I’m giving it two weeks at most before Chris Matthews goes on a hysterical rant about how if Hillary Clinton wins, she will get her menstrual fluids all close to the Oval Office desk and whatnot, which will cause all sorts of problems, including bear infestations. I wanted to write about his attempt to get it into the conventional wisdom that Clinton is playing the “gender card” and how it’s a thin cover story for his obvious and ill-concealed belief that a woman should not be allowed to hold high office, but Digby beat me to it. Still, I have a few things to add. This quote from Matthews, for instance, kicks off a bout of unvarnished sexism that will go down in the history books alongside rants about how women aren’t smart enough to work ballots.
MATTHEWS: Another thing Russert pointed out the other night. If you’re running on your record as first lady, let’s see the records, babe. Let’s see them. Lets see what you’re bragging about here and then to say, that’s not my decision, that’s not a first lady’s decision, that’s my husband’s decision, what?
You can’t keep playing this “I’m a little girl” thing, and “my husband makes all the decisions” if you’re running for president.
According to Matthews, Clinton shouldn’t be feminine to be taken seriously. And then there’s this:
Bob, didn’t you think she had a nice, mellifluous voice there? She was calm, she was charming, her hair looked just to be cosmetic, her hair looked great, she looked great. Can she soften her image from the more strident Hillary and do well without it?
So Clinton has to both be feminine and not, an impossibility that lends one to think that Matthews’ real point—and I think this is his real point—that a woman has no right to run and in his eyes, she can’t do anything right because her very womanhood makes her fundamentally wrong.
It’s been well-hashed-out how it makes no sense for Matthews to whine that Clinton draws attention to her gender when he’s practically suggesting that the election be thrown out and replaced with a circle jerk contest, with the winner being he who can shoot his load the farthest. He’s a living embodiment of Simone de Beauvoir’s theories—he can’t see that he’s a huge gender warrior, because he doesn’t think of masculinity as a “gender”. Gender is something those things have, those women, those Others. Masculinity isn’t a gender, but the human condition, and gender is just a lack that women have.
30 Responses to “Cards and circle jerks”
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Amanda wrote:
Nahhh! Mrs Clinton is sixty years old, and Mr Matthews is smart enough to figure out that she’s past menopause.
I’m not sure that Chris Matthews actually knows a thing about menopause.
Even if he does, I suspect he thinks that Hillary can start ovulating again at a moment’s notice, just so she can get eggs all over the nuclear button.
60 doesnt necessarily mean past menopause. My grandmother is in her late 70s and just finished menopause. Also, wasn’t there a 62-year-old woman who gave birth recently? I think fertility drugs were involved, but still.
Nothing has happened yet to make me cease wondering, when I have the spare cycles, as to how Tweety got and held on to his job.
Mrs Clinton is sixty years old, and Mr Matthews is smart enough to figure out that she’s past menopause.
Oh, I doubt he’s fully cognizant of what menopause is. If someone tried to explain it to him, he’d run screaming from the room for fear of girl cooties.
It’s been clear to me for a very long time that Chrissy boy has a huge problem with women in the public sphere. I will never forget the incredulous tone in his voice as he wondered how on earth Nancy Pelosi could be speaker of the house. He said her voice was too high pitched, too shrill, no one would be able to understand or hear her. FFS.
He said her voice was too high pitched, too shrill, no one would be able to understand or hear her. FFS.
I’m really amazed that none of his guests have ever unleashed a “What the hell, Chris? What the hell is the matter with you?”
First, there’s the rather shocking use of “babe”. Would Matthews use a similar diminutive to any male candidate? “Let’s see the records, stud?” not likely.Second, the farcical notion that access to the records is somehow rooted in a neutral desire to know what’s going on deserves to be thoroughly pissed on. The Attack Right and the corporate media will cherry pick anything that even sounds bad, ignore context, whip the extracts into hysterical overplay and endlessly run with it. Matthews isn’t annoyed because the Public Good is being denied by restriction of what the media demands; Matthews is pissed in the same way a mugger is pissed when he has an empty gun but the victim won’t hand over the bullets.
“It’s been clear to me for a very long time that Chrissy boy has a huge problem with women in the public sphere.”
He always reminds me of that incident with former baseball player Keith Hernandez going absolutely berserk on the air when he saw a woman in the dugout during a game he was broadcasting. To paraphrase:
“Hey, wait a minute! Is that a woman I see in the dugout!? What is going on here!? This is an outrage!!1!”
Even if he does, I suspect he thinks that Hillary can start ovulating again at a moment’s notice, just so she can get eggs all over the nuclear button.
Yes, I bet she has calculatingly controlled her ovulation in the manner designed to enhance her power.
The Hillary Derangement Syndrome displayed by so many on both right and left truly is a wonder to behold.
As for the Tweetster, he has sealed his legacy (as has Russert) from his homoerotic excitement re: the Bulge to his extraordinary agitation at the mere thought of Hillary in power - we are all so shellshocked right now by the staggering magnitude of the decrepitude of the national political media that we don’t see it more clearly. Last week gave a stronger glimpse than usual. For instance, in any halfway healthy media climate, Russert would have been shamed off the national stage after the revelations of how the VP’s office played (and continue to play) him like a violin.
why does anyone bother to answer smerconish guys like dana?
smerconishers get fluffy from ingenuously baiting women.
Before this week, I would have been skeptical that members of the “educated” classes would know such things. However, having had to explain to the young men in my gender class this past week how women use the pill as a means to control their periods (cycles, cramping, flows, etc.). I took it as fairly common knowledge that women did this. Apparently, lots of young men are completely unaware of this. At least I was able to discuss it (whew).
Funny how Tweety has never called on Shrub to “hand over the records, babe.” Apparently, when men (especially Republican men) keep secrets, it’s because it’s a State Matter. If women keep secrets, it’s because they’re up to something sinister (yet trivial).
Speaking of handing over records…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20731-2001Oct31
pussy tourmaline, while I
Whereas his own voice is so flawlessly normative, so non-highpitched, so non-shrill, that everyone can always understand him perfectly. He’s never less than comprehensible, not a’tall.
…oh, wait…
Circle jerks are a suburban myth.
damn you, epistemology! you had to spoil it for me.
This is equivalent to being white in the U.S. The privilege of being in the majority here is that race is something other people have. Of course, being a privilege, it is not something you _must_ exercise, and many, many people do well by rejecting it. In any event, it’s the same pheonomenon. Males can pretend that maleness is default and femaleness is special, whites can pretend that whiteness is default and everything else is special. Matthews never saw a privilege he didn’t like.
We should take pity on Matthews. He’s only a victim of the growing raging hate hard-on people have for the Clintons.
Poor Chris Matthews. Don’t you know if a woman becomes president his penis will FALL RIGHT OFF? He’s just looking out for his boys.
[/sarcasm]
I’m just going to amuse myself by watching Jon Stewart take him to town.
Hey that’s an interesting two second intro to Simone de Beauvoir. Can you recommend a starter book?
Digby nails it:
I don’t like Shillary. I respect her toughness, drive, focus and buckets of brains, but, fact is, she stands for a corporate conservative agenda on the one hand and a neglect of her duty to protect the US Constitution on the other — as in, the “if you let your enemy starve it to death you’re not really a murderer” mindset — that leave me cold.
That said, one question: Is it just me, or does the Hate ON! for Hilary remind anyone else of the near-hysterical loathing of Eleanor Roosevelt?
The debased punditocracy, epitomized by the cartoonish Tim Russert and his obsession with personalities but not policy issues, don’t want Hllary’s memos to Bill, they just want the pillowtalk.
Cheney’s discussions with big oil? BORING.
Last time I sounded off here at Pandagon about how I ranked the Dem candidates, I had Clinton down at the bottom. (I have always been prepared to vote for her next Novemeber, though, if she emerges as the Dem candidate as I expect she will). But sadly, except that Kucinich is still holding firm as far and away the best of a flawed lot, but still with no better prospects of actually jumping either the primary or general election hurdles–the other guys, Obama and Edwards, have been failing to distinguish themselves. Well actually I don’t hear much about Edwards, but given his coming-from-behind position, that isn’t good news either. But Obama seems pretty determined to demonstrate that all my hopes that his relative newness on the Democratic elected official scene might involve some really fresh and hopeful visions and even effective strategies to achieve them–were just that; empty hopes; in every interaction he moves closer and closer to the boilerplate DLC positions of Republican Lite.
So yeah, Hillary Clinton would not be much of an improvement over some Republican, based on her own political track record, that of her husband (which I think will have some relevance), judging by her contributors and endorsers, her campaign statements–etc. Back in 1992, after Bill Clinton had overturned 12 years of Republican lockhold on the Presidency, the Progressive magazine responded with a cover showing Clinton and the caption: “Four More Years.” Of Reagan/Bush biz as usual, that was. I figured they were a bit overwrought at the time, but was quickly disappointed with how easy it seemed for the rightists to push the new President around, and soon had to wonder whether they weren’t pushing him precisely in the direction he actually wanted to go.
That said–I still think it was better to have Bill Clinton in the White House for those 8 years than the Republican alternative (or any of the 3rd party runners-up for that matter–at this point I wouldn’t even trust Nader). In the same way, I am sure it will be less awful to have Hillary than any Republican–just going by her positions and likely movements as a generic politician.
And I think that if she is the Dem nominee, and does win, it will be against special Republican attacks on her fitness just as a woman, and I also think that if she nevertheless does win as she might–then the fact that the Rs will have started the gender food-fight will have repercussions–good ones. I think there is good reason to hope that she will have found by the time she is elected, or shortly after, that she has reached the limits of triangulating to the right, and that her allies are all to her left, but that if she takes on her enemies bravely that that support base represents the majority of the country and also pragmatic common sense. I think she might, without intending to, be forced into striking the political blows that finally break the back of the Right in this country, just because she is a woman, and a strong one, if not a particularly progressive one.
So yeah, she’s going to have to win the nomination without my help (which is rarely helpful anyway, judging by the results of most campaigns I have ever thrown myself into) unless she articulates a much saner and more humane platform than she has so far. But come Nov ‘08 if she’s on the ballot, I won’t be holding my nose when I vote for her. I will be downright thrilled to be sending a woman, even if it is this dangerously conservative one, to the Oval Office and blowing lotsa right-wing tiny minds.
Now if only Obama were convincing me he’d be so much better it would be worth giving that up (though a black man there would have much the same effect to be sure) or Edwards that he can give the slurs against him the snappy comebacks they deserve better than Kerry did, or Kucinich that he had a chance in hell.
Oh well, Hill running the White House–I’m getting used to visualizing it, and grinning.
Can you recommend a starter book?
There’s only one book: The Second Sex. You can kind of skip the parts where she dissects authors; it’s interesting, but may be drags some. The rest is just a classic piece of feminist scholarship.
“Circle jerks are a suburban myth”
that’s what us cool kids say to the boys we didn’t invite
DeadMan
that’s what us cool kids say to the boys we didn’t invite
Using both hands alternatively doesn’t count, Deadman…
There’s only one book: The Second Sex. You can kind of skip the parts where she dissects authors; it’s interesting, but may be drags some. The rest is just a classic piece of feminist scholarship.
Although if you need just a taste so you can figure out what to go for, try this. Please note that it is cheating to use this series to fake an education on the Internet…