Thursday, May 15, 2008

On Wearing The Scarlet 'Hillary' [from 5.2008]



So much anti-Hillary hysteria.  Intra-party rancor. It makes me want to throw up. (Not to mention that I don't deal well with rancor in general, which I won't mention.)

All this name-calling and intra-party partisan hysteria, in addition to making me want to throw up, makes me want to call up Tony Benn, my social democrat hero, and ask if I may please, please throw myself onto his lap, sobbing, while he pats my hair paternally and reassures me that, sooner or later, everything's going to be alright.

Which may or may not be the case. And may or may not be what he would say. It's, you know, a fantasy.

Meanwhile, besides work, I try to amuse myself making green curry of duck, endless steaming pots of chicken soup, and digging in the garden, and indulge in aimless streams of thought: "Windy today, by the way. I like that poem by Czeslaw Milosz. I don't think anybody read it. People don't like poetry. Well, Americans don't like poetry much, certainly. South Americans do. In my experience, everrrybody in South America can quote Neruda. Here it's such an egghead thing. Why do Americans hate eggheads? Why do they hate intelligence? Why did they elect Bush? Why do they hate Hillary?"

My political head hurts.

Using Cheney's adjective: "Big-time."

Ok, then, why do they hate Hillary Clinton so? In particular, why does the so-called left wing of the Democratic party hate Hillary Clinton? Why are they aligned with Karl Rove? Beats the crap out of me.

Not in RL, but in blogtopia and SL, I belong to a shockingly despised minority because of this.

It's been very unsettling. I am one of the many commenters at Kos who fled after the Great Anti-Hillaryist First Purge.

Seeing my dendrobium send out a pre-bloom shoot this morning, I was reminded of John Aravosis, fellow orchid-fancier, whose blog I regularly visited, commented at, and really enjoyed until his Great Anti-Hillaryist First Purge. (Now John's written a charming post entitled "Go Away You Horrible Human Being," and he's NOT talking about Dick Cheney.)

Ditto Democratic Underground and BuzzFlash and HuffPo and on and on. Oh, and now we have John Edwards and NARAL throwing Hillary under the bus. Way to offend people you really don't want to keep on offending, people. (Or should I say, "sweetie"?)

In SL, though friend avs remain friendly (I think), once I'm in a larger political social grouping, the slightest show of Hillarysupport from me results in an automatic "INCOMING!"

I've toyed with the notion of making a little sign above my avatar saying "Pariah Clintonista," just to get it over with.

I think it's important to be supportive of whoever one's supporting, but there's an edge of virulent hysteria here with which I'm both suspicious and uncomfortable. Now it's starting to spread over into virulent anti-Obamania, and I just can't go there, either. Not at all.

So, Tony, dear -- you once called yourself a "biological Buddhist."

Where is the Middle Way?



---

Arthur Silber needs money. Send him some if you have some.

6 comments:

BillyWitchDoctor said...

YOU are the Middle Way.

I've thrown out almost all of my political bookmarks in the past few weeks because I couldn't stand the constant urging to guzzle the Obama-Aid. (That includes Orcinus and If I Ran The Zoo, which still hurts because they were once the Middle Way but gradually fell. Funny thing: I ditched Glenn Greenwald for attacking Orcinus in defense of Ron Paul. Again, the enemy of my enemy is NOT necessarily my friend.)

But I left Kos, DU, AmericaBlog, and many others ages ago because of that Capital-P phony Progressive blogosphere infestation I wore about in an earlier rant here. LONG before Hillary's campaign, they were merrily gobbling up and disseminating neoconservative talking points--as long as they were Clinton-bashing--and engaging in silly shit-fits over complete nonsense. (Sorry kids, I just couldn't see getting worked up into a tizzy over that "homophobic hate crime" Snickers commercial.)

I've tried a couple of other pro-Hillary blogs only to drop them because they clearly attract (and encourage) idiots who think they're being cute when they write that a person on Obama's staff "looks like Hitler" and title an anti-Obama article "Call A Spade A Spade." Yeah, that helps.

Right now for me it's down to MyDD, Crooks & Liars (only because they've toned down their own Hillary-bashing in light of the embarrassing attacks by Randi Rhodes and Keith Olbermann and so on), Informed Comment (so I can keep track of the Quagmire), and you. I guess once the dirt settles, I'll start looking again, but right now, who needs the grief?

Hang tight. Hopefully, this too shall pass--"this" meaning the pseudo-Progressive infestation. Assuming it's recognized, and then repelled...

Unknown said...

I've stopped reading the true believers on both sides. they are equally insane. Ok, I still read TNG occasionally because I like egalia, but she's insane. And I read this blog, but nbfh isn't insane.

But all the others are dead to me. Except Orcinus. He's not insane. Or maybe he is, but I don't see it, because I'm insane.

And i liked the poem, but didn't want to say so lest I be branded an elitist.

but seriously, coming into the campaign season, I thought we'd see a huge fracturing of the left of center blogging community, but I thought it'd be more right/left, with the more boderate-DLC friendly bloggers like Josh Marshal, Matt Eglasias (sp), and Kevim Drum on one side and everyone else on the other. It really hasn't worked out that way.

Anonymous said...

NBFH...you might want to read Ragebot today. I've got a post up that speaks to this issue.

No Blood for Hubris said...

Will do, Kvatch. Btw I do apologize for having lost my link to ragebot -- I shifted to blogspot beta last week, lost a bunch of links, just haven't gotten around to re-installing all of them. My bad.

No Blood for Hubris said...

Hm. Somebody has scrubbed "Go Away You Horrible Human Being." Shoulda saved a screen shot. I'll see if I can track it down.

No Blood for Hubris said...

Seems to be gone. But what he said was just what you'd expect from an anti-Hillary piece called "Go Away You Horrible Human Being," one Dem to another.