I’m sure you all remember that old [edit - ok ok I know - it was Bowie!] Aerosmith song (well maybe some of you are too young) that ends with wham bam thank you ma’am"! You don’t have to be a 40-something like me to know what that means. Now I don’t take what the New York Post has to say seriously (ok it’s nothing more than a supermarket rag really), but when they include a headline about yesterday’s Chesapeake Primary with a picture of Sen. Obama that says WHAM BAM Barack Romps in MD, DC & Virginia I just can’t imagine that they meant anything other than that he’s ...
Well you get the picture in all its disgusting slimy detail.
Guys we’re talking about a United States SENATOR here. We’re talking about someone’s mother - someone’s wife - someone’s daughter for crying out loud! We’re talking about a woman who’s dedicated her life to making this world a better place for us – especially for the children of this world and this is how they choose to report election results????
And people claim that sexism isn't an issue in the coverage of this election.
Some of you may have caught a recent post of mine on a comment by David Shuster, in which he accused Hillary of pimping her daughter Chelsea simply because Chelsea (a grown woman of 27) is active in her mother’s campaign. It generated quite a response – sadly some chose to ignore or make excuses for this guy’s horrid behavior. Shuster issued an apology. MSNBC issued an apology and suspended Shuster. Shuster made another apology.
For crying out loud even Keith Olbermann apologized on Shuster’s behalf.
After all that hand-wringing – after all that apologizing what did MSNBC (in its infinite ignorance) do? They suspended Shuster... for 2 weeks!
Question...
Did anyone apologize to Chelsea?
Or to Hillary for that matter?
Just wondering – as far as I know no one’s called either of these women to say they’re sorry about what was said on MSNBC by one of their talking heads, but I’m guessing they’re getting pretty used to this bullshit by now.
I doubt Hillary’s waiting by the phone for an apology from the New York Post – she’s got more important things to do.
This diary of mine also sparked some discussion – over 1000 comments worth of it as a matter of fact – about an essay by Robin Morgan called Goodbye to All That (#2). She pointed to a lot of what’s been going on in this campaign around the whole issue of sexism and double standards – sadly, little has changed since she first wrote this sort of essay back in 1970.
So we’ve chatted quite a bit about the sexist tone of this campaign. We talked about John McCain’s eager reply in response to a (female) supporter’s question of "how do we beat the bitch?" We’ve also chatted about the nutcracker complete with spikes between strong thighs in Hillary’s image. And then there’s Tweety’s string of hateful and sexist remarks about Hillary. David Brock (of Media Matters) took Tweety to task over his BS back in January and this set off a shit-storm the likes of which I haven’t seen in a long time. And all he had to do was list what Tweety had said about Hillary...
"I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for."
"She Devil"
"Nurse Ratched"
"Madame Defarge"
"Witchy"
"Anti-male"
"[U]ppity"
"She's going to tell us what to do."
"Her scolding manner in terms of her public speaking"
...
"Look at those eyes. Look at the cold eyes that she's giving him. Look at that cold look."
"[L]ike a strip-teaser saying she's flattered by the all the attention"
...
"Let me tell you how short Hillary's leash is."
...
On Sen. Clinton's laugh: "What do you make of the cackle?"
...
"[B]eing surrounded by women, does that make a case for commander in chief -- or does it make a case against it?"
"Is she hemmed in by the fact that she's a woman and can't admit a mistake, or else the Republicans will say, `Oh, that's a woman's prerogative to change her mind,' or `another fickle woman'? Is her gender a problem in her ability to change her mind?"
"[T]he reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around."
(Someone correct me if I’m wrong here but this is the 21st century – right?).
Pretty clear this jerk’s obsessed with Hillary but worse yet is the way MSNBC never even suspended Tweety. Suuuuuuuuuure he apologized – sort of. But that was the end of it. Life goes on and the sexism continues.
Now a little over a week ago, Erica Jong had an article published in the Washington Post called Hillary vs. the Patriarchy.
Well Jong just posted a follow up to that on Huffington Post today and it was a real page-turner (so to speak). She’s magically put into words so much of what I and a lot of other folks (not just women) have been thinking for a long while now. She talks about the response she’s gotten to her Washington Post article. That haters really got her attention - take a look...
What's their ammunition? Oh, it's simple. They call her Mrs. Clinton, not Ms. or Senator. They pull out those nutcrackers in the shape of her supposed thighs. They complain about her ankles -- too thick. They complain on Fox TV that "White women are the problem" -- (idiot boy Kristol, the brain-damaged scion of Irving who rose through nepotism like our unelected "president"). Then they say she has "baggage" -- which could mean wrinkles, or her husband, or her daughter Chelsea whom they say she is "pimping." Then they say she never divorced Bill -- as if it's anyone's business. Then they moon over Obama's rhetorical style. Then they make it appear that she's a drone or a worker bee and has no royal jelly. Or else she has royal jelly and is queen bee. And that's her problem.
I give up. If I have to watch another great American woman thrown in the dustbin of history to please the patriarchy, I'll move to Canada -- where they live four years longer than we because they have universal health care. Or Italy -- where Berlusconi played at being Mussolini but life is sweet anyway and people take vacations in August and at Chanukah (Christmas or Diwali or Kwaanza) and Passover (Easter).
Ok folks, stick your heads in the sand like Maureen Dowd who thinks we're not against women but just against Clinton "baggage." Or Barbara Walters who seems to have forgotten how viciously she was attacked when she got her first million dollar contract -- worth only half a million in Euros today.
Go read the whole thing – its quite a history lesson and she makes some excellent points about our recent losses in 2000 & 2004.
I’ve been writing about the sexist tone of this election and the MSM & press coverage of it for months and I’ll keep right on writing about it until folks wake up to the fact that most of us care more about health care, the economy and saving our environment than we do about whether someone’s uppity (and by the way can you imagine the shit-storm that would have erupted if Tweety had said that about Obama????).
Look all we’re asking for is an even playing field here. Maybe equal time on the evening news for our candidate. And it might be nice if they stopped calling her a bitch on national television because at the end of the day it comes down to one simple fact folks...
She’s a human being and she deserves better than this.
We all deserve better – and so do your wives, daughters, sisters and mothers.