In yesterday’s reminder I talked about the male-left shell game, the pitch to women that their issues will be adequately addressed in the general (male-run) revolution. Didn’t happen with the French Revolution, didn’t happen with 20th century socialism, didn’t happen with 1960s radicals. And it’s not going to happen with Barack Obama.
That pro-Obama women should even imagine that it will is testament to women’s enormous capacity for self-delusion. This is a coping mechanism, of course; in a woman-hating society, women must be able to block out the misogyny at least partially in order to stay sane. We see that perfectly with the Obama campaign, which has unleashed the most vicious bout of public woman-hating I’ve ever seen in this country. And yet there are women who simply refuse to see it, who persuade themselves that somehow this band of sexists and misogynists will have their interests at heart.
There were two historic candidates for President this year: the first viable female candidate, and the first viable African-American candidate. One of these was greeted as a transcendent historic figure, a symbol of our nation’s redemption. The other was treated as a cunt.
Barack Obama deliberately exploited the strains of misogyny in our culture to defeat Hillary Clinton. That’s important, because it’s the key thing that many women still refuse to see. They want to imagine that somehow the misogyny that saturated Obama’s campaign was just an incidental byproduct of our society, nothing specifically to do with Obama or his campaign. This is self-delusion. This is denial.
From the beginning, Obama’s campaign exploited the 15 years of rightwing misogyny that had painted Hillary Clinton as a monstrous she-devil. Hillary Clinton was “one of the most secretive politicians in America today” said the Obama campaign. She was controlling and abusive. She and Bill were corrupt moral bankrupts who tried to profit from 9-11. Remember all those scandals from the 90s? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And what really happened with Vince Foster, anyway? And how about the sex angle? Is Hillary some kind of lesbo or frigid ballbuster or what? As Michelle Obama herself said, if she can’t keep her own house together, how’s she going to keep the White House together?
The tone was set by Obama, and his enablers amplified the message:
Hillary Clinton is a bitch. A big ol’ bitchy bitch. And a cunt. A “big fucking whore.” Fortunately, you can “call a woman anything.” She’s “Nurse Ratched.” She’ll castrate you if she gets a chance. She would like that. She’s a “She-Devil.” She’s a madam, and her daughter’s a whore. She’s frigid, and she can’t give head. She’s a “She-Devil.” A lesbian. A nag. When things get tough, she cries like a big dumb GIRL. In fact, she’s just that — a “little girl.” In FACT, she wants to “cry her way to the White House.” To be, ahem, “Crybaby-in-Chief.” That proves that she’s not tough enough. But she’s also not feminine enough. She’s “screechy.” She’s an “aging, resentful female.” She’s “Sister Frigidaire.” She really ought to quit running for President and stick to housework. She basically spent her entire time as First Lady going to tea parties. She’s a monster who just won’t die. In fact, she really should just die. You can buy a urinal target with her face on it to express what you really think of her. OMG she’s got claws! She’s crazy. In fact, she’s a lunatic. She’s petty and vindictive and entitled. She’s a washed-up old hag. She’s “everybody’s first wife standing outside probate court.” She’s a “scolding mother.” She’s shrill… shrill… shrill. She can’t take it when people are mean to her. She’s a “hellish housewife.” She’s Tanya Harding. She CAN’T be President, what with the mood swings and the menses. Any woman who votes for her is voting with her vagina, not her brain. Women only like Hillary because she’s a fellow Vagina-American. And because they vote with their feelings. Frankly, anyone who still thinks we need “feminine role models” should get over it and move on, already. Oh, and men who support her are castratos in the eunuch chorus. You shouldn’t make her President because she wants it too much. She’s totally just banking on support from ugly old feminists. And she looooves to “play the victim.” She cackles! And cackles. And cackles. It’s like she’s a witch or something! She’s definitely “witchy.” And now you can buy her cackle as your ring tone. Her voice, too, is “grating”–like “fingernails on a blackboard” to “some men.” She’s hiding behind her gender. She isn’t a “convincing mom” because she’s too strident. She never did anything on her own. Her husband keeps her on a leash. She hates men. Her campaign is a “catfight.” She makes people want to kill themselves, is like a “domineering mother,” and is cold. And OMG she has boobies! All of which are reasons to hate her. (And boy, could I go on.)
Oh, and if you even mention any of this, you’re either silly or a bad person.
It’s at about this point that the denialists start insisting that Obama can’t control his followers, and his campaign isn’t responsible for what people in the media or the netroots say. But remember, the following two things cannot both be true:
1. Obama, with the help of David “the Astroturf King” Axelrod, has run a brilliant internet/grassroots/media campaign, shaping the discourse in the netroots and the media throughout the election season.
2. Obama has no knowledge of, or control over, the virulent misogyny that his supporters have displayed on virtually every pro-Obama outpost in the netroots and the media.
I wish now that I had saved the hundreds of comments from Obama trolls that I have deleted from my moderation queue over the past year. I should have kept them as an exhibit. I have never in my life — in my whole long life — been subjected to so much vitriol. I thought the MRAs (Mens Rights Activists) were bad, but Obamabots are worse. They’re like MRAs on crack. And every other Hillary blogger will tell you the same story. It is impossible to endure months of this without wondering what the hell kind of movement it is that attracts these people. The old “Obama can’t contol all his supporters” line starts to wear a little thin. Okay, granted, he can’t personally control all his supporters, but why are his supporters like this?
The plain, hard truth is that Obama never reined in his supporters because they were doing exactly what he wanted them to. Hillary’s destruction meant his triumph, and if harnessing misogyny was the way to destroy her, then fine. Think carefully about what Obama himself did — and did not do:
1. Exploited 15 years of misogynistic wingnut smears against Hillary throughout his campaign;
2. Never once reprimanded his supporters for their misogyny;
3. Never once acknowledged or denounced the sexism in the campaign;
4. Never once praised Hillary’s historic achievement — until after she’d conceded (while Hillary, in contrast, never failed to applaud Obama’s historic achievement);
5. Referred to Hillary as a “conventional” candidate, echoing the sentiments of his mentor Jeremiah Wright that women have never been discriminated against and a woman President would not represent any particular significance;
6. Never once denounced or expressed regret for the vicious personal insults of Hillary expressed by his good friends, Wright and Pfleger;
7. Delivered a major address on rooting out the bigotry that still exists in the black community (homophobia, anti-semitism) but never once mentioned sexism;
8. Consistently avoided any acknowledgment of sexism or of women’s rights in his speeches;
9. Employed a campaign manager who ridiculed Hillary for “crying” in New Hampshire “about her appearance”;
10. Consistently used sexist language to refer to Hillary — claws, tea parties, periodic moods, feeling down, “likable enough,” etc.;
11. Said Hillary ought to be “allowed” to stay in the race as long as she felt like it;
12. Strode into his Iowa victory party to the strains of “99 Problems (But A Bitch Ain’t One)”;
13. Gave Hillary the finger when she bested him in debate;
14. Stated that women in the pro-choice movement have been guilty of not treating abortion as the serious moral issue that it is;
15. Used terms like “cutie” and “sweetie” when addressing women — even Senator Barbara Boxer;
16. Said that women who were upset about the treatment of Hillary needed to “get over it” and refused to do anything to reach out to them;
17. Made condescending noises about how women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions just because they’re “feeling blue”;
18. Jokingly reprimanded Bernie Mac for a sexist gag and then said, “I’m just messing with you, man!”;
19. Never distanced himself from prominent sexist supporters like Ludacris and Sean Combs, even when they produced songs and videos incredibly insulting to Hillary;
20. Invited sexist blowhard extraordinare Larry Summers to be a senior adviser to his campaign (and may possibly make him Secretary of the Treasury), a fitting follow-up to his support for another sexist Harvard alumnus, John Roberts.
Meanwhile David Axelrod’s astruturf army consistently stoked the fires of misogyny online. Sites like DailyKos and TPM and the Huffington Post became unofficial mouthpieces for the campaign. DailyKos was the ideal staging area for the ugliest smears, a place where nasty rumors could be planted. TPM handled the more reputable stuff, the “senior advisers say” stories. Huffington Post became a soapbox for C-list celebrities and washed-up politicians who wanted to express their personal feelings about just what a lying monstrous cunt Hillary Clinton really was.
“I’d rather vote for a black man than a menopausal woman,” said one young white male Obama supporter to a Hillary supporter. Because gawd, what’s more repellent than a menopausal woman?
The answer, as we would soon find out: a pre-menopausal woman.
To be continued in the next reminder.
Posted by Violet in Barack Obama, Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, If you vote for Obama this is what you're voting for
