There's been alot of debate about comments aimed at Hillary sprinkling the political blogs, and whether some of them are routed in sexism. In truth, I think some are, some arn't. It's true, the Clinton's have always been somewhat polarizing. I think one reason for that, is the right wing's contempt for one of few extremely successful Democrat's in the last several decades. But, with Hillary, there is more to it than that. Remember, Pat Buchanon once called her a "radical feminist". Still, as we've seen here in some instances, the sexism is not necessarily only coming from Right or Left, it's just coming.
So, some criticism is valid, some is sexist in nature, and it's extremly disappointing that the press isn't talking about it at all. I was stunned when a McCain supporter called Hillary Clinton a "bitch", and McCain actually used it as a fundraising tool. The media shrugged it off. Then, last week, Chris Rock, upon introducing Obama, jokingly warned african american's not to support "that white lady", which oddly has only been reported as a story about race, not gender. There's a gender issue here, in both cases, that is not being addressed.
But beyond the inappropriate comments and jokes, widely ignored by the media, there is a more sinister, extremly overt campaign of sexism being waged against Hillary Clinton. It's out there it the unrestrained world of the internet for anyone to see. Jonathon Tilove of Newhouse News tells the story:
In the coming months, America will decide whether to elect its first female president. And amid a techno-media landscape where the wall between private vitriol and public debate has been reduced to rubble, Sen. Hillary Clinton is facing an onslaught of open misogynistic expression.Step lightly through that thickly settled province of the Web you could call anti-Hillaryland and you are soon knee-deep in "bitch," "slut," "skank," "whore" and, ultimately, what may be the most toxic four-letter word in the English language.
We have never been here before.
No woman has run quite the same gantlet. And of course, no man.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, set out to research racist attacks she thought may be out there against Senator Obama, but what she found was that sexist attacks against Hillary Clinton were much more pervasive.
Like me, Jamieson was surprised there was no real public discussion of the McCain "bitch" event, and no soul searching as to what it might mean. Fellow academic, Debbie Walsh, weighs in on the McCain event:
"Can you imagine if that woman had said, 'How do we beat the "n-word"?'" asked Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics. For McCain, said Walsh, or at least for those who think the nation might have benefited by examining why that woman felt so free to say what she did so publicly, "It was a terrible missed opportunity."
Some academics looking at this phenomenom believe it would not be happening to a Republican woman, partly because Hillary can be viewed as a feminist icon(recall Pat Buchanan). Sociologist C.J. Pascoe, a researcher with the Digital Youth Project at Berkeley's Institute for the Study of Social Change claims, "This would not be happening if it were Elizabeth Dole," Pascoe said. But, she said, "Hillary Clinton offers young men on social networking sites a ripe target for their aggression."
Here are just a few examples of what is out there:
One is "Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich," with more than 23,000 members and 2,200 "wall posts" -- Internet graffiti in which discussants have fantasized about Clinton being raped by a donkey.
Another Facebook group, more temperate in tone and with about 13,000 members, is "Life's a bitch, why vote for one? Anti-Hillary '08." Like several other anti-Clinton sites, this one promotes a T-shirt: "Hillary for President. She Puts the C--- in Country."
The proprietors of the Facebook group "Hillary Clinton Shouldn't Run for President, She Should Just Run the Dishes," with 2,159 members, offer a pre-emptive disclaimer to offended visitors:"Do not message just to say how sexist we are and how the Lord will strike us down for hating women. That is just ignorant. It's been really hard to respond to all of the e-mails without saying the C-word, don't make us start now."
So what about the guys(mostly young men) behind these sites? They think this is just humor.
People need to see the humor in politics, he said. He loves Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart and "The Colbert Report," and is among the more than 1.4 million members of the Facebook group "1,000,000 strong for Stephen T. Colbert," even though he knows Stewart and Colbert are mocking his conservative politics.Moreover, Jussaume said, "I'm not against women in politics. I hope in my lifetime I can live to see a female president."
Then there is the more mainstream sexism, from conservative pundits to comedy central.
On his radio show, which reaches 14.5 million people, Rush Limbaugh talks about Clinton's "testicle lock box." On his MSNBC show, Tucker Carlson says, "There's just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary," and a guest, Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, says that if Clinton is going to appeal to women for support on the basis of her gender, "at least call her a vaginal-American."Comedy Central is a source of both entertainment and political news for its audience, which is heavily young and male. Among its most popular offerings is the outrageous animated show "South Park," which in March had an episode in which terrorists (Russian mercenaries hired by Queen Elizabeth II, bent on the reconquest of America) place a bomb in Hillary Clinton's vagina. (The episode provoked much less outrage than another mocking Tom Cruise and his religion, Scientology.)
While some of the examples I provide are overt, there is much that is less clear.
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who expressed reluctance to defend Clinton because she doesn't want to be mistaken for a supporter, said:
"There's a deep string of sexism that informs a lot of the criticism ... and sometimes it's hard to disentangle."... But she expects there may be some women, otherwise cool to Clinton, who will rally around the senator as the misogyny burns brighter. Jamieson concurred. "This has the potential to push a lot of moderate Republican women toward her," she said.
So this is out there, and it not really being discussed. I'm not sure if that's helpful or harmful to Hillary Clinton. I just know it disgusts me.
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