Re: [Marxism] Gender-Race-Interactions? Assessing the Obama/Clinton-constellation

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles is right on the money about this. A few thoughts:

This is the last half of Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal
column rejecting the Clinton-backer's claims that she's the
victim of sexism. Sure, sexism IS one reason why some people
don't like her, and why some wouldn't vote for her. But her
campaign is really more and more based on a racist appeal to
voters using the code-words "electability" and "experience"
when all she really means is that she's white, and that's
pretty much what she's appealing on the basis of. Yuck.


Walter Lippmann
============================================================

Hillary Clinton complained again this week that sexism has been a
major dynamic in her unsuccessful bid for political dominance. She is
quoted by the Washington Post's Lois Romano decrying the "sexist"
treatment she received during the campaign, and the "incredible
vitriol that has been engendered" by those who are "nothing but
misogynists." The New York Times reported she told sympathetic
bloggers in a conference call that she is saddened by the
"mean-spiritedness and terrible insults" that have been thrown "at
you, for supporting me, and at women in general."

Where to begin? One wants to be sympathetic to Mrs. Clinton at this
point, if for no other reason than to show one's range. But her last
weeks have been, and her next weeks will likely be, one long exercise
in summoning further denunciations. It is something new in politics,
the How Else Can I Offend You Tour. And I suppose it is aimed not at
voters -- you don't persuade anyone by complaining in this way, you
only reinforce what your supporters already think -- but at history,
at the way history will tell the story of the reasons for her loss.

So, to address the charge that sexism did her in:

It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone
else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.

It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be
understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood
of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support
Mrs. Clinton.

It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward
they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in
the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman
a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize,
in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have
given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the
sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her
share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the
Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda
Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard
about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and
given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking
responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You
want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get
bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to
hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for
the girls."

And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is,
ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would
be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and
foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.

* * *

It is probably truer that being a woman helped Mrs. Clinton. She was
the front-runner anyway and had all the money, power, Beltway
backers. But the fact that she was a woman helped give her supporters
the special oomph to be gotten from making history. They were by
definition involved in something historic. And they were on the right
side, connected to the one making the breakthrough, shattering the
glass. They were going to be part of breaking it into a million
little pieces that could rain down softly during the balloon drop at
the historic convention, each of them catching the glow of the
lights. Some network reporter was going to say, "They look like
pieces of the glass ceiling that has finally been shattered."

I know: Barf. But also: Fine. Politics should be fun.


=========================================
     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un ParaÃso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================

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