Let's be real. This year's Democratic presidential race is not about issues. Registered Dems agree they have two candidates running who appear to be decent, law abiding citizens. They both seem pretty suited for the job. But one candidate is a woman and the other a man. Let's ignore for this article the part about the male candidate also being black. The gender issue alone is so layered with complexities and misogynist subtext, that to add Obama's skin color as well to the mix would just be overkill. (Which speaks more to the point I was trying to make in my previous article, If I Wrote It, You Never Would Have Believed It)
Yes America. For the first time you have a female raising her hand in Social Studies class but not to ask to go to the little girl's room. For the very first time she is asking to go to the White House as President and not as First Lady.
The right wing airwaves fill up on bird seed and water so they can pump out coo coo bird messages telling their audience to be afraid of the lady candidate, be very afraid. How can a female run a country? Her weight, clothes, cleavage, hair and make up have all become the butt of jokes made by humorless, pasty, rich white men. Rush Limbaugh in fact seriously asked his listeners to think long and hard if they could stomach watching a female president age before their very eyes! Who writes his stuff? And how does he get to maintain a gene pool of breathing people to listen to him everyday?
Talk about shock and awe!
As a member of this culture and historic time and place, I am in shock this line of non sequitur reasoning is still being bantered about - it's 2008 people! Not 1908. We've gone to the moon and back already. When is this country going to grow up and stop listening to jabbermouths that only want to distract you from using your own critical thinking cap in order to form an opinion that may differ from what's constantly spewed out of talk show hosts who couldn't handle a real job in any other industry, nevermind enlist in the military.
And I stand in awe of third world countries who have primitive domestic lifestyles and are not sophisticated in the ways of the Prada, Gucci or Louis Vuitton world, yet they're not burdened with a cultural bias or any mind numbing limitations on deciding whether or not to vote for a female to run their country on the sole basis of her governing skills and not how fat her ankles are.
3 comments:
I took a long time deciding who to vote for, and i chose Hillary based on the strength of her policies and the strength of her character. She is a true champion of the poor and sick. She is a true patriot, and she is dedicated to working tirelessly for the every American! Now, unfortunately, I am saddened by the growing idea that experience isn't a necessary quality in our leaders... One young woman college student recently told me that she voted for Obama because "He's cute!"...Once again, an underqualified man is trying to push aside a smart, capable woman. Is this the state of America in 2008? If so, than what our preceeding generations fought for, is lost.
I have one genuine problem with Obama. during the runup to the war in Iraq I had friends on both sides of the issue. When they asked my opinion I told them "I dont have access to the intelligence data supplied to congress by the CIA and british MI-6 and neither do you, so you cannot make a sound reasoned decision either way." Now unless the CIA is in the habit of breifing the Illinois state legislature on matters of national security then neither could Obama. What he could do is exactly what he did do, he chose to play partisan politics and simply took the stance opposite what the republicans were saying. This is not wisdom, this is the same old partisan politics. Now that it has turned out his way he is strutting around boasting about his "judgement", however I attach no more judgement to what he did than I would attach to someone calling heads on a coin toss and then walking around bragging about how wise he was for calling heads. Hillary made a reasoned judgement with the intelligence she was given at the time. Unless we expect our senators to don a spy coat and undertake their own covert missions they will have to rely on our national intelligence institutions to make these decisions. My vote goes to Hillary.
These are all great posts and I agree with all of them.
The media bias during this campaign has sunken to an all time low. The media wants obama to win because he is just new and differnt than Hilary who they have already covered. The assholes like Chris Matthews and Tim Russert are losing credibility by the second. I use to think that Fox News was such a joke now CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC also falls into that category. .The sexism that is going on is another very disturbing issue that the media is pushing. For instance on Bill Mare (who supports Obama) he called Hilary a bitch but god forbid his white ass call Obama the N word. McCain supporter yells out lets beat that Bitch and the media hardly says a thing. Now if someone shouted Nigger...holy shit it would be all over the news in a heartbeat.
Recently the media has been pretty pathetic covering the war especially in the beginning, not asking follow up questions, letting the Bush administration off the hook etc..Well now the media has sunk themselves and a lot of people are saying it will be very hard to get their credibility back.
I guess there is still a tremendous amount of sexism in this country.
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