ABC News’ David Muir, Raelyn Johnson and Sunlen Miller Report: Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., on the tail end of his 36-hour campaigning marathon in New Hampshire on day before the primary vote, reacted to rival Sen. Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment Monday.
Edwards offered little sympathy and pounced on the opportunity to question Clinton’s ability to endure the stresses of the presidency.
“I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business,” Edwards told reporters Laconia, New Hampshire.
Earlier in the day, Clinton became emotional when speaking to a group of voters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Completely unacceptable amounts of sexism. It’s bad enough that the media plays the game with Clinton where if she shows any emotion, she’s too feminine or too scary, but if she’s more stoic, she’s a scary ballbuster, but to have her own party members (if political rivals) play that cheap sexist card is too much. I’ve been reconsidering moving my Edwards support to Obama, and unless someone can show me evidence that Obama is just as likely to take cheap, sexist shots like this, I think that’s what I’ll be doing in light of this. We need someone at the top of the ticket who can know when to hold ‘em. And Obama does on this issue—when baited with the opportunity to be sexist to Clinton, he declined. Edwards appears to have taken it back, so it’s hard to say that it wasn’t just base opportunism on his part. Still, it should be immediately evident to any candidate that playing the “Hillarygirlieweak” game with the media is a bad idea.
On that note, here’s another WTF blog post at ABC’s blog.
It won’t come across on the transcript, but Sen. Hillary Clinton got angry during the debate tonight.
She was bickering with Sen. Barack Obama about their differences on health insurance, and whether Obama’s plan leaves millions of Americans uninsured.
And then she … well … she got angry.
Frankly, I don’t even really understand what she was saying. What I was getting was how angry she is. Not about an issue, so much, as about the fact that Obama is beating her.
The clip, I predict, will be played again and again and again.
Pundits will say that her tone made male voters recoil. And led some female voters to sneer.
I can’t bring myself to vote for the hawk in the campaign during the primaries, but dammit, this makes me sort of wish she’d win so that I can vote for her in the general election in good conscience. You don’t get much closer to saying outright, “We simply will not allow a woman to win if we can help it,” than that quote there. When male candidates show a modicum of controlled anger, they get credit for their passion and their big, brass balls. Hell, the former President Bush was coached to act angrier so that people didn’t think he was a wimp. But no one will cut Clinton a break.
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I’ve been really confused by this whole thing. It was hyped up like she broke down, but when I watched it, she just seemed heart-felt, though her voice cracks a little at one point - but it’s not at the point where she saying campaigning is hard. Her voice cracks when she’s talking about how important this race is and how America is failing in its promise. If there is anything worth being emotional about, that would be it.
Even though I haven’t been an Edwards backer, part of me wants to cut him some slack because it may have been misrepresented in the question (just like it was misrepresented in most of the descriptions). But he should have stopped at no comment. No need to go on about strength and resolve.
I told you that America is far more sexist than racist, which is why Hillary could never win. Progressives are not much better than the general population in this regard.
Wow, talk about reading into a situation. Not only does this guy “know” that Clinton was angry, he knows exactly why she was angry.
With mind-reading abilities like that, he’d be a cinch to win on “Jeopardy.”
What’s gotten this country into trouble, administration after administration, is our ever-loving lust for bulldozer, macho posturing. I want a president who has a heart as well as a brain. And Edwards and his asinine comment can go screw.
I got a sense of this in the last debate, the Obama/Edwards tag-team of the woman insolent enough to be up there on stage with the big boys. It’s really, really ugly to see it writ large like in the Edwards remarks today though.
Despite how much I disagree with her politics, I do find myself felling somewhat protective of HRC. As much as everyone talks about Obama and the race situation lately, the blatant sexism she has been put through in this campaign is inexcusable and the relative silence about it is concerning.
I wish at least one of the candidates with a realistic shot at winning didn’t piss me off on a major level. It sucks
I want a Obama- Edwards ticket.
I do want a woman candidate - some day - but I have never wanted her to be Clinton.
I was all ready to vote for Dole if she ran- even though I am as conservative as I am …..purple?
Edwards shouldn’t be such an opportunist. That annoys me. I still like him- but I know that he would be the kind of guy most rich white guys are. Get him in a room full of men drinkin’ brews, watching football and he’d have as many sexist jokes as the rest- or at least laugh at them.
I’m just really confused by this. Not so much the Clinton incident itself– as far as that goes, so what? A politician expressed apparent emotion at a campaign stop? I cannot understand why I am supposed to form some kind of opinion on that. Nor am I really surprised by the media pileon– petty, self-contradictory herd behavior like that is very much in character for today’s media.
I’m really really confused by the Edwards quote though. That’s just… I don’t know, it just seems incredibly out of character for Edwards. I am unable to form a mental picture of those words coming out of Edwards’ mouth in that order. What happened there?
I’m inclined to give Edwards a pass on his (admittedly ill-advised) comment, just this one time. I started down the road of outrage along with the rest of the pro-feminist blogosphere when I first heard about it, but after a few steps down that path, I performed a bit of a thought experiment that gave me a somewhat different perspective on it.
Removing gender from the equation entirely, a top-tier candidate had a public emotional moment regarding the strains and stresses of a national campaign and another candidate fired a quick opportunistic shot about the toughness necessary to do the job of the president.
If Obama had been the one to come close to tears, Clinton would have likely made a similar comment, as she often has in regards to his stated willingness to meet with the heads of hostile governments.
So, though those of us who regard the world through a feminist lens can easily read smarmy misogyny into Edwards’ comment, that needn’t have been the motivation. He’s since repudiated it, which may mean that he realized how it was being taken and did not mean it that way.
Now, I realize that this latest comment echoes the one he made some months ago about her jacket, but two points makes a line, not a pattern. I’m willing to withhold judgment on the matter this time around, and give Edwards the chance to prove my more cynical reading of the comment wrong.
I’m really curious to see the conversation or question that Edwards was responding to. I don’t really want to believe that Edwards (or any of the front-running dem candidates) would be that crass and asshole-ish.
Senator Clinton has been running for the title of “Thug-in-Chief” for months. Nothing about a pantsuit or anything else that keeps one from being a thug if you have few scruples and access to a lot of military hardware.
I would have respected Edwards more had he expressed joy or at least a sense of justice at her tears rather than contempt: “I am glad that she is hurting, because she represents the forces of corrupt madness that should suffer and repent for their enthusiastic continuation of Mr. Bush’s destructive war. Better she cry than more families of fallen servicewomen and -men cry for this piece of Republican madness which we Democrats stand damned for permitting to occur.”
Despite how much I disagree with her politics, I do find myself felling somewhat protective of HRC.
Yes, me too! I’m totally OK with people knocking her for her politics, but so much of the Clinton-bashing is based on the fact that she’s (gasp!) a woman, and it drives me crazy. And it really, really annoys me that people just ignore that.
Like one comment I read today said they don’t like Hillary because she’s running like she has the biggest balls out of all the candidates. It made me think, “Well … duh?” Just about any time I’ve been the only woman in a boy’s club, my machismo ratchets up … it’s like a defense mechanism or something. And I suspect I’m not the only woman on earth that does that.
This makes interesting grist for the political pundit’s mill, but these people are tired and stressed. WAY too much is being made of ill advised comments made under pressure, and often taken out of context.
Nobody up for ripping Hillary Clinton for downplaying Martin Luther King’s role in the Voting Rights Act? After all, HRC was a self-described “Goldwater girl” at the time, and thus opposing the efforts of both MLK and LBJ.
I told you that America is far more sexist than racist,
How could you falsify that statement?
I saw the clip of Edwards saying that on the news this evening and it did seem pretty out of character to me too. Even if he did think that sort of thing (which I don’t really know), I thought he would have had way too much class to actually say it out loud, to a reporter.
And yeah, I don’t agree much with her politically, but I do feel kind of bad for Clinton. She’s really getting hit with both barrels of the American cultural misogyny here. Personally, I thought her show of emotion humanized her and it made me like her better, but as soon as I saw it, I though she should have just stopped after her first sentence, because there was no way the media or the other candidates were going to let that one go without making it into a ‘poor little woman just can’t handle it’ moment.
Was Edwards counterpunching after the go-around yesterday between his people and Clinton’s? Edwards was appearing with the Sarkysian family (whose daughter died after being denied a liver transplant by their insurance company, IIRC), a Clinton staffer said that Clinton’s speeches are about people she’s helped and not cases torn from the headlines, and Edwards got pissed off. Whatever the context, the remark was super tone-deaf.
I liked his speech after Iowa, but I did think that he was ungracious in his “victory” over Clinton. Since then I’ve been feeling like Edwards is piling on, like when he paired off with Obama to depict the two of them as agents for change as against the Clinton status quo. You flatter yourself, John.
I do feel for Hillary Clinton, who’s been being dissed and dismissed for a long time, only to find herself being characterized as the epitome of… the Old Boys Club.
I love Edwards for his unabashed anti-corporatism, which is just what this country needs right now, but the Republicans would probably succeed in blocking his every initiative.
It now looks like Obama might just have a chance to re-align US politics, though. If he brings minorities and the young (you remember them, Amanda, those folks under 30) into the game, we could be seeing a permanent Republican minority.
Phoenician in a time of Romans:
By finding lots of evidence to the contrary.
To me, these two clips actually played quite differently from one another.
The “sad” clip played in both a positive and a negative way to me; positive in that even as she got emotional, she remained substantive and focused and kept her brain on – really, a sign of trustworthiness and of being “together” emotionally (contrast this management of strong emotion with President Bush’s impatience and anger at unpleasant data and questions, feelings that often seem poorly restrained in public and seem even to affect his decisions); negative in that her palpable sadness reminded me a bit of her seeming sense of entitlement, that she seems to me shocked to encounter serious opposition in the primaries, rather than regarding it as a natural aspect of the candidacy. (She didn’t convey this attitude in her Senate run in 2000.)
By contrast, the “angry” clip played very well to me — again, she managed the expression of emotion, a sign that she’s a fundamentally mature and together person with a sense of context and appropriateness, even of leadership – and more, it conveyed a sense of assertiveness, which I want in a president; a willingness to get one’s hands dirty and to be passionate in addressing matters of substance that are perhaps being overlooked or distorted; to fight for the truth and the cause one is advocating. I don’t know what Jake is talking about there. That does seem like sexism to me, or else just a too-refined notion of how politics work. Politeness is good, but it can clearly be taken to a fault, whereas leadership does require passion as well as knowledge.
My husband just saw it and wasn’t even aware she was crying. He thought she was hoarse.
You see his point, though, epistemology, don’t you? Sexism and racism are hardly quantifiable, and even if they are, they’re not really quantifiale on the same scale. Down the path of wayward’s statement lies all kinds of mischief, most of it between anti-racists and anti-sexists rather than between those factions and assholes.
They’re not quantifiable, either.
And as an Edwards supporter, I say good riddance to you.
Back a fifty-state loser, see if I care.
politics is a tough game. they are treating her as they would each other - because she’s a woman it seems some people want to say they cannot be as firm with her in their comments as they would with a man. sorry you feel this way, take care and remember, you’re likable enough.
Only idiot white women can say with a straight face that America is more sexist than racist…oh and as for the Shillary thing, don’t you guys know that the Presidency iz serious biznezz
It seems that beng considered a racist is more anathema than being considered a sexist. Is this because there is a more permissive attitude when it comes to sexism? Because so much of what qualifies as sexist simply falls along maintaining status quos that a lot of people don’t see a problem with? Who knows?
I don’t know. This is anecdotal at best, but someone in our office made a racist “joke” and were (quite rightfully) drawn and quartered by HR. Meanwhile, I endure sexist “jokes” weekly, and oh my, aren’t those just so funny.
Not to mention, almost weekly I come across more and more “scientific” “studies” proclaiming the inherent inferiority of women than I do “scienctific” “studies proclaiming the inherent inferiority of non-white races.
If nothing else, I find [overt] sexism is more culturally/politically acceptable than [overt] racism (though both exist in far higher levels than they ought to.)
Eh, how many tries did Barack and Hillary require before they decided that it wasn’t “immoral” to be gay?
Lame statement by Edwards in any case, especially given how snappish his responses (like the above) can be.
Eh, how many tries did Barack and Hillary require before they decided that it wasn’t “immoral” to be gay?
Foolish comment by Edwards in any case, especially given how snappish he can be.
Let’s see how protective and caring everyone feels towards HRC as she’s eviscerating social security for her puppetmasters. Bubba killed welfare, Dubya and the congress did away with bankruptcy protection and unleashed the credit card dogs, the next Democrat will do away with social security while pushing the lousy line that the trust fund is broke.
I don’t trust Clinton and I won’t vote for her if she’s the candidate. It has nothing to do with her being a woman, it has everything to do with her DLC ties and the knowledge that there won’t be any change if she gets in. I don’t want Rahm Emanuel involved in my country’s future any longer and she will not cut him loose.
In the comments at Ezra’s, the proposal has been floated that this is a cynical attempt to:
steal the “it’s personal” bit from Edwards
humanize a candidate who (I’m told) apparently needed humanizing.
I’m not saying I believe this necessarily, though I couldn’t prove it wrong. She loses either way: if it was genuine, she’s weak and feminine, and if it was calculated, she’s using emotion for manipulative purposes, just like everybody knows women do.
I was upset when I first read about the Edwards response. but then I saw the clip that included the question and the first part of his answer, and in that context it was apparent that he was refusing to talk about her and just talking in generalities.
At least she laughed at the “Iron my shirt!” hecklers.
Seriously, you have your big moment on camera to publicly heckle a politician/political figure and that’s the best you can do? At least “falafel” is a funny word in itself.
The msm altered his comments somewhat. At first he said he didn’t know what happened and declined to comment. He then said that quote.
He didn’t know why hillary cried or what happened. He was running a 36 hour bus tour, and said that. So he’s probably thinking about what’s happening to himself. He may not be commenting on Hillary as a woman…just Hillary as being able to do a crazy ass bus tour. Just think about if Hillary was a man…would John Edwards comment be justified? Would you still vote for him? If not then YOU are a sexist.
When the Don Imus debacle went down, people were appalled that he’d said something so racist. That his remark was also sexist got barely a mention.
Sexism is such a part of our culture, it’s barely even noticed. When it is noticed, it’s laughed off.
Or, what SarahMC said.
Yikes, I was making a flip remark regarding Phoenician in a time of Romans’ faith in falsifiability as THE path to truth, not entering into the debate:
Resolved: America is more sexist than racist.
Let’s not fight; we are big enough of a nation to be both.
Having said that, we are clearly more sexist. It is no accident that black men got the vote almost three quarters of a century before women. Falsify that.
As John Lennon (or was it Yoko?) said: Woman is the N**** of the world. Nobody openly debates whether blacks should “submit” to whites in this country, but just such a debate, regarding women submitting to men, is an open subject for candidates for president.
We are living in the Jim Crow era of feminism. De jure equality (almost) for women, but de facto sexism, using every tool from rape to the old boys network.
I think that, because women live in the same social class (households even) as their oppressors, the racism blacks have suffered is worse. But that which women suffer is more lingering and intractable.
And aren’t most African-Americans women, too?
Any bets on whether we will have an African-American man, or woman president first? My thesis (our sexism is worse) suggests a prediction. Takers, Phoenician in a time of Romans?
Yes, because people saying mean things to you is the be all and end all of discrimination…structurally, racism and sexism are just as intertwined and ingrained as the other and its foolish to say otherwise
Give Edwards a break. Just yesterday Clinton called his heartbroken guests talking points for his campaign, when they volunteered to come speak on his behalf. That took alot of courage with their daughter dead 2 weeks and Clinton reacted like jerk. Edwards was pissed and asked if she had no conscience…she looked like an asshole. And now a teary very emotional showed up on the trail a day later. PLEASE. Stop. It’s all for show and I suspect Edwards knows it too.
Lloyd, you sound just as “foolish” (noooo, no sexism in that characterization at all) as the “idiot white women” you refered to when you describe the “be all and end all” of sexism as “people saying mean things”. I don’t think one of the two is any bigger of a problem than the other. I DO think that overt racism is more frowned upon than sexism. Go ahead and disagree…I could really give a flying fuck.
Ah come on….now we’re getting into the “my oppression is bigger than your” thing.
Hell, I didn’t fall for THAT when I was a young ‘un—I sure as hell knew that was a tool to keep everyone divided….Both are crap and we don’t need either of ‘em…
(And this anti-spam measure SUCKS. )
hey, i don’t want to start trouble here, but, amanda, didn’t work for edwards for what, about a minute?
what i mean is, how new is this attitude on his part to you, considering he dumped you faster than the view dumped rosie? didn’t you think back then he was a bit opportunistic and ready to let the womenfolk fend for themselves?
i’ve wanted to support edwards, but i could never bring myself to officially endorse him on skippy…he talks a good game at his rallies, but his national campaign was never exciting to me.
i don’t trust obama, and i don’t want clinton. but i do have to say that i think the media’s portrayl of clinton as first calculating then suddenly emotional is so phony and depressing.
what can i say? there are about 20 folks running for president right now, and i don’t like any of them.
Epistemology: The experiment (who gets the Presidency first) for your thesis (sexism is worse in America than racism) is pretty poor, considering that it will probably happen this year and is probably more dependent on individual personalities and campaign problems.
I could say the test is who got more superdelegates or who got more campaign money or who’s leading nationally (or in California), but it still is a pretty poor indicator of anything. 500 white women, 500 black men, and 500 black women seeking a loan with identical financial numbers might be better.
I’ve been arguing against the anti-Hillary’s for awhile at C&L today on this point. Criticize her policies, but the personal attacks should be beneath us.
And Edwards? I suspect his reaction was programmed before he thought it through. It was hardly as bad as stuff I’m hearing liberals spew that are clearly misogynistic.
But ultimately, I will vote for who I think best serves American’s interests. I expect everyone running to make a mistake or two. But I’m not going to vote for anyone out of sympathy or out of anger.
My anger is focused on mass murdering torturers and their corporate cronies. My sympathy is with the people of the world. And my vote will go for the person I perceive to be the most dedicated and capable to dump the former and aid the latter.
Man, I certainly hope my comment didn’t get eaten without warning, because I have no desire to type it aain.
Wow, you have hard-to-read captchas!
I do think that the treatment of HRC has been unfair. However, in pulling your support from Edwards, you perhaps aren’t taking into account the effects of exhaustion, or the subsequent statements by both John and Elizabeth Edwards that were more sympathetic.
Obama did show better instincts this time, but he’s currently in a position to be much more relaxed than the other candidates. I’m sure he’s sleeping better.
I kind of wish we could vote for Elizabeth Edwards, though. She often has better instincts than John does.
By finding lots of evidence to the contrary.
How on Earth could you compare them in any objective fashion? Assessment is always going to be tainted by personal position and the observer effect.
But feel free to correct me - I dunno, perhaps there is a way.
Yikes, I was making a flip remark regarding Phoenician in a time of Romans’ faith in falsifiability as THE path to truth, not entering into the debate:
Mmm - not so much “THE path to truth” as an observation that any remark that cannot, even if only in principle, be falsified is likely to be empty of actual meaning.
“And aren’t most African-Americans women, too?”
I don’t know about most, but I would guess about half…
:)
Obama was just a-ok hunky dory with the ex-gay gospel singer. There is really no good pick. There never is. You grits your teeth and you pulls your lever.
Let’s not dramatize every utterance of either the candidates or the vapid media gossip. Edwards’ comment is empty campaign-speak, hardly reason to jump ship. Hillary’s “anger” in the debate didn’t turn off any reasonable viewer; neither did her “crying.”
Oh, might I add that Obama made a consciously considered series of decisions that led up to his sharing the stage with the ex-gay man? He did not have a microphone shoved in his face while being heckled “Will you or won’t you?” while sleep-deprived and not aware of the specifics of the situation.
politics is a tough game. they are treating her as they would each other
That’s just the thing though, I don’t think this particular strong-and-resolute, tough-business set of rhetoric should be used in this way against anybody, by anybody. A serious component of what is broken in our politics right now is that we do by and large have this cultural vision of the President not as a problem-solver or a communicator but as the Tough Guy in Chief, some kind of statue on a pedestal. Edwards is not my first choice candidate but I’d at least sort of thought of him as part of the attempt to move past that. Instead here we have Edwards jumping into that “toughness” frame with both feet, and I find that troubling even before we get into any implicit sexism. 30-hour-days or no, I’m wondering what it says about him that that frame was the first thing that came to his mind in this particular instance.
I was upset when I first read about the Edwards response. but then I saw the clip that included the question and the first part of his answer, and in that context it was apparent that he was refusing to talk about her and just talking in generalities.
Where could we find this? I’d appreciate the context.
MSNBC.
I’m also dying to see the clip.
But and I know that we’re not supposed to take this stuff into account, but let’s remember that he lost his son, and his wife is dying… I interpreted it as more of a reaction to some reporter sticking a mic in his face and asking him how he felt about Hillary’s tears… and if I were JE and had gone through the tragedies he’d gone through, I would be extremely pissed at the inanity of the whole thing,
was she tearing up about bill getting breast cancer? or losing chelsea? what? oh, the campaign is grueling, and her quest is personal.
she got emotional about the toll of the campaign. BIG FUCKING DEAL. at the end of the day, hillary wins this one because her issue was that people thought of her a cold calculating, etc. so whether staged or not, she wins the “humanizing” vote, as well as the outrage vote, as apparent here.
all this supposed outrage should be directed at tweety and scarborough all the gloating creepy blanket coverage this non event is getting, rather than edwards or obama.
I wish this was just a bad moment for Edwards, but I’m afraid it was part of a strategy. One of his campaign people was on the Rachel Maddow show this afternoon, and his comment was along the lines of, “If she breaks down under the pressure of the campaign, how will she handle threats from the enemy?” Rachel, who is no Hillary fan, was as close to furious as I’ve ever heard her with someone she was interviewing.
if he had made this comment about guiliani, would that be ok? why is it not ok to make about hillary?
Let’s see how protective and caring everyone feels towards HRC as she’s eviscerating social security for her puppetmasters.
Um, isn’t that Obama’s thing, being “serious” about the Social Security “crisis”?
That’s funny, james, as it’ plays backwards here in Illinois.
Carol Marin just had an article in the Sun-Times practically laughing at Rahm’s inability to make a decision between supporting Obama and supporting HRC. Everyone else in the state is firmly behind Obama, but since Rahm got his start with the Clintons, he’s staying with them.
I think it’s true that HRC doesn’t cut people loose, but Rahm doesn’t really want to go. He’s just having a really hard time b/c it’s becoming very obvious that his “strategies” of Republican-Lite were WRONG and with HRC losing Iowa, he’s backing the wrong horse.
No more power for you, my erstwhile neighbor!
As for the sexist/racist country, this is a both/and blog. But I will remind us all that Blacks got the right to vote before women did. I think it’s quite possible that we, as a nation, would be more prepared to accept a black man than a white woman (and women of color long after that).
After all, Morgan Freeman has played the President more than once, and the President on 24 was black, and we all know that show is where wingnuts get their info.
Speaking of wingnuts, I find it amusing that they insist on calling him Barack Hussein Obama, but they won’t use Hillary’s Rodham.
Amanda - looks like you bought ABC’s spin!
Look at the words the CORPORATE MEDIA used to describe Edwards - and they influenced YOUR opinion!……
>>>>>Edwards offered little sympathy and pounced on the opportunity to question Clinton’s ability to endure the stresses of the presidency.
Edward didn’t say anything wrong - or sexist!!!
You’re spreading crap!
But your page hits will increase - so you must be happy!
“After all, Morgan Freeman has played the President more than once, and the President on 24 was black, and we all know that show is where wingnuts get their info.”
Hell, things are so fucked under the current management, if either Morgan Freeman or Dennis Haysbert were running for POTUS, or they wanted to split POTUS and VPOTUS between them, I’d go for it. They can’t be anything like as stupid and evil as Cheney/Bush.
Obama should be a slam dunk…
Anyone who thinks Hillary will break down under pressure hasn’t been paying attention for the last two decades. She handles pressure very well. And the Edwards remark pissed me off as it showed a lack of class. The last couple of weeks he has seemed to be getting more and more obnoxious under the pressure of the campaign. Personally, I think a few tears would be an improvement.
What I don’t get, in this whole kerfuffle and its sequel, is this: It’s OK for Clinton to have a moment, to get teary-eyed and raspy-voiced, because for goodness sake, she’s been running a hard campaign for over a year and they’re draining… no one can be 100% all the time.
But no one seems ready to apply similar thinking to Edwards, who from what I’ve seen, responded off the cuff. Isn’t he allowed to be tired, too? Isn’t he allowed to show a little human weariness?
I think a lot of the guff Clinton has received has sprung from a fount of sexism in our media culture; I really do. But I also think that a lot of the nuclear overprotective defending of her and the decision that Edwards is an unreformed Neanderthal also springs from a fount of sexism. I think there are a lot of stones flying and very few glass houses left…
Sorry. No one gives Hillary Clinton a break because she doesn’t deserve one.
Support politicians for their politics, not their sex.
I’d like to see the clip of Edwards too, but I’m concerned that there was a strategy set long ago in the Edwards campaign. The meeting went like this:
-Damn, Hillary is so tough.
-Yeah. What are we gonna do to flip the Breck Girl thing?
-Well, if she ever shows a crack we’re going to girl her, and then she’s trapped in her own construct and we’re tough now.
Use the voice Billy Bob Thornton used doing James Carville in ‘Primary Colors’ when you read that last line, because I’m pretty sure that’s how it happened.
I’m going to further prognosticate when this meeting occurred. It was sometime in spring 2007, sometime after the presser where John and Elizabeth announced that her remission was over and that he wasn’t going to drop out, which was when he began to get more tough and aggressive in his speeches.
He’s pissed. His wife is dying and she HAS the best health care in the world. He’s fucking furious and he lowered his voice and started calling them what they are. Media pushback? Breck Girl.
It’s a dirty business.
I want Jed Bartlett from “The West Wing” for President. Or Aaron Sorkin, who created him. Or at least Martin Sheen. Someone, well, presidential.
Of course, if you want to get really depressed…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/opinion/07kristol.html?th&emc=th
Also, I thought that the coverage of what Hillary did today, which I would describe as having showed a glimmer of the person who wanted to fix this country’s wrongs for the right damn reasons, was so sexist that I could puke.
Full quote:
“I don’t really have anything to say about that,” he said.
but then continued, “I think what we need in a commander in chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also very tough business. And the president of the United States is faced with very, very difficult challenges every single day and difficult judgments every single day. What I know is that I’m prepared for that.”
I think the first sentence in the quote, the one omitted from the article you cite, is a bit important. In the end, I just don’t see it as a sexist dig at Ciinton.
Sexist? Jesus, the Republicans will have a field day with images of her with tears in her eyes. She simply cannot show weakness, period. Not because she’s a woman, but as a candidate. Remember McCain’s “that hurts?” That ended it. He showed he wasn’t tough and that he’d let Bush walk all over him.
John Edwards is right. Campaigns are tough, and people want someone in office who never wavers. That’s just the way it is.
It’s Hillary Rotten Clinton, the Darth Vader in a pantsuit.
i hear this second-hand from my dad, so i won’t claim to be accurate down to the word. rachel maddow interviewed mudcat saunders (edwards aide) about HC’s breakdown today, and he put it pretty well. no, he doesn’t feel sorry for clinton. there are millions of people in this country with (my words, cribbed from edwards speeches) inadequate access to health care, inadequate employment, family members serving in iraq, etc. the campaign is about them, not about hillary having a rough day.
i’m a firm believer that you can never really trust a politician. but edwards is more palatable than obama or clinton because he actually talks and seems to care about all americans, not just himself. fuck it, i don’t feel sorry for hillary either - she (and obama, and edwards if you go back a couple of years) has hurt a lot more people voting to fund the war than a televised breakdown will EVER make up for. a lot of americans have to be tough every day.
…and here comes “Eric” to prove PhoenixRising’s point…
Amanda,
Hillary Clinton has endured endless undeserved and sexist attacks from Republicans and from the media–
–but that doesn’t justify equating Edwards’ opportunism with sexism. It’s not.
Edwards: “I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business.”
Sexism? How so? This is the quintessential ‘alpha’ move applied by every candidate, since time immemorial. Display dominance by asserting a foregone conclusion, & in so doing assume the [mythical] role of protector, aka commander-in-chief.
Further, Hillary used precisely that same tactic of dominance and inevitability in her allegedly ‘emotional’ interview:
“Some of us are right and some of us are wrong; some of us are ready and some of us are not; etc. . . . so when we look at the array of problems that we have, and the potential for it getting, really spinning out of control . . .”
Same tactic. They did it to Kucinich; to Dean; to McGovern; to Dukakis–and now Clinton used it on Obama and Edwards (giving “the personal is political” an entirely new, feminist, meaning). Kettle, pot; black. But somehow, upon getting it in the teeth Edwards’ offense is speaking up, dishing a little in return? That’s sexist? Edwards made no reference to Hillary’s gender. I guess it’s easy when the litmus test is not shutting up and eating the shoe leather you’re fed.
Don’t get me wrong. I have a lotta sympathy for Hillary. But you do not underestimate Iowa and then run straight to the Ed-Muskie snows of New Hampshire. Straight to the nearest microphone-as-therapists-couch to tell everybody how you feel. It’s not specific to girlz. Ed Muskie went down for showing emotion, for supposedly cryin in the New Hampshire snowfall. Didn’t matter it mighta been the flakes. Campaigning is just not that kinda encounter session.
I’ve never found Hillary terribly threatening or cold, etc., etc.–and really hated the venom directed at her. But seems she’s unfortunately bought into the right-wing/MSM abuse heaped upon her. Striving for that softer side. Instead of laying some wood in the right direction.
“if I didn’t feel passionately…” “it’s personal for me..” “I see what’s happening ..” (Ignoring the dig at Edwards (from whom she swiped her health care plank))– saying it isn’t doing it. “I see what’s happening”? Umm, she’s a Senator.
There’s plenty to take issue with regarding Hillary’s political judgement–but almost the most damning is the timing of her run for Prznt.
It would have been nice to see this level of viciousness from Edwards in the Cheney 04 debate.
Amanda, the bright side is that you aren’t still with the Edwards campaign and have to grit your teeth through this.
I like Edwards wonkishness. He has been the guy I have been pulling for. The Edwards quote is bad. It seems that are natural differences towards men and women that the Hillary and Edwards story showed. Hillary cried, which is a natural way many women react when they talk about something emotional to them. Edwards response was she wasn’t tough enough. It’s an interesting display of how men and women are different. Men and women differences should be embraced.
The knock on Hillary was that she isn’t emotional enough. She displayed emotions and I’m not sure if the public will view that as a good or bad thing. Edwards inner-pit bull came out and he lashed at Hillary. It is obvious from the debates that he doesn’t like Hillary. There were questions of would he endorse her during the campaign. Edwards was tougher on her during the ABC debate than on Obama the frontrunner. Clinton isn’t going to act like a tough guy because she isn’t suppose to. That is like Ann Coulter saying Edwards is too feminine. It is not justified.
This is Edwards second presidential run. He should be more polished. Why is Edwards giving the media a Joe Biden sounding quotes?
Um, I think Hillary knows better than Edwards or Obama exactly how stressful the job she is after can be.
Can we get any more patronizing here? I mean, really?
Edwards will eat his own. I thought this was pretty clear after the whole Marcotte vs. Donohue debacle.
Amanda:
I certainly agree that there is far too much being made of a single non-verbal utterance here, but I completely disagree with Wayward’s comment that America is more sexist than racist.
Every day, in every way, my life as a black woman is impacted by my blackness–and almost always negatively.
And sweet goddes, but your anti-spam is one outrageous insult. How many times do I have to type in these unreadable, mangled numbers? This is my seventh try.
Best,
Caryce
gwangung:
Point well taken.
Or would be, if I were actually oppressed.
No question the statement was tone-deaf and ill-advised.
But I agree with Twilight Jack that the comment would have been completely in-bounds if leveled against one of the other men in the field…. or if Clinton herself had leveled it at one of the men, which is easy enough to imagine.
Fact is, the gender politics are complex in this race, and they constrain what is and is not seen as acceptable behavior by everyone in the race, not just Hillary.
Thus, Obama gets points for respecting gender norms, and Edwards gets a demerit for failing to use kid gloves with the woman who has been hitting him below the belt?
I don’t think any of these candidates are perfect, and this certainly isn’t the moment around which I want Edwards to be judged. But at the end of the day, with everything considered, I strongly prefer a flawed John Edwards who will fight corporate Washington in the interest of the middle-class and poor on health care and a host of other issues to all the other flawed candidates in the race.
Shocking turn of events all-in-all.
Hillary Clinton’s got the pollsters, she’ll know it’s over tomorrow.
Pam Spaulding (hope you’re eating better now) wins this one. Shillary’s negatives are WAY too high.
Inevitability was all she had. Buh-bye.
Moe, Larry and Curly all suck. None are *leading* on real issues that don’t have popular support. They all support the drug war, none have come out in favor of religious skepticism or nominating non-believers to the federal bench, none have been talking about the real issues behind domestic violence and none have been talking about the overt racism and sexism behind our global AIDS policy. And none of them support marriage equality. Assholes.
This is one of those 6 and 1/2 dozen kind of decisions…. The minor differences you’ll get??? John Edwards gets a whole lot more money from labor PACS than Hillary does, and a shitload more than Obama does. Labor rights are an issue for you? Vote Edwards. You want someone who will turn out the Democratic vote? Obama got 99% of his campaign donations from individuals, not PACs, and he’s only 10M behind Hillary. You want the otherwise apathetic minority vote? Vote Obama. Hillary has the most corporate support, will make it through the corporate media better than any other Democratic candidate (whatever cry-baby nonsense is going around now) and has the connections to survive the revival of the right-wing punditocracy. You want someone who will take all the shit the GOP throws at her and keeps going? Vote Hillary.
Really, that’s it. They’re all the same. People had two chances for actual change in Democratic bullshit: Kucinich and Dodd. The former is hanging by a thread and the latter’s already dropped out. I sincerely hope people are happy having shamed themselves into thinking there’s anything such as a “single-issue voter” label they need to run away from, and are pleased that all we have left are three sides of the same coin.
Ehrm. Three… coin. Yeah. I’m going with it anyway.
Jesus Fucking Christ Amanda. Great way to prove your point that women are in fact NOT weak and hysterical, by removing support from your favorite candidate over Edwards attacking a political opponent’s public demeanor in the last days of a primary. And Edwards made no reference to gender! If Edwards had criticized another candidate for crying, would it be safe to assume that the underlying basis of his criticism was some unique characteristic of the candidate rather than his stated claim? I’d like to know your thought process on this one.
Whiny punk.
Let’s see him stand up to Ken Starr.
hmm, try this
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/07/556194.aspx?p=1
for more context.
Actually, the Edwards quote was about leadership, not Hillary. He told the person interviewing him that he had no comment on Hillary. The quote is out of context and misrepresented by the writer in that article.
“unless someone can show me evidence that Obama is just as likely to take cheap, sexist shots like this”
not sexist, but extremely homophobic with the whole McClure MCing that event. And i’ve heard very troubling stuff about Obama and reproductive rights and something about the secrecy of women’s records in IL courts about assault.
A reminder too–Hillary pretty much accused Edwards of kiling that girl during the debate–an enormously false, unfair, and low blow: http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=01&year=2008&base_name=democratic_debate_wrapup#103572
Ont eh earlier-breached subject of sexism being more OK than racism to most people, I’ve seen what happens if you accuse someone of being racist. I remember someone pointing out that Tom “Bomb Dem Muslims” Tancredo was a racist shitbag when Tom dropped out of the race, adn my girlfriend, usually fairly liberal jumped on that person for daring to point out that a nativist shitbag was a racist. The “I’M NOT PC SO FUCK YOU” crowd is so scared of being called racist that they jump on anyone daring to make the accusation. It’s not even about the racism itself, it’s about being thought of as racist.
Sexism, though? They don’t seem to think twice about it.
I don’t see anything wrong with Edwards’ statement. He’s right. Presidents have to be tough. If they go around tearing up because things are haaaard, it’s a problem. Doesn’t matter what they have in their underwear. You want to cry at a soldier’s funeral or when you talk about some kid dying because he couldn’t get health care or when some wonderful event like our boys and girls coming home happens? That’s great, that’s human. But Clinton’s thing was just pure self-pity, if it wasn’t pure theater.
What amuses/confuses me is the reason she got teary - because this wonderful country that gave her so many chances is facing a terrible fate! Except that, er, at the moment, the terrible fate is “not having Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee”. If she was up against the Romney-Huckabee “religious nut” ticket, it would make sense to be upset. But she’s misting because Obama is cleaning her clock. That’s not tears for the fate of America at the hands of the Hussein Brigade. She knows damn well that he’d be a perfectly OK Democratic president. That’s tears for her dwindling presidential hopes.
If I was going to have to go home and put up with Bill Clinton for the rest of my life, I’d cry too. But then, I’m not running for President. I don’t have to demonstrate that I’m tough. She does, and she failed. And it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference that she’s a woman. A man who cried the way she cried would have gotten reamed out too, and deservedly so.
I read the statement of John Edwards and find no hint of sexism in it, not even a slight implication. Perhaps you are overly touchy on the issue.
The “I’M NOT PC SO FUCK YOU” crowd is so scared of being called racist that they jump on anyone daring to make the accusation. It’s not even about the racism itself, it’s about being thought of as racist.
fuckin’ a. i’ve had that fun-ride with my dad a few too many times — and he’s the kind of guy that likes to think of himself as generally progressive, open-minded, blablabla (which, to be fair, is true if you compare him to his family and stuff). and yeah, he gets way more pissed/defensive when he gets so much as a whiff of the word “racist” than he does when you take him to task for something sexist. even though i’m his fucking daughter.
And i’ve heard very troubling stuff about Obama and reproductive rights
He got a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood as a state senator; his “present” votes were to give cover to some marginal senators who needed a close vote to justify their “yes” votes. You can criticize Obama for not hitting hard enough or for the ex-gay-athon, but his record on choice is pretty good.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with the assault thing. Please elaborate.
I don’t see anything wrong with Edwards’ statement. He’s right. Presidents have to be tough. If they go around tearing up because things are haaaard, it’s a problem.
Bull. Only sociopaths never cry. The toughest people I know cry. Tougher people than you cry.
Human emotion is not a weakness. And the sooner we get that through our heads, the better off we’ll be as a society.
Sexism … are you kidding me? You think a guy that Elizabeth Edwards is happily married to could have an ounce of sexism in him? I don’t think it’s likely he views Hillary as a female candidate, merely a rival - isn’t that what you want?
Lloyd Webber: Only idiot white women can say with a straight face that America is more sexist than racist
Well I guess I just got a sex change and morphed from a person of color to white.
If something is not taken seriously and is, in fact, celebrated in society, it will be emboldened. Racism certainly exists (I can vouch for that), but misogyny is universally derided as simply bad manners–no matter how intense or violent the hate. Misogyny is bigotry. Period. It’s amazing though how common it is for people to either dismiss it or justify it.
___________
First, I, too, am an Edwards supporter so let it be known I’m not some Hillary supporter, not am I obsessed with hating her (like most people it seems).
Listen, people: the woman is simply exhausted. We’ve all been there. She just stumbled a little bit. That’s all! She didn’t even cry!There’s nothing there and the fact so many people are absolute hysterical about it shows how messed up we are in society about gender. She’s just tired.
I’ve worked on campaigns before and they are grueling. There’s nothing like being sleep drunk and trying to handle basic tasks. God, it’s awful. And who says you can’t be tough and get frustrated every once in a while? Damn.
james,
Uh, actually she’s staunchly defending SS from privatization. Seriously, that’s something that’s very important to me. And in case you’ve missed it: Obama is just as corporate (He endorsed CAFA, for crying out loud).
If anyone has a foolish plan for SS it’s Obama (although Edwards doesn’t have a good handle on it either). Krugman took him to task over it big time.
I understand if you don’t care for her policies, just make sure you get the policies right.
I agree with many of the previous posters.
Don’t abandon John and Elizabeth Edwards now when Obama has stolen his language—yes, go to boston.com and they document the actual theft of his language and pretended to be the populist that John Edwards actually is. I know that John Edwards cares far more about workingclass women than the Ivy League Obamas. And if anyone hasn’t been given a fair chance, it’s the brave and passionate John Edwards. C’mon Amanda–your “switch” is already being celebrated–don’t do it.
“I think what we need in a commander in chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also very tough business. And the president of the United States is faced with very, very difficult challenges every single day and difficult judgments every single day. What I know is that I’m prepared for that.”
This statement certainly plays into misogynistic concerns about Clinton. But the last presidential candidate to lose because he cried (or at least appeared to cry) was Ed Muskie. Male candidates are not allowed to show emotional “breaks” either.
What to me is most troubling about Edwards’ statement is that it buys into a certain model of leadership, applied to both men and women and based on a patriarchal model of masculinity, that tends to encourage things like the militarism (note the emphatic “commander in chief” at the top of Edwards’ statement). All the leading Democratic candidates including Clinton (as well as, of course, the Republicans) embrace this notion of leadership.
While I completely understand how this makes you think less well of Edwards, I just don’t see how it makes anyone feel better about Clinton as a candidate. We’re all able to denounce the racist and sexist “ping-pong ball” crap that is sometimes thrown at Michelle Malkin without forgetting how reprehensible she is for reasons that have nothing to do with her gender or ethnicity. Those of us hostile to Clinton’s positions should similarly not be swayed in her favor simply because she’s the repeated object of unfair, sexist attacks. To be blunt, she voted to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis without even reading the NIE and refuses to even apologize for doing so. No amount of misogyny aimed her way can make up for that fact.
By this point, after Hillary’s countless grave miscalculations, it’s interesting to see the sophistry involved in defending her. She’s entitled to cry; it’s sexist to criticize her; she’s criticized if she’s strong. Let’s forget for a moment that she’s crying because she’s a female and try to fathom why she was shedding a tear based exclusively on her own words. Accordingly: “People” are treating this campaign like a game. But, the inference goes, she’s entirely serious about winning and helping America be all it can be.
This isn’t the sentiment of a person who first and foremost cares about the country as much as it is the feeling that her presumption she was entitled to the Big Seat has proved incorrect. It’s also a crass insult that implicitly incriminates her opponents (”People” Who?) for not having the same “noble” motives she has. It may also be incriminating the pundits and media for having turned away after having consumed gallons of her special Kool Aid.
Since she fled to Arkansas with Bill, after having failed the bar exam, Hillary has aimed to accrue as much power and glory as possible. There’s no shame in that. But what’s pitiful is her charade that she’s so devoted to the common welfare. That these piddling opponents - these insignificant pests who should just go away - are blocking her from becoming Big Cheese, when, in fact, she’s by far the weakest opponent among the group.
How does less than two terms as Senator, dining with dignitaries as First Lady, a horrific stint as Healthcare Czar, and a bout as a part-time attorney for the Rose law firm amount to a genuine “35 years of experience”? You need the magic of David Copperfield to turn such inconsequential history into relevant experience. And yet most people, and the media, bought this notion hook, line and sinker. Did anyone feel sorry for her opponents who haven’t been the beneficiaries of such generosity? Did you hear them complain about her grossly inflated past? Did they cry because the polls showing her way ahead were primarily based on immediate recognition as opposed to actual qualifications?
Hillary heads the Superfund Subcommittee. Have you ever once heard her detail all her accomplishments with the Superfund? No. Why? Because there aren’t any. Yet in Saturday’s debate she vehemently criticized her opponents’ legislative records. What about her record? What has she ever done, what bill has she ever successfully spearheaded that made America a better country to live in? Zip. Nada. Zilch. 0.
Her record is quite insubstantial; there’s far more neglect than accomplishment. Indeed, after voting for W’s preemptive war, she went ahead and voted for Kyl-Lieberman, giving the Neocons an opening for taking the immoral “War on Terror” into Iran. But yet her opponents haven’t cried when the public and the media presumed her record is truly meaningful. Dodd, Gravel, Kucinich, and Biden, who have been summarily overlooked, in large part because of Hillary’s huge lead in the polls, never complained or cried about getting screwed.
You always heard, Hillary is tough, even from detractors who said it with admiration. But really, how tough is she when things aren’t going her way? You always heard she’s so intelligent. Then why in a recent Fox interview did she undervalue the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the sake of attacking Obama for using words like, hope? Why did she even go to Iowa when her handlers suggested she concentrate on NH? Why did she recently talk about Musharraf
as a candidate when he was recently elected? And why does she blanatly and persistenly play the gender card, which the women of Iowa totally ignored?
From the beginning, Hillary was never going to be the Democrtaic nominee because she’s professionally unsuited for the role, she’s basically been a Neocon sympathizer playing the role of a liberal, she’s too contentious to be an LBJ style politican working both sides of the aisle, and, more troublesome, she has the comportment of a Drill Instructor that has turned off the majority of Americans.
By Feb. 5, if not sooner, she’ll have the luxury of curling up somewhere out of the limelight, and shedding all the tears she wants. But don’t feel bad. We didn’t lose Hillary, we gained our party back.
They are all getting really tired and burned out. They are all fighting tooth and nail to stay in this. Overreaction is a natural side effect of sleep deprivation and pressure. Not excusable, but natural.
I would like to see the same amount of discussion given to the excessive macho posturing of all the candidates in the race as the amount of discussion that has been given to a quiver in Hillary’s voice.
I think that the voters are way ahead of the media in terms of recognizing that this election is about issues, not the crap that they shovel when they’re empty at deadline time.
Hillary would be well served to take a good look at her body language. Her comments are sometimes misinterpreted on the basis of her movements and her facial expressions. Bill was better at the “face” thing.
There is a process problem here. Taking a quote you found in an ABC story and trying to analyze it without a transcript or video clip is a fool’s errand. You’ve relied on ABC to summarize what happened rather than find out for yourself.
This is a common sort of post in the liberal blogosphere. Sometimes they are right, often they are wrong, because the methodology is nonsense.
We should all stop pretending that singular out-of-context quotes mean anything. It’s a very bad habit that just makes people look foolish.
Ben Alpers:
What to me is most troubling about Edwards’ statement is that it buys into a certain model of leadership, applied to both men and women and based on a patriarchal model of masculinity . .
Disagree simply because you’re not going to win a campaign by fighting a gender war to overturn the patriarchy.
Fact is, winning campaigns keep the focus on campaigning and doing the work to win—NOT on someone’s feelings. That focus translates directly into “we need in a commander in chief is strength and resolve.”
Further, it was HILLARY who used the classic patriarchal ‘tough’ and experienced and sexist ’strong’ memes against Edwards and Obama.
What’s more, she did it in that very emotional interview. But Hillary gets a free pass on her adoption of sexist tactics that play into /feed a widespread patriarchal psychology.
Go figure.
A male candidate criticized for crying is seen as “weak” (i.e. female) because of their show of emotion. It’s still sexist. Duh.
rebecca Traister summed it all too well for me to have anything else to say
“But with this small, small utterance, Edwards has revealed so much more about himself than we ever knew. About how he’s such a tough man (with such shiny tough hair) that despite being unable to actually win elections himself, he’s strong and resolved enough to pick the meat off the carcases of the former front-runners like a big, tough, strong vulture. “
norbizness:
Val has become so expert at pretending that I’m amusing that sometimes I believe her.
Of course that’s a joke. But the fact that African-American men got the vote decades before women in this country certainly is germane if not dispositive.
Epis: No, not really, considering the fact that the franchise couldn’t really be operated in large swaths of the country without violence and intimidation until the late 60s. Now (see Ohio) all inner-city residents face is 8-hour lines.
Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Depends on what we mean by meaning. The proposition “The US is more racist than sexist” can certainly be put into agreed upon terms susceptible to evidence.
I share with you, apparently, a blind faith in parsimony and evidence. But how would one falsify the principle of parsimony? Posit all possible explanatory methods, test them against what we know, and see which theories yield better predictions. Then repeat in other places and times in the universe. Impossible.
Still, we do the best we can. And falsifiability does not mean that we can prove something right or wrong, just that the theory makes observable predictions one way or the other. Certainly this qualifies.
Of course if we were to take Wittgenstein’s dictum at the end of Tractatus seriously (”What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence”) these pages would be empty. Little of what we “know” is falsifiable, or even able to be expressed rigorously.
“What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.”
MikeEss:
It’s most.
Male candidates are not allowed to show emotional “breaks” either.
Of course men are attacked for *tearing up* (not “breaking down”). Because they are acting “like a woman.”
Sexist.
norbizness:
Of course that is right. But poor white women face the same long lines to vote.
Surely you don’t claim that women’s enfranchisement, that is their ability to be full citizens free of intimidation, is now fully realized?
People still say sexism is OK (in numerous ways) but they rarely publicly say that about racism anymore.
epistemology, seriously (for a moment) how do you figure that?
The male/female birth rates among African Americans would be approximately 50%/50%, just like they are for any other group of
humansmammals. I know women tend to live longer in populations with decent medical care, and I know African American men are killed/die at higher rates than the population at large, but that much difference? To make a definitive statement that most African Americans are women?Not buying it…
I’m sorry — why is this even important? If it’s below freezing out, and one person has a thin t-shirt on and another person has a slightly less-thin long-sleeved shirt on, is it really important to point out how worse off the person in the t-shirt is? Both people are in trouble. Both would do well to work together to come in from the cold.
Complaining that sexism is worse than racism in this country serves only to alienate women of color and sympathetic men of color from the feminist cause, and bolster the ignorance of whites who believe that people of color are just “more sexist” than the “enlightened dominant culture.” It does nothing to help anyone and the white male patriarchy cries crocodile tears for all of us.
I’ve got it- how about instead of debating and meeting with people and canvassing the country, we save alot of time and trouble and make all of the candidates sit down at a big table and peel onions? The one who can peel the most w/o a tear or wipe of an eye wins.
Jackson, you had it right- saw the clip a gazillion times and the woman just seemed exhausted. About now, they ALL are.
Sheesh @ 8:16:
So, knowing the sexism inherent in the system, do you a) sit down and confide your feelings at the first opportunity? Or, b) play to win by using the techniques and displaying the attending-to-business attitude you know will get you into the White House?
In short, the candidate’s feelings are not the issue, but rather whether voters perceive that they’re continuing to accomplish the business of conducting a winning campaign.
Nothing sexist about Edwards’ words. Even if sexist men and women latch onto that and respond to that—it doesn’t make his words sexist.
Hillary used the same tactic in her emotional interview that you criticize Edwards’ for. Is that sexist too?
I’m going to cut John Edwards some slack for this. Yes, it is unacceptable, but I don’t think it nullifies him. But mostly, who knows how he was told about it. Reporters play games by telling one person about another and they don’t always do it honestly. If Edwards were told, “Clinton was crying during her campaign speech”, Edwards might have come back with that remark. If he were told, accurately, “Clinton got a bit teary-eyed as she spoke of her love for country”, well, if it were me, I’d say, “So do I”. So we don’t know what story Edwards got. But he could also have simply slipped and grabbed at a straw that was being offered to him during a presidential campaign to knock an opponent. That’s not the sort of thing I want in my president, but it is also very human.
Frankly, I was ready to write him off because he didn’t stand up for Melanda Marcewan, but he’s really the only candidate who comes even close to reflecting my own views on policy, and I think he could even be moved to support universal single payer health care, which I don’t think we could get out of Clinton or Obama. They’ve staked their positions on the insurance companies and they’ll sink us with that.
I swear to god, if a male candidate said, “Well, we wouldn’t want a President’s breasts to interfere with her ability to sit comfortably in the Oval Office,” some people would defend it as not sexist and some people would say, “Well, if she were a man, I’m sure he’d say the same thing.” Others would say, “It’s out of context; he might just be really concerned about her breasts.”
You know what’s amusing? The number of people who are giving a pass to Edwards because he was tired and had a microphone shoved in his face. Remember, people, this is the guy who said this:
By his own standard, then, no, he’s not prepared for that. So showing emotion is not being prepared for leadership, but shooting off one’s mouth with sexist drivel when one is tired is somehow the sign of a leader?
Tell it to Howard Dean.
No, shooting off one’s mouth in this circumstance is a function of them all being damned worn out.
If anyone is to blame here, it’s the media. Why they had to try to make this ’story’ into a snowball and roll it down a hill to see what stuck to it by asking Ewards, Obama, etc their reaction, is a mystery. Obama side-stepped it and Edwards didn’t.
The media should have just been focusing on, oh I dunno, maybe WHAT she was saying and not HOW?
Again, I don’t think it’s so much that sexism is WORSE than racism (they’re both equally damaging). The difference is that people just seem to give less of a shit about sexism and play it off whereas they’ll (rightfully) lose their shit over racism. If you don’t see the truth of this, frankly you’re in denial.
True enough, Dan. When a male candidate does who is an absolute threat to the media narrative, he gets it blown all out of proportion. But they have to blow it way out of proportion. The media made it seem like Dean ripped the head off a newborn or something. But Clinton? All you have to do is accuse her of failing in her feminine duty of pretending that everything delights her, so long as a man says it.
Louise, I blame both the media and Edwards. Both/and. He’s been in this long enough to know when they’re trying to manufacture stories, and he took the bait.
SarahMC:
It’s long been obvious that sexism exists in male-only settings. So, is that the battle you want to fight right now? You write:
Of course men are attacked for *tearing up* (not “breaking down”). Because they are acting “like a woman.”
Sexist.
Not so. You presume that ’strength’ is a masculine and negative characteristic–which is sexist in and of itself. It’s not the sole province of the male. Second, we’re looking for attention to the job at hand–of campaigning and winning–not one’s introspective feelings (valid though they may be). Neither maternalism nor paternalism are appropriate; so, how ’bout a sports metaphor? (thought you’d like one) Hillary’s emotional vid was a post-game interview—not the action of someone playing to win, on the court.
At the same time, Hillary applied the same sexist attacks on Edwards that many here see as sexist when Edwards responded in kind—w/o any reference to gender.
epistemology:
Of course if we were to take Wittgenstein’s dictum at the end of Tractatus seriously (”What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence”) these pages would be empty.
Yes, but why would we do that? Ever.
“Tell it to Howard Dean. ”
Well, let it never be said that repigs are consistent in their bullshit. It changes to whatever suits them.
Jackson @ 2:21:
“Listen, people: the woman is simply exhausted. We’ve all been there. She just stumbled a little bit. That’s all! She didn’t even cry!There’s nothing there…”
I agree there’s “nothing there” in Clinton’s words OR in Edwards’ words.
Yet–we’ve had one caucus, out of 50 primary contests. The ground game in Iowa wasn’t as extensive as advertised. So, I’m not persuaded that exhaustion is the issue here.
You’re right, Amanda- oh, this sort of stuff is really gonna get old by November, eh? I just wonder what ballpark percentage of voters react more to fabricated journalism like this than actually LISTEN for a consistant message from the candidates.
Don’t tell me; I don’t think I wanna know. Thank goodness for C-SPAN and TiVo so I can watch and decide for myself w/o the pundits.
The fight over racism and sexism is silly. Yes, it’s easier to be blatantly sexist in public, because women are expected to laugh it off because we don’t deserve to have inconvenient feelings. But structural racism is probably worse than structural sexism. It’s the difference between having to travel to Mexico to get an abortion and being left homeless from a hurricane. It’s measurable in sheer dollars earned and time spent in jail. On the whole, structural oppression is worse, in no small part because it’s harder to fight and it’s more effective. It’s probably better, oppression-wise, to be a white woman than a black man in this country. In fact, I’d say if you don’t see that’s inarguable, then you’ve got your head up your ass.
Epistemology: Of course not. I am somewhat skeptical as to whether your thesis can be tested and more skeptical of the metrics you’re using to test it.
When I saw her “breakdown”, you know what I took it as? She looked defeated. Really. And she was sad about it, not for her ego, but because she wanted to do good all along. And there was no anger in it, just despair, worry, and concern.
For what it’s worth, from my POV her standing as how I’d think she’d do as president went up quite a bit…I usually get the feeling from her that it’s a game that doesn’t matter.
I think she knows that it really was hers for the taking, to be the first woman president,
To be honest, I think Edwards mistake wasn’t in taking the sexist jab, but it was in not acknowledging it in the first place. Instead of using it to lift them all up by explaining how tough and emotional it is because they all believe that this stuff matters..it’s very important.. he used it to pull her down, which I don’t like.
zuzu:
there’s not a single sexist sentiment in that statement.
It differs not a single iota from anything anyone has ever said about a Presidential candidate.
Amanda wrote:
“I swear to god, if a male candidate said, “Well, we wouldn’t want a President’s breasts to interfere with her ability to sit comfortably in the Oval Office,” some people would defend it as not sexist and some people would say, “Well, if she were a man, I’m sure he’d say the same thing.” Others would say, “It’s out of context; he might just be really concerned about her breasts.”
I don’t see any parallel or analogy between the above quote and Edward’s words. One’s sexist; the other is not.
“Strength” and “resolve” are positive qualities that are not the exclusive domain of men. Just as having a rich and vibrant emotional life is not the exclusive domain of women.
Edward’s didn’t call Hillary a girl, nor did he cut her down for veering into the emotional. He stuck to characteristics voters look for in a President. Hillary did use the same tactic Edwards is taking heat for, though, in that same interview. The “Some are ready; some are not” lines are just attacks that say nothing about policy, the issues at hand, nor the actual facts re experience, etc. Hasn’t Edwards won just as many elections as Hillary?
I swear to god, if a male candidate said, “Well, we wouldn’t want a President’s breasts to interfere with her ability to sit comfortably in the Oval Office,” some people would defend it as not sexist and some people would say, “Well, if she were a man, I’m sure he’d say the same thing.” Others would say, “It’s out of context; he might just be really concerned about her breasts.”
Well if that’s in response to me, I don’t think the two are comparable situations, though I give you points for a clever construct. Edwards didn’t say anything like that, and the business about her crying could easily be told to Edwards in a provocative way. In addition, let’s not forget that Ed Muskie was taken down for getting teary in New Hampshire once before, which I am convinced was in the minds of the media when they made such a big deal about this thing.
And I also think it was crappy for Edwards to reach for that “card”, but I am not going to get my ideal candidate no matter what I do, so I have to decide which issues matter to me the most and which candidate gives me the best chance to get the things I want for the country. It’s going to be about policy for me, first and always. I hate that sexist bullshit and I hate that Edwards said some sexist bullshit, but I don’t agree with Clinton on policy so I can’t get to where I am writing Edwards off.
Here, for me, is the core of this discussion: is John Edwards a sexist, or so sexist that it disqualifies him from my or your support? I have not at any point disagreed that what he said was despicable. At the same time, I could probably dig through the record and find despicable remarks from everyone running for office (even Dennis Kucinich). How genuinely awful, in terms of supporting a candidate, were Edwards’ remarks?
Oh, and as far as men being attacked for being too feminine, I think you’re right on the mark with that. When Muskie left his presidential bid in the snows of New Hampshire for allegedly getting teary about attacks on his wife, it was for being “womanly”, not for being weak. If it were for being weak, that’s only because being “womanly” is regarded as weakness.
Of course, if you weren’t responding to me, I say, in the words of the great Emily Latella: never mind.
You presume that ’strength’ is a masculine and negative characteristic–which is sexist in and of itself.
I am not presuming that it’s a masculine characteristic. People who criticize men who cry are presuming that.
“He is showing weakness. Men shouldn’t show weakness.”
It IS sexist in and of itself, which is what I am saying.
I don’t equate crying with weakness, either. I am merely analyzing the things other people say.
Finally watched the Hillary crying video. It actually made me like her more. It sort of filled me with patriotic pride. I really liked it.
I don’t feel sorry for or “protective” of her. I’m pretty sure if there was a caged grudge match Hillary would take him.
Edwards made a mistake here. For better or for worse, perception is reality in politics, so even if you could argue that Edwards wasn’t being sexist, if enough people think he is being sexist, then he is in the context of a campaign.
That said, it’s not yet enough to draw me away from him. I would defend Clinton against the sexist crap she’s been confronted with for years, but that doesn’t offset my disagreement with her on the issues. I still think Edwards has the better stances overall compared to both Obama and Clinton.
You know, I don’t think Edwards treated Clinton any differently than he would have treated a male opponent. To me, it’s a compliment.
Am I to expect he should have pulled his punches “because she’s a girl”?
Good troll, Michael.
That’s exactly how they think–you’ve captured it perfectly.
Oh, wait….
A woman can be perfectly tough in a major crisis (especially if she’s the president and has to be) and still cry when it’s safe to release tension. Only someone with their head stuffed firmly up the patriarchy’s ass would not realize this. I guess Bush’s reaction of sitting on his ass looking stunned on 9/11 is preferable? Sexist dumbfuck.
Maybe Edwards just feels that “Grey’s Anatomy” is too
pansypopulist for leadership too.SarahMC:
I am not presuming that it’s a masculine characteristic. People who criticize men who cry are presuming that.
“He is showing weakness. Men shouldn’t show weakness.”
It IS sexist in and of itself, which is what I am saying.
You, along with others, ARE presuming that (weakness, sexism) that is the reason showing emotion on the campaign trail costs candidates the White House.
Could it not be, instead, that attention to winning the next contest, rather than sharing one’s feelings or self-pity or attending to internal life rather than external tasks—is what the electorate responds negatively to??
FWIW,
My folks—mid-60s feminists & NOW members—took me to the ERA march in 1978, where I got to hear speaker after speaker rightly demand equal rights under the Constitution.
And I hate the Hillary bashing and double standards that’ve been applied to her.
But that does not legitimate performing the same number on fellow Democrats. Nor does it legitimate, when a preferred candidate has internalized the MSM conventional wisdom and Hillary bashing, crying wolf at a guy who’s NOT guilty of said sexism, etc., etc. …
Snort.
Remind me again how many women are running?
Now, regarding Edward’s blatant sexism, his loss of his son, and Elizabeth’s breast cancer: if a man cannot live without a son to the point that he coerces his wife to take hormones to become pregnant some 15+ years after her first children were born and he disregards the fact that he has a daughter (oops two! because, you know, Elizabeth had to keep popping pills, fucking Edwards, and getting pregnant until she “had” a son), and then gets teary when the hormones lead to his wife’s breast cancer, well it really doesn’t get any more sexist than that. But hey! At least he has a replacement heir. Someone’s gotta inherit the 100 acres/$6 million-dollar home in Orange County.
And then there’s always his utter spinelessness in his treatment of Amanda.
Just thought it should be highlighted again. Much as people on this thread would like to pretend otherwise, in our society, emotion is still coded as “feminine” and lack of emotion is coded as “masculine.” If Obama’s voice had broken while speaking passionately like Hillary’s did and Edwards made the same comment about Obama, it still would have been a sexist comment.
mnemosyne:
Edwards’ statement does nothing of the kind. Clinton also routinely applies the same tactics regarding the same attributes, presuming that alpha-male candidate attitude will work and is appropriate.
Commander-in-chief is part of the job description, and though I despise the counterproductive and antiAmerican militarism continually displayed, it’s a plain fact.
So I don’t see strength as a male trait or a negative one.
Q Grrl:
No hate there, eh? Got anything to back that up? Otherwise your venom defaults to . . sexism.
What “number” is being “performed” on fellow Democrats, oh wise one? Displaying one’s blindness to privilege and sexism perfectly legitimizes a call-out.
Sex and race aren’t a reason to vote for someone, my ass. Give. me. a. break. Just because you can’t see sexism doesn’t mean it’s not there. It just means you’re blind.
John, I’ve seen some amazing pretzel logic on the internets, but yours might actually be the most ridiculous I’ve had the chance to bear witness to. Congratulations.
You, along with others, ARE presuming that (weakness, sexism) that is the reason showing emotion on the campaign trail costs candidates the White House.
Presuming that sexism exists is not sexist.
As of 2002, there are 86 black men to every 100 black women. So I’d call that one for black women, yes. Also, there is not a 50/50 birth rate, males outnumber females in human at birth.
So I don’t see strength as a male trait or a negative one.
That’s not the issue.
Does crying–per se–indicate weakness? And are either crying or weakness “feminine” traits?
Our dominant political culture’s answer to both those questions is “yes.”
But crying should not be seen as akin to weakness. And neither weakness nor crying should be coded “feminine.”
I think a good case can be made that both seeing crying as weakness and seeing crying/weakness as “feminine” are themselves sexist attitudes.
But, as I note above, as far as I can tell, Clinton herself buys into the dominant image of a good, strong leader of which these (sexist) cultural moves are a part. That doesn’t excuse Edwards behavior. But it does make voting for Hillary Clinton a fairly irrational response to that behavior.
Context, context, context.
It’s fascinating to see how fast, just here, it has become taken as fact that “Hillary cried about how hard campaining is” and “Edwards made sexist remarks in response.”
But buried in the thread are some things that shoot those down completely. One is that it seems that the emotional point in what Clinton said was not about the difficulty of campaining, but just conflated with it because it was in the same soundbite, and the other is that Edwards made it clear that he didn’t know the specifics of what they were asking him about Clinton, but in response to them repeating the story to him.
The fact is, that campaining is hard work. And probably both physically and emotionally more exhausting than anything I’ll ever face.
And the fact is, all the Democrats are running to be President of the US, to take over while we are at war, with social and economic damage beyond imagining to clean up, preparing to try to accomplish things with, unless the makeup of Congress changes significantly, a huge opposition minority that will use every dirty trick, obfuscation, and outright lie to make sure they fail at every turn. If Clinton or Obama win, they’ll have extra ammunition, but Edwards would not have it easy either.
It isn’t sexist to say that yes, campaigning is hard, but so is the job they are campaigning for. Clinton may well have reason to understand far more directly and viscerally what being President costs on a personal level.
For everyone here who is saying that Edwards did wrong, and was sexist, what exactly do you think he should have said?
Which is exactly why I suggested the “peeling onion test”- cull the weak!
Johnsturgeon: What part do you doubt? 1) his son died 2) he was not satisfied with just a daughter 2) he asked Elizabeth to become pregnant in order to produce another son 3) Elizabeth had to take hormones to conceive 4) Elizabeth had a second daughter 5) John kept trying to impregnate Elizabeth until she successfully had a son 6) Elizabeth had to remain on hormones until a son was conceived 7) Elizabeth got breast cancer which has a proven link to the hormones she took in order to conceive John’s son
that his new son will indeed inherit the 100 acres/$6 million home before either of his sisters does.
Some say that Elizabeth is too saavy to be with a sexist man, but she’s giving her life for the grandest sexist trap out there.
Let me also add that, while I don’t think that taken in context, what Edwards said was sexist, that the reporting of it, the way that it has been spun, and the way that the media (and the public) are discussing it are HIGHLY and blatantly sexist.
So I absolutely agree that sexism (and misogyny) are playing a significant role in this as a news item.
I just don’t think that laying the sexism at either candidate’s feet (at least on this one) is justified.
Amanda,
I respect you and have always been steeped in, and a proponent of, feminism.
However, I don’t need to resort to “pretzel logic”–nor do I do it here. I’d love to see how & why you feel any available fact has been twisted, for that’s left unsupported as well.
I don’t see anyone substantively identifying anything sexist in Edwards’ words. Hillary uses the same alpha-tactics.
So I’ll defend Hillary, and I’ll defend feminists, but that doesn’t mean anything goes anytime somebody’s upset. Edward’s isn’t responsible for society’s ingrained sexism.
SarahMC:
You clearly mis-apprehend my clear meaning. It’s fair to presume sexism exists–in general. It would be a mistake to presume “that’s the reason showing emotion on the campaign trail costs candidates the White House.”
BIG difference. In short, voters are likely to intuitively know (even the men) that attention to the task of winning the second primary contest takes precedence over one’s feelings, as well as the need to share them.
Clinton’s responding to the false meme and unfair battering at the hands of the rightwing and MSM. It’s a mistake for her to buy into that.
All told: Edward’s sticking to facts and attributes–just as Clinton does–and in no way displayed any sexist sentiment. No one here has demonstrated otherwise—or even attempted to.
He hadn’t seen the clip and made no reference to gender or stereotypes of women at all.
there’s not a single sexist sentiment in that statement.
This is a rather common canard of antifeminist trolls: “Unless they said explicitly that she was bad for being female, it’s not sexist!”
It’s called coding and context, John. Go look into it and let the grown-ups talk.
That’s supposed to be an “8″ not some smilie.
But, I’m thinking more: what kind of a man isn’t satisfied with the child he has remaining and asks his 48 (and then 50)-year-old wife to endure multiple pregnancies?
My answer: not the kind of man I want leading this country.
“As of 2002, there are 86 black men to every 100 black women. So I’d call that one for black women, yes.”
If your figures are correct, I cancel my objection. And I say yay Black women, and whoa, we need to help Black men…
I am curious to see what the figures for other races are, and a comparison between developed vs. developing countries. (I also realize this is all OT…)
“Also, there is not a 50/50 birth rate, males outnumber females in human at birth.”
That’s why I said “about 50%/50%”. I realize it’s something like 51/49 or 52/48 (at least among humans), but it’s not a huge difference. It’s also my understanding that the ratio is about 50/50 by the time we’re teens, and then women have the edge from there on out, at least in developed countries where women are much less likely to die in or because of childbirth…
For everyone here who is saying that Edwards did wrong, and was sexist, what exactly do you think he should have said?
How about, “I didn’t see that, so I can’t comment on it.” Obama managed to see that it was a trap and stopped right there.
So…I’m going to set aside the “whose oppression is more severe…racial/ethnic minorities or women…” discussion, simply because it reminds me of a scene from Will and Grace in which they discuss how many “cards” they can pull…and as a bi-racial homosexual…I have plenty of cards to pull…so I digress…
The problem with debates about Hillary’s emotions, is that it doesn’t matter what she does, she’s going to be criticized/brow-beaten. I have been shuffling through tens of blogs, conservative and liberal over the last few hours (may I add this is my very first post on any blog EVER…and it scares me…) and it got me thinking. If she speaks her mind…she’s labeled a femi-Nazi or worse (some of the misogynistic slurs I read tonight made me blush, tear up, and reaffirm my fear of Americans in general). If she gets angry, she’s called too emotional or the tenor of her voice is critiqued. If she goes cold emotionally (and can anyone actually blame her on this front?) she’s, well, a cold-hearted bitch. If her eyes water, she’s either too emotional to be a leader or a calculating (gasp…) politician. So no matter what, she’s fucked.
Now my problem with all of this is that it used to come primarily from the right (and who’s to be surprised by that…they promote bigotry as one of their primary selling points…) But this election cycle, it seems to be coming mostly from, well, Obama supporters. I clearly wouldn’t attempt to use this as a way to paint Obama in any way. However, why is it that so many of his supporters in the blogosphere are so quick to turn into maniacal imbeciles (”I wouldn’t get with her even if I had a ten foot pole. GO OBAMA!” Say what? For real? In 2008?) to show their undying support for him? Is this “Hope?” “Passion?” “Inspiration?” “Change?”
So being my first blog post, bring on the fire. It’s 2 am here in Japan, and I’m wide awake and ready to fire back.
So…I’m going to set aside the “whose oppression is more severe…racial/ethnic minorities or women…” discussion, simply because it reminds me of a scene from Will and Grace in which they discuss how many “cards” they can pull…and as a bi-racial homosexual…I have plenty of cards to pull…so I digress…
The problem with debates about Hillary’s emotions, is that it doesn’t matter what she does, she’s going to be criticized/brow-beaten. I have been shuffling through tens of blogs, conservative and liberal over the last few hours (may I add this is my very first post on any blog EVER…and it scares me…) and it got me thinking. If she speaks her mind…she’s labeled a femi-Nazi or worse (some of the misogynistic slurs I read tonight made me blush, tear up, and reaffirm my fear of Americans in general). If she gets angry, she’s called too emotional or the tenor of her voice is critiqued. If she goes cold emotionally (and can anyone actually blame her on this front?) she’s, well, a cold-hearted bitch. If her eyes water, she’s either too emotional to be a leader or a calculating (gasp…) politician. So no matter what, she’s fucked.
Now my problem with all of this is that it used to come primarily from the right (and who’s to be surprised by that…they promote bigotry as one of their primary selling points…) But this election cycle, it seems to be coming mostly from, well, Obama supporters. I clearly wouldn’t attempt to use this as a way to paint Obama in any way. However, why is it that so many of his supporters in the blogosphere are so quick to turn into maniacal imbeciles (”I wouldn’t get with her even if I had a ten foot pole. GO OBAMA!” Say what? For real? In 2008?) to show their undying support for him? Is this “Hope?” “Passion?” “Inspiration?” “Change?”
So being my first blog post, bring on the fire. It’s 2 am here in Japan, and I’m wide awake and ready to fire back.
Amanda, I hope you don’t abandon Edwards because he made a stupid and sexist remark. He did, no doubt. And I hope he apologizes. But fighting sexism as a reality is, obviously, the kind of thing that is mirrored in the policies a politician advocates. Edward’s populist program, if it were implemented, would do much more for the women of America than Clinton’s continued Rubinomics. As for foreign policy - well, let’s just say that the greatest leap in radical sexism in the past seven years occurred, as we all know, in Iraq. Try being, say, a woman hairdresser in Basra at the moment. Try surviving. Clinton is still unapologetic about what the U.S. presided over there - and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths only covers one dimension of a disaster that has had far reaching affects on how much Iraqi women can literally appear in public. It is a privatization of the female sphere that is second only to that achieved by the Taliban.
I suspect some of Edwards’ supporters think that Obama is such a winning combination that it is time to let go of Edwards. I don’t think so. Even if Edwards doesn’t win, he has been the force that shaped the politics of this race, and I would like to see him continue. We know that after the Democratic convention, the shift in the campaign will be to the right, which is why it is important to press the Dems to the left at the moment.
So please don’t break with Edwards yet, even if you do send him the strongest kind of personal message.
It causes me to pause every time I see an Edwards supporter bring up Clinton’s Iraq War vote and her lack of apology. Did Edwards’ “heartfelt” apology undo anything on the ground in Iraq? Did his apology to the American electorate undo the damage done to Iraqis? Maybe instead of hedge-funding it, it should have stayed in the Senate and fought for his newly-found opposition to the war instead of apologizing from the sidelines.
So because all of the candidates are held to a sexist standard, that magically makes the standard not sexist anymore? Huh?
How about, “I didn’t see that, so I can’t comment on it.” Obama managed to see that it was a trap and stopped right there.
Exactly. Obama even showed a little class by noting how grueling the campaign was for all of them — note, he included himself. This isn’t rocket science.
I recognize Edwards and Clinton were both tired, but here’s the thing: Clinton displayed some human emotion when tired. Edwards displayed poor judgment when tired. I’ll take door number one.
And I say this as someone who probably counted himself as an Edwards supporter.
dbk: Frankly, I was ready to write him off because he didn’t stand up for Melanda Marcewan
wow, i just realized that that probably meant “Melissa McEwan”, didn’t it?
or did it?
Clinton’s teary emotions were contrived, just like everything else she says and does. John Edwards was being kind.
Caryce, Shirley Chisolm, who ran for president in 1968, thought America was more sexist than racist. And that was in 1968!!!
Mrs. Nice Guy
So Mark Penn comes through in the end after all, apparently?
This was OBVIOUSLY a calculated tactic given that everyone was saying she needed to show her soft side and there were other attempts leading up to it. And now many have fallen for it.
Even worse is another round of media mistreatment on Edwards. I have only seen the complete quote of his comment on Hillary’s display once and have seen the truncated quote about 30 times. Does anyone have a vid clip of it so we can judge for ourselves?
Here’s what one commenter said after seeing the vid:
“I was upset when I first read about the Edwards response. but then I saw the clip that included the question and the first part of his answer, and in that context it was apparent that he was refusing to talk about her and just talking in generalities.”
Congratulations for saving Penn’s job and perpetuating these kind of lame campaign theatrics for another cycle.
Don’t be patronizing. If you want to vote for Obama because you just have a feeling, do so. But please, don’t give us BS about Hillary being a hawk and Barak not. He promised in that speech you are thinking of to not support funding of the war. He broke his promise..or he lied…and funded the war. So stop with this crap to avoid looking like a traitor to women. You are. Her voting record is relatively the same, except she voted and took on responsibilities. She didn’t just give good speeches and vote absent. You look like a hypocrite when you come up with this thin gruel of a justification.
Be a man about it, and just admit you like him better. We already know to never count on you. When the going gets rough, some women get going. And don’t think for a minute this will not count in the credibility stakes. It will.
As for John Edwards, he lied at the debate along with Obama…Edwards about passing a Patient Bill of Rights, Obama about not hiring lobbyists as campaign chairs. So there was ample reason to pass on both. You didn’t.
You took one liar over the other when a competent progressive woman could be President. Maybe the social pressure got to you…because it wasn’t cool enough. Who knows. But if you like him better, I’m down with that. Just don’t come up with good sounding justifications that are pure bulls**t because you are diminished in the process. All the progressive women are looking…and we know who is standing up.
I’m willing to see what Edwards does in the near future, and I hope it’s the right thing. I do think what he said was sexist, but I’m less troubled by this particular incident than I am by, say, Obama’s carefully calculated finesse on the question of reproductive rights.
Yes, I do know his voting record in the Senate is good on that, and it should be considered, but we should also remember that those were as a Senator from Illinois, a pretty strongly pro-choice place as I understand. Will he carry that commitment into the presidency, should he get the nomination and win? I’m not yet sure of that, and I’m not the only one.
I do not like Hillary. There is not a single goddamned thing I like about her, there never has been, and there never will be.
So I was somewhat surprised when I found myself in Manchester two days ago defending her in front of a table full of conservatives.
Amanda’s right, Hillary CANNOT win, her opponents have her coming and going.
I want to see her lose because I disagree with her on a lot of issues. The fact that she will lose because she’s a woman is sickening.
Can anyone find out exactly what question Edwards was asked that the quote was an answer to? I have seen several references that indicate that the quote was a part of a longer answer that did, in fact, indicate that he wasn’t able to comment directly on the Clinton moment, but then made a broader statement about campaigning.
I see repeated quotes of the “showed no sympathy and pounced on the opportunity” - but those are all other people’s interpretations of the quote out of context. Anyone have more than just the quote he’s being crucified for?
“Clinton’s teary emotions were contrived, just like everything else she says and does. John Edwards was being kind.”
Yeah, sexism is *totally* overwith.
_________
“But fighting sexism as a reality is, obviously, the kind of thing that is mirrored in the policies a politician advocates. Edward’s populist program, if it were implemented, would do much more for the women of America than Clinton’s continued Rubinomics.”
And it is also mirrored in the way he benefits from misogyny and doesn’t speak out against it.
While I admit that what happened with Clinton and what Edwards said afterward have been way overblown, the simple fact that he (and Obama, for that matter) benefit from the virulent and constant use of sexism to attack Clinton, while never saying anything against it, guarantee that I don’t care at all what they’re policies are.
I hope you don’t abandon Edwards because he made a stupid and sexist remark
I, in contrast, hope that you do. Edwards has repeatedly demonstrated that when stressed he will abandon women. I was just starting to warm to him, to think that maybe his treatment of Amanda was atypical, noting his reasonable position on Iraq…in short, thinking of him as someone I might vote for. No more. He’s revealed his true opinion and that opinion is that women aren’t his equals. If I were Elizabeth Edwards I’d be divorcing him now. I would urge any woman or pro-feminist man to abandon him entirely. He is not fit for public office.
“their” policies are.
Add to that what Wheatstraw said - she won’t be beaten because she’s not a good candidate, she’ll be knocked back because she’s female.
If Edwards is willing to ignore - or indeed fan those flames - that to get himself elected, he’s hardly an ally.
And I’m little grossed out at all the men who - once again - are telling women to shut up and put up.
Amanda wrote:
Are you really surprised that the politician you supported is a politician?
The same thing happened to Ed Muskie in the snows of New Hampshire in 1972, so it isn’t just sexism.
Still, Mr Edwards, Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are battling for the most important, most powerful job in the world — and they’re all winding up hammering on each other; the Republican candidates are doing the same thing to each other.
Melissa McEwan, as she so often does, nails it here.
roula,
Not exactly. It stood for the conflated Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte. When the bird hit the windsock over that one, either Amanda or Melissa was the first to write their names as one name because the press managed to turn them into a single person somehow, possibly through voodoo and an application of mustard greens and chicken bits. I couldn’t remember how Amanda had been spelling it, so I just made up my own conflation of names.
Can anyone find out exactly what question Edwards was asked that the quote was an answer to? I have seen several references that indicate that the quote was a part of a longer answer that did, in fact, indicate that he wasn’t able to comment directly on the Clinton moment, but then made a broader statement about campaigning.
I’m pretty sure Ezra has video.
Of course, that just shows that he was trying to have it both ways. He could have just stopped at “I won’t comment.”
And right there is what every discussion that even tangentially involves Hillary devolves into: the endlessly repeated meme of “OMG SHE TEH CALCULATING EVIL PERSON”. The right wing has, once again, shaped the language used in political discussion, and the ignorant have bought right into it.
Wow, changing your vote over that comment. Good to see that you are really focusing on the big issues and who would be the best leader to take this country forward.
conflated Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte.
oooh, thanks dbk. ha. i find that funny and am surprised i missed it back when all the exciting sisbangboom fracas was going on.
sorry amanda, not actually trivializing what you had to deal with, more the fact that your hire was even a story, much less a frothing-at-the-mouth one, in the first place.
and, When the bird hit the windsock over that one,
hee.
Basically, Edwards has revealed himself to be a Nice Guy(TM): Willing to pretend to be respectful as long as he thinks it might get him some…votes. But not really interested in what any woman thinks or feels, muchless equality.
Thing is, Dianne, I’m not so sure Obama isn’t also. Furthermore, I have serious disagreements with Clinton. So that doesn’t leave me with a whole lot, it would seem.
Amanda,
I would think a woman who was herself caught in a storm of media controversy drummed up by stupid ass reporters would weight oh, I don’t know, a millisecond, before jumping to a conclusion.
read what Edwards supposedly said. That’s not calling Hillary weak for tearing up - HE AGREED WITH HER. SHE SAID THE SAME THING!
It is tough to run for President. it is a very tough thing to do.
Candidates get tired. Sometimes they tear up. Sometimes they say things in a manner that ends up reading differently than the tired candidate intended.
Why is it sexist to hold Hillary Clinton to the same standard he would hold himself? If the question was “Senator, Governor Richardson choked up today talking about how tough it is to run for president, what do you think?”
And he answered the same way, would he be sexist then?
I realize this is the set of binoculars through which you have decided to view the world, but you just traded all the good things about Senator Edwards for one ill-timed comment.
Calling his sexist is a patently ridiculous statement. I urge you to reconsider your post.
By the way, do you support the position that being the President’s wife makes her more qualified in foreign affairs than her otherwise equally experienced Senatorial colleagues?
That’s the position she takes. Does calling that position the unequiocal BS it actually is make someone sexist?
“You’re likeable enough, Hillary.”
Why isn’t he taking heat from you for that snide remark?
zuzu @ 11:59:
It’s called coding and context, John. Go look into it and & let the grown-ups talk.
It’s called a Presidential campaign, and it’s pivoting on the same points and tactics every other previous election has.
That’s the context. The coding is inserted / applied by the reader in this instance, as any poststructuralist/feminist literary theorist knows.
Edwards got off the bus, answered in generalized campaign-speak–hadn’t even seen the vid–yet got hopped on anyway.
So– no need to be patronizing, zuzu. I can hold my own in any feminist debate or decoding, and have, from Gertrude Stein to Dworkin—though you’ve no basis for questioning my cred.
This is a great blog, and I credit Amanda and respect that. Doesn’t mean there’s anything to the claim at hand.
I’m not quite sure I understand the logic being applied to the Edwards campaign here. As I see it, Edwards went out and hired two well know, clever feminists to be his campaign’s bloggers. Clinton and Obama didn’t. Then, Edwards caved to a reactionary response, and the bloggers resigned. In response to that, did the Clinton or Obama campaigns come out and hire feminist bloggers? Did they throw down the gauntlet? No.
Now, in point of fact, all three Dem candidates really have said nothing about America’s complicity in the Talibanization of Iraq. I expect this - America looks at the rest of the world as a kind of mirror, in which it expects to see itself reflected - otherwise, Americans could care less. Still, that’s simply the vilest systematic attack on women over the past seven years. And it has been assisted materially by the 100-200 billion dollars being spent on Iraq. You can’t compartmentalize this out. That Clinton’s foreign policy crewe consists of sinister Lieberman Dems is a feminist issue, if feminism has any kind of international dimension at all., since it spells a lot of potential misery for a lot of women who have the misfortune to live in areas the U.S. plans to target. That her economics is more of the same Wall Street influenced b.s. is a feminist issue, too, naturally. There’s a reason that single women and divorced women shift Democratic - it is a jolt that makes one understand what the economic structure is all about. Clinton is not a monster - her health care plan is pretty good - but she has more than made it clear that triangulation is what we can expect from President Clinton. There is a reason that Bush feels comfortable about her as the Eisenhower to his Truman.
Clinton, as a woman, is subject to the same kind of sexist remarks as, say, Michelle Malkin. There are tons of ridiculous, deeply sexist and vile remarks that herald Malkin on almost any progressive blog comment thread that mentions her. The Nation actually sent a preppy crew of guys to harass her at a conservative convention in D.C. last year, and it was supposed to be the funniest thing ever for prog bloggers to link to the clip. It is the one time I ever had any sympathy with the usually revolting Malkin.
If Amanda switches to Obama, it is no tragedy. I think there is a bit of the ‘narcissism of small differences’ going on between Obama and Edwards. But I don’t think that switch is being made from a sexist to a non-sexist. It is a switch between styles of sexism - which is a structure as well as a feeling, or at least that is the message I’ve gotten from reading Amanda’s posts. My sense is that Edwards is more open to being influenced on this than the other candidates.
“That’s the position she takes. Does calling that position the unequiocal BS it actually is make someone sexist?”
We’ve just gone through 7-years figuring out that being the ex-Governor of Texas gives you no experience or understanding of foreign affairs.
We also know that being a political science professor and the Provost of Stanford University, as well as heading Chevron’s committee on public policy, serving on the board of directors for the Carnegie Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the Chevron Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Rand Corporation, the Transamerica Corporation, and other organizations, apparently doesn’t make your foreign affairs knowledge good enough to make you an effective Secretary of State.
So I’d say that “being the President’s wife”, as well as being a US Senator are as good a set of qualifications as anybody can expect, especially since her competition consists of the ex-mayor of NYC, a few other Senators, an actor/ex-Senator, etc.
Not a lot to choose from in any case…
Amanda,
I think you’ll agree that this:
Is pretty much the worst piece of crap ever to appear on this blog.
Q Grrrl, or whatever you are, think hard about your portrayal of Mrs. Edwards in that comment. If, in fact, you possess the ability to analyze and be self-critical, which I doubt, you will see that you have portrayed her as some sort of will-less object.
Talk about sexism.
So, Dan, you don’t think that the rights and respect of 51% of the citizens of this country counts as an issue?
Oh, I’m sure, like most women put into such a sexist predicament, that she had lots of choice. Right. Power and money are mighty coercive. But that’s a drift, and a dodge on your part, from the sexism the underpins John Edwards asking for this to happen in the first place. [shit, even on the off chance that it was Elizabeth’s decision in the first place, the man shows an amazing lack of perception as to the risk to her life and wellbeing. And he wants to go around talking about his healthcare platform. Fuckin’ hypocrite]
“Why is it sexist to hold Hillary Clinton to the same standard he would hold himself? If the question was “Senator, Governor Richardson choked up today talking about how tough it is to run for president, what do you think?”
And he answered the same way, would he be sexist then?”
Yes. Because, as it has been explained a million times on a million blogs, crying is framed as weakness which is framed as feminine. If Edwards had said the same about Richardson, he’d simply be tossing a dash of homophobia on top of the sexist crap pile.
“I realize this is the set of binoculars through which you have decided to view the world, but you just traded all the good things about Senator Edwards for one ill-timed comment.”
And the set of binoculars through which Dr. Frank views the world are crystal clear. *snort*
“Calling his sexist is a patently ridiculous statement. I urge you to reconsider your post. ”
Posting something this ignorant is patently ridiculous. I urge you to pull you head out of your ass.
The same thing happened to Ed Muskie in the snows of New Hampshire in 1972, so it isn’t just sexism.
Oh, dear God.
Let me try this again: the reason that Ed Muskie got raked over the coals is that he showed emotion and therefore revealed himself to be like a woman, i.e. overemotional and unreliable.
What happened to Muskie was completely about sexism. Because here’s the shocker — a big part of sexism is convincing men that there are “feminine” characteristics that they dare not exhibit, like sadness or frustration, or they will be thought to be less of a man.
How many times does this have to be freakin’ explained before it sinks in?
Q Grrl you are reprehensible.
You have no right to make these statements about Mrs. Edwards’s decision to have more children. She has repeatedly stated that she wanted more children.
She and her doctor have also repeartedly stated that her type of breast cancer was completely unrelated to hormone treatments.
So shut the hell up. you are embarrassing yourself.
Amanda, have you actually watched the clip of edwards’ response, as Coturnix suggested upthread?
Again, all he did was say it is hard to run for president and you have to be pretty tough to make it through.
Which is pretty much exactly what Hillary Clinton said.
But she managed, through her ever so realistic looking choke-up, to throw in all of her attacks on Obama.
I don’t thnk she looked weak. I think she looked extraordinaroly savvy. Whoever came up with it was a genius.
Thing is, Dianne, I’m not so sure Obama isn’t also.
Me either.
Furthermore, I have serious disagreements with Clinton.
Me too.
So that doesn’t leave me with a whole lot, it would seem.
Life sucks, doesn’t it? But if the perfect presidential candidate isn’t running, and s/he isn’t, then you can only choose between the available choices. I, for one, would not call you anything nasty if you decided that Edwards’ descent into sexism was the lesser of multiple evils and voted for him anyway. It’s just that that’s not what I’m going to do.
“if you decided that Edwards’ descent into sexism was the lesser of multiple evils and voted for him anyway. It’s just that that’s not what I’m going to do.”
Me neither. But I agree with the basic premise. We always have to pick the lesser of multiple evils. I’m just very sick of having to pick the one that represents me the least in favor the “correct” choice -which always seems to be Mr. White Christian Male.
The fact that Obama has not said ONE WORD about the sexist tone of all this says a lot to me about him. Silence=Collusion. To remain silent and to not use this as a springboard discussion about sexism shows poor leadership from Obama. The only way he will ever get my vote is by speaking out against this shit. But he DID say he doesn’t want to fight the old battles, and unfortunately sexism is one of the oldest battles of all times.
Dianne and Betty, good points from both of you. As I mentioned earlier, I’m probably still leaning toward Edwards, but I think I get what both of you mean here.
“I told you that America is far more sexist than racist, which is why Hillary could never win. Progressives are not much better than the general population in this regard.”
Seems odd then that she ever dominated in the polls. As a general matter both the criminal justice system and the educational system would disagree with you.
What bugs me completely is how this entire discussion is based on a false premise. An ABC news clip in which Clinton got choked up for a second, no more than McCain, Obama or anyone else has gotten, is playing as “Hilary Cried”.
She didn’t. That’s a gross exaggeration.
But rather than linking to the actual footage and discussing the truth of the initial assertion (Hillary Cried) blogs and media alike skip to a discussoin of the underlying issues, which provides tacit suport for an untrue premise.
That a typical moment of candor could be exaggerated until it is Ed Muskie weeping is, in itself, sexist. But key to this discussion is how it isn’t true. I’m greatly disturbed at how much of this debate appears to assume it is, because those involved haven’t bothered to go to the source.
“But rather than linking to the actual footage and discussing the truth of the initial assertion (Hillary Cried) blogs and media alike skip to a discussoin of the underlying issues, which provides tacit suport for an untrue premise.”
I heard she also claimed to have invented the Internet. But then I heard that Giuliani said there were ten other airliners that were going plow into New York skyscrapers on 9/11 but he shot them down while flying his F-14 fighter, and only two escaped. And Thompson said he earned an official “license to kill” while acting in In the Line of Fire. And Huckabee learned how to walk on water from Jesus himself.
I don’t know what to think, but I guess if the rumor is out there, it must be true…
The problem with “coding and context” is that some people can read coding and context into everything. It’s a tautological argument.
Hillary has made toughness one of her major issues. She is the one advancing the claptrap that she’s the one who can take on the right wing noise machine, “I’m your girl”, she’s battle-hardened by years of fighting the GOP, etc.
A large part of her campaign has been focused on what a warrior she is. She’s been the one extolling traditional masculine qualities. It’s fair to judge her based on her own rhetoric and how it matches her actions.
She’s made it an issue.
I’m behind and confess, I have not read all of the 200 comments, but had to throw in my pennies.
ARRRRGGGHHH! I’m not too thrilled about the international (read - war and US aggression) stances taken by Clinton.
But …
Dammit!
I’m so sick of how “the woman” gets treated in politics and the stupid media, I’m ready to vote for Clinton on the basis of her gender and the rest of her policies.
Woman make up a majority of the population and can hardly get elected to dogcatcher. Ridiculous.
apologize for the rant, but, jeeez!
Not that anyone will read this I am so far down the chain . . .but I disagree with the central analysis. John Edwards would have said the same thing about Obama if he had gotten choked up. It may be ooprtunism, but what candidate isn’t taking shots when they can. If you just read or listen to what Edwards said there is NOTHING offensive about it. There may be an innuendo, but I took it as a way to deflect the stupid question in the first place. Why is anyone asking Edwards what he thinks about Clinton anyway!! Asking him implies a lot more sexist attitudes than his answer.
You know, what’s really amazing to me is that y’all have so seriously limited yourselves. Granted, you’ll never vote for a Republican, but you have a perfect candidate running, who has the experience Mrs Clinton only claims to have, and whose policy positions are pretty much the same as those of the “top three.” (Face it; if the Democrats are not all on the exact same page, they are at least reading the same chapter.)
But Bill Richardson, a former congressman, former ambassador and trade negotiator, and a sucessful governor (really, everything you’d want in a presidential candidate) is going absolutely nowhere.
He has the experience the top three lack, and he doesn’t have the big negatives. If he won, the Republicans might not like his policies, but the visceral hatred of the Clinton years wouldn’t be there.
…says the guy whose brain can’t wrap itself around statements like “Women’s bodies really do belong to them. No, really, they do.”
But Bill Richardson, a former congressman, former ambassador and trade negotiator, and a sucessful governor (really, everything you’d want in a presidential candidate) is going absolutely nowhere.
That’s because we remember Wen Ho Lee and how Richardson rolled over and let the Republicans in Congress (especially Christopher Cox) romp all over him in the name of “national security.”
Most people feel compelled to back one of the top 3 candidates.
I’d take Kucinich, Dodd or Richardson over any of the top 3 easily. That more progressives aren’t behind Kucinich is something I’ll never get.
You’ll take Kucinich? Nice choice because he’s so tight with scumbag Larry Flynt.
“…but the visceral hatred of the Clinton years wouldn’t be there.”
Oh, I wouldn’t count our friends in the Reichwing out, no matter who gets elected. I’m sure they’ll come up with some “really good” reason for hating the winner (assuming they’re a Democrat)…
Dana,
If you told me the sky was blue, I’d assume it was puke fucking green. Nothing personal, mind you, it’s just that you’re a troglodyte.
Margalis,
Kucinich might have some good views, but the fact that he even considered running with Racist Ron Paul as his running mate is a major turn-off for me. That might also be why many of us aren’t behind him.
Hell, they’ll come up with a reason to hate a Republican, if the Republican isn’t far-right enough for them. They actually try to push the meme that Mike “Let’s Turn America into Jesusland” Huckabee is “liberal” because he won’t slash taxes down to nothing.
damian beat me to it. i was a kucinich supporter until he declared himself an ally of ron paul. fuck that shit.
watching msnbc primary coverage, what exactly is it about chris matthews that makes you want to stab him/something/your own ears and eyes out?
I’m not a single issue voter, and who a candidate is friends with makes almost no difference to me.
I find this kind of reasoning incredibly reductive, and the same attacks could be made against any candidate. Obama is friends with an ex-gay homophobe, Hillary is friends with a ton of Washington power brokers, etc. If being buds with Larry Flynt is Kucinich’s worst sin then he’s the second coming of Christ.
Kucinich/Ron Paul represents exactly what Obama says he would do: work on the things we agree on. Kucinich and RP disagree on many things, I wouldn’t expect Kucinich to adopt Paul’s social policies, but they are both anti-imperialists and have a lot of respect for the Constitution and the law.
The intersection of their views is very appealing. If our country did only things that both Ron Paul and Kucinich agreed were good ideas we’d probably be in a much better place.
I would never vote for RP for President or as the VP of another Republican but honestly the idea of RP for VP with Kucinich sounds like a wonderful idea because while each is a little crazy their intersection is exactly what we need.
Anti-imperialism, ending the “drug war”, rethinking the “war on terror”, restoring basic civil liberties…um yes please.
Maybe OT by now, but I want to stick up for what Q Grrl said. Sounds plausible. Intoning that Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer had nothing to do with being pumped up with fertility hormones … yeah, maybe. Some breast tumors are identified as estrogen-dependent and some aren’t, but nobody knows which of them come from artificial hormones. Fertility drugs are one massive uncontrolled, unsupervised experiment.
Meanwhile, her husband had sued hospitals and drug companies for years. He knew how indifferent the medical establishment is to the welfare of women patients. And he at least went along with the hormone chug-a-lug into his wife’s bloodstream, even if he didn’t order it.
Do you have any information to go on besides the ABC blog story? Because as far as I’m concerned, if you don’t then there’s nothing here. The reporter never said what question he/she asked of Edwards. All there is to read is that Edwards wasn’t sympathetic.
So on the basis of this, you and a half-dozen other bloggers who ought to know better go off on a tear about how Edwards is a mysoginistic prick?
As far as I’m concerned, this entire story was generated out of nothing. I haven’t read this blog very often, and if this is an example of the skepticism and reasoning you apply to a story, then it looks like I wasn’t missing much.
Do you have anything besides this ABC blog article as a basis for your opinion? If not, then as far as I’m concerned, you’re not applying anywhere near enough skepticism to this story. On the face of it, it appears that you’ve just taken some reporter’s perhaps faulty impression of a conversation and turned it into a slag-fest.
I wrote a lot more than this before, but this POS software blew away the text. Read here, then comment either place.
Do you have anything besides this ABC blog article as a basis for your opinion? If not, then as far as I’m concerned, you’re not applying anywhere near enough skepticism to this story. On the face of it, it appears that you’ve just taken some reporter’s perhaps faulty impression of a conversation and turned it into a slag-fest.
I wrote a lot more than this before, but this POS software blew away the text. Read here, then comment either there or here.
Do you have anything besides this ABC blog article as a basis for your opinion? If not, then as far as I’m concerned, you’re not applying anywhere near enough skepticism to this story. On the face of it, it appears that you’ve just taken some reporter’s perhaps faulty impression of a conversation and turned it into a slag-fest.
I wrote a lot more than this before, but this POS software blew away the text. Read here, then comment either place.
Silly though I believe that trying to capitalize on an emotional moment is, I’m not sure that you can really send it as misogeny. Remeber Edmund Muskie’s emotional moment in 1972? Last time I looked Muskie was male.
Fight your battles where they occur.
If that’s what Edwards was doing, raj, then you’re right, it was silly. It wouldn’t be his first silly moment in this campaign, either. Unfortunately, given what we’ve been told, I don’t even think we can assume that.
Q Grrl @ 2:45pm:
The science is murky and yours is a helluva characterization.
I think about the kind of person Elizabeth Edwards is, and it doesn’t fit. (His Southern persona is a bit alien even to me until I adjust my reading.)
You deny Elizabeth valid status as fully actualized adult woman able to make her own decisions just as fast as you deny John Edwards a deeply felt, valid and healthy emotional life. How very feminist.
Some folks go to great lengths to get pregnant and I can’t say I understand it. But it’s a marriage and like abortion, who’s in your bed, how many kids you have and when, it’s just not my business.
Hasn’t Jane Hamsher been vilifying everybody for attacking fellow Dems? Aren’t you with the program?
Mnemosyne @ Jan 8, 2008 @ 2:49 pm
The same thing happened to Ed Muskie in the snows of New Hampshire in 1972, so it isn’t just sexism.
Oh, dear God.
Let me try this again: the reason that Ed Muskie got raked over the coals is that he showed emotion and therefore revealed himself to be like a woman, i.e. overemotional and unreliable.
What happened to Muskie was completely about sexism . . . . .
How many times does this have to be freakin’ explained before it sinks in?
You never had to explain it. Everybody here knows that.
I just got through explaining upthread that, yes, men and Ed Muskie too, are subject to sexism. But citing Muskie does not deny sexism exists, NOR does it imply that Hey, everybody deals with it so it must be ok.
The Muskie episode is relevant b/c sexism and related valid issues are prevalent. Everybody faces that. It’s a reality to be dealt with. The question is, how? And how well?
After all, it’s only the second of fifty primaries– : still a long way to go, you know ’strength’ will come up as a valid issue & positive trait held by both genders, and national security is on the table. Talking about it is not sexist–even when John Edwards does it.
So the key, & the interesting thing is: What else is going on here? A lot:
1. Muskie and Tweety and Hillary’s emotional vid does not speak to Edwards’ general words or indicate some 3rd-party sexism on his part, nor employ an outrageous coded subtext.
It’s a campaign. Talk of ’strength’ is SOP; strength is not confined to one gender.
2. He’s gonna talk about resolve and strength because it’s in the job description and they’re positive qualities of men and women.
3.a. Eyewitnesses swear melting snowflakes only made it look like Muskie was crying. I didn’t see Clinton’s tears.
3.b. Buying into the Crying Frame is a huge mistake, the hubbub plays into the bullys’ hands. And is a losing proposition. It is also a lie:
4. It doesn’t work. PARTS of the electorate responds ‘weak like a woman.’ But many respond positively, as New Hampshire just proved!
5. More is at work here than sexism. When the chips are down, does a leader/Prznt/partner relentlessly stick to business? Or are their feelings their paramount concern? Emotions are great! But plenty of women keep them in check and in perspective until they finish up Job One. Voters intuitively and consciously know that. That’s valid. So maybe nailing Boehner & Rudolph G for crying instead of falling into the defensive trap is a better route.
6. Attempting to wage a wider war on systemic, ingrained sexism, culture-wide, in order to win a national election, is to lose the White House. It is tactically unsound and not bright.
“I’m not sure that you can really send it as misogeny. Remeber Edmund Muskie’s emotional moment in 1972? Last time I looked Muskie was male.”
You’re right, and for the upteenth time, dsmissing him as a girly man who cried over a woman–a WOMAN!!! had nothing to do with sexism.
“Fight your battles where they occur.”
Thanks daddy.
“You deny Elizabeth valid status as fully actualized adult woman able to make her own decisions just as fast as you deny John Edwards a deeply felt, valid and healthy emotional life. How very feminist.”
How can you blame her, John? All her life she’s been going along thinking she undersands feminism and sexism, without ever once being exposed to johnsturgeon, world’s leading expert on feminist, to explain to her what a stupid little girl she is. How can you expect her feeble brain to comprehend without you here to explain it all? fter all, you can hold your own with anyone, but we just can’t handle it. And unlike you, some of our best frends may not have been feminists! Help us john, explain our lives in a way that our feeble minds can process. And I reallu object to zuzu traeting you condescendingly–I mean your creds speak for themselves even if you didn’t have all these feminist friends, I mean parents
“Attempting to wage a wider war on systemic, ingrained sexism, culture-wide, in order to win a national election, is to lose the White House. It is tactically unsound and not bright.”
Well, that’s us girlz, doh! Not bright kind of defines us. And we will go on thinking we matter. Hell, we might go on thinking we’re the Democrats’ most numerically significant constituency and all. We’re so dumb, but we listen when daddy explains it all to us, thankfully.