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Our Hillary problem.

So yes­ter­day I was e-mailing back and forth with an old pal, and she wrote:

I keep wait­ing for a coura­geous blog­ger to point out that Obama has yet to repu­di­ate his sur­ro­gate, speak­ing at an Obama fundraiser, who called Sen. Clin­ton a “fuck­ing whore.”

Now, I ask you: If a Clin­ton sup­porter, at a Clin­ton fund-raising event, had uttered an insult toward Obama that was the racial equiv­a­lent of the sex­ist slam “fuck­ing whore” — and I think we all know what that would be — I dare­say that Clin­ton, by now, might have dis­tanced her­self from the remark. To say the least.

Oh — wait. I for­got. Racism is awful; sex­ism is OK.

I don’t know about you, but whomever one backs in this race, the sex­ism that is so accept­able, so wide­spread, has just sick­ened me.

Yeah, me too. I’m not emo­tion­ally engaged with Hillary, and I think she deserves a cer­tain amount of what’s being dished out. But she has a point. A short and incom­plete roundup, from New York mag­a­zine, in an essay that unfor­tu­nately goes down­hill from here:

A greatest-hits selec­tion pro­vides a mea­sure of the misog­yny: There’s Repub­li­can axman Roger Stone’s anti-Hillary 527 orga­ni­za­tion, Cit­i­zens United Not Timid, or CUNT. And the Face­book group Hillary Clin­ton: Stop Run­ning for Pres­i­dent and Make Me a Sand­wich, which has 44,000-plus mem­bers. And the “Hillary Nut­cracker” with its “stainless-steel thighs.” And Clinton’s Wikipedia page, which, accord­ing to The New Repub­lic, is reg­u­larly van­dal­ized with bathroom-stall slurs like “slut” and “cunt­bag.” And the truly hor­ri­ble YouTube video of a KFC bucket that reads HILLARY MEAL DEAL: 2 FAT THIGHS, 2 SMALL BREASTS, AND A BUNCH OF LEFT WINGS. And Rush Lim­baugh wor­ry­ing whether the coun­try is ready to watch a woman age in the White House (as though nearly every male politi­cian has not emerged portly, wea­ried, and a grand­fa­therly shade of gray). And those two boors who shouted, “Iron my shirts!” from the side­lines in New Hampshire.

That’s the first I’d heard of Cit­i­zens United Not Timid, and I get around. It’s a 527 orga­ni­za­tion, “to edu­cate the Amer­i­can pub­lic about what Hillary Clin­ton really is.” Charm­ing. I grow a lit­tle weary of calls for A to denounce B — hav­ing the same gen­eral views as another does not make me my brother’s keeper — but it’s nice to have groups like this around. With Cit­i­zens United Not Timid in the world, I no longer have to lis­ten to right-wing whin­ing about Michael Moore.

But my friend is right. Can you imag­ine, even for a minute, a 527 called New Infor­ma­tion Guar­an­teed Great­ness Elu­ci­dat­ing Real­ity, “to edu­cate the Amer­i­can pub­lic about what Barack Obama really is”? If “cunt” is the female equiv­a­lent of “nig­ger,” how often do you hear Obama called the lat­ter? Some dim bulb in Ken­tucky refers to him as “this boy” and has to apol­o­gize within hours. But insult­ing Hillary with sex­ist jokes gets you a high-paying job on the net­work news:

The frat boys at MSNBC por­trayed Clin­ton as a cas­trat­ing scold, with Tucker Carl­son com­ment­ing, “Every time I hear Hillary Clin­ton speak, I invol­un­tar­ily cross my legs,” and Chris Matthews call­ing her male endorsers “cas­tratos in the eunuch cho­rus.” Matthews also dubbed Clin­ton “the griev­ing widow of absur­dity,” say­ing, of her pres­i­den­tial can­di­dacy and sen­a­to­r­ial seat, “She didn’t win there on her merit. She won because every­body felt, ‘My God, this woman stood up under humil­i­a­tion.’ ” While that may be partly true — Hillary’s approval rat­ings soared in the wake of l’affaire Lewin­sky — Matthews’s take reduced her uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized polit­i­cal suc­cesses to rewards for pub­lic sym­pa­thy, as though Clinton’s intel­li­gence and long record of pub­lic ser­vice count for noth­ing. Would a male can­di­date be viewed so reduc­tively? Many have argued that the media don’t like Clin­ton sim­ply because they don’t like Clin­ton — even her devo­tees will admit she arrives with a com­plete set of over­stuffed bag­gage — much in the same way they made up their mind about Al Gore back in 2000 and ganged up on him as a prissy, uptight know-it-all. But what­ever is behind the vit­riol, it has taken crudely sex­ist forms.

Part of it is human nature. I used to work for a gay man, who could, on occa­sion, be a real jerk. (He, too, had a prob­lem with strong women. One of the strong women in the news­room once told me, in a pri­vate moment, “I want to grab him and say, ‘I’m not your MOTHER, ass­hole.’”) I admit, when I was angry with him, I’d some­times refer to him as a “misog­y­nist fag.” Some­one called me on it, and I thought it over and decided I would now refer to him as a misog­y­nist jerk. (Even though I was danc­ing in gay bars when he was still pre­tend­ing to be straight.) But you get the idea: It’s easy to express an ugly emo­tion in ugly lan­guage. You’d hope this would only hap­pen in pri­vate moments, but then, we can’t all be Chris Matthews.

So here’s my ques­tion for the floor today: How com­fort­able are you with the cracks about Hillary’s fat butt, les­bian vibe and stainless-steel thighs? Whether you sup­port her or not, at what sta­tion do you get off the train? (We’ll assume, to all of our credit, that we don’t ride it all the way to Cit­i­zens United Not Timid.) Is there room for chivalry in a pres­i­den­tial race? And any other top­ics you want to bring up.

Me, I gotta go to the gym. I missed three weightlift­ing classes in the last 10 days, ratio­nal­iz­ing that because I was on my bike most of those days, I wouldn’t pay for the skips. Au con­traire; my ham­mies felt like splin­tery ply­wood, only less flex­i­ble. But before I go, some bloggage:

Inside base­ball, but I found Ken Doctor’s sug­ges­tions for jazz­ing up newspaper-corporation boards to be pretty dead-on.

Tbogg got a new puppy. Now he has three bas­set hounds to walk. Tbogg is insane, but at least his house has extra cute­ness.

Finally, a Metafil­ter post that rounds up pretty much every­thing you ever wanted to know about wacky wav­ing inflat­able arm-flailing tube men, aka “airdancers.”

Off to stretch the hams.

Posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 9:41 am
in Current events.

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55 responses to
“Our Hillary problem.”

  1. Connie said on April 15th, 2008 at 9:54 am

    I made a com­ment here not long ago about the sex­ist nas­ti­ness regard­ing Hillary that has appeared in the com­ments here recently.

    Recently I received a cat­a­log of lovely large size clothes in all my favorite col­ors. Dis­played in the midst of all the flow­ing gar­ments was the Hillary Nut­cracker, the one with stain­less steel thighs. I was so appalled I went to their web page and sent them a con­tact us mes­sage. To which they haven’t replied. And then I threw the cat­a­log out.

    And for­got to men­tion yes­ter­day, that I have my very own rock and roll birth­day song. I’ve told you this before. “It was the 3rd of Sep­tem­ber, a day I’ll always remem­ber, cause that was the day that my daddy died. Pappa was a rolling stone.….” You know the rest.

    Sun is shin­ing and kid will be home from her semes­ter in Europe this weekend.

  2. Laura said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    I have a real prob­lem with the Hillary bash­ers. I’m cur­rently in the Hillary camp, but at this point, I’m unsure what is dri­ving me to sup­port her. Is it because she’s the best can­di­date, or is it because she is up against so much misogyny?

  3. Peter said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    Yeah, it’s way over the top. Although I must admit I laughed out loud when I read “Stop Run­ning for Pres­i­dent and Make Me a Sand­wich”  — now THAT’s a sen­ti­ment I can live by, and it really could apply to all the can­di­dates, although I’m not sure what kind of sand­wich Ron Paul would serve up — some­thing tells me that the idea of hand­ing out tasty Texas brisket bar­be­cue wouldn’t enter his mind.

    I think it’s true that if some­one talked about Obama in half as bad a tone as this Hillary stuff that per­son would be pub­licly flogged.

    The part that gets me is that there are plenty of insult­ing terms you can accu­rately use on Hillary before you need to hit the sex­ist list in the thesaurus.

    No, I take that back, here’s the part that gets me: Like W and her hus­band, the hatred some peo­ple have for her knows no bounds. Seri­ously, I don’t think peo­ple hated Hitler as much as those 3. I don’t get it; other than the parent/spouse/kid of some­one killed in Iraq, how the heck can you get THAT angry over someone.

  4. MichaelG said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    I donated a com­ment with my thoughts on Hillary a week or two ago. I don’t par­tic­u­larly care for her and I voted for Obama in the CA pri­mary. In fact, the more I see of her, the less I like her. To hear her talk, she prac­ti­cally joined the NRA over the week­end, clutch­ing Charl­ton Heston’s used gun. But, if she is the nom­i­nee, I will vote for her over McCain. That said, I am appalled at the steady beat of misog­y­nis­tic crap that is every­where includ­ing all the so-called joke emails I get every day. I don’t care who she is or what she stands for it’s just wrong.

  5. coozledad said on April 15th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    I used to sup­port Hillary, until she basi­cally endorsed John McCain. Sex­ist attacks on her piss me off, espe­cially com­ing from that creepy dim­bulb Chris Matthews, and it’s an issue of con­cern. But if some­one goes all aryan nations on Joe Lieber­man, it does noth­ing to improve him. He’s still an arro­gant bas­tard with a hired man’s con­tempt for the demo­c­ra­tic process. I’m not say­ing Hillary is a shill for cor­po­rate pay­mas­ters so much as she is for that clique of Wash­ing­ton din­ner party fix­tures who served us this war, this econ­omy, and this pres­i­dency. And instead of lan­guish­ing in their own feces in a jail as they would if there were any jus­tice, con­tinue to draw salaries to tell us everything’s basi­cally OK.
    I want a Demo­c­rat for pres­i­dent. A par­ti­san. Not more of that Carville-Cokie Roberts-Richard Cohen-Mara Lia­son– rub­bish. Hillary’s just their pry­bar to get McCain in office.

  6. Dorothy said on April 15th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    A day or two before the Ohio pri­maries, I was on my way home from work when I spot­ted an elderly man wav­ing Hillary Clin­ton signs, so I got into the turn­ing lane quickly, so I could drive over to him and pick up a sign for my apart­ment win­dow. Also maybe a but­ton, because I like the can­di­date and I wanted to sup­port her. And I planned to vote for her.

    So I got waved over by a young man who was stop­ping for a red light. He let me cross traf­fic to get to the man in the park­ing lot. I smiled and waved, thank­ing him for the favor. I zipped over to the old guy, and put my win­dow down. To my utter amaze­ment, the young guy who had sec­onds ear­lier allowed me to cross the road put his win­dow down, and shouted “You bitch! If I knew why you wanted to get over there I never would have let you drive across!! Fuck you and fuck Hillary!!” Well of course I was stunned,. But then I real­ized that this guy’s reac­tion was the epit­ome of venom and vit­riol directed right at Mrs. Clin­ton. I started won­der­ing if she has to hear those kind of nasty things spit at her while she’s out cam­paign­ing. And yet she keep smil­ing and try­ing and talking.

    I did vote for Hillary in the pri­mary, but like Laura above, I am sort of torn as to why exactly. I do like cer­tain things about Barack Obama, but I feel like Hillary’s expe­ri­ence is deeper and stronger than his. I don’t know what to think some­times. One thing I’m cer­tain of though is that this county has a long way to go in gen­der rela­tions, more so than race rela­tions, espe­cially when peo­ple think it’s funny to say “Stop Run­ning for Pres­i­dent and Make Me a Sand­wich.” That’s just plain wrong, unfair and def­i­nitely unfunny.

  7. Cara said on April 15th, 2008 at 11:52 am

    Until we focus on our econ­omy, for­eign pol­icy, edu­ca­tion and health care, and our domes­tic secu­rity needs, in other words, cre­ate a job descrip­tion for the Pres­i­dent, and fill that job with the best can­di­date, we all lose.

    The names, blames and flames thrown about are dis­trac­tions. The ques­tion: Who will we hire to lead us in solv­ing the big problems?

  8. Peter said on April 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    Dorothy, I didn’t want to offend — although it was only applied to Ms. Clin­ton, I think it’s good advice for any candidate.

    I can’t help it if I like sand­wiches. I’m sorry I live such a poor, deprived exis­tance, but hav­ing a nice sand­wich makes my day. Sure, it’s bread and cir­cuses, but in 1980 sev­eral can­di­dates set up booths at my col­lege; Reagan’s just handed out fly­ers, but Anderson’s had quite the spread. I’d like to think it was his rea­soned approach to cur­rent events that led me to vol­un­teer for his cam­paign, but I got to tell you, that was one fine sandwich!

    In the old days in Chicago, alder­manic can­di­dates rou­tinely bought rounds at the local pubs. Now they hire media con­sul­tants. Just another exam­ple of how we’ve regressed.

  9. moe99 said on April 15th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    I believe that Hillary is a light­ning rod for every right wing kook out there. My Repub­li­can friends from Defi­ance, who I stay in email cor­re­spon­dence with, if only to give my left lean­ing ship some bal­last, go bal­lis­tic when her name is men­tioned. And they aren’t big McCain sup­port­ers at all. It’s just some vis­ceral reac­tion like hit­ting your knee with the ham­mer produces.

    That being said, I still do not like, do not trust Hillary. Her career has been built on expe­di­ency. When I think of her, I do not come up with any higher goals that she has illus­trated as moti­vat­ing her cam­paign for pres­i­dent. She, just like McCain seems to feel like some­how she is owed the pres­i­dency because of all she has been through. And for those who want expe­ri­ence in their can­di­dates, may I point out that Abra­ham Lin­coln had less expe­ri­ence than Barack Obama.

    All of that being said, I tried to come up with a woman politi­cian with­out Hillary’s bag­gage, who I could look to as a pos­si­ble pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Now, I have two women Sen­a­tors from my home state, Patty Mur­ray who is nice enough, but reputed to be a dim bulb and Maria Cantwell who is sec­ond cousin to the Wicked Witch of the West if her treat­ment of staff is to be believed. And I know the Gov­er­nor, Chris­tine Gre­goire, hav­ing worked for her and really would not vote for her either for very sub­stan­tive, non-sexist rea­sons that are too long to get into here. So, what is it about pol­i­tics that draws these types of women? Are there any women else­where who could carry a pres­i­den­tial can­di­dacy with­out being utterly consumed/changed? Don’t get me wrong, I think the pres­sures on men can­di­dates are enor­mous, but given the addi­tional sex­ism that women have to endure, I have yet to meet a woman who could go through all of that and suc­ceed. And I don’t know where we start to com­bat it.

  10. alex said on April 15th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Hillary’s prob­lem is that she has an unsym­pa­thetic per­son­al­ity. Not that this is uncom­mon among politi­cians, and it won’t keep me from vot­ing for her in the fall should she be the nom­i­nee. But it’s the rea­son I’m vot­ing for Barack in the pri­mary. That, and frankly because he has shown him­self to be more adept at deflect­ing mis­siles from the Repub­li­can poo-flinging machine.

    I acknowl­edge that Barack is get­ting some­thing of a free ride. The poo-flingers are way too cow­ardly to exploit his race the same way they exploit Hillary’s gen­der. Imag­ine some­one say­ing “stop run­ning for pres­i­dent and fetch my car, boy.” It would be a national scan­dal, no doubt.

    I would say, anec­do­tally, from what I’ve seen in the work­place and in the world at large, that overt racism at present is more ruth­lessly pun­ished than overt misog­yny. Why? The cul­ture is still steeped in misog­yny and plenty of women don’t even rec­og­nize it as such. I remem­ber one time when a female co-worker was approached by man­age­ment, who feared she might be get­ting ready to file a com­plaint against a sex­ist boor who worked there. “C’mon,” she told them. “I’m not some kind of fem­i­nazi.” (This was a woman who missed a lot of days due to the shin­ers her hus­band was always plant­ing on her face, by the way.)

    This elec­tion cycle should be inter­est­ing. I think it will indi­rectly high­light just where this coun­try really is in terms of race and gen­der. (I’m guess­ing the pat­tern will be sim­i­lar to the red and blue one we saw last time around, actually.)

  11. James said on April 15th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    So… what sur­ro­gate called Hillary that? Can you cite a source, because I hadn’t heard of that.

    It’s a lit­tle unfair to pile on Mr. Obama for things said by Tucker Carl­son and Chris Matthews. As far as I know, Obama doesn’t pal around with those crackers.

  12. whitebeard said on April 15th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    I am not totally enam­ored with Hillary, but I detest her lame­brain speech writ­ers who put bla­tant lies in her mouth that get her in fact-checking trou­ble.
    With friends like her back-stabbing strate­gist who quit recently, whose firm grabbed, what was it, $10 mil­lion of her hard-earned cam­paign funds, she doesn’t need ene­mies, much less crude com­ments from sex­ist Repub­li­can white male cave dwellers who have brought this coun­try and the entire world to its knees eco­nom­i­cally and are too cow­ardly to admit it.
    The dis­gust­ing words about Hillary show how much those white males are afraid deep down that a woman in the White House would spur efforts to curb greed and cor­rup­tion in the oil indus­try, the insur­ance indus­try, the drug indus­try and the military-industrial car­tels.
    As for the gun-toting red­necks. their scat­a­log­i­cal vocab­u­lary is as low as their IQ from mar­ry­ing their cousins. And their rifles are sym­bols of their sex­ual inad­e­quacy.
    I know all is fair in love, war and pol­i­tics but maybe some self-censorship should be enforced.

  13. snarkworth said on April 15th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Hello, all. I’ve been lurk­ing since I found you all after Nancy broke the pla­gia­rism story. The com­ments on this site are of a refresh­ingly high qual­ity (most of the time). I also hap­pen to be a Penn­syl­van­ian who will vote next Tues­day for one of these two, so this topic really caught my eye.

  14. coozledad said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    @ James: I believe it was Randi Rhodes. I guess she’s an Obama sur­ro­gate, but she strikes me as more of a loose can­non. A very tal­ented radio host, but fre­quently over the top, and this time appar­ently, lost her job.
    I should apol­o­gize for being a lit­tle stri­dent myself.

  15. Dorothy said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    The sand­wich line just reminds me of the “bare­foot and preg­nant” kind of atti­tude that lots of peo­ple still ascribe to. They might not nec­es­sar­ily admit to it, but it’s just bla­tantly sex­ist to me. I’m not offended, Peter, hon­est; I just wish those kind of old, 50’s-era atti­tudes would dis­ap­pear for good.

  16. James said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    Randi Rhodes is NOT an Obama sur­ro­gate, any more than I am ( yeah, I’m for him…). A sur­ro­gate is some­one who’s paid by the cam­paign as a spokesper­son, or a politico who’s endorsed a can­di­date. Not a radio talker.

    Oth­er­wise, Rush Lim­baugh would be a Hillary sur­ro­gate, since he encour­aged folks to vote for her in Texas and Ohio. If that’s the case, I think Hillary’s got some apol­o­giz­ing to do for his wacky statements.

    I’m just sayin’…

  17. Jolene said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    It was Rhodes? Wow! It’s more than a stretch to refer to Randi Rhodes as an Obama sur­ro­gate. She may be a sup­porter, but sur­ro­gates are peo­ple like Chelsea and Bill Clin­ton, Ed Ren­dell, Michelle Obama, Bob Casey – peo­ple who make cam­paign and media appear­ances on behalf of the can­di­date. Rhodes’s com­ment was beyond the pale, but it’s a bit much to expect Barack Obama to apol­o­gize for the words of some­one over whom he has no con­trol and who he did not ask to speak on his behalf.

    Of course, the Rhodes exam­ple is only one of the many that Nancy and oth­ers have cited, so that doesn’t make the prob­lem go away. Still, we should make sure our indig­na­tion is directed at the right targets.

  18. coozledad said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    Judg­ing from the sta­sis in PA polling, I think that Hillary’s pos­tur­ing (espe­cially on the whole elit­ism thing) has alien­ated a lot of the more lib­eral wing of the party, and Obama’s had a pretty good response. I think he’s ulti­mately going to do well com­ing out of this flare-up.

  19. John said on April 15th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Kirche, Kutchen und Kinder is a bit older than the 50s, but I always admired Mrs. Cleaver who clearly knew how to get what she wanted.

    As for Sen. Clin­ton, I’m not a fan of hers although I don’t have any ani­mos­ity towards her. I feel that both her and her cur­rent rival have lim­ited expe­ri­ence and am not com­fort­able sup­port­ing either one. I’m not really crazy about the other Sen­a­tor who seems to have his party’s nom­i­na­tion although not their love. My vote doesn’t count any­way liv­ing in Con­necti­cut as it is not a swing state.

    I agree with our host­ess’ premise that there have been far too many ugly words used this year.

  20. sue said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    I’m not a Hillary fan, as you know, for all the rea­sons given by the pre­vi­ous posters (plus that whole Cubs/Yankees thing, of course). My per­sonal feel­ing about all the sex­ist com­ments is that she’s just expe­ri­enc­ing on a larger scale what many women go through, and if any­one can take it, it’s Hillary. The boys are just shoot­ing them­selves in the foot, because peo­ple are sit­ting up and tak­ing notice and the accom­pa­ny­ing pub­lic­ity reflects more poorly on them than their tar­get. The out­rage should not be that an strong adult female is being tar­geted by boor­ish nean­derthals, but that any­one walk­ing past a mixed group of 14-year-olds will hear much the same thing, com­ing from both sexes, and sup­pos­edly all in fun. It starts early.
    What Hillary needs is a good humorist on her writ­ing staff. Instead of smil­ing through this, or pre­tend­ing it’s not hap­pen­ing, she needs to fight with words. I would like to see the equiv­a­lent of JFK’s “My father told me not to buy any more votes than I had to” com­ment regard­ing these cretins.
    I think Obama is actu­ally in more dan­ger than Hillary. The hatred and fear of Barack is hid­den and the cra­zies who are nur­tur­ing their hatred know to keep their heads down and com­mu­ni­cate only with each other.

  21. Joe K said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    As a repub­li­can it is really fun to watch the Dem’s go after each other. They sure don’t play nice. I always heard the Gop were the mean spir­ited one’s, but man can those two dem’s make them selfs look silly. I think I’ll just kick back and watch them destroy each other then vote Repub­li­can again. Mcain may not be the one all save all, and lord knows we need some help in Wash­ing­ton, but Obamma and Hillery ain’t it.

  22. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    When Liddy Dole ran for the Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, she didn’t get all the flack that Hillary is get­ting. The “Hillary Prob­lem” isn’t that she’s female. Peo­ple hate her because she’s Hillary. She loves a good fight, and she fights dirty. Besides that, she’s Joe Isuzu: she lies even when there’s no pos­si­ble ben­e­fit from telling lies.

    The real “Hillary Prob­lem” is that she’s mak­ing it easy for the GOP to win this fall.

    McCain needs to name a woman as his run­ning mate, some­one who has proven lead­er­ship skills, who comes from the pri­vate sec­tor instead of com­ing from gov­ern­ment. It wouldn’t be the first time we elected a non-politician. Woodrow Wil­son came from acad­e­mia. Ross Perot put up a cred­i­ble fight, and he was a com­puter salesman.

    He has Meg Whit­man and Carly Fio­r­ina already on board his cam­paign. Meg for­merly ran Ebay, and Carly ran Hewlitt-Packard. I think he’d feel more com­fort­able with Meg.

    In either case, he could argue that they pro­vide more exper­tise in rebuild­ing the US econ­omy than any politi­cian can offer. And with pro-feminist defec­tors from the Demo­c­ra­tic party, he’s likely to win.

    Of course, the “Hillary Prob­lem” is only a prob­lem for the Demo­c­ra­tic party, not for Hillary. She knows she’s not going to get the nom­i­na­tion this time around. She’s try­ing to ensure that McCain wins this fall, so that she doesn’t have to run against a sit­ting pres­i­dent for the nom­i­na­tion in 2012.…

  23. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    I’m not really crazy about the other Sen­a­tor who seems to have his party’s nom­i­na­tion although not their love. My vote doesn’t count any­way liv­ing in Con­necti­cut as it is not a swing state.

    My vote doesn’t count either, since I’m reg­is­tered with the GOP and Penn­syl­va­nia doesn’t have an open primary.

    But being from Con­necti­cut, and using “crazy” and “sen­a­tor” in the other sen­tence, shouldn’t you be talk­ing about your own Sen­a­tor Lieberman?

    I’ve been anti-Lieberman ever since the early 1990s, when he and Leahy sided with the Japan­ese to keep com­puter games from small Amer­i­can pro­gram­mers out of the marketplace.

    Inside base­ball, but I found Ken Doctor’s sug­ges­tions for jazz­ing up newspaper-corporation boards to be pretty dead-on.

    It took me a while to read it, but his list of sug­ges­tions is a real hoot. Eliot Spitzer, Chris Matthews, Craig New­mark, Oprah.

    How about D. O. McComb? Now there are skills that a news­pa­per can use…

  24. coozledad said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

    Jah, Joe. Just sit back and watch that Repub­li­can econ­omy shine, shine, shine. And gotta love that war. It’s so good McCain wants to fetch us another one.
    The only exper­tise McCain can claim is get­ting the national media to ignore to ignore his psy­chosis and his crim­i­nal record.

  25. John said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Harl, don’t even get me started on either of my state’s sen­a­tors. They both have for­got­ton who they rep­re­sent. This is the result of a sin­gle party hold­ing too much sway in the state.

  26. Joe K said on April 15th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    Coo­zledad,
    Remem­ber it was Billy C. who signed Nafta, and we do have a Dem con­gress, no??. I guess I didn’t know Mcain was a crim­i­nal, what were the charges?
    While the econ­omy could be bet­ter, if you posi­tioned your­self back 5 years ago to weather a down turn, things are not as bad as some make it out to be. As for the war, bet­ter there, than here, and don’t believe some­one would not try it again.
    Joe

  27. nancy said on April 15th, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    Joe, this statement — 

    As for the war, bet­ter there, than here, and don’t believe some­one would not try it again.

    – is so wrong it makes my head hurt, and I don’t want to get headachey on this lovely day, so I’m let­ting it pass.

    So far, I think Alex has the clos­est view to mine: Sex­ism per­sists and flow­ers because too many women are com­plicit in it. Imag­ine a black man chuck­ling along with the racists in his office about Obama. You can’t do it. And yet, women par­tic­i­pate in the Hillary-has-fat-thighs bull­shit enthusiastically.

    And then there are cunts like Dr. Laura, who have made a career out of it.

  28. coozledad said on April 15th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    Joe: I sup­pose vot­ing for Bush eight years ago would have been “posi­tion­ing your­self for a down turn”: Otherwise,I don’t have the slight­est idea what you’re talk­ing about. Although I must com­mend old anger-issues for reach­ing across the aisle to get neck-deep in the Keat­ing Five scan­dal. There’s a record of it. It’s crim­i­nal activ­ity.
    Let me remind you that the mil­i­tary is des­per­ate for some more folks to catch shrap­nel while it’s tied down over there. It could just be you have the mak­ings of a great ord­nance absorp­tion tech­ni­cian. Just let me know when McCain has fig­ured out who the hell it is we’re fight­ing, because as he’s amply demon­strated, he doesn’t even know who changed his dia­per this morn­ing unless Joe Lieber­man tells him.

  29. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 15th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Well, pol­i­tics doesn’t bring out the sprightly, thought­ful, eru­dite side of any of us, does it? I think Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton has sur­prised me by becom­ing a pretty good sen­a­tor, and should work on tak­ing over the Demo­c­rat lead­er­ship role cur­rently being held down by the twin som­nam­bu­lists Kennedy and Byrd. This i say as a Repub­li­can, but one who wants a strong, ratio­nal debate on things like over­seas bomb­ing and national bor­ders and inter­state bridge inspections.

    She shouldn’t go in the White House because she spent eight years there with Bill and sorry if it’s unfair, but some­day i hope to say this about the hus­band of a two-term woman pres­i­dent to defend my con­sis­tency on this question.

    Oh, and a last con­ser­v­a­tive con­trar­ian obser­va­tion — with­hold­ing from your reg­u­lar pay­check will never go away, but the decline of per­sonal sav­ings in the US of A par­al­lels the start (dur­ing WWII as a tem­po­rary mea­sure — ha!) and expan­sion of with­hold­ing for income taxes, because then you don’t need to set some aside through the year to have the big lump to mail in on April 15. That, and the per­ni­cious esti­mated self-employment scam where we pay taxes on money we don’t have yet and may never see, and tax penal­ties for dar­ing to make more than you’d expected to in a year, are almost as much a drag on the econ­omy as employer based health care. If Obama said he’d drop with­hold­ing, i’d have to seri­ously con­sider vot­ing for him on that basis alone.

  30. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    Well, I wanted Pam to chime in, since her opin­ions about Sen­a­tor Clin­ton would be much more inter­est­ing than mine, but (as you can see) in this I failed.

    I am struck by the light­en­ing HRC draws – both good and bad. Remem­ber that Lazio guy she beat, enroute to her Sen­ate seat? He the­atri­cally crowded her on stage at a debate, and essen­tially ended his chances of winning…so when it comes to iconic women, we seem to have that volatile mix­ture of veneration/vituperation always in play.

    If I was going to yap and yap, I’d expand on the idea that Obama should defend his “bit­ter” remarks, by con­nect­ing them with the bit­ter remarks of his old south-side of Chicago Pas­tor; there is con­sis­tency (and more than a lit­tle truth) in the thought Obama expressed about dis­il­lu­sioned peo­ple in eco­nom­i­cally bypassed small towns, and pas­tor Wright’s rough-edged remarks….but I have to run off to IPFW and see if I can get into the audi­to­rium where Jill Long Thomp­son and that Schellinburger (sic?) guy are debat­ing tonight….I hope JLT busts his balls!

    (note – that was a joke!)

  31. Scout said on April 15th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    Randi Rhodes is as much a sur­ro­gate for Obama as Nancy’s e-mail pal is one for Hillary. Actu­ally, the sup­port­ers of the can­di­dates have made an absolute spec­ta­cle of this whole process. I’ve never seen so many tantrums over some­thing like this before. All the threats of “If he/she gets the nom­i­na­tion I’ll just vote for McSame” are so child­ish I want to scream.

    As a les­bian woman of a cer­tain mid­dlish age I am in the exact demo­graphic of the aver­age Hillary sup­porter and yet, go fig­ure, I am an Obama sup­porter. I sus­pect my rea­sons for this are shared by many. Not the least of which is because of her enabling war votes that allowed a known loose can­non to start an ille­gal occu­pa­tion in a coun­try that didn’t attack us.

    As I have watched her cam­paign unfold and become more and more soaked with des­per­a­tion I am even less enchanted with her than I was before. She seems deter­mined to destroy every­thing that that stands between her and her move back to Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue except the one thing that might, the pos­si­ble pres­i­dency of McNasty that her scorched earth tac­tics are ulti­mately benefiting.

    As a loyal Demo­c­rat I have been a cease­less defender of the Clin­ton pres­i­dency and fed up with the media that abet­ted the ridicu­lous witch-hunts of those years. So it dis­mays me to see Bill and Hillary as they now put their own aspi­ra­tions above the party that stuck by them. It’s tough to watch peo­ple I always admired take that “If you don’t vote for us, then we don’t care what hap­pens” attitude.

    Bot­tom line — Hillary’s gen­der has squat to do with why I hope PA ends it for her. That being said, I’m not stu­pid or spite­ful, so I will vote for her in Novem­ber if she ends up the nom­i­nee. I live in Ari­zona, I know what McCain is all about and there is no way he should be allowed any­where near a red telephone.

  32. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    If Obama said he’d drop with­hold­ing, i’d have to seri­ously con­sider vot­ing for him on that basis alone.

    Does it really mat­ter whether we tax income or outgo? I think it does, and we’re tax­ing the wrong one.

    Most of Europe, for instance, has the VAT. When they import a Cadil­lac to the US, the price tag includes dou­ble tax­a­tion — both the US income tax on the man­u­fac­ture, and the Ger­man VAT tax on its sale. When we import a BMW from Ger­many, though, Ger­many imposes no VAT, and the US taxes only the dealer’s profit.

    It’s kinda hard for us to com­pete in a world econ­omy when that happens.

    And a VAT would not be a “regres­sive” tax if you exempted gro­ceries. The rich folks would pay a lot of VAT on their fancy toys, and restau­rant lifestyle, while a large per­cent­age of the poor’s income goes for exempt groceries.

    I live in Ari­zona, I know what McCain is all about and there is no way he should be allowed any­where near a red telephone.

    Hillary Diane Clin­ton is 60, and tired and senile. I know that because her hus­band recently said so.

    I don’t think cry­ing is a very good tac­tic when she is try­ing to deal with the North Kore­ans. They’ve gotta be think­ing, “If she for­gave Bill for cheat­ing on her and giv­ing her months of humil­i­a­tion, there’s no way she’s going to start a war over us cheat­ing on a treaty.”

    On the other hand, while Sen­a­tor Obama wants to get us out of Iraq, a war Mr. Bush pro­claimed won five years ago, he says he’s will­ing to bomb Pak­istan, a sup­posed ally, to get Bin Laden. If he’s will­ing to do that, you think North Korea will risk cheating?

  33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 15th, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    Harl, i could live with VAT. Absolutely with gro­cery exemp­tion, though. And we’d still have to fig­ure out what to do about local edu­ca­tion fund­ing. Another com­ing rip­ple on the fore­clo­sure mess is the (to me) star­tling num­ber of peo­ple who “escrow,” which is to say, put their prop­erty tax bill in with their mort­gage — again, so as not to have to set money aside and write a big hunk o’ check to see what gov­ern­ment is cost­ing you really (as opposed to elec­tion sea­son ranting).

    A num­ber of school dis­tricts are going to see steep drops in col­lec­tions that they didn’t/couldn’t plan for, and will ham­mer them right when the cost of gas for buses and food in the cafe­te­ria is spiking.

  34. joodyb said on April 15th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    ftr, i camp with no one, but hrc should take a teensy cue from her rival and just be cool. For one fg minute, show us she can hear the quiet and not be tweaked by every ran­dom elec­tri­cal impulse in the uni­verse. choos­ing all the wrong tac­tics, exhibit­ing the wrong emo­tions, mak­ing shit up. for me, the last straw: rail­ing against obama for his ‘bit­ter’ amer­i­cans remark. she should spend an evening in one of those detroit air­port bars where the nwa pilots hang out.
    she’s revealed her­self to be the spoiled out-of-touch oppor­tunist every­one has been call­ing her, and for the first time in my life i won’t cast a vote in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion if she is the nom­i­nee. she has no fixes.
    As for sex­ist phys­i­cal and oth­er­wise insults, don’t par­ents teach their kids any­more that these are at least signs of a fee­ble imag­i­na­tion if not com­plete igno­rance? no? ok, what about walk­ing away from bul­lies? no, too? Gee, Wally, i guess if Mom and Dad are laugh­ing at the YouTube, we can too!
    mean­while, media freaks like Matthews flour­ish — his rat­ings are right up there with ‘To Catch a Preda­tor.‘
    (nn, you KNOW he’s prob­a­bly read­ing that nyt mag story again. right now. for the 3rd time today.)

  35. MichaelG said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    Jeff, I can’t imag­ine why you’re star­tled by the idea of main­tain­ing an escrow account to cover prop­erty taxes. I make one pay­ment per month to my lender and don’t have to worry about prop­erty taxes at all. The mort­gage com­pany pro­vides me with a monthly account­ing of the whole she­bang includ­ing the escrow account, pays inter­est on the account and pays my taxes every six months. In the mean time, the county still sends me the same tax bill every­body else gets so I’m never in the dark about my prop­erty taxes and how they’re paid. I have friends who pre­fer to pay them­selves. I see it as a Ford vs. Chevy sort of thing. But a star­tling con­cept? Can’t under­stand that.

  36. Suzi said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    I had to agree to some extent with Elton John, “I’m amazed by the misog­y­nis­tic atti­tudes of some of the peo­ple in this coun­try”. What else can you say when cunt and whore are used to describe a com­pe­tent capa­ble US Sen­a­tor? And why are attacks on women expressed in such graphic and abu­sive, even vio­lent, terms? We use sex­ual terms to deride men — dick­head, prick, moth­er­fucker, ass­hole — but those terms do not con­vey the same sort of vit­ri­olic intent, imo. Misog­yny is alive and well in the USA and it’s a damn scary shame.

  37. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:38 pm

    Another com­ing rip­ple on the fore­clo­sure mess is the (to me) star­tling num­ber of peo­ple who “escrow,” which is to say, put their prop­erty tax bill in with their mortgage

    It shouldn’t be star­tling. Most peo­ple don’t choose to escrow; their lender requires that an escrow account be estab­lished to pay both mort­gage and insur­ance. It makes sense; they want to be sure that your mort­gage is backed by a house you own, not a pile of ashes, or a house that has been sold for taxes. Besides, there’s no inter­est paid on the escrow account, so it sub­si­dizes the inter­est rate on the prin­ci­pal, and makes the mort­gage look cheaper.

    A num­ber of school dis­tricts are going to see steep drops in col­lec­tions that they didn’t/couldn’t plan for, and will ham­mer them right when the cost of gas for buses and food in the cafe­te­ria is spiking.

    Every state does it dif­fer­ently. Some states fig­ure that if the appraised value of the dis­trict goes up, the mill­age rate needs to go down in order to keep the total income the same; other states fig­ure if the appraised value goes up, the school has a lot more houses to educate.

    Appraisals do NOT directly reflect mar­ket value. They are based on such things as how many square feet you have, how many bath­rooms you have, etc.

    Years ago, I was in a house that I’d paid $25,000 for, and the appraised value was $12,000, which I thought unfair, because most of the houses in the neigh­bor­hood were sell­ing for $40,000 and had appraised value of about $10,000. We’d bought a house from a widow in a nurs­ing home, and it hadn’t seen a bit of main­te­nance in years, so it was only worth $25K in the con­di­tion it was in, but would have been worth $50K if we’d lived there long enough to bring it up to snuff.

    And now, I’m in a house that cost $50,000 and has an appraised value of $62,500, because that’s what the city fig­ures it would cost to buy our postage stamp of dirt and build our house from scratch.

    You can build a $400,000 apart­ment build­ing or a $400,000 house on the same acre of land, and their taxes will be about the same, but if that apart­ment build­ing has 20 inex­pen­sive apart­ments, you’ll end up with 20 low-income fam­i­lies. Lots of domes­tic dis­putes, lots of kids com­mit­ting van­dal­ism because, well, when you’re 12, lots of things look fun, no mat­ter what your par­ents say and do. You’ll have enough kids liv­ing there that the school dis­trict will need to add two class­rooms, and you’ll have the fire depart­ment stop­ping a lot of fires because, well, when you’re 12, lots of things look fun, no mat­ter what your par­ents say and do.

    And across the road, there’s a 10-acre field that has the same appraised value as either of those 1-acre devel­op­ments. It doesn’t cost much at all to pro­vide police, fire, roads, etc., for a field of corn. Farm­ers are the ones that really get screwed by prop­erty taxes.

    A per capita tax wouldn’t be fair, either. It’s just as expen­sive to fight a fire in that $400,000 home as in a $400,000 ten­e­ment. Maybe instead of tax­ing heads, we ought to tax butts. Pay­ing an annual tax on toi­lets and bidets would be fairer, and it’d pro­vide a nice source of humor. “So tell me, Mr. Can­di­date, what do you say about the pro­posed hike in toi­let taxes?” “I don’t think cit­i­zens will stand for it.”

  38. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    What else can you say when cunt and whore are used to describe a com­pe­tent capa­ble US Senator?

    To be fair, there are a lot of male sen­a­tors accused of being whores. For instance, ex-Senator San­to­rum of Penn­syl­va­nia was accused of being a whore for Wal­Mart; they were one of his biggest con­trib­u­tors, and he flew here, there, and every­where on their cor­po­rate jets, while pro­mot­ing leg­is­la­tion that would make it eas­ier for the Wal­ton fam­ily to escape inher­i­tance taxes, and to under­pay employ­ees in their stores.

    And while McCain called Cindy a cunt, most peo­ple refer to H. D. Clin­ton as a bitch, rather than a cunt, because she’s so bitchy.

    Uh, Marie says she takes excep­tion to that. She says bitches are quite nice to have around, and I agree with that, at least in her case.

    She also notes Tbogg’s new bas­set hound. Even though they may be merely bas­set hounds, not Ger­man Shep­ards, she thinks pups of any kind are cute. Unlike cats. Liv­ing in a small Penn­syl­va­nia town, she is embit­tered about cats.

    Excuse me, but she’s now rub­bing her nose against my elbow, say­ing she wants to be walked.

  39. baldheadeddork said on April 15th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

    I’m extremely unhappy with any sex­ist remarks made against Hillary Clin­ton. I thought the nut­cracker was vile, and the grotesquely-named advo­cacy group was even worse. Randi Rhodes deserved to lose her job, and the “Iron my shirt” blast in New Hamp­shire was reprehensible.

    But, let’s put all of these in their fac­tual perspective.

    Call­ing Rhodes an “Obama sur­ro­gate” is a stretch that sim­ply isn’t sup­ported by the facts. Rhodes never had a role in the Obama cam­paign. She never appeared at cam­paign events speak­ing with Obama. She spoke for her­self alone, at an event that was not orga­nized by the Obama cam­paign, and that the cam­paign had no knowl­edge of. There’s a hell of a dif­fer­ence between Rhodes rela­tion­ship with Obama and, say, ex-BET chair­man Robert John­son and Clinton’s campaign.

    The idiot who yelled “Iron my shirt” in New Hamp­shire was a morn­ing shock jock who did it just to get some pub­lic­ity for him­self. Same with the cre­ator of C.U.N.T — he’s a GOP oper­a­tive who’s made his entire career out of slimy groups like this, most of them against the Clinton’s. The Hillary nut­cracker isn’t even a half-step removed from the sim­i­larly vile crap that sprang from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’s gift shop ten years ago.

    And that stu­pid Hillary/KFC e-mail has never been spread by the Obama campaign.

    So answer me this: How the hell is Barack Obama respon­si­ble for any of this? How did he become the bad guy for these Clin­ton sup­port­ers? He’s had not one damn thing to do with any of this. There is only the thinnest of con­nec­tions to his cam­paign when one exists at all. Is respon­si­ble for every chau­vin­ist pig because he has a Y-chromosome?

    Another ques­tion: What is the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for being a vile, sex­ist piece of shit? A can­di­date in this race today once said that Chelsea Clin­ton was so ugly because Janet Reno was her father. Not only is Hillary Clin­ton not out­raged — she can’t stop prais­ing John McCain’s char­ac­ter. Just two weeks ago she walked into the office of Richard Mel­lon Scaife and left hick­ies on the man’s ass. This is some­one who made it his life’s work to destroy her and her fam­ily — includ­ing pay­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to “prove” she had her best friend mur­dered. Bill Clin­ton goes on Rush Limbaugh’s show and every­thing was sweetness?

    This all gets a pass, but Obama has col­lected the most rav­ing group of sex­ists since Bobby Riggs dis­banded his fan club, and they’re all run­ning some secret cabal con­nected to GOP hacks who have kept their kids in ortho­don­tics doing this to the Clinton’s, third-rate talk radio hosts, and the Jerry and Mike Morn­ing Zoo on Nashua’s Clas­sic Rock.

    Look at the dis­par­ity and tell me how Hillary Clin­ton is not just cyn­i­cally using charges of sex­ism — and exploit­ing decades of real dis­crim­i­na­tion expe­ri­enced by her sup­port­ers — to win an election?

  40. moe99 said on April 15th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    bald­headed­dork: I am in awe. What great snark!

  41. Danny said on April 15th, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    Oh — wait. I for­got. Racism is awful; sex­ism is OK.

    Both racism and sex­iem are awful, but it’s pretty amaz­ing that a lot of dems (here included) are so twisted up in knots about this. A few weeks ago I men­tioned Obama’s racist pas­tor and many here bent over back­wards to defend him. Heck, he couldn’t even renouce Far­rakahn. Chick­ens com­ing home to roost, indeed.

  42. brian stouder said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Well — Indi­ana might just be our own canary in the coal mine, when it comes to sex­ism. Watch our May 6 gube­na­to­r­ial pri­mary, and com­pare it to our con­cur­rent pres­i­den­tial primary.

    Before tonight’s debate, I couldn’t have picked her oppo­nent (Jim Schellinger) out of a lineup…and, all snark aside, see­ing him in per­son — he looks just like George W Bush! And he gives vac­u­ous answers and airy eva­sions to almost all ques­tions (I think he asserted that “I am not a politi­cian” 6 or 8 times dur­ing the debate!).…and Ms Long was work­ing through a head cold, and giv­ing crisp, sub­stan­tive answers (answers which, point­edly, addressed the ques­tions asked)…I thought she absolutely clocked the guy.

    So — if Obama’s vote total equals Schellinger’s, then I will believe both got the “any­body but the woman” vote.….and if Obama wins while Long also wins, then Indi­ana is the smartest state in the Union!!

    But if Sen­a­tor Clin­ton wins the state ALONG with the empty-suit Schellinger — then I give up!

  43. Deborah said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:28 pm

    I’m so anx­ious to post my own views I con­fess I skimmed the com­ments tonight which is rare for me. I love this blog and the com­menters so…

    I con­sider myself a pretty big time fem­i­nist, I really do. I was a mem­ber of NOW way back when it started. But, there is some­thing about Hilary that really bugs me. She just seems phoney to me. I really like Bill, I was a total sup­porter even though I thought the Lewin­sky thing was com­pletely stu­pid, dick thinking.

    I’m cur­rently liv­ing in Chicago, moved here five years ago from a sec­ond tier mid­west­ern city. I’m a true Lake Shore lib­eral. I became enam­ored with Obama when he was runnning for Sen­a­tor. Maybe I’m just look­ing at Hillary through that per­spec­tive, but I don’t think so.

    She’s not work­ing for me. I will sup­port her if she is the can­di­date, but I was will­ing to do that for Kerry too, and I’m just not moti­vated by her like I am Obama.

  44. basset said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    I don’t remem­ber the last Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date I voted for, in the sense of want­ing that per­son to win… the past few times, it’s been a vote against some­one I feel even worse about.

    cute pup, though not as awww-inducing as our Eudora.

  45. Kim said on April 15th, 2008 at 10:36 pm

    Been quiet for weeks now, but this is an impor­tant topic. I can’t see why Obama and Clin­ton, both accom­plished and decent peo­ple, wouldn’t get together and say, “Look, CUNT is the equiv­a­lent of NIGGER. It’s wrong and we all know why. So don’t do it. Don’t take us there. Don’t crit­i­cize what is irrel­e­vant. Do start a civil con­ver­sa­tion as mem­bers of a civil soci­ety whose intent is to build up Amer­ica, not tear it down group-you-don’t-like by group-you-don’t-like. Now go do some­thing pro­duc­tive, thought­ful even. That is all. Thank you.“
    Are both too fright­ened to lose a vote? It’s ridicu­lous the way peo­ple are behav­ing. Ridicu­lous and dis­tress­ing. We couldn’t pos­si­bly be more screwed as a nation if we let this continue.

  46. Hattie said on April 15th, 2008 at 11:09 pm

    Ram­bling around: I think this is all to the good. Yes, that nice guy really does call women cunts. That women does have a crush on the black guy. Etc.These are not triv­ial mat­ters, I think.
    We have got mil­lions of cit­i­zens with a bad atti­tude. I can’t see myself hav­ing Koom­baya moments with peo­ple who bully Clin­ton sup­port­ers. I’m com­pletely off lots of left­ists I used to like. I used to lis­ten to Randi all the time but no more. I was through with her when she said that she was bet­ter look­ing than Cindy Shee­han. She is a media trollop.

  47. Harl Delos said on April 15th, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    I can’t see myself hav­ing Koom­baya moments with peo­ple who bully Clin­ton supporters.

    Right.

    She is a media trollop.

    I for­get. Isn’t that pretty much the same thing as a fuck­ing whore? (grin­ning, duck­ing, and running)

    Obama needs to have a new speech, made up of var­i­ous things he’s been say­ing, only rearranged a lit­tle bit. He needs to say “Those signs don’t say ‘Yes, he can’, they say ‘Yes WE can’. And that’s the whole point. It’s going to take every­body, and if you beat some­one up, they will vote exactly the oppo­site way you want them to vote, just for spite.

    “Maybe you hear a joke tomor­row about Sen­a­tor McCain, or Sen­a­tor Clin­ton. I don’t care how funny it is, don’t pass it on. Sen­a­tor Clin­ton is a great Sen­a­tor, and we need her in the Sen­ate, work­ing with us. Sen­a­tor McCain is a great Sen­a­tor, and we need him in the Sen­a­tor, work­ing with us. Burn­ing bridges is a really dumb idea, and it’s an idea we can’t afford.

    “A cou­ple of decades ago, the most hated Repub­li­can in the Sen­ate was Dan Quayle. You’ve prob­a­bly heard some jokes. And the most hated Demo­c­rat in the Sen­ate was Teddy Kennedy. You may have heard some jokes about him, too. But Dan and Teddy got together and cre­ated the Jobs Part­ner­ship Train­ing Act, which was prob­a­bly the most impor­tant leg­is­la­tion the Sen­ate passed that session.

    “Democ­rats like jobs bills, and Repub­li­cans pre­fer that pri­vate enter­prise get involved, because they think gov­ern­ment wastes money when they do things. And we need to admit this: the Repub­li­cans are right about that. But Dan and Teddy cre­ated a bill in which unem­ployed peo­ple got exactly the skills employ­ers were seek­ing, and by involv­ing pri­vate enter­prise, we min­i­mized the bur­den to the taxpayer.

    “Now, do you think that would have hap­pened if Dan Quayle had been insult­ing Teddy Kennedy, or if Teddy Kennedy had been insult­ing Dan Quayle?

    “The old style of pol­i­tics calls for peo­ple who are good fight­ers, but the old style of pol­i­tics isn’t work­ing. Doesn’t mat­ter if you have even 35 years of expe­ri­ence at fight­ing. We don’t need to do the same old things bet­ter; we need to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. Like nego­ti­at­ing, so that peo­ple on both sides of the aisle are work­ing for the same thing.

    “Eliz­a­beth Edwards says that Sen­a­tor Clinton’s health care plan is bet­ter than mine, because it’s more inclu­sive. I don’t argue that a bit. The dif­fer­ence is, I can get my health care plan passed. Sen­a­tor Clin­ton has been try­ing to get uni­ver­sal health care passed for fif­teen years, and she hasn’t accom­plished anything.

    “So remem­ber two things when you leave here tonight. It’s not about me, it’s about us. Yes WE can. And be civil to the oppo­si­tion, because we’re going to need their coop­er­a­tion in order to accom­plish any­thing meaningful.”

  48. Kim said on April 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am

    Um, Harl, are you over 37, a natural-born cit­i­zen and I for­get the other require­ments — my sec­ond Tues. in Nov. vote goes to your sen­si­ble response if so.

  49. deb M said on April 16th, 2008 at 9:28 am

    I don’t care what camp you are in, hope­fully every­one read­ing this is weary of the sex­ism. My sister-in-law actu­ally said “I would vote for HRC if she would lose 20 pounds” WHAT do you say to that??
    I look for­ward to a time when we stop feel­ing the need to refer to some women (usu­ally suc­cess­ful and/or edu­cated and/or an indi­vid­ual, etc) as ‘strong women’ and just pre­sume they ALL are. Men in the same set­ting are pre­sumed to be strong. Words like ‘weak’ or ‘timid’ are used to describe men who are an anom­aly – and ‘strong’ used for women. Hey, Women ARE strong…we should not use our lan­guage to ref­er­ence that as being out of the ordi­nary.
    Deb

  50. alsodeb said on April 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am

    I thought maybe you might like to hear of life on the other side of the tracks, so to speak. I live in ‘the hood’, and I have heard the remark so many times I’ve lost count, “It don’t mat­ter what he say, he black. ‘Nuff said.” In that light, it seems fool­ish for both can­di­dates to not address the racist/sexist issue. Unless the issue is work­ing in a pos­i­tive way for one of the can­di­dates, of course.

  51. Harl Delos said on April 16th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    Um, Harl, are you over 37, a natural-born cit­i­zen and I for­get the other require­ments — my sec­ond Tues. in Nov. vote goes to your sen­si­ble response if so.

    Sorry. I have women come on to me ALL the time, but I’ll have to say to you the same thing I say to them: I’m mar­ried, and too cow­ardly to cheat. I do, how­ever, have a wait­ing list, just in case my wife acci­dently eats some poi­son mush­rooms. Or if she suf­fers a crushed skull from refus­ing to eat her mushrooms.

    Oh, you’re talk­ing about vot­ing for me for pres­i­dent? That’s dif­fer­ent. My wife says it’s OK for me to cheat on her if I get elected president.

    I must warn you that I would be run­ning on the Whig ticket. The Whigs are pro-progress, which is pretty much a mean­ing­less cam­paign pledge these days, but they are known for two things.

    One is that it was in a Whig admin­is­tra­tion that the first bath­tub was installed in the White House, (defined as a permanently-installed tub with run­ning hot and cold water, and a drain.) There­fore, my first cam­paign pledge is to take a bath each and every month I am in office — and I note that NONE of the other can­di­dates have made that pledge.

    The other thing is that Whig pres­i­dents have been so seri­ous about term lim­its that a full 50% of them have died in office. There­fore, my sec­ond cam­paign pledge is to die in office. I hope to arrange it so that it involves a jeal­ous hus­band of a volup­tuous intern, and none of these imma­ture lit­tle nymphs, either, but a mature woman who knows what she’s doing.

    But I have to admit that if I run and win, I am so earnest and hon­est about my cam­paign pledges that I will prob­a­bly be assas­si­nated before I actu­ally take the oath of office, thus set­ting a new record for Whigs.

    But I thank you for your kind com­pli­ment, and, as i say, I’ve added you to the wait­ing list. You will be noti­fied if a suit­able oppor­tu­nity arises.

  52. Scout said on April 16th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    The com­ments here have been so great I find myself return­ing to see if any­thing new was added. So far bald­headed­dork is the big win­ner with me!

  53. baldheadeddork said on April 16th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    Harl — the short answer to that ques­tion is that Obama has made that speech many times. Not exactly in your words, but he has made a con­stant theme out of respect­ing peo­ple we dis­agree with — includ­ing Hillary Clin­ton. This gets to what I was ask­ing ear­lier — how is he respon­si­ble for peo­ple who don’t work for his cam­paign, and in most cases don’t sup­port him?

    Deb — what I would say to your SIL is: “You’re an idiot.” I know, I need to work on the kindler and gen­tler thing…

    I agree with your point about the lan­guage of strength and gen­der, but both words have prob­lems. Hillary Clin­ton has made being a woman a cen­tral the­sis of her cam­paign. For some vot­ers that is a rea­son to vote for her, a much smaller num­ber would never vote for a woman, but I think for the largest group her gen­der is irrelevant.

    It’s not the strong part that both­ers me. I expect strength in a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and I’ve never doubted that Clin­ton has it. But if being a woman is rel­e­vant to decid­ing between two can­di­dates for pres­i­dent, you have to show me why. What about hav­ing ovaries will make you a bet­ter pres­i­dent than these male candidates?

    The only answers I’ve heard for that ques­tion are that there has never been a woman pres­i­dent, there­fore if every­one is qual­i­fied it would be sex­ist to not choose the woman can­di­date. Or, as Clin­ton has repeat­edly put it in her only attempt at rea­son­ing on this ques­tion that I’ve heard, “It’s about time we had a woman president.”

    Sorry, that doesn’t wash. So far as I know it didn’t wash for Golda Meir or Mar­garet Thatcher, either. It’s not about being twice as strong or hawk­ish as a man in order to be taken seri­ously, it’s about being so com­pe­tent and con­fi­dent in your abil­i­ties that your gen­der doesn’t mat­ter. “It’s about time we had a woman ____________” is poi­son. You need to be able to say “I’m the best can­di­date in the field. Period.”

    I am absolutely con­vinced that a woman will be elected pres­i­dent of the United States in the imme­di­ate future. But I’m even more cer­tain that when she does run, she will make her gen­der as much of a non-issue as Barack Obama made race for his campaign.

    One more thought for y’all. This fight­ing is much more gen­er­a­tional than it is about gender.

  54. Suzi said on April 16th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    “Hillary Clin­ton has made being a woman a cen­tral the­sis of her campaign.”?

    She has?? Where and when?

  55. baldheadeddork said on April 16th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

    Suzi — I’ve heard her say on sev­eral occa­sions, and at least once in debates.

    Here’s one from an inter­view on ABC around the NH primary

    http://​abc​news​.go​.com/​P​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​V​o​t​e​2​0​0​8​/​s​t​o​r​y​?​i​d​=​4​097786

    Quote:

    “And dur­ing Saturday’s New Hamp­shire debates, Clin­ton became notice­ably agi­tated as she responded to a state­ment made by for­mer Sen. John Edwards, in which he defended Illi­nois Sen. Barack Obama’s pledge for change and sug­gested Clin­ton was the can­di­date for the sta­tus quo.

    “Mak­ing change is not about what you believe or about mak­ing a speech, it’s about work­ing hard,” Clin­ton said after Edward’s state­ment, in which he said, “Any­time you speak out for change, this is what hap­pens. The forces for sta­tus quo are going to attack.”

    Then, a lit­tle bit louder, she said, “I want to make change, but I’ve already made change. I’m not run­ning on a promise of change. But on 35 years of change. … We don’t need to raise false hopes of peo­ple in our coun­try about what can be delivered.”

    “I think that hav­ing a first woman pres­i­dent is a huge change,” said Clin­ton, rais­ing her voice. ” ”

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