So I watched MTV's presidential candidate thingie last night, and listened carefully to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Thus I determined that Hillary = a sharp Wonkette.
Barack Obama was Prince Charming (not that there's anything wrong with that) -- well-spoken, but he was not the equal of Wonkette. Style not substance. And not progressive.
Hillary Clinton
was a sharp Wonkette, not only well-spoken, but with all facts at her fingertips, and her plans set out in impressive uber-wonk detail.
I'm looking for someone who knows what he or she is talking about, someone who has actually done his or her homework, having been treated to 7 years of torture via a left-behind class-clown braindead frat-boy. A sharp Wonkette will bring back competence.
Hillary "Sharp Wonkette" Clinton has been
pre-Swiftboated. Endlessly. No surprises to be feared. In terms of electability, this is a supreme strength.
There is nothing vile and nasty that can be said about her that hasn't already been said about her, and is still being said about her, from both the vile right and the blood-on-their-hands Faux-Left Manichean Naderite Posse.
Thirdly, she is being supported by many people I respect: Wesley Clark, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Barney Frank, Sidney Blumenthal, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, and a person I do not: Ann Coulter. (No, of course Ann Coulter is lying. But who cares.)
Senator Clinton's election as President will make Karl "Miss Piggy" Rove and Rush "Chemical Assist" Limbaugh wish they were dead, I strongly feel. This is a side issue, but it would be nice. Some say who cares about Rove, and Reagan, and the great rightwing conspiracy, but I say those people have not been paying attention to the past 30 years.
While I appreciate the fact that sharp Wonkette Senator Clinton is female, that is not my reason for voting for her. I would certainly not vote for Condi Rice nor Mrs. Dole, never ever ever, perish the thought. The ongoing shameless sexist sliming of Senator Clinton, however, was enough to start steering me more strongly in her direction. I stopped hoping that Gore would appear like a deus ex-machina. I loved Dean, Wesley Clark.
I was strongly steered away from Obama by the recent high-school glamour popularity contest hype communicated to me by our beloved and insightful Media Whore Media. And I don't like his conservativism at all.
Obama took another hit via several Manichean Faux-left Naderite Posse cliques such as Progressive Democrats of America and MoveOn.Org, who gleefully overlooked the actual differences between these two fine candidates in favor of jumping directly on the age-ist Youth and Newness Bandwagon: Young! New! Young! New! Young! For no apparent reason other than a desire to bandwagon jump, and to punish the uppity Clinton for not toeing their party line.
PDA in particular pointed out that,
yes, yes, yes, annoyingly enough, Clinton's actual policies ARE more progressive than Obama's, but -- they just don't give a shit about that. Like that HER health care plan is universal, and HIS plan, tepid and flabby, only covers kids, for God's sake. Hunh?
Get this:
No matter who we've supported so far for president, many PDAers have seen firsthand the enthusiastic, youthful, multiracial movement that has embraced Barack Obama.
The Senator hasn't been totally progressive on the issues, but our engagement with the inspiring Obama movement--which includes tens of thousands of open-minded newcomers to activism--leaves us hopeful.
Hope? Wow. My SUV runs
great on hope!
"The Senator hasn't been totally progressive on the issues" they say, but who really gives a shit about that?
Let's all drool about new! shiny! youth! change! hype! new! youth! glam! shiny! new! new! spin as if Obama were a Chevy or was running for Prom King.
Whiny mostly white librul boys (and some gurrls) perseverate on a vote the white gurrl cast five years ago when her opponent wasn't even
in the Senate to cast any vote at all. (And since he's been there, he sure hasn't stuck his neck out. like he promised he would. That's a track record in itself.)
Manichaeans are like that. Black/white, Kinda Bushist, really. That's why their being pissed at Clinton for talking to Wal-Mart or Big Pharma sounds like a Faux-Left snot-nosed version of Bubble Boy refusing to talk to Iran or Syria. Yo, is that smart? NOT.
Yeah, go on Faux-Progressive toyboys and toygirls, keep on bitching about that stale vote of yesteryear -- a single vote that could
not have prevented Bush's war -- a vote that looms SO large when we've started a war based on lies, killed 600K+ people, killed habeas corpus, shredded the constitution and the rule of law; abandoned government competence, destroyed the social safety net, destroyed the very basis of our democracy.
America is bankrupt, morally and fiscally. It's polluted and decaying, as Preznit Toad-Exploder jabs his spurs in our bloodied sides even deeper, and rides us all straight down into flaming hell.
(Where they'll find Faux-Left Manichaean Kingpin Ralph Nader roasting, toasting as he enjoys his accrued karma for helping Bubble Boy get selected in the first place . . . .)
More:
The divine Robin Morgan on Hillary Clinton, just a fantastic piece
here. Goodbye to All That (#2):Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!)
Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She’s running to be president of the United States. . . .
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her.
Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.”
Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”
I’d rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart men — of all ethnicities and any age — who get that it’s in their self-interest, too. She’s better qualified. (D’uh.) She’s a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on.
(Also, yes, dammit, let’s hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I’d rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how—and he’ll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he’s an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who’ve worked with the Kennedys’ own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it’s only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn’t it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from torpor it’s useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country’s history: the boomer generation—the majority of which is female?
Old women are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back!
I read her piece and felt ashamed of myself, for my own sexist, tepid support of Senator Clinton's candidacy. And for my silent acceptance of things I know better than to accept as status quo. For my own cowardice and hesitance. (is that a word?)
Pandagon gets the whole thing right from the start,
here. Please enjoy the commenter toward the end of the thread who, though apparently a liberal, actually rashes Hillary for the sin of not hiding her intelligence. Honest to God. I kid you not.
Stanley Fish at the New York Times on the anti-Hillaryists,
here.
