So I have been writing for almost a year on the leftiness blogs about the Clinton candidacy. Not necessarily in an entirely approving mode, at least not in terms of many of her statements or her alliances, but nevertheless in an appreciative sense.
She is good at what she does, and she has put herself in the best possible position that she can manage to become the next President of the United States.
Meanwhile I have watched with increasing wonderment at the tidal wave of anti-Hillary Clinton sentiment that has built among so many leftiness bloggers.
“The leftiness death wish in all of its sad glory”, I thought originally.
But more and more I am beginning to reconsider my reaction.
The literal hatred…potentially self-defeating in many of its aspects…that is being directed at her (At her personally AND at her candidacy.) seems driven by more than just stubborn leftiness dreams of ideological purity. The rapidly increasing support for her essential ideological twin Obama on the blogs is all you need to know about THAT idea.
So…what gives here?
Read on for my own take on the subject.
This morning I wrote a comment on the Hillary thing called Clinton Wins Stunning Victory in New Hampshire
In it, I presented the beginnings of an idea that many of the leftiness bloggers who so resist her candidacy are doing so for almost totally unconsciously held sexist reasons.
And I quite predictably got a self-defending response from someone called “anna in philly”.
Who wrote:
are you saying we women cant look at all the info and think for ourselves?
that we cant look at all the corporate and special interest donations and come to the conclusion that she cant possibly do anything progressive because she is bought and paid for?
I started a reply, and it grew.
So I am now presenting it as a stand-alone post.
Here it is.
—————————————————
No anna, I am saying that on some levels, almost NO ONE can think rationally.
Case in point.
You.
I wrote…quite carefully:
…many of the leftist women who have been most vocally attacking Hillary Clinton are in some quite complex way actually attacking the fact that she is female.
And a WHOLE lot of the men. Who are quite unconscious of what they are doing or why.
I applied the word “many” to the female opponents of Hillary Clinton and the word “most” to the males.
Because that is what accurately reflects my take on the matter.
Not all men OR women. But certainly more men than women.
And you answer by asking
…are you saying we women cant look at all the info and think for ourselves?
that we cant look at all the corporate and special interest donations and come to the conclusion that she cant possibly do anything progressive because she is bought and paid for?
“WE” women.
ALL women.
And by that all-inclusive “we”, you put yourself firmly INTO the camp that cannot reliably think for itself as far as I am concerned.
Because you did NOT think for yourself.
I could go on for a long time here, but I do not have the time to do so. Thus a brief précis of my path to this idea will have to do.
I was very close to two women…one now deceased and one an ex-lover…as recently as 8 months ago. Recently enough so that Hillary Clinton’s aspirations towards the Presidency were quite apparent and it was also quite possible that she might achieve that goal. Both were very independent women, women who had worked and succeeded all of their lives while also comparatively successfully raising children and sustaining a marriage. And both had an almost blind antipathy to Hillary Clinton. When they were really pressed for a reason to this antipathy their answer came down time and again to ideas such as “I just don’t like her!!!”
Followed closely by “LOTS of women don’t like her!!!”, “Lots of PEOPLE don’t like her!!!”, “The conservative right will defeat her”, “The South will rise against her” and the like.
They were both essentially political moderates, so the idea that she was a centrist or controlled by the evil masterminds of SMERSH, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers and the Illuminati didn’t enter into their own equations.
And I would watch in wonderment, trying to figure out how this INCREDIBLY consistent, successful, careful, survivor (and conservator, if the truth be known) of a flawed marriage who raised an apparently sane child in the midst of the turmoil of a political career could rouse such emotionally-based antipathy in two women for whom her life might be considered a template in many respects.
And then…EUREKA!!!
I got it.
They resented her success. They resented the template ITSELF. To some degree, the fact that this woman had become a truly DOMINANT woman…not just independent,. but dominant over the lives of many, many men as well as children and women pressed buttons in both of their heads that had been implanted in their early “I ENJOY being a girl!!!”, “Play with those damned dolls or ELSE” youth.
There is a popular saying…I do not know its origin…that goes ” ‘BALLS!!!’, said the Queen. “If I had ’em, I’d be KING!!!’ ” It is a derisive, anti-female saying, most often heard in all-male situations.
But it holds a grain of truth, if only because of the pervasiveness of the sentiment it expresses throughout most successful human societies. And that grain of truth…that grain of reality…is imposed upon them from outside when as little girls they are forced (“taught”) to wear dresses that make their genitalia relatively easy to reach while men wear protective leggings; it is embedded when they are taught (forced) to wear long, troublesome hair that can be easily grabbed, when they are taught (forced) to daub their faces with paint in order to appear desirable to men while men are allowed to walk into the room relatively ungroomed and are considered all the more “masculine” for it, etc…y’all know this by now, right? I hope so.
Well…THIS queen is violating ALL of the rules. Those subliminal rules that burrow their way deep into our psyches and lie fallow like an untouched landmine until something comes by that sets them off.
She is saying “Balls? I don’t NEED balls to be king. I don’t even need to ACT like I have balls. In fact…the king not only has no clothes, his ‘balls’ have made him act in so many foolish ways that it is time for someone WITHOUT balls to become the ruler.”
This is revolution on the HIGHEST of psychological planes, and the landmines it sets off…the mindmines…in a number of people are spectacularly well camouflaged.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
Hillary Clinton…conservatively dressed, coiffed and made-up Hillary Clinton, 60 year old-ish baby boomer child of the upper middle class Hillary Clinton…is tromping through the minefields of a LOT of people’s beings wearing army boots and detonating landmine after landmine as she goes. Somehow miraculously surviving, which may be the unkindest stomp of all. (“Aaaah, yer momma wears army boots!!!” Them was FIGHTIN’ woids to the Dead End Kids. And somewhere deep inside, we are ALL Dead End Kids. Bet on it.)
Look in the mirror, boys and girls…men and women, who after all are essentially only OLD boys and girls…and see the truth of the matter.
Your OWN truth.
If indeed this antipathy that you feel to Hillary Clinton has no basis in your early sex role training…and you are going to have to look DEEP inside to find that shit, bet on that as well…if it is not emotionally based but rather based on real positions and real facts, then feel free to go on about your anti-Hillary business.
But if your reaction to her and or her candidacy is primarily emotionally based, if you support some OTHER candidate who resides in the same general pockets as does she for any reasons other than at least a somewhat factually based belief in her own non-electability…a belief that her strong success in the red areas of New York State does well to belie…then look into yourself.
The fault may not lie in either the stars OR the candidate.
In may lie within your own formative upbringing.
Take a look.
A good, LONG look.
You might be bettah off.
WE ALL might be bettah off.
Peace on y’all.
Later…
AG
Tips are nice, too.
Flames?
It’s winter. Today seems more like spring in NYC than winter, but what the hell…all heat will be appreciated as well.
Fire away if you so desire.
Later…
AG
I have to agree with you and have felt similarly for quite a while. If Hilary wins no feminist or professional women will be able to blame the “glass ceiling” for their own lack of success. What a frightening prospect. As for the men, it will be just that little bit harder to put down a good women. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said: “no one can make you inferior unless you let them”.
That’s such a full argument…a leap of logic.
Are you telling me that if Sen. Clinton becomes president that men, particularly white men, across this country are all of a sudden going to stop being sexist?
Or is it what you are you really saying is that if Sen. Clinton becomes president then women will all of sudden start being CEOs, governors and other occupations because, as you put it “no feminist or professional women will be able to blame the “glass ceiling” for their own lack of success.”
Lack of success in the boardroom is tied to a lack of a female president.
Okay.
Sure.
The Presidency of the United States is a highly symbolic office.
If you do not think that a woman as President would strongly affect attitudes…atitudes that will resonate for generations to come…then you are indeed blind as a bat.
AG
Because I heard white men tell the same lies to black people, to Latinos, to Asians. I’ve heard, “Well, a Black mayor is symbolic and will send a message to the boardroom.” Yeah. Sure. The problem is that the message needed to be sent to the cops beating and harassing young Black, Asian and Latino men, just because of their color. The message needed to be sent to the cabbie who won’t pick me up because I am black. The message needed to be sent the shopkeeper who follows me around the store, but never asks me if I need help.
And then there is just the “Ain’t American Grand” in that statement that is laughable. Tons of other countries, “Third World” countries even have had female leaders. Some of these countries still don’t allow female children to be taught to read. Some of these countries have had even less female CEOs than the US. Some of these countries have their own glass ceilings, so what are you talking about resonation? Or is this another “your time will come later” thing that my great-great grandkid may be able to see on TV?
Well I have to say I now love you…..just can’t help myself. It’s been building over the last several months, but now with this diary, I am over the top.
Thanks so much for writing this, and I am betting you will continue, writing that is.
Cheers to you Arthur!!!!!!!
I’m beginning to feel three is a crowd, so I’m outa here!
Have fun, you two….
Oh please don’t go, I have a little love for you too for that comment above…
Oh and BTW, I have thought for a long time now that the ticket would be Clinton Pres, Obama, VP, give him some experience and then I think in 8 years he would make a fine Pres.
To me looking at the primaries so far, with the vote totals, this ticket would take the election in a big way. Of course we still have to wait to see how the south votes. Well anyway that is my take.
My sister a Republican has said she hated Hillary, the reason, she believed all the murder and mayhem crap thrown at her. Well the other day, pre emotional moment, I said to her I didn’t like her feeling that way, reason 1, all those things were lies, and if Kent Starr didn’t fine any bones, well you know, and the second reason was that she was just like us, my sister and I, little bit younger, but the same kind of early life….she could have been one of my sisters friends, who I amways thought were so cool and remarkable, sister’s a slight bit older than I. Anway, I think it got to her and she started to relent.
To my mind,If there is anyone to be hated in the country it surely should be Bush and maybe we can give a little break to someone in our own party.
Remember after the Clinton affair, her positives were very high, but when she did not divorce, they started to go down.
I always wondered why, in such a “Christian” country, she should have had negative ratings for not divorcing. Is that another reason why people hate her – because she stuck with him thru thick and thin… if you know what I mean…. Now if she HAD divorced him. the evangelicals would have has a field day, UNFAITHFUL, can’t be RELIED on, broken promise to GOD etc.
I do believe the Clinton haters, by extension passed it on to her, when she did not divorce him. On another front she rejected the homey women type (baking cookies reference)during his campaign, but was then seen to be just another soccer, housewifey lady, when she didn’t go off on her ownand leave him. So as usual she was wrong to some either way she went.
One thing I have always remembered about her was a quote relayed by one of her long time friends,(paraprased) when asked how she maintained herself after the affair, she said I would have loved to go into a room and cry my eyes out, but I just didn’t have the time. It is also interesting to note that many of those in her immediate campaign circle are friends from highschool and college…says something about a person when they still have the friendship and loyalty of people from their youth.
I have read your diaries and comments for a long time here, AG. This is the best “undercover work” I have seen in recent memory. You are so exactly right on the mark as I see it.
That damn programming all of us have been through all of our lives about this particular subject and so many other ideas and concepts of “how things are,” is insidious, deeply hidden (most often), and very tough for most of us to face honestly.
You have done a terrific job with your thesis here and I commend you highly.
Keep up the good work.
Shirl
Well this is one woman unwilling to be her subject.
She and her “Bill’s bitten bottom lip” moment is driving her perilously close to the $3 bill fakery that is Mitt Romney.
But I’m ready on day one. Please. If living in the WH is preparation, then let’s just forget having elections and institute a rule stating that all first families have right of first refusal for the
crownoffice.I don’t attack her as a woman. I attack Clintonism. I attack the fact that she acts entitled. I attack her patronizing manner.
She’s already shown me exactly who she is with her MLK/LBJ comment, and I believe her.
Booman Tribune ~ The Queen cometh. And many of her potential subjects shaketh. That’s my take on what’s up, anyway.
Was it all that much worse than Bushism? And didn’t Clinton give Gore his chance – which he squandered?
IF, and its a big if – Hilary is like Bill without the flaws – she’s a darn side better than what has happened since.
Perhaps the US can do even better, and Obama presses all the right buttons, but who is to say he isn’t another Dukakis, Dean, Kerry, Gore and a whole host of Dem favourites who ended up handing power to the GOP.
At least the Clintons do have a (mixed) track record, but it’s a lot better than a few years in the debating chamber known as the senate.
This is the time to fight for what the Democratic party should be about. To respond to:
with
is simple a straw man argument.
Since, after all, does it respond to the statement? Suppose that Clintonism is held to be less bad than Bushism. In what way does that then imply that Clintonism should not be attacked?
A universe in which Clintonism and Bushism are the sole two alternatives … well, yes.
But not in our world.
And the presumption that Senator Clinton could have run immediately for the President without first passing Go in the Senate and collecting $100m, in:
Evidently: no. The chance which Clinton gave to Gore, the Vice Presidency, was, indeed, not squandered by Gore … he converted it into a Presidential nomination. And whether or not the nomination was squandered, it was not a gift of President Clinton.
Was it all that much worse than Bushism?
That’s the point. I am sick of settling.
well…the fact she is a woman is one of the very few plusses in Hillary’s column. I’ll take a package deal…a female president for all the bile that comes with it. It’s a bargain.
But this particular woman is the head of political movement within the Democratic Party. On a bad day, that movement doesn’t extend much beyond Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and a few of their best friends. On better days, it represents the aspirations within the party to be the party of big business and aggressive international interventionism. They hold most of us in contempt and will go to great lengths to make sure our values are not represented within the Democratic Party. They are the leaders of the Blue Dog/New Democratic coalition. That explains 90% of my opposition. The other 10% is that she has shorter coattails than Obama.
You’ve never heard me say horrible things about her personally. About the worst I’ve said is that I don’t like her voice. And I’ve always insisted both that she is qualified and electable.
But I get the feeling people take my hostility the wrong way and draw these same conclusions that you’re drawing, Arthur. And I don’t like it.
Yeah – I have to admit, that voice – the ‘campaigning’ voice, grates on my nerves. She was better in that small group at the cafe where she was just talking normally.
And it was also that softer, lower more personal “voice” she both used (physical) and referenced (politcal) in her victory speech.
Depending on your political point of view, there are as many political grounds for criticising Clinton as any other candidate. However the point AG was making, I think, is that quite a few people who know or care little for politics and policy have a visceral hatred for Hilary. He was merely asking the question why, and proposing an answer, with which you are also entitled to disagree.
But unless you guys have a personal history that I’m not aware of, AG’s comments were not directed at you personally, or at politically engaged activists who ARE motivated by political platforms rather than barely understood personal prejudices.
But the latter ARE a problem for the Democratic Party. Because if Hilary wins the nomination she could lose to someone like McCain (or much less likely , Huckabee) not because the majority of people don’t want a democrat President, or like Democratic policies, but because a large number of otherwise democrat voters have a personal dislike or hatred for Hilary.
It is therefore important that this particular aspect of her candidacy is explored and understood, so that the inevitable GOP plays on that personal factor can be exposed and countered. If AG is right, and a lot of it is rooted in sexist conditioning, then that is a very important debate for America to have in any case, if not for the sake of a Hilary Presidency, then for the sake of a more liberated society for all.
I personally take the view that Hilary has over-compensated for the attacks of GOP and chauvinist political forces, and has tried to present the image of a teak tough fighter who will not be blind-sided by the GOP on national security. In so doing she has lost the heart of much of the Dems and the public at large.
We saw the viciously chauvinist response to her “moment of weakness” which in a man would have been portrayed as an endearing show of compassion and commitment. As New Hampshire voters showed, people are fed up of such sexist stereotypes and want to see the human side of their candidates as well. Perhaps it will liberate Hilary to be more true to herself and to America.
In any case most Americans now don’t have a problem with her because she is a women, but the problem is with dealing with those who still do, because some of them, at least, would otherwise vote Democratic and are vital to the Democratic cause.
Let us pray that you are right.
If you are it’s going to be by a squeaking eyelash, I think.
New Hampshire, New England in general, the northern states in general and even northern climes throughout the world…they all seem to me to have produced a larger percentage of independent women than have more southern areas. I dunno…maybe it’s just the weather. The hardness of the life. Whatever…that New Hampshire reaction by women to the momentary breakdown of Hillary Clinton’s hard-as-nails, lacquered pol front comes as no surprise to THIS ex- Maine, ex-rural New England dweller. They LIVE behind a reserved front of that type, many of them. They DO know, as Ms. Clinton put it, how “hard” it is.
We shall see…
AG
Seriously?
Seriously????
I love the success she’s had, although I wonder how much of it she would have gotten on her own had she not been riding Bill’s coattails. That’s not to denigrate her at all. It’s just an unknown. She’s had more opportunities than most women, because of that, and has done a lot with those opportunities.
But when I hear her talk about all her experience – I think yeah, but….
But seriously???????
I just don’t like her policies. I think she’s too centrist for my tastes. Too cozy with lobbyists, and the DLC, the old guard I never liked in the Democratic party.
THAT is why I don’t like her.
Please, please. Don’t make such broad generalizations.
But AG, I thought we lived (or pretended to live) in a representative democracy – a queen?!
I enjoy your analysis and the challenges you often pose to your readers (even when your style was YELLING), so I had to think about this.
I wonder if H. Clinton was NOT a woman if you would defend her so. It seems to me you see her as the chosen one. And that you have hopes that once in office she is going to shrug off her current “protective covering” and morph into Hillary Roosevelt. Perhaps more realistically you seem to consider her the best of the lot available.
AG, you have described your relationship to music and to other players, recognizing if you were to maintain your integrity you could NOT play with bands-R-us. It would have corrupted you. I’m not sure H. Clinton has changed that much from the young Republican she was, so I don’t know how she defines integrity, but I wonder about the company she keeps. Permagov indeed.
I had hopes at one time that women wending their way along different career paths, moving out of the 60’s, would make deep changes in the way that business was done – major cultural changes. That both men and women could set aside the cultural delineations and limitations to pursue work that would bring out the best in them. I had hopes that the first woman president would be not only bright, savvy, and hard-working, but would have a large heart and a grand vision.
Yet here we are in corporatized America with Wal-Mart the largest employer. Maybe Hillary Clinton as the first woman president is actually an accurate reflection of the state of the nation. I find her a disappointment.
There does seem to be something primal going on here. She really has a lot of people absolutely hating her on the left and right. The wingnut I work with thinks she is pure evil. Grandma M had a comment about her aunts feeling Clinton is running on Bill’s credentials. That pisses them off. But like you said Arthur people who are not political seem to be put off. Seems to be a lot of reasons from a lot of different people. Some folks are just tired of defending the Clintons. Its kind of like hearing a song too many times. People say I used to like it but I’m sick of it.
On a different note. We are breaking new ground here with our two front runners. A woman and a black man leading the race is new for everyone. Maybe asking them for ideological purity is too much too soon. I’m kind of high off the whole deal and proud of the Democratic party’s primary voters. This is pretty cool.
I’ve always been troubled by the many, many women who have said to me, “I’ll never work for another female boss.”
But I thought about that again after reading this post and I came up with a possible explanation. Maybe it’s because they know women in power have to be twice the asshole men do just to get into the game, and three times the asshole to rise to the top.
And in some sense, that’s the feeling I get about Hillary. She has to be three times the war-mongering, corporatist asshole to get there – and I don’t want any part of it.
There’s an old swing era jazz big band joke.
It goes like this.
Yup.
I wonder if Hillary Clinton has really succceeded in out-assholing most…or all…of the men. My own subjective take on it is that she has not. That she is just…smarter, more dedicated, less dispersed and more able to compromise to get where she wants to go than are most of her male peers in the game.
It is VERY instructive to read the Wellesley paper that she wrote on Saul Alinsky way back in her undergraduate years. She was all for his goals…he was a very left-wing union organizer…and totally against his tactics. He just took things out…wildcat strikes, etc. (whatever worked, short term)…and she thought that gradual work within the system would get things done that would STAY done.
And here she is, 40 years later. DEEP inside the system, still trying to get things done.
Or of course…she is a closet fascist right wing harpy intent on bringing about Armageddon for the benefit of her alien masters and THEIR master, Satan. Which is the read I am getting from a surprising percentage of the leftiness people.
Oh well.
So it goes.
Business as usual.
And the center holds.
Maybe.
Just barely.
Later…
AG
For all those who think she has never done much except to be a first lady planning parties check out wikipedia, here is just a tiny bit of her extensive and impressive resume.
From wikipedia
Hilary was always a radical until Bill’s presidency and behaviour and her own political ambition forced her into compromising positions. Her health care reforms foundered on a Republican dominated congress and her position on Iraq was caused by her determination not to be blind-sided by Republicans on National security.
She may, indeed, now be too compromised by the failures of Clinton’s Presidency and her own attempt to attract independent support by steering a centrist course just as the country was moving left. But these are political failings, not personal ones. If she is to be rejected as Dem. party nominee, let it be for her political mis-judgments rather than for any personal dislike.
She has a better pre-Senate radical pedigree than many of the liberals who criticise her now.
Than the typical male, “Oh you’re just jealous she’s a woman” crap.
Up until about maybe a month ago, I was willing to hold my nose and give The Clinton’s a 3rd term in office. Then I realized that Sen. Clinton’s “35 years of experience” bullshit was exactly that. Yes, she was Congressional legal counsel and worked for–dammit, I’m blanking on the name–Rose something law firm, but if you think about it…all her political experience she’s touting is because Bill slipped it to her. As I mentioned on BlogHer yesterday:
And that 12, was me being facetious…I really think it’s closer to like 6. Or 8.
But, you think it’s because she stepped out of a box…right? That’s insulting and laughable.
I can no longer get behind a Clinton candidacy because she decided to get girly on me. Here is a woman I thought was a pretty strong (privileged, white) woman who can possibly win the presidency on her own accord. But no, on the campaign trail, she had to have Bill Clinton to Save The Day!
Then she tried to appeal to our uterine similarities in Iowa by trotting out more (priveleged, white) women: her mom and kid. I don’t care and I while her record does speak for itself, this is a Clinton we’re talking about, so it’s only a matter of time before women get thrown under the bus. Also on BlogHer:
Then there was the “choking up” crap and then listening to all those interviews with her about it just left stunned. She’s sat there talking about that like she broke a nail on her new fucking dishwasher. Ugh. Where did Hillary go? She played the media and the voters with her sex and since it’s Clinton, no one was going to call her on it because it would be sexist to do it.
But what convinced me that the “choking up” and the “iron my shirt” stupidity were campaign ploys, was her victory speech, where she clearly said, “Thanks for voting, suckas!” Where did she say it? When she said, “I finally found my voice.”
I couldn’t have written a better line for speech for that moment…White women love that shit. They eat that crap up…fucking Oprah. ‘I finally found my voice.’…What a steaming load of shit from someone who used the same voice (campaign lies) that we’re all used too these past 3 or 4 weeks.
What a steaming load of shit from someone who just spent the previous 4 days telling us about her 35 years of experience.
What a steaming load of shit from someone who told us that she was “ready to lead from Day 1”.
I never had a big problem with Sen. Clinton and have always thought the people in the liberal blogosphere were psychotic sheeple when it came to Clinton. I never understood the hatred and no one has ever explained it to me. Whatever. I was not a supporter of her coronation campaign, but I would have voted for her if she was the nominee. After Tuesday night? No way in fucking hell will help her campaign if she’s the nominees. I will not volunteer my time or money.
and
is just about enough right there to disqualify you from ANY criticism of what I have written, fabooj.
Wow!!!
Deep.
Thanks for your (unconscious) support of just the point that I have been trying to make.
Yours in solidarity…
Ann Coulter
It wouldn’t be the first time that a man making a declaration on a females “emotions” has decided that what I say can’t be reasonable. You chose one line to discount everything I said,when that one line is exactly my point. And to make it funnier, is that you don’t even tell me that I’m wrong.
It’s like all those other legacy politician. Dodd, for example…only got his job because of who his Daddy was. Does that discount me from talking about Dodd’s fitness for the presidency? Or is that yet another double standard?
Part of the reason the political class here in America could look at Pakistan and say “Democracy will flourish there.” and in the next breath tell us that Bhutto “willed” her power to son is that they’re okay with this sort of thing. They do think that wives and kids have the right to fill the office of the deceased politician. Look at the large number of white women with no political background or experience who have managed to become Congresswomen because of a dead spouse or Daddy’s money. Yeah, tell me again how Clinton is different?
Tell me I’m wrong.
Or you can discount my words, yet again, because I’m a female who used a buzz word or phrase you’ve decided you didn’t like.
And another.
Dodd?
Does “his daddy” equal Hillary Clinton’s whole life in politics?
Give me a break.
Do some research.
Or…just read the little bit of her 35+ years in politics that has been posted here by diane101.
Frankly…I think that she made Bill. Not the other way around. He was the front man and SHE was the Cheney. Albeit a much more beneficent version thereof.
But in my view it appears that you…and any number of other leftiness bloggers of all seven sexes…pre-decided your dislike for Hillary Clinton long ago and far away (In my view due largely to subconsciously dictated motives) and then you have proceeded to try to pin her policies and activities BASED ON THAT PREJUDICE.
That’s what I am seeing, anyway.
Good luck with it.
You may just succeed in being the camel that breaks the straw poll’s back.
So it goes.
Ya humps.
AG
You prejudged my responses because I am a liberal who blogs, that I automatically, viscerally and psychotically despise Hillary Clinton for no clear reason. This, despite the fact that I made it, and have made it in my years of blogging, abundantly clear that is not the case at all.
You had already prejudged my reaction because I am a woman. If my response wasn’t “I LOVE Hillary!!!”, then it’s because I’m jealous, because I hate her for her power, because I need a excuse to blame [whoever] for [whatever my panties are in a twist about].
Fine.
I LOVE Hillary and I can’t wait for her to be president because then I’ll have a chance become a CEO at a major corporation!!!
or something…
more from wikipedia
Note the line in bold, sure turned out to be true, didn’t it.
Hillary, the White House years, (the ones where she was riding the coattails of her husband, (snark)
The Queen has been wearing a mask. It seemed to lift in the days before New Hampshire. That may have been part of the bump she got. Even if was just a short, controlled burst of spontaneity, it seemed to give us a view inside that before seemed obscured by the robo-candidate facade.
A candidate who appears opaque creates distrust and inhibits any real attachment. You can’t see who they really are and it raises questions in your mind whether they really are who they say they are or whether they think about the world in the same way you do.
No candidate is really that transparent, but unless we feel we are seeing enough to judge their true selves, their will be trouble. People wanted to have a beer with Bush(and not so much with Kerry) at least in part because with Bush they felt like they had a sense of who would be sitting next to them on the stool at the bar. (And that he might bring some higher octane consumables.) I think it comes down to what you think of them as people – applied to what you think they need to be as a person to be both Presidential candidate and President.
Now (getting back to your take on the gender subcurrent) to some extent do we define those needs differently for women than men?
Sure.
Does that change how we judge candidates?
Yup.
But other aspects come into play in the same way.
What a black man needs to be as a person to successfully run for and govern as the President is different as well. Spin the dial again for a black woman.
Small state governor, New York mayor, baptist preacher, plaintiff’s attorney – they all change how we define the requirements of who that person has to be to both get and do the job.
Are all of our deeply embedded prejudices (of all sizes and shapes) implicated?
I can’t see how they are not.
But I also would not limit that analysis of the public’s reaction to only Hillary and only gender. To the extent we see what we believe is real, the candidate scores high on the authenticity scale. (To the extent we don’t feel we have seen enough to make that call – a disconnect will exist.) To the extent that our perception of a candidate’s true nature matches our standards for what each candiate needs to be to run, win and govern, they end up higher on our lists.
So why the anger towards Hillary? Some don’t like people who appear fake. Too controlled and you can come off as fake and insincere. Lunch room, board room, campaign trail – that does not change.
For Dems, you add the Clintons’ DLC/corporate background and Hillary’s continued enthusiasm for taking and relying on boodles of money from those same interests that politically funded and benefitted from Bush’s trashing of America. (I sometimes wonder if that unprecedented corporate largess towards a Democratic candidate will continue though election day or disappear when it is most needed – but that’s a different topic.)
So I think there are subconscious rules we apply to Hillary’s candidacy, but there are subconcious rules we apply to them all and when it comes down to it for many people (maybe most), gender is one, but only one factor in how those rules are written.
perhaps there’s nothing behind the mask beyond the continuation of the status quo…no tangible change.
new orleanscontinues to be rebuilt as a monument to monied interests, and the new disneyland version, becomes a playground for the haves and have-mores, seemingly safe in their seven rooms from the degradations that exist outside the high walls and gates, while for those outside the gates death and destruction rages on:
we shall see.
lTMF’sA
LMAO..AG, you can stir the pot better with a chopstick, than anyone I know with a paddle…
I love it…great article.
sometimes the truth will leave a mark ; )
Semper Fi
That damned pot NEEDS some stirring.
AG
Ya, you don`t want anything sticking to the bottom.
That infidelpig is a funny guy.
Good essay Mr. Gilroy