But veal substitute would have been apt. Though Dianne's original diary was, in its expression, subpar, it was the real deal: genuine anguish from a RK'er that Queen Hillary's long planned parade to the White House has been inconvenienced by a male candidate who has managed to successfully present himself as someone above voting blocks and demographic subsets.
Attached below is the veal substitute -- excerpts from an offsite J'accuse! whose author's Wikipedia entry describes as a radical feminist. In its outrage, it covers ground similar to that touched on in Dianne's excised diary, but goes further in tying overtly misogynistic attacks on Senator Clinton herself to mankind's long oppression of woman and concludes, in so many words, that it is a woman voter's duty to right the wrongs of an abused sisterhood by putting Senator Clinton into the White House.
Like many partisan screeds, this is one-sided. Its author seems not to grasp that though, yes, a woman president is long, long overdue, this particular candidate appears to many of us as the wrong woman at the right time. And that entitlement as compensation for righting the many wrongs done to women is simply not good enough. Or that the central conceptual problem with Senator Clinton and the acolytes promoting her as the feminist standard bearer is that she has clearly gotten to where she is because she is Bill Clinton's wife.
As did Dianne, the author of this piece lambasts the "toxic viciousness" of the misogynist commentary that Senator Clinton, as a public figure, attracts, yet ignores the elephant-in-the-room of her personal life, the details of which we all know too well. And it is those details that suggest a shaky core at the heart of Senator Clinton's character. Though she may choose to present herself as feminist standard bearer, throughout her marriage, her husband has abused and humiliated her, not in word, but in deed. Is it any wonder that some of us are skeptical about the public outrage she chose to direct at a TV commentator who acidly noted that she was 'pimping' her daughter, while she has never once expressed a mote of genuine emotion about her husband having sex in the Oval Office with someone other than her? And worse, that billions of people learned of it in detail so intimate it was almost gynecologic. While aznew, for one, challenges any attempt at diagnosing Senator Clinton's psychological fitness, it seems reasonable enough to wonder how a woman president with this kind of personal history with men would react, when pushed, by misogynists extraordinaire like Osama bin Laden.
The author of this piece ignores Senator Clinton's bad politics in voting for war and showering appropriations on the misogynistic nonpareil defense industry. She essentially dismisses Senator Obama as merely an anti-Hillary and seems incapable of understanding an appeal that transcends race and gender and, to an extent, even political ideology. Take note that she claims that Senator Obama has had "to pass as white" to get to where he is. But that's not all. The subtext of this whole piece is that to a stick-in-the-mud American electorate, better any man, even a black one, than a woman.
This came to me in an email from a business associate early the morning of Super Tuesday. My attempts to convert her having failed, she voted for Senator Clinton.
From: x@x.com
Subject: Re: in case your mind is not completely made up
Date: February 5, 2008 7:14:04 AM
To: x@x.netHi x ...
Just wanted to pass this on to you -- it's been circulating like wild fire for a few days now. I think this reflects what a lot of people (probably mostly women) are feeling, and why getting Hillary in there is about so much more than just getting a woman in office. It also happens to be, I think, a brilliantly written article.
Lemme know what you think, even if it's scathing. :)
x
***********
Goodbye to the double standard . . .Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever had labor pains?)-When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
Young political Kennedys-Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.-all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort "See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage-as citizens, voters, Americans?Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites-especially wealthy ones-adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a chance-even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending politics.I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote-until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they're being called "race traitors."
So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest scar-slavery-which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men-though not all the same as one another-and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys-though unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.
As for the "woman thing"?Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman-but because I am.
It's also available in its entirety here:
http://www.womensmediacenter.c...
I've often seen Hillary as the type of woman who wants to have the advantages of both the new equality between the sexes and the old system as well. She seems to be running for president mainly on her husband's record and only partly on her experience getting CHIP enacted.
So she is running as Bill's wife AND as symbol of the new independent woman at the same time. That's cheating in my book. It reminds me of women executives who still want their dates to pay for virtually EVERYTHING, a la 1940, so they can put their own money in the bank.
If she is so proud of her role in her husband's administration why aren't we allowed to see the White House communications which would elaborate on what that role actually was?
We must all remember that the main reason the 2000 election was so close was because of the delightful experience of having the Clintons in the White House. Whatever good there was in the Clinton years it was equally offset by the circus of their private lives. Otherwise I'm convinced Al Gore would have won by a landslide.
and it also questions the emotional backbone of Clinton since she was cheated on by bill in quite a convoluted and offensive way.
I just found it ironic to see this post on the same day as the reminder towards civility. But don't think it should be taken down - just as I didn't think Dianne's post should have been taken down.
I really think censorship is a dangerous business.
I also think this whole line of argument being pursued by some of the more strident feminist supporters of Hillary Clinton is incredibly weak. And yet, I do believe that Clinton has been attacked by the male chauvinist pig quarter and by the self-hating women quarter just as Obama has been attacked by racists.
The nature of political campaigns is not to dwell on your attackers. Until our culture works through these issues, it seems that candidates for office will have to deal with them. Of course, it helps to have allies.
I think that Obama and Clinton supporters should find a way to have a constructive discussion. We should be willing to conduct ourselves honorably and say may the best candidate win. Then, we unite behind the winner.
There is a lot more to say in this area. We all should do some serious thinking and reading.