Hating Hillary

[question everything]

Hating Hillary

Andrew Stephen

New Statesman

Published 22 May 2008

(snip)

History, I suspect, will look back on the past six months as an example of America going through one of its collectively deranged episodes - rather like Prohibition from 1920-33, or McCarthyism some 30 years later. This time it is gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind. It has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins. The chief victim has been Senator Hillary Clinton, but the ramifications could be hugely harmful for America and the world. I am no particular fan of Clinton. Nor, I think, would friends and colleagues accuse me of being racist. But it is quite inconceivable that any leading male presidential candidate would be treated with such hatred and scorn as Clinton has been. What other senator and serious White House contender would be likened by National Public Radio's political editor, Ken Rudin, to the demoniac, knife-wielding stalker played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Or described as "a fucking whore" by Randi Rhodes, one of the foremost personalities of the supposedly liberal Air America? Would Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein fame) ever publicly declare his disgust about a male candidate's "thick ankles"? Could anybody have envisaged that a website set up specifically to oppose any other candidate would be called Citizens United Not Timid? (We do not need an acronym for that.)

(snip)

America has a peculiarly wicked record of racist subjugation, which has resulted in its racism being driven deep underground. It festers there, ready to explode again in some unpredictable way. To compensate meantime, I suspect, sexism has been allowed to take its place as a form of discrimination that is now openly acceptable. "How do we beat the bitch?" a woman asked Senator John McCain, this year's Republican presidential nominee, at a Republican rally last November. To his shame, McCain did not rebuke the questioner but joined in the laughter. Had his supporter asked "How do we beat the nigger?" and McCain reacted in the same way, however, his presidential hopes would deservedly have gone up in smoke. "Iron my shirt," is considered amusing heckling of Clinton. "Shine my shoes," rightly, would be hideously unacceptable if yelled at Obama.

Evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, American men like to delude themselves that they are the most macho in the world. It is simply unthinkable, therefore, for most of them to face the prospect of having a woman as their leader. The massed ranks of male pundits gleefully pronounced that Clinton had lost the battle with Obama immediately after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, despite past precedents that strong second-place candidates (like Ronald Reagan in his first, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 1976; like Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown) continue their campaigns until the end of the primary season and, in most cases, all the way to the party convention. None of these male candidates had a premature political obituary written in the way that Hillary Clinton's has been, or was subjected to such righteous outrage over refusing to quiesce and withdraw obediently from what, in this case, has always been a knife-edge race. Nor was any of them anything like as close to his rivals as Clinton now is to Obama.

The media, of course, are just reflecting America's would-be macho culture. I cannot think of any television network or major newspaper that is not guilty of blatant sexism - the British media, naturally, reflexively follow their American counterparts - but probably the worst offender is the NBC/MSNBC network, which has what one prominent Clinton activist describes as "its nightly horror shows". Tim Russert, the network's chief political sage, was dancing on Clinton's political grave before the votes in North Carolina and Indiana had even been fully counted - let alone those of the six contests to come, the undeclared super-delegates, or the disputed states of Florida and Michigan. The unashamed sexism of this giant network alone is stupendous. Its superstar commentator Chris Matthews referred to Clinton as a "she-devil". His colleague Tucker Carlson casually observed that Clinton "feels castrating, overbearing and scary . . . When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs." This and similar abuse, I need hardly point out, says far more about the men involved than their target... A few brave souls had foreseen the merciless media campaign: "The press will savage her no matter what," predicted the Washington Post's national political correspondent, Dana Milbank, last December. "They really have their knives out for her, there's no question about it."

(snip)

Here we come to the crunch. Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history... One of (Obama's) female staff then distributed a confidential memo to carefully selected journalists which alleged that a vaguely clumsy comment Hillary Clinton had made about Martin Luther King ("Dr King's dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964") and a reference her husband had made in passing to Nelson Mandela ("I've been blessed in my life to know some of the greatest figures of the last hundred years . . . but if I had to pick one person whom I know would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions . . . I would pick Hillary") were deliberate racial taunts. Another female staffer, Candice Tolliver - whose job it is to promote Obama to African Americans - then weighed in publicly, claiming that "a cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements" and saying: "Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?" That was game, set and match: the Clintons were racists, an impression sealed when Bill Clinton later compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 (even though Jackson himself, an Obama supporter, subsequently declared Clinton's remarks to be entirely inoffensive).

(snip)

http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/05/obama-clinton-vote-usa-media

[anonymous171]

1. You had me up until "pro-Obama media"

:rofl:

[Occam Bandage]

2. Hey, they haven't played Rev. Wright footage in *days.*

[depakid]

26. Obviously you have a VERY short memory

Obama would never hav even gotten off of the ground- much less won Iowa without the unprecidented positive media coverage.

But don't take my word for it- look at objective studies on point.

Like this one:

THE INVISIBLE PRIMARY—INVISIBLE NO LONGER
A First Look at Coverage of the 2008 Presidential Campaign

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy

In the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, the media had already winnowed the race to mostly five candidates and offered Americans relatively little information about their records or what they would do if elected, according to a comprehensive new study of the election coverage across the media.

The press also gave some candidates measurably more favorable coverage than others. Democrat Barack Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois, enjoyed by far the most positive treatment of the major candidates during the first five months of the year—followed closely by Fred Thompson, the actor who at the time was only considering running. Arizona Senator John McCain received the most negative coverage—much worse than his main GOP rivals.

More: http://www.journalism.org/node/8187

Or this one:

Obama and Clinton Tie for Coverage, But Barack Wins on Tone
Democratic Race Dominates Presidential Campaign Coverage

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/738/obama-clinton-coverage

That the corporate media inevitably turned on him (using material that they'd kept under wraps for many, many month doesn't negate the fact that they built him up to where he is now.

To conclude otherwise is either to be in denial- or to be dishonest.

[question everything]

37. Thank you! Ever posted this as its own thread? (nt)

[question everything]

36. You must not have been watching Matthews and Olbermann and Stewart

since the beginning of the year... can't blame you. I stopped watching them too.

Same with all the Newsweek guests on Olbermann, Jonathan Alter who has been envious and angry at the older baby boomers, it seems all throughout his life.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Hillary hatin' on us, you mean.

[Richard Steele]

4. I guess codswollop is cheaper if you get it in bulk, and secondhand. nm

[palindrome]

5. k

[John Q. Citizen]

6. Hillary Duff deserves all the bad vibes she gets. That's who you are talking about, right?

[JimGinPA]

7. This Op-Ed Totally Ignores Her Failings...

And deflects blame;
"...is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history..."

What a crock of shit.

[Window]

35. What Jim said.

[question everything]

38. I don't suppose waiting for example to prove that these comments are wrong

is too much to hope.

That's OK, I am used to this freeper-like attitude on DU. Who cares about facts and reasoned response? "Troll," "shit," etc are so simple response and you do not even have to pretend that you possess a capacity to think independently.

[Botany]

8. Hillary started w/ $200 million in the bank, a 40 point lead, and

huge well funded organization ... and she lost because the voters rejected
her and she ran a nasty campaign of slander and lies.

[tularetom]

9. I'm sorry but there are some people who are just plain unlikeable

and there is something about hillary clinton that is so manufactured, so plastic, so phony, that most people just naturally dislike her. She lacks whatever it is that her husband used to possess that made you like him even though you knew he was lying to you. I get the feeling that she is trying way too hard to be something she just isn't - a charismatic, inspirational leader, rather than what I think she really is - an introverted bookworm.

She just does not have the personality to be a chief executive of anything and all the pumping up of her image does nothing to alter that fact. She can't even be true to herself. For instance, I know she isn't a racist but she was perfectly willing to act like one in order to get votes from the inbred demographic in several Appalachian primaries. She lacks the moral strength to stand up for what I think she truly believes. In my opinion, pretending to be a racist warmonger because you think that makes you "tough" is worse than actually being a racist warmonger.

[GoesTo11]

22. Thank you so much - you've nailed it.

[Aussie leftie]

10. Thankyou so much

Your post said it all. k & r

[question everything]

12. Thank you. As I was reading it it felt as if my own words were coming back

at me.

I have posted similar comments on DU for months, including the one about McCain going out of his way to "defend" Obama, yet chuckled when someone asked him about the "bitch."

And I have stopped watching Olbermann and reading Newsweek's Jonathan Alter when their bias became so clear, Alter actually admitted it, saying that, being born in the mid 50s he felt a "stepchild" to the boomers and hate both Clintons (and Gore).

[Honeycombe8]

11. He's been a Hillary supporter from the beginning. Most of this article is hogwash.

I have been keeping my eyes and ears open for sexism. I've run across a few statements, but nothing big. It's been curious, actually, that Hillary's gender has been discussed so little, and that is so slight a factor in the primary. It IS a factor to a small segment of our society, but it's not much of one.

A compliment on her jacket is not a sexist remark. When someone goes out of his/her way to dress differently from the other candidates, and stands in the middle of the stage in a lineup of 6 men wearing dark suits, and she chooses to wear a tangerine-colored suit...well, that is someone who is saying, "Look at me. Pay attention to me. I want your eyes to come to me." Edwards, in response to some comment by Clinton, quipped jokingly something about her attractive jacket (it was a beautiful jacket - he wasn't being sarcastic). That's not sexist, but Ferraro cited this instance on Fox News as one of the sexist incidents that occurred. It simply isn't true.

Clinton has tried to make her gender an issue, even though it wasn't, so that it would get her followers all wound up. It worked. And I like to see women FINALLY backing other women (that isn't always the case). But it's a false ploy. The issue simply doesn't exist except in their public relations world.

But they are trying to use it so that they can get some underdog traction against Obama's race issue.

[emilyg]

19. Thank you.

[monomach]

13. The mean black guy and the MSM nailed a true Saint to the cross.

We get it already. Sheesh.

[AtomicKitten]

14. Um, you've heard of the expression "what goes around comes around?"

The way she is regarded is entirely commensurate with her behavior this campaign, and she has nobody but herself to blame.

[guruoo]

21. Unfortunately, Obama's going to be the one to suffer the blowback

from his supporter's continuing efforts to destroy the Clintons.

[bhikkhu]

15. "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" someone said

and I really dislike responding to long and ultimately useless posts with equally obvious and useless responses. What difference does it make at this point? HRC ran a lousy campaign, and we must all apologize that we ever mentioned that it was a lousy campaign? Ok, I'm sorry.

Now there are much more important things.

[BlooInBloo]

16. Bullfuckingshit.

[Enrique]

17. I wonder if anyone will examine their behavior later?

individually or collectively?

I'll be looking forward to the first article by someone saying, omg, what came over me/us?

[hfojvt]

23. Don't hold your breath

Have they done any mea culpas over the war on Gore?

Except of course, the war on Gore sorta blows the whole sexist/misogynist theory out of the water.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[McCamy Taylor]

20. I told you so. When I wrote my journal about "The Race Memo" I said the press would bring it up in

their own sweet time once Obama had sewn up the nomination, in order to portray Clinton as the victim and Obama as the big bad Daley style dirty trickster politician.

The press knew that "The Race Memo" was dirty when they saw it all the way back in early January, but not a one of them (with a few exceptions) commented upon it at the time.


They knew that it was going to be a gold mine against Obama in the general.

I told you that Obama and Clinton and the Democrats needed to start talking about race in the primary and Obama needed to step forward and make it clear that none of those charges in the Memo was true and that everyone who wrote them had been fired and that he did not endorse any of that silliness. But he has allowed the innuendo to go on so long that it is too late now.

You will be seeing this story over and over again all the way until November unless Obama and Clinton are on the same ticket.

PS The Obama Camp should investigate to see if the women who wrote the Race Memos have any links to the RNC because those documents are too suspicious. They are just like the kind of things that CREEP used to play in 1972 against one Dem pretending they were from another Dem. And the way that NBC kept using them even after Obama tried to call them off---shameful! Pat Buchanan even wrote the outline for the follow up of the "Race Memo" in "Ghettoizing Barack"

Obama also needs to get out in public right now and explain away those memos and say that he regrets that anyone ever got the idea that his esteemed colleague Sen. Clinton and her husband Bill Clinton could ever in a million years be racist.

[question everything]

39. You certainly did. More than once

but, as you can see from the responses here, most would rather attack the messenger than pay any attention to the message.

[midnight]

24. This story was blamed on HIllary because it was a leak and

made Obama look bad.

Signs point to PMO in NAFTA leak
Source: The Star

OTTAWA–Fingers are pointing at Conservatives close to Stephen Harper for leaking a diplomatic memo that badly embarrassed Barack Obama and put Canada's vital cross-border interests at risk. Multiple sources say the Canadian note questioning the Democrat frontrunner's public promise to reopen NAFTA was leaked from the Prime Minister's Office to a Republican contact before it made American headline news.

Their claims come days after an internal probe threw up its hands at finding the source. Contradicting Friday's inconclusive report, they claim the controversial memo was slipped to the son of Wisconsin Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner. Frank Sensenbrenner is well connected to Harper's inner circle and, at Ottawa's insistence, was briefly on contract with Canada's Washington embassy to work on congressional relations.

Contacted yesterday morning, Frank Sensenbrenner did not seem surprised and agreed to an afternoon interview. But he did not call at the agreed time and did not respond to repeated emails.

snip

That badly misses the point and obscures the motive. Identifying the information as more sensitive would not have stopped the leak as long as Conservatives in high places were willing to help soulmate Republicans by rolling the dice on Canada's most important relationship. Getting the diplomatic memo to the U.S. media was pivotal in amplifying a small Canadian story into big American political news. The interpretation by Canadian diplomats that Obama was speaking out of both sides of his mouth on free trade is widely believed to have damaged his prospects in the Ohio primary and distracted Democrats to Republican advantage.






Read more: http://www.thestar.com/News/USElection/article/431367

[livingmadness]

25. 5 more days n/t

[WeDidIt]

27. Freaky Deaky n/t

[Perry Logan]

28. I wonder how many women are afraid to tell anyone they favor Hillary.

The abusiveness of the pro-Obama camp is legendary. I'll bet millions of women favor Hillary, but are outright afraid to say it.

[GCP]

30. You said it - see below.

[EFerrari]

44. LOL

[GCP]

29. This article supports everything I've been feeling about this race

The US will look back at this and say "WTF were we doing?"
I'm the older white woman demographic that supports Hillary - there are many of us out there absolutely pissed at what's been going on, especially at NBC/MSNBC.
And yes, I will hold my nose and vote for Obama if he's the nominee.
k and r to the original post.

[SoCalDem]

31. It's not because she's "A woman".. it's because she's HILLARY CLINTON

Her persona transcends her gender..

[Arkansas Granny]

32. The media needed a "rock star", so they made one. For counterpoint, they needed

a villain(ess), so they made one. The fact that they could do this with a black man and a white woman was absolutely a boon for them. They couldn't have asked for anything better for a media circus. They could promote this historical "battle" and exploit it for their own benefit. The number of viewers and readers goes up, the ad buys go up, the candidates exposure goes up. Everybody wins!

Except the American voter, of course. In the course of this frenzy to capture dollars and audience, the most experienced and better qualified candidates are ignored for the most part and effectively shut out of the contest leaving the Democrats to choose between two of the weakest candidates in the lineup.

But hey, it's been fun, hasn't it?

[GCP]

33. You nailed it

What with the stupid and probably fatally-flawed primary system, we had a prefect storm.

[papapi]

34. Useless drivel.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

40. I don't "hate" the Clintons, but I loathe what they stand for.

They, and the DLC, took a moderately liberal political party and "triangulated" it to the right while passing off what they were doing as "progressive".

They made being the "not as bad" candidate the epitome of "practical politics" and made mediocrity palatable while selling the poor and disenfranchised down the river in the name of political victory.

They made Republican policies palatable by watering them down and calling them "The 3rd Way".

They patronized the minorities and pandered to the white majority.

They played to the lowest common denominators of American society - greed, fear, and nationalism.

They now offer only more of the same.

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." Thomas Paine

[Hamlette]

41. LOL, that's delusional

I hate her. There I said it. Not because of anything your article talks about (I'm a 58 year old woman/feminist lawyer). I'm pissed for her saying we should seat FL and MI and the popular vote means anything.

It is not only a bunch of bs, it is hurting my party.

I expect those kind of harmful attacks from the right but not from one of our own.

I'm SO over the Clintons and I defended them for 15 years. Now I know why ppl hate her.

[question everything]

43. Interesting that you bring up the popular votes

She won the popular votes in NV and TX but lost the delegates because of a bizarre system that gives black districts more delegates per capita.

She won big in PA in the popular votes, but not in delegates for the same reason. Philadelphia carried more weight that the rural areas where she won 75% of the votes.

So when some say that Obama is winning because he is black this, too, is a reason.

[kevinbgoode]

42. It isn't as if the Clinton's didn't KNOW the negativity numbers were sky-high

and that right-wing media would feed the fire. Of course, her campaign didn't help itself too much either, managing to ostracize Democrats and Independents while promoting divisive attacks on both the party and the frontrunning candidate. Naturally, her supporters and campaign people take no responsibility for their own fu*k-ups.