17 posts tagged “politics”

With all the jeering, nasty factions, and millions being expended, sometimes I fear that this election is just a phony display of spatial images. Where's the horse-blood in a bucket? This is why the U.S. loses credibility. Sigh.

May 13, 2008

Clinton Campaign Brought Sexism Out of Hiding

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON -- As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and they are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which the liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big f---in' whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White B---- Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, be gone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mockup of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons why Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

mariecocco@washpost.com

Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/clinton_campaign_brought_sexis.html at May 14, 2008 - 07:05:18 AM PDT

Last year, I came home from Whole Foods after having purchased organic granny smith apples at $1.49 a pound, to which my mom responded with "that's kind of expensive." Today, conventional apples cost $1.69 at the local grocery stores.

Maybe it's prevalent and I'm only realizing it now, but I feel as if this week was emblematic of the current food crisis. JJ and I stopped by the Briarwood Family Residence to donate some bags of clothing for the families and the recreation specialist told us about how they are really in need of food. Yesterday, when I spontaneously decided to cut my Child & Adolescent Psychopathology class to go to AA and JJ's Sociology of Poverty with my old professor, a guest speaker from St. John's Bread & Life Soup Kitchen took over the class. Food shortage, New York City Council, donations, volunteers were among the gamut of words being used.

A few friends are having difficulties finding stable jobs post-college and "it's the economy" is no longer a deflection of personal responsibility. It's the economy. And as the value of the American dollar drops because the Federal Reserve is printing more money to pay for the War in Iraq, I receive an e-mail from a friend telling me that by the time I graduate with my MA, we'll all be facing another Depression. My heart and hands hurt when a small middle aged woman approached me, with my arms full of produce, asking me for fifty cents.

I have my own issues regarding emergency food charities and private charities in general; I'm not pro-privatization here, but you'll probably find AA and me volunteering at the soup kitchen this summer.

do you know what the root of most problems in america is today? ice cream.

from a very early age we've been inculcated with the protestant ethic and the sins of instant gratification through this devilish dairy delight. observe:

when DC and i were kids living in our first apartment, our mother would tell us that if we cleaned the living room within a given amount of time, we'd each be rewarded with ice cream. i think the amount of time spent cleaning was inversely related to the amount of ice cream we'd receive or something. regardless, in our cunning wiles, what we did was take all the crap on the floor of the living room and stock them onto the couches. clean living room. we cheated, but it was all fair within the semantics of the conditions.

in our society, there's such a 'forbidding fruit' quality to so many things such that going 'good' for a few days - eating well, no smoking, no mishandling of hearts - feels constricting because that cake in the fridge has a heartbeat that's only beating harder and faster every time you reach over to grab an orange. and on the other side of the chocolate coin, companies have commodified this constriction with tag phrases so prevalent: low-fat, low-carb, gluten free, et al.

is it me or are we just living an entire existence of placing bandaids on otherwise preventable wounds? people get out of college, and the first thing they do is put a down payment on an exorbitant commodity as a testament to 'making it,' only to spend a disproportionate amount of time paying off the debt, working off the pounds. and damage is a hot commodity: bypass surgeries, lawyers, dr. phil shows, promises from politicians, health insurance companies. we're a society very much concentrated on sick care as opposed to health care.

why is doing well equated with asceticism? i singled out ice cream, because there's a specific element that makes it not just an instant gratification, but a quickly transitory one at that. eat your mint chocolate chip scoops quickly before you're left with green soup. put that down payment on the new car you can't afford, you only live once. a life of paying off some kind of debt. with interest.

i did a research paper for my graduate global poverty class. China is big and booming and may very well be the next superpower, oh hell, it's palpably probable. but upon further investigation, it's moving so fast that it's this 24/7 hour engine of material production, leaving China as one of the most heavily polluted regions on the planet - i know, i've read the incredibly detailed UN reports.

opportunity is fleeting, therefore it must be manufactured into something that generates profit. what is even more predictable is that in a few years, while the hare has finished the race, beating out the US, the UK, and others, it will be because of steroids that will leave an entire population burnt out, with the generations to come cleaning up the millions of tons of ammonia, nitrogen, volatile hydroxybenzene and permanganate from industrial TVEs. so is it that necessary to finish the ice cream for fear of it being taken away, subjected to frostbite, melting?

but maybe i'm just overreacting to all this news. i'm sorry, i can't hear you while my head is halfway in the edy's tub of frozen yogurt.

despite my iffiness over corporate monopolies of certain things (ie. starbucks), i love whole foods. i go at least once a week because it's a vegetarian's playground, and if someone gave me some sort of carte blanche to whole foods, i would forever be inappropriately grateful.

if you opened one of the cupboards in my kitchen, you'd find a large cloud of plastic grocery bags. while the world is preoccupied with Staten Island Chuck and Punxatawney Phil, i'm somewhat pleased with this "going green" crusade worldwide. i've been using one of those meshy grocery bags from whole foods instead of plastic bags whenever i go to key food, and the ladies at the register actually thank me for it. when i overheard another customer at whole foods ask for extra bags, the guy said "you really wanna destroy the planet some more?"

i was moreso pleased to learn that there is a 33 cent tax per plastic bag enforced in ireland. this particular effort may actually be effective because plastic bags aren't biodegradable; they take up to a thousand years and contain a litany of other dangers as well. while bloomberg's proposed congestion pricing in manhattan seems altruistic, do we really want to pay more money to go into another borough? it'd just harness all the carbon monoxide into another borough.

it's easy to say that the world is ending soon anyway, and i'll refrain from listing a laundry list of ways in which we've screwed ourselves into the ground, but while we're here, we might as well give it a shot, right?

do you know who you're voting for on tuesday? i'm still torn, i really am.

I'm happy; really, I look it, don't I?

*let's try to ignore the elephant - britney spears - in the room by discussing something important.

i've started watching TV after a long hiatus. and while i was flipping through the channels to have some white noise around the apartment while walking around after a shower, i sat down with my eyes glued to Bravo's Make Me A Supermodel with Nikki Taylor and Tyson Beckford. nothing special, nothing new, just offering a modeling contract to the hottest commodity. Beckford said, upon first impression of the 28 contestants, that he was scanning them for who was "catalogue" and who was "runway." i think he takes himself way too seriously. and as they stood elbow to elbow, their bodies were examined and scrutinized in every way - men and women. one girl, whose body i actually liked, was criticized because her "thighs needed toning." another guy needed to tone his lower abs, so as to pronounce that "V" near his pelvis.

i've been told lately that i have a great body - skinny even - in both private and platonic scenarios, especially after this summer. but as a girl who has her moments of experiencing body dysmorphic disorder, it's shows like these that make me want to wear large sweaters to work. that i can feel pretty okay about myself until i eat that exorbitant amount of ice cream and i'll just feel inadequate afterwards. do we have to completely change ourselves, to commodify our bodies, in order to lessen the pressure?

back in the end of november, i used my concerns about body image and showed Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women from my honor society to a roomful of students and my department chair. it wasn't just that advertising is the subliminal consumption of unattainable standards for women's bodies, but it's that it's force-fed to us, oftentimes hundreds of times a day. it's concerns like this that make me glad that i'm president of my honor society, despite how much i bitch about it and the red tape. i'm glad because i can and have actually used my blog entries, like this one to serve as conversation pieces in programs to (try to) promote some semblance of consciousness.

one thing i addressed was the advent of newer campaigns to counter the rail-thin image of women, namely the Dove campaign. so i was especially happy that a newer show exists to promote self-esteem within women by working with what they have: How to Look Good Naked. no extreme cosmetic surgeries - do you remember Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and I Want A Famous Face??? it's this perception of our bodies that's not just internal vilification, but an entity of its own that we feed and fuel, that leaves us resigned and perpetually negative.

is this something we should be vying for? a 100,000 dollar contract, which will be petered away by taxes, leaving winners disillusioned and left wondering, 'that's all?' i've read over and over again how Bravo TV has done little to propel contestant winners' successes in shows like Project Runway and Top Chef. it's all about the ratings. i've seen PR's first winner Jay McCarroll wandering the streets of lower manhattan twice and read in NY Mag that he's homeless - well, not homeless, but living in a bathroomless studio apartment. 

back to How to Look Good Naked. with wearing the right clothing, the right underwear, and exposing the depths of their pseudo-dysmorphic perceptions, women can start to embrace themselves and either accept themselves or take better care of themselves thereon.

so while progress is slowly but surely evident, it is also a pendulum that swings back and forth. hopefully it's more of the former than the latter. watch the clip! it's pretty fabulous.

***EDIT: i just flipped to VH1 only to watch ANTM and it's an episode where they pose as crime scene victims: electrocuted, organs stolen, shot in the head, decapitated, strangled, pushed off the roof, drowned poisoned, pushed down the stairs, and stabbed. one photographer actually berated one of the contestants "you shouldn't look like you're napping, you're supposed to look dead" i'm not even going to get into that, comments? Tyra - you should know better!!!

...by way of distraction because i'm cooped up with the cold and taking a break from JD Salinger...

i'm sure i've mentioned before how much i love Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. but after having the time to watch some parts on Youtube, especially after summer and finals had transpired, it really got me thinking - okay, i know i think too much; it got me thinking even more.

on a train through Europe, Celine and Jesse, total strangers at 23, meet after Celine moves her seat to get away from an annoying German couple. they speak and have the witty repartee, and he's set to get off at the next stop in Vienna while she stays on to Paris. however, he turns around and coerces her into getting the train off with him:

"Jump ahead 10, 20 years and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have the same energy that it used to have. You start to think of all those guys you met in your life, and what might have happened if you picked up with one of them..."

the entire movie is this great night spent together by two perfect strangers. with no money for a hotel, they walk through Vienna, listen to music together, drink a hustled bottle of wine in the grass in the park. they fall in love - or, met with our skepticism - so they think. the trick is that all the time they have together is until sunrise, when they have to return to their lives. low budget, little editing, no real cinematography. they hug and kiss before she boards the train back, and agree to not exchange phone numbers because it was nonsensical - so they thought. and they agree to meet six months later in Vienna.

nine years later they meet again in Before Sunset, because of circumstances that prevented their six-week reunion. they have one afternoon to catch up on their lives. he's married and a published author, and she's in a loving relationship and is an activist living in Paris. great - idyllic, even. right? no, he is in a loveless marriage that is being kept together by his kid, and she is "dying inside" because she can't commit. it's really a lot more complex - watch the clip, they're in My Videos. by the end of the afternoon, we know nothing. we the audience, that is.

i love these movies because they are so minimalist yet spoke so many volumes about our society today. is this scenario feasible these days? if you read last week's issue of New York Magazine, one of the reasons why we should love New York is because "You can find love underground" - the subway. a page with couples who found each other and found love and marriage waiting for the L train or what have you. and they were really heartwarming stories, but these happened in the 80s and 90s. now you can't even give away real contact information on the train.

technology has truncated the notion of 'six degrees of separation.' and while many know and attest to my ability to track and accumulate info on virtually anyone - prospective dates, friends, employers, dirty laundry - it's not a stellar reflection of how we are. not only do we advertise and proselytize ourselves with facebook, myspace, blogs, countless dating profiles, but we leave very little to the imagination. spontaneity is severely limited. it's all negative, self-preservation; it's about security, gauging the likelihood that your date isn't going to slip a roofie into your drink, or have an irate ex call you. it's about background information, priors, suspicious friends, ex-girlfriends.

nine years later, Celine and Jesse are unhappy and in loveless relationships. he thought about her on his wedding day and she feels that all the romance she was and is ever capable resided in that one night they shared in Vienna. she claims that maybe they would've ended up hating each other if they'd met in Vienna again all those years ago. well i think maybe they wouldn't have hated each other, but given how bogged down our lives are by work, MA's, JDs, HMOs, 401Ks, and what have you, that kind of chemistry straddles the boundaries of idealism versus reason. ideally that chemistry, that wit, that magic between two people can be reproduced, developed into that fairytale relationships, wishes on eyelashes. but reason? cost of living, and more abbreviated "real life" factors that really leave us to question, again, and again, is timing everything?

and another thing i have to address, in light of so much static in my head via conversations and just reading about these things. we've become so spoiled by access, by options, that we can't make a decision. that making a decision about commitment, about slowing down for half a second, is misconstrued as settling or being shackled. guys (and girls, too) seemingly have been in so many "relationships" that they don't appreciate monogamy anymore. i know too many guys who have many ex-girlfriends. is this generation Ex? what took our parents months, and maybe those just a decade or two older, to ascertain - i want to be with this person; that feeling of certainty isn't a commodified representation of love, it's the real thing, it's not flaky - seems unattainable these days, irrational, even.

it's irrational because there's that ever-so-persistent thought, that seed of doubt, that there's more out there. that fear that two people will just get bored and find themselves unhappy, kicking themselves because there are so many options out there. and they feed off of this unhappiness, feed it so much that we have an embarrassing divorce rate. i remember touting the phrase that marriage is a bastardized institution. it's not that i don't ever want to get married, it's just that i wouldn't, given how we are these days. we have silver-haired bachelors and couples getting married for the first time at older ages. and this collective mentality that we have is worse for women, as fertility doesn't improve as time passes.

DM told me about a friend whose high school boyfriend at 16 dumped her and told her "i don't want to be with the same girl from 16 to 80." she's about to get engaged with her live-in boyfriend who'd just graduated med school. and the ex? he still drunk-dials her on occasion, six years later.

there aren't just so many factors that work against committed relationships these days. it would appear that we have more reasons to leave one than to enter one. 

Just a hop, skip, and a week.

nicole has a tag on her blog entitled "boys are confusing." El Goober has a tag on his blog entitled "women play games with my mind." meredith grey gets mcdreamy after he finally leaves addison, but she ends up realizing she doesn't want him. a friend's boyfriend once drove off away from her, ditching her in the parking lot, they're still madly in love with each other. another friend said to me, "kendra, here's a piece of advice: make sure you have a back up before you break up." guys complain and notice when girls don't pay, yet vehemently refuse when they actually offer.

i've been proverbially holding so many hands this past week, either listening, literally holding hands, going out for a drink, talking ad nauseam online or on the phone, and for what?

i'm really starting to understand that whole adage of how men are from mars and women are from venus. and oftentimes, it's not of our own volition. we're designed that way. we're fed this ideology. yet sometimes it's interchangeable, where the girl is the "guy" in that she's not into him whereas he's head over heels. he's just not that into you - no, actually, she's just not that into you. (s)he's busy, the "three day" rule, the don't kiss on the first date rule, care to add more to the list?

a wise friend of mine once said:

oh, i don't date guys under the age of thirty. guys in their twenties either don't know what they want or are just looking for sex.

and i have to add, i'm kind of witnessing dents in homosexual relationships too. this was a messy post, but anyone care to pitch in their two cents?

...but now there might be!

Miscarriage card

You know how you can peruse through the Hallmark card aisle because it's compartmentalized to perfection? Have a grandfather who's turning seventy? There's a card for that. Have a neighbor who's just given birth? Have an uncle who is graduating college? There's probably a card for that. Have a co-worker whose plant died because you "mistook" orange juice for water when she was on vacation and you want to apologize for that? Well, there could be a card for that.

Do you starve yourself because you're a victim of prescribed dress sizes? Are you suffering from abnormal neurotransmitter activity? I find it somewhat appalling that eating disorder, miscarriage and sterility are some are some of the new labels that you'll find under the cards in your local store. It turns out that Hallmark released a line of cards called Journeys. Cancer diagnosis, hair loss (!), waiting for test results, et al.

As if holidays and greeting cards are bad enough for personal occasions, now there are cards that showcase generalized statements to make an awkward moment into a hopeless situation.

AA and I joked about the travesty of this and she alluded to a whole bunch of possible greetings for:

Sterility:

at least it's not a barren wasteland!

at least you don't have to worry about becoming pregnant!