Just when you thought the slime couldn’t get any deeper. The bogus charges any more cynically dishonest and puerile. Along comes a meme to prove you wrong.
The latest insult to our collective intelligence runs as follows:
“The Sanders campaign is trying to paint Hillary Clinton as a whore.”
Having failed in their first attempt to present the ill considered characterization “Corporate Democratic Whores” by Paul Song as a direct insult aimed at Sec. Hillary Clinton, partisan hacks are attempting to revive their attack by a descent into absurdity.
Now the claim is a that the protesters at the recent high roller Clinton fund raiser hosted by George Clooney were actually engage in a “gendered” assault on HRC.
Yes, that’s right.The men and women who protested against the corrupting influence of money on our political process, the ones that Clooney himself said were right to do so, were actually engaged in misogyny.
How you might wonder? Well it seems they were chanting “Hey,hey, ho, ho, Hillary Clinton has got to go!” .
Now you may be confused by the fact that this all purpose chant has been around for decades. You might recall it being used as follows:”Hey,hey,ho,ho, Tricky Dick has got to go!” or “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ. has got to go!” or even “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Racist Cops have got to go!” and think that there’s nothing gendered, sexist or misogynist about it.
Evidently you need to don your gender sensitive spectacles, because if you do you’ll immediately see that if you cut out everything except the central “hey”and “ho” you get “hey ho”. Isn’t it obvious now? Clearly they were calling HRC a “ho”!
Maybe you’re still not convinced. That’s okay, there’s more.
Remember, the protesters also threw dollar bills at HRC’s Limo. That’s just like throwing dollar bills at a stripper! They were comparing HRC to a stripper! Since everyone knows that being a stripper is as good as being a whore, that means they were calling HRC a whore! See? It all fits together!
Except, of course, it doesn’t.
I have the privilege of being old enough that one of the first public protests I ever attended was in support of women’s Reproductive Rights. Of course in those days we just said Abortion Rights because it was pre Roe v Wade and no one saw any point in mincing words. Consequently, I have very clear memories of strong, courageous and determined women chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Sexism has got to go!”. I’m neither so foolish or so credulous as to believe they were engaged in misogyny by doing so.
As for throwing dollar bills at limos being the equivalent of throwing dollar bills at a stripper, or equating being a stripper with being a whore, the first is ridiculous on it’s face and the second is itself a form of misogyny.
Throwing money in order to dramatize it’s corrupting effect goes back at least to the 1960’s, when Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman threw money onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange inciting the brokers to scramble to grab the bills.
Many women, students, single Mothers or the otherwise impoverished, have had to resort to stripping in order to survive. They do not deserve to be equated to whores or otherwise slut shamed for doing so. Certainly not because some rabid partisans find it politically expedient.
This particular meme is repellent on so many levels that it would be difficult to enumerate them all. It offends against honesty, reason and simple human decency.
More, it trivializes the very real oppression and suffering that actual misogyny inflicts on all women. All to score political points and place a false halo of martyrdom around a candidate who is one the most powerful politicians in the Democratic Party.
It seems for some there is nothing, not honesty, reason, decency or the even the struggle against actual misogyny that cannot be sacrificed on the altar of partisan interest.
Unsurprisingly, David Brock’s Blue Nation is pushing this tripe.