Hillary Clinton deserves enormous credit for this gracious, powerful speech:
Especially since she and her supporters had to endure this:
Hillary Clinton 21
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Posted 7:50 PM on 7 Jun 2008
by David Roberts -
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caniscandida Posted 5:35 pm
07 Jun 2008
And all Americans should be very proud that so very many of us supported her this primary season (not me, on Super Tuesday, but never mind), and were not dissuaded by small-minded and disgraceful sexist sniping, of the sort illustrated in DR's second video.
Royal idiot Tucker Carlson should be made to remember how abashed he looked back in 2003, in the glory days of CNN's Crossfire, when he vowed to eat his shoe on the air if Hillary's memoir sold more than a million copies:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/09/tucker.shoe/.
On the back page of today's Sunday New York Times Week in Review/Sunday Opinion section, under the heading "What Went Wrong?," are several comments, by people of various backgrounds, on Hillary's failed campaign. Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey (and W.'s former EPA chief), makes a powerful statement about the way the sexism in the coverage of Hillary was relentless.
She recalls that ABC News's Charles Gibson asked Hillary (during that notorious PA debate) "if she would 'be in this position' if it weren't for her husband." I do not remember how Hillary answered; but, on her behalf, I would have answered: "Charlie, were I inclined, I would take that question as extremely offensive. I am in this position because I choose to be, and that is because I consider myself to be perfectly qualified to be President of the United States. To suggest that I know I am not qualified, and that I am slipping something by the scrutiny of the American people who are to vote in November, is unacceptable."
Another Republican woman, the once-upon-a-time rising star from New Mexico, Heather Wilson, made this comment, which might chill both girls and boys alike, having as we do our own respective memories of school days:
<<
[Hillary] became a caricature: too smart, too strong, too assertive, too rational, too competent. Think how the young Harry Potter and his male friends initially reacted to Hermione Granger and you get the idea.
>>
J.K. Rowling (a she-Brit!; who has done very well for herself, I might add) might be a traitress of her sex. But she certainly appealed to ancient prejudices: in school, certain boys like to slouch, and disregard the rules; but they are made miserable, when certain girls uphold the rules perfectly, and at least implicitly point accusatory fingers at those slouching boys; which just makes the boys want to slouch all the more profoundly, as an expression of their masculinity, while despising those girls ...
But the definitive double biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton will probably not be written for another couple of decades ...
Meanwhile: Yes, Hillary's speech was very good. (And in a magnificent, if bizarre, space: Whoever heard of the National Building Museum?, a not altogether happy marriage of Italian Renaissance palazzi and Late Antique Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Nevertheless, it was suitably grand, and I want to go see it next time I am in DC.) She said good things; talking-up Barack Obama got some noticeable boos, but the applause was louder.
God knows what Hillary and Barack talked about at Diane Feinstein's place. Among future paths for her, I for one think Supreme Court Justice would be perfect. John Paul Stevens surely is thinking of retiring, and so perhaps is the sole woman on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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maxgladwell Posted 5:54 pm
07 Jun 2008
MaxGladwell.com
The Nexus of Social Media and Green Living
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amazingdrx Posted 7:40 pm
07 Jun 2008
The particularly agregious perpetrators like Mathews, who should know better, will not fair well. Many can no longer stand to hear or see him, the channel is switched when he comes on.
As for the rest, faux news and fools like bow tie boy, no one who matters watches them anymore. Only the 27% that still approve of the bushwacking. The strange world they inhabit has very little conection with reality and has nothing to offer the nation and world at large.
Mathews and his ilk should go the way of Imus.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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MAD MAC Posted 10:56 pm
07 Jun 2008
McCain is a good man. So is Obama. There are women I would vote for, but she's not one of them. Unfortunately for women, the most prominent women politicians in the US right now are incredibly annoying personalities: Pelosi, Boxer and Clinton. I would never even remotely consider a vote for any of the trio.
Victory in Pattani
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CFL CTA Matt Posted 1:14 am
08 Jun 2008
I also was a die-hard supporter of Hillary Clinton.
Either vote for Barack Obama Or Ralph Nader Or Bob Barr.
I can't actually vote so it doesn't matter,but i will remain undecided this year. I agree more with Nader than Obama--I prefer views that are more on the Palestinian side & to cut down on nuclear (not completely though, like Nader)but I don't want to throw support behind someone who won't win. Barr's pretty cool too, and i like McCain as a person.
Switch all your lights to CFLs!
Buy Carbon Credits!
Make a solar-thermal toaster!
TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORT!
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amazingdrx Posted 1:17 am
08 Jun 2008
Dream of guzzling unlimited gas, forever, in shinier, bigger, "clean" coal to liquid powered, ever more costly gas guzzlers. That's paradise isn't it? Hehey.
20 bucks per gallon would just make the dream more exclusive, no problem. Just you, duuhbya and your lord.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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spaceshaper Posted 1:33 am
08 Jun 2008
It has hosted several inaugural balls including, if I remember right, that of Bill Clinton.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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MAD MAC Posted 3:04 am
08 Jun 2008
Victory in Pattani
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David Roberts Posted 3:17 am
08 Jun 2008
So you would vote for a woman in theory, but all the actual women available are "annoying" and "power hungry." If only a demure woman who knew her place would run for high office! Then you should show how unafraid of women you are.
grist.org
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:03 am
08 Jun 2008
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Wolverine Posted 4:06 am
08 Jun 2008
Canis, considering your politics, I don't see how you could possibly be proud of Clinton as your carpetbagging senator. As a fundamental issue, the Clintons don't even belong in New York. They're from Arkansas, and the only reason they moved to N.Y. was because there's no way Clinton could have gotten elected in her home state. But even more important are Clinton's pro corporate political views and votes, including her war mongering attitude and full support for the military industrial complex and U.S. imperialism. There are certainly strong women politicians to be proud of and support, like Barbara Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Maxine Waters, but Hillary Clinton is not one of them if you're a progressive or radical.
And that's what's wrong with identity politics. It's completely irrelevant to the big issues -- namely war and the environment -- whether an elected official is male or female, or what the color of his/her skin is. What matters is what policies they pursue and vote for or against. Of course I'd love to see a black or, even better, Native American, female president, just as a "screw you" to all the racist sexists. But as assholes like Margaret Thatcher have shown, it's not what's between your legs that counts in political office, it's what's between your ears, in your heart, and in your gut.
To respond to Mad Mac, what's wrong with Clinton and Pelosi is that they're pro-corporate, pro-military assholes, not that their personalities are annoying. Voting for people based on their personalities is one of the major problems of electoral government. It's a canard that the ruling class has successfully pulled on the majority in order to maintain the status quo, which is what you get if you vote this way. A politician's personality is largely irrelevant. He or she is not going to be living with or even personally interacting with you in any way, so what difference does the personality make?
And BTW, I think that all politicians, with a few rare exceptions, are assholes, because they have to be very egotistic and aggressive to even run for office. And moreover, you don't even know what their real personalities are, only what you've been fed by the corporate media.
To Matt and Mac, you think McCain is a good person? You either have a very strange definition of that term or you've been badly fooled. McCain made his name by being captured after dropping bombs on people in another of the many illegal and immoral U.S. wars, which is the lowest of the low in immoral industrial militaries. McCain is also a very mean, angry person who has a hard time controlling his temper. So what exactly makes this guy a good person?
This is yet another reason to ignore personalities when voting. Unless you spend some time researching, you don't even know what the real personalities of the candidates are. What you know is what corporate America wants you to know and feeds you through its media.
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MAD MAC Posted 4:26 am
08 Jun 2008
Demure and running for high office? No. Just not a raging a#$hole.
I really liked Jean Kilpatrick. I had always hoped Reagan would pick her as a running mate.
I like Caroline Kennedy and wish she would run for elected office.
I like Kay Bailey Hutchinson.
I always liked Olympia Snow.
I like the early reviews of Amy Klobuchar.
Did I mention Diane Feinstein? Add her to the incredibly obnoxious personalites on the list with the Clinton crew.
Victory in Pattani
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MAD MAC Posted 4:37 am
08 Jun 2008
Victory in Pattani
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caniscandida Posted 8:56 am
08 Jun 2008
It is certainly not my intention to defend Hillary Clinton's record. I agree fully with the NY Times editorial, that she never explained to the satisfaction of any reasonable person how her November 2002 vote was not supposed to give her any responsibility for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And regarding her blitheringly racist campaign, her recent reference to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, by way of responding to a question on why she was staying in the race, was about as crassly cruel and gut-punching as one can get.
Not that it matters, but I never supported her in her campaign for president. I was always a John Edwards supporter, with a cool shift to Obama after Edwards conceded.
(And again, not that it matters!, but my husband, a Scorpio -- and those who understand those things, know what I mean -- , had sworn never ever to vote for Hillary; and yet, there is something about Obama -- a Leo!, like Bill Clinton, ironically, a very bad personality for making nice with Scorpios -- which my husband profoundly mistrusts; and so he ended up rooting powerful-strongly for Hillary towards the end. And as part of that, (a.) the media were regularly vilified, chez nous, for being pro-Obama partisans; (b.) I was not allowed to say anything positive about Obama; (c.) and poor MICHELLE Obama, whom I like a great deal, has become persona MAXIME non grata. And in case you are wondering, I have no idea where this household goes from here. Fortunately Husband Dearest is fixated on the perfect Empress-hood of Little White Dog, aka Theodora, aka Fiordiligi, so hopefully subsequently will be paying less attention.)
The "carpetbagging" charge is not only old, but anti-New Yorkist. New York is the state sans pareil so far as hospitable acceptance and integration of immigrants goes. Hillary holds the seat of that other great "carpetbagger," RFK. We have no problem with that; and if we do not, then nobody else should. And if Hillary wants to spend the rest of her professional life in the US Senate representing New York, I am OK with that, thank you very much, even if she does indeed have her lethally unenlightened moments.
On "pro-corporate": excellent observation. Nor does she have the environment at heart, nor animal welfare, even if her voting record is satisfactory. Which is why she is fine in the Senate, but not exactly the fearless leader we want to be charging out in front. Not to be sexist or anything, but she is an excellent Hermione Granger, but no Harry Potter.
(Yes of course girls can be the remarkable astounding leaders! Sainte Jeanne d'Arc, par exemple! And boys are for the most part miserable slouches in the background -- the ones who lazily found the energy to work up a dumb case against Jeanne and burn her at the stake.)
So far as corporatist or other well-monied interests go, though, I do not know that Obama is appearing very much better than Hillary. Obama has been looking more and more old-fashioned, in spite of that "Totally new and different purple Change!" message that he was pronouncing (or perceived to be pronouncing) earlier on. A ver, as they say in Chiapas, woolly ski cap and all.
On "identity politics": that is a red herring. Or worse. Serious injustices remain imbedded in American society; and just because some attention has been given to them in the past couple of decades, that hardly means they have been eradicated. We should not tolerate dismissals of the candidacy of either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama on the grounds that it is a function of "identity politics," and so undeserving of respect. The symbolism of our potentially choosing a woman president, or an African-American candidate, has unspeakably great positive value both in our society and around the world.
On MAD MAC's women: MM is rather to the right of me on a number of issues, I gather, but I appreciate his judgment. He has roots in the state of Maine, I have learned; and indeed, both the Senators of that state are not only Republicans, and women, but also among the most sensible people in Congress.
Let us keep our eye on Caroline Kennedy. Obama likes her a lot, apparently. She is helping him pick a VP right now. Unlike Dick Cheney, she is hardly likely to recommend herself for that job; nevertheless, if Obama arrives in the White House in January, it seems hard to believe he is not going to give her some nice job, with some PR prominence.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Max8806 Posted 9:56 am
08 Jun 2008
On the Jesse Jackson/South Carolina comment, that I think was also overblown. The reason being, whenever either candidate won any state, the other campaign always tried to play down its significance. Each campaign tried to assert that somehow the states they won were the 'important' ones, and the others weren't representative. No one called out the Clinton campaign for trying to peg Obama as the white farmer candidate when they played down the loss in Iowa as not being representative. South Carolina was exactly the same point - a relatively homogeneous electorate. That that electorate played to Jesse Jackson's and Obama's advantage is also indisputable. That the electorate was black isn't saying anything against black people, its making a demographic point about not being representative of the larger electorate, just like they did after Iowa.
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caniscandida Posted 6:45 pm
08 Jun 2008
Also, before South Carolina, Bill Clinton was right to predict that Barack Obama would win the majority of the black vote in that state. But he was wrong to add, "as Jesse Jackson did in 1984." That was doubly unfair and insulting, first, for suggesting that blacks will inevitably vote for any black candidate, no matter who; and secondly, for suggesting that Obama was running a campaign focused on civil rights and racial justice.
The enthusiastic rallying of many African-Americans behind Obama significantly followed his big win in Iowa, when they saw that he could receive the votes of many white voters. So Bill Clinton was not technically wrong. But his explanation was quite wrong.
Marcus Mabry had a fascinating essay about this and related matters, in yesterday's Sunday New York Times, the Week in Review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/weekinreview/08mabry.ht ....
Mabry makes the interesting observation that precisely because Obama is widely known to have received over 90% of the African-American vote, many white voters will conclude that he stands for "African-American interests" exclusively, and so will refuse to vote for him.
That is part of the background to Geraldine Ferraro's comment, to the effect that Obama has only got as far as he has because he is black. I think she was correct to suggest that Obama has had great appeal among white Democrats -- whether they should be called "socially liberal" or "progressive," I do not know -- who are genuinely thrilled by the historical significance of our possibly electing a black president. That appeal persists, and will persist through November, I am sure. But that could easily be put into perspective by noting that (a.) the historical significance of our possibly electing a WOMAN president was appealing to an even larger portion of the electorate; and (b.) precisely because Obama is black, many voters (sadly) can NEVER consider voting for him.
At the end of the day, given that this was a gloves-off fight, I cannot see that the charges of "this is over the top!," and "this is unacceptably offensive!," really stick. These people are playing hardball, after all. Bill Clinton's "fairytale" remark was fair rhetoric, even if it lost him a lot of black friends (and I think the outrage following that remark may have had a homophobic edge, actually). And Obama's foreign policy adviser Samantha Power should most certainly NOT have been pressured to resign for calling Hillary a "monster."
Whether Hillary is indeed a "monster," I am reluctant to say. While she and her people are not racists -- at least not flamboyant racists -- , I cannot help but return to her throw-away remark on the assassination of RFK, and think that that surely admits of an evil interpretation. Her desperate comment towards the end, alleging that she is electable because she won among working-class and ethnic white voters, but Obama is not electable because he lost, was perhaps not evil, but was certainly divisive and destructive.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Baby Boomer Posted 1:31 am
09 Jun 2008
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Sharon Astyk Posted 2:16 am
09 Jun 2008
The idea that being a rich white woman and the wife of a former president is more victimized position than being a black man in this country is ridiculous.
She's my senator. I had some respect for her - not fondness, but some marginal degree of respect - but no longer.
Sharon
Sharon, with dirt under her fingernails.
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inkabinkaboo182 Posted 2:32 am
09 Jun 2008
Was it Bill Clinton attacking Obama, saying that he was being picked on because of his (Bill Clinton's) race? Was it Hillary invoking race in such a negative way? Was it this business with Reverend Wright? Was it the gas tax thing? Was it...
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Wolverine Posted 7:54 pm
09 Jun 2008
Before the gas tax holiday fiasco, I was telling people that while I find Obama less offensive, you could fit the differences between him and Clinton in a thimble. I'm trying to find hope in Obama's refusal to pander on that issue. However, I'm also furious that the first thing he did after Clinton quit the race was speak to the disgusting AIPAC lobby, pandering on about how much he supports the evil state of Israel, how Jerusalem must always be Israel's even though East Jerusalem was not until after the '67 war, and how the legitimately elected Hamas Party is a bunch of terrorists that he won't talk to (funny, I thought talking to everyone was his main international agenda).
But this isn't my fight anyway. I hate the vast majority of Democrats almost as much as I hate the Republicans, and I'll be voting for whomever is on the Green Party ticket for president in California.
BTW, loved Max's response. Instead of responding to any of the issues I raised, like why someone who bombs innocent civilians should be considered a good person, he responded that he was a career military person and infers that just being in the military makes one a good person. Great example of why the world is in the state that it is.
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caniscandida Posted 11:54 pm
09 Jun 2008
right, that performance of his was not very edifying. It seems now that the consensus of both his own advisers and pundits from without is that what he said last summer regarding meeting questionable foreign leaders has come across in time as simply naive and ever so slightly clueless; so how he is engaged in the joyless task of back-pedaling -- never mind that he won so much enthusiastic support early this year, NOT because those supporters were looking forward to the spectacle of him back-pedaling.
The problems of Hamas, East Jerusalem, and, to add another biggy, the Jewish settlements on the West Bank, are all different, to be sure. It is hard for me to understand the right-wing Israeli position on any of them; and if I were advising Obama, I would certainly not encourage him to mollify them.
In fairness, though, it is difficult to start up a conversation with any high-level person in Hamas, when rockets are being fired all the time from Gaza onto Sderot.
By the way, Max8806 is not to be confused with MAD MAC. It is the latter who is/was the professional soldier. I do not know that he is claiming that being in the military has made him a better person. But I gather he is surprised to find himself in an environment here in which we do not automatically accord him a fair degree of high regard, simply on the basis of his having been in the military.
You recall that recent nonsensical anti-Obama hoo-ha, when at the commencement address at Wesleyan University, he mentioned a small number of kinds of service in which he was encouraging the students to participate, but did not include military service (and well-done on his part, say I: in this age of interminable terms of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, with wives and veterans more or less abandoned, it would be immoral to advise young people to sign up!; let the Pentagon and the administration start talking sense first), and he got piled onto by the right-wing chatterers? Well, not that I can say for sure, but (1.) while MAD MAC has probably a more nuanced outlook than those chatterers, (2.) he probably also has a much more generous and positive attitude toward military service, than do I -- and perhaps Obama, though we would never hear him say that, wearing his big shiny flag lapel pin.
Those of us who grew up during the Vietnam War years, and learned to oppose that war, learned also a very healthy attitude of mistrust of the military. It is a pity that recently, most notably during the Swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004, and his non-reaction to it, the noble legacy of the anti-war protests has been abandoned.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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