Letters to the Editor
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Registering Disagreement
Just in case anyone over there is counting, let me say (with as little bitterness as possible) that:
1) I agree with those who say Obama was not asked tough, but stupid questions.
2) I agree with those who say that there is something profoundly sick about our current media environment, and I am surprised that the editor of Salon would casually endorse it by valorizing the questions as tough.
3) I agree with those who say that Obama stands to win by making the press an issue, since so many Americans reacted viscerally to the gossipy, inane character of the debate.
4) I don't think that's being peevish, I think that's being a moral leader.
and last
5) I wouldn't mind seeing Salon exercise more of that same moral leadership, in its masthead editorials.
We'll see whether Obama can make this a winner, politically, but condemning it outright as peevishness concedes too much credit to the status quo.
I say all this as a person who genuinely admires both Clinton and Obama, though Clinton less so recently because of her surprising reluctance to exercise moral leadership on this issue. I think it's a winner politically, and also think it's imperative on any true Democrat at this time. As Josh Marshall, Glenn Greenwald, and others have argued here and elsewhere, the Republican ability to float spurious innuendo about Democratic candidates and thereby change all policy debates into vague contests over "character"--a debate that only allows for racism, sexism, and machismo to dominate our public life-has to be contested.
While Clinton--having been unjustly savaged to this day--seems to think that the only way to win is to play the same dirty game (admittedly her call), I just think she's wrong. And it pains me to see both her accept that proposition.
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poetic justice
there once was a mag named Salon
who's editor's rants would drone on
her view was quite slanted
the readers; disenchanted
refused to put up with the con
twas sad that a site once so liberal
spouted nonsense with logic quite illiteral
cried the posters beware!
the increasing despair
of the thought of McCain's inaugural
so Joan please come to your senses
your objectivity! what a pretense is!
the Fat Lady's sung
the Bell's toll has rung
it's time to start mending fences!
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Joan -- some of us seem to be attempting an intervention here
Your candidate has just thrown a good percentage of your readership under the bus. There are more than 3,000,000 in MoveOne.org, for Christ's sake, and Hillary just repudiated all of us.
Get with the program. She is not a progressive; she is a destructive force for the values that most of your readers hold dear. Without hope of taking the lead in the popular vote, or the pledged delegate count, she is running a sour-grapes, mean-spirited campaign to ensure four more years of Bushism, channeled through her friend, John McCain.
Are you not a progressive; are you not a liberal? If you are still a committed Democrat and a progressive, please have the decency to call Clinton out for her final and fatal outrage.
Salon is not even a shadow of what it used to be. Without Glenn Greenwald it would be an unqualified disaster.
It's okay to abandon your support for Clinton. Her candidacy is dying from self-inflicted wounds anyway. A lot of people are changing their choice of candidate today, and they are wise to do so. I would be thrilled to see you join them.
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Why am I reading this nonsense?
At this point I wonder why I read Ms. Walsh's nonsense, given that I could go to the Clinton campaign website and receive the same talking points directly.
While the rest of the world is talking (rightly) about how poorly handled the debate was, and how insulting and worthless the questions put to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were, Ms. Walsh calls the interrogation "tough" and once again regurgitates the Clinton campaign line about Obama's performance. Talk of flag pins and the Weather Underground doesn't qualify as tough questioning and Obama had every right to be annoyed. We all should be.
I find it interesting and more than a little disheartening that when Barack Obama displays appropriate human emotions and when he tells the painful truth, he's castigated for it by Clinton supporters and Republicans alike. Two groups, I might add, that have begun to sound virtually identical in recent weeks.
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McCain The Winner
I am afraid there is nothing that Obama can now do that will cost him the Democratic nmination. I find what the press is doing now is sort of like the umpire giving a break to the losing team after, earlier helping the winning team. This way when we look back people will say they were tough on both candidates.
This contest has disgusted me. I have voted in more than 1o presidential contests, never for a Republican. That will change with the nomination of Obama.
The Democrats have to pray for a depression type economy along with bad news in the war. It will be interesting to look at a map in September and see which states are safe democratic states at that time.
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RIGHTFULLY ANGRY
I know I was pissed by yet another example of the MSM not asking one question about the subversion of our Constitution, gross violations of the Rule of Law by this Administration, Illegal Domestic Spying and Eavesdropping, Torture, Gitmo, the Politicized Justice Department, Out of Control Executive Power, what ever happened to Habeus, why is it called the Patriot Act, when in reality it is the Oppression and Facist Dictator Act, etc., ad nauseum.
But I know what this story is really about:
Poor, set upon white lady, day ???,.......*sniff*....
I wonder if a year from now Joan will be writing about "What would it have been like if Hillary were in this situation instead of that (yuk, patooey) President Barack???
Man, get over it already.....
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SO JOAN
all you have to do is just agree with all these nice people and agree to never write another disturbing word. We can't have too many differing opinions around here.
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Slow on the uptake much?
Your question "Will Obama's debate stumble hurt him" is a day late and a dollar short. Do you not keep up with the news?
According to the latest polling, taken after the debate, Obama's "stumble" not only didn't hurt him, it actually widened his lead over Hillary Clinton in the national polls. Clinton's negatives went up further, and fewer Democratic voters find her honest and trustworthy.
In short, it is Hillary Clinton who has not only stumbled, but fallen on her face in the aftermath of a debate that the majority of voters believed was a petty hit job on Barack Obama, loaded with inane, irrelevant questions that had nothing to do with voters' actual concerns. Instead of questions on gas prices--oh wait, we did get a gas price question in the last MINUTE--we got questions about flag pins and whether or not Rev. Jeremiah Wright loves America.
(Sidebar: Rev. Wright apparently hates America so much he enlisted and served in two branches of the military during Vietnam, while America Lovers George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and--oh yeah!--Bill Clinton were using deferments to get out of it)
Your bias to Hillary Clinton has always been obvious, but today it is so obvious as to be comical, and your headline question so devoid of news--considering the latest polling, to which you are surely paying attention--that it makes you look like you stupid and behind the curve ball.
Hillary Clinton did more than stumble in the debate. She showed the voters once and for all that if she is not in league with the Right Wing attack machine, she's certainly enjoying its use against Obama as it was on Wednesday night. Smirking like the cat who swallowed the canary and then putting on a mien of false concern when addressing questions of Obama's patriotism and past associations, it was beyond obvious that Clinton was indeed "in her element", attacking her opponent using right wing talking points. It was a sick, sad display and she has paid the price with her plummeting poll numbers.