When Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign, the Obama side was left with a giant weapon and no enemy to use it on. The giant weapon, of course, was the misogyny machine they’d built to destroy Hillary (see Reminder #13).
Meanwhile, Democratic women got busy convincing themselves that the abuse meted out to Hillary was for her alone; that it wasn’t representative of any kind of general attitude towards women, and certainly not representative of the Obama camp’s attitude towards women. Oh, heavens no. Of course not! There was just something about Hillary.
Then Sarah Palin showed up.
When McCain announced Palin as his running mate, I thought the election was over. A lot of people did. Palin is an intrinsically appealing figure: personally charismatic, accomplished, impressive in a Harry Truman kind of way, and, best of all, a feminist (albeit a conservative one). She’s got a stay-at-home husband and an outspoken commitment to gender equality, but she’s also a Christian and a conservative Republican with a small-town working-class background. How many demographics is that?
The Obama campaign saw and understood the threat. Fortunately for them, they had that giant misogyny-machine weapon lying around gathering dust. What good is a weapon if you don’t use it?
Barack Obama’s team set out to crucify Sarah Palin the same way they crucified Hillary Clinton, but more quickly and thoroughly; time was of the essence. The smears started on DailyKos — the same place where so many of the smears against Hillary had been planted — with lurid speculation on Sarah Palin’s pregnancies, her daughter’s pregnancy, the potential for incest-derived genetic mutations within the Palin family uteri, and so forth. TPM segued from “senior advisers say” hit jobs on Hillary to “senior advisers say” hit jobs on Palin. Huffington Post, the home of twits ridiculing Hillary Clinton as a vicious lying bitch who ought to be killed, now became the home of twits ridiculing Sarah Palin as a stupid cunt who ought to be raped. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign pushed a laundry list of lies about Sarah Palin’s political beliefs, crafted to make her seem crazily right-wing, to alienate potential women voters, and even to justify the intrusions into the Palin family’s private life (the lie that Sarah Palin is opposed to contraception and sex education, for example, was used to justify the grotesque obsession with Bristol Palin’s pregnancy).
Consider, for example, the rape kit smear. It’s been thoroughly debunked, of course, but the damage it did was tremendous. And that’s damage it was designed to do. The rape kit smear was pushed by the Obama campaign itself, with conference calls to reporters urging them to follow the story. It was expressly designed to alienate women voters in particular; after all, there are few issues more raw for women than sexual violence. The Obama camp’s behavior in perpetrating that smear reminds me of their similar role in the RFK smear: both were profoundly cynical, morally bankrupt attempts to exploit people’s deepest fears.
Pause for a moment and think about that; think about the supreme irony of Obama using a lie about rape, of all things, to trick women voters into believing that he, not the feminist woman he’s slandering, is their champion.
But there’s more. The Obama campaign ventriloquized the women’s groups they’d co-opted to publish a constant stream of misinformation about Sarah Palin, as in this widely-circulated email (annotated by me):
Perhaps like us, as American women, you share the fear of what Ms. Palin and her professed beliefs and proven record could lead to for ourselves and for our present or future daughters. To date, she is against sex education [false], birth control [false], the pro-choice platform [true, but more nuanced than reported], environmental protection [false], alternative energy development [false], freedom of speech [false], gun control [true], the separation of church and state [false], and polar bears [debatable].
That’s a whole lotta lies in one sentence, and the amazing thing is that they’re all so easily debunked. But then, none of the smears the Obama camp pushed against Hillary were true either. They were all easily debunked, and non-insane people kept trying to debunk them. But it didn’t matter. Truth is irrelevant. All that matters is if the mud will stick.
The “woman-to-woman” email continues:
First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She does not demonstrate or uphold our interests as American women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket could win over women voters. We want to disagree, publicly.
If you agree that Palin is an irresponsible, even dangerous, choice for VP, please consider participating in this drive. Gentlemen, send this to the women you know and care for. I know it’s tough to understand the way this choice is impacting women, but I have never seen so many women so outraged, angry and distraught in my entire life. We’d like our voices heard.
If you agree, PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY! If you send this to 20 people in the next hour, you could be blessed with a country that takes your concerns seriously. Stranger things have happened.
I think Barack Obama’s next book should be called “The Audacity of Ratfucking.” Have you ever seen the beat? According to this truly audacious con job, the way for women’s voices to be heard is for them to put their trust in the man who waged a campaign of relentless slander and misogyny against the first woman to have a real shot at the presidency, the man who is now slandering even more egregiously the first woman to run on the Republican presidential ticket.
But neutralizing the power of those milestones was critical. There is room for only one history-making candidacy in Barack Obama’s world, and that’s his.
Think about it from his perspective: going into the 2008 election, Democrats had a choice between nominating the first woman or the first African-American. It was in Obama’s interest to neutralize the appeal of “the first woman president,” and to simultaneously magnify the potential resonance of his own nomination. To that end he wrapped himself in the aura of the Civil Rights movement and tried to sound like Martin Luther King; at the same time, he and his aides utterly refused to acknowledge that Hillary was anything other than a “conventional candidate” (in Obama’s own words). Nothing historic there, nosirree. Meanwhile his mud merchants were busy turning Hillary into a laughingstock, an anything-but-inspiring figure of ridicule, the kind of woman people would be ashamed to support. The kind of woman that women would be ashamed to support. Nothing to be proud of there, nosirree. Yes, of course we’d like a woman president, but not this one because she’s a vicious lying cunt.
And then he did the same thing to Sarah Palin. Palin is very different from Hillary, so a different set of sexist tropes were used. Where Hillary was a ball-busting bitch, Palin is an airhead fuck bunny. Where Hillary was every(male)body’s know-it-all nagging first wife, Palin is a beauty queen bimbo. Hillary was a vicious lying cunt, but Palin is a stupid cunt. The result is the same: a laughingstock, an anything-but-inspiring figure of ridicule, the kind of woman people would be ashamed to support. The kind of woman that women would be ashamed to support. Yes, of course we’d like a woman vice-president, but not this one because she’s a stupid cunt.
Did it work? Did he convince you? Are you ashamed to support Sarah Palin? Were you ashamed to support Hillary Clinton? Are you out and proud about voting for the history-making Barack Obama, the Lightworker, the bringer of hope and change for everyone except women, who are still lying, vicious, stupid cunts?
Because if you vote for Obama, that’s what you’re voting for.
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?
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.
I’ve been reading other discussion boards where women are telling one another not to give to their usual causes, like Planned Parenthood, instead give more to Obama so he can win and take care of EVERYTHING. It’s like they’re preparing for the rapture.
Ah, yes. This has happened before. It is the standard answer to women’s liberation from the Left-Wing Division of Patriarchy, Inc.: “Now, now, shouldn’t we all be working for the common good? Shouldn’t you be worrying about things that effect everybody? Shouldn’t we all? Just trust us guys to handle things and you’ll get a fair deal.”
This is a promise, I note, that has never been kept.
The most salient instance of this particular shell game occurred early in the 20th century, when the socialist era in Europe got underway. The socialist movement theoretically embraced gender equality, and the pitch to women was that they should abandon their own movement and instead devote everything to socialism, because Socialism Would Fix Everything. ( “And shouldn’t we all be working for the common good?”) Activist women bought into this dream to a very large extent, and the women’s movement essentially died.
Socialism did not fix everything. It most definitely did not fix gender inequality. The real nature of women’s oppression was never examined, and the men running socialism had no real desire to give up their own privilege (or even examine it, for that matter). The women’s movement lost decades while leftist women put everything on hold for the sake of socialism, and they got nothing in return. That’s why the Second Wave of feminism was necessary — and it was 50 years in coming.
In communist countries where socialist philosophy became state policy, the situation, paradoxically, was even worse. In the Soviet Union, for example, the policy was for women to be equally employed in most of the same professions as men. But they still had to do all the housework and childcare. And of course they were still subject to the social bias and abuse that women endure in all patriarchal cultures. Russian women got the burden of equality — having to work the same hard jobs as men — but none of the benefits.
The Second Wave of feminism that occurred in the non-communist West was blocked from happening in Eastern Europe, and not just because of restrictions on political freedom. The Second Wave of feminism is still being blocked in those countries. That’s because the consensus there is still that socialism took care of all that stuff — women are officially equal, are they not? — and so the actual nature of women’s oppression still remains unexamined and unchallenged. The rates of domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, forced prostitution, and other abuse and exploitation in Russia are appalling. Public attitudes towards gender roles are literally decades behind even our own sick society’s.
Back in 1970, Robin Morgan (still in possession of her faculties then — which is a whole separate freaky sub-plot but damn, she was one hell of a feminist back in the day) wrote Goodbye To All That:
And that’s what I wanted to write about–the friends, brothers, lovers in the counterfeit male-dominated Left. The good guys who think they know what Women’s Lib, as they so chummily call it, is all about–who then proceed to degrade and destroy women by almost everything they say and do: The cover on the last issue of Rat (front and back). The token pussy power or clit militancy articles. The snide descriptions of women staffers on the masthead. The little jokes, the personal ads, the smile, the snarl. No more, brothers. No more well-meaning ignorance, no more cooptation, no more assuming that this thing we’re all fighting for is the same; one revolution under man, with liberty and justice for all. No more.
**
Goodbye to all that shit that sets women apart from women; shit that covers the face of any Weatherwoman which is the face of any Manson Slave which is the face of Sharon Tate which is the face of Mary Jo Kopechne which is the face of Beulah Saunders, which is the face of me which is the face of Pat Nixon which is the face of Pat Swinton. In the dark we are all the same–and you better believe it: we’re in the dark, baby. (Remember the old joke: Know what they call a black man with a Ph.D.? A nigger. Variations: Know what they call a Weatherwoman? A heavy cunt. Know what they call a hip revolutionary woman? A groovy cunt. Know what they call a radical militant feminist? A crazy cunt. Amerika is a land of free choice–take your pick of titles.) Left Out, my sister—don’t you see? Goodbye to the illusion of strength when you run hand in hand with your oppressors; goodbye to the dream that being in the leadership collective will get you anything but gonorrhea.
**
I once said, I’m a revolutionary, not just a woman, and knew my own lie even as I said the words. The pity of that statement’s eagerness to be acceptable to those whose revolutionary zeal no one would question, i.e., any male supremacist in the counterleft. But to become a true revolutionary one must first become one of the oppressed (not organize or educate or manipulate them, but become one of them)–or realize that you are one already. No woman wants that. Because that realization is humiliating, it hurts. It hurts to understand that at Woodstock or Altamont a woman could be declared uptight or a poor sport if she didn’t want to be raped. It hurts to learn that the sisters still in male-Left captivity are putting down the crazy feminists to make themselves look unthreatening to our mutual oppressors. It hurts to be pawns in those games. It hurts to try and change each day of your life right now—not in talk, not in your head, and not only conveniently out there in the Third World (half of which are women) or the black or brown communities (half of which are women) but in your own home, kitchen, bed. No getting away, no matter how else you are oppressed, from the primary oppression of being female in a patriarchal world. It hurts to hear that the sisters in the Gay Liberation Front, too, have to struggle continuously against the male chauvinism of their gay brothers. It hurts that Jane Alpert was cheered when rapping about imperialism, racism, the Third World, and All Those Safe Topics but hissed and booed by a movement crowd of men who wanted none of it when she began to talk about Women’s Liberation. The backlash is upon us.
They tell us the alternative is to hang in there and struggle, to confront male domination in the counterleft, to fight beside or behind or beneath our brothers–to show ‘em we’re just as tough, just as revolushunerry, just as whatever‐image‐they‐now‐want‐of‐us‐as‐once‐they‐wanted‐us‐
to‐be‐feminine‐and‐keep‐up‐the‐home‐fire‐burning. They will bestow titular leadership on our grateful shoulders, whether it’s being a token woman on the Movement Speakers Bureau Advisory Board, or being a Conspiracy groupie or one of the respectable chain-swinging Motor City Nine. Sisters all, with only one real alternative: to seize our own power into our own hands, all women, separate and together, and make the Revolution the way it must be made—no priorities this time, no suffering group told to wait until after.
Sound familiar? It should. It should all sound very, very familiar. In fact, I recommend you read (or re-read) the whole piece for a full-body frisson of déjà vu.
An Obama supporter represented his movement perfectly when he snarked on Tom Watson’s blog in June:
Oh well who cares if no majority Caucasian country in the history of the western world has ever nominated a black man before. It’s no biggie, some dude’s wife is much more monumental.
ABC and Politico are reporting on the list of names being bruited about for Obama’s cabinet. Jesus! Look at these people:
Larry Summers, sexist blowhard extraordinaire, is said to be a favorite for Treasury Secretary. And so now we know the answer the question: what happens to a male chauvinist pig who abuses his academic position and insults half the human race by peddling noxious lies that women’s brains are genetically inferior? He gets rewarded by Barky Opossum with a Cabinet position! Whee! Unity ponies for everyone!
Austan Goolsbee, the free-market anti-regulation crypto-Republican goofball, is slated for White House economic adviser. So that’s how Obama plans to fix the economic crisis.
David Axelrod will of course be something: “senior adviser,” “sandal-bearer to the king,” whatever title they come up with. Axelrod is the chief architect of Obama’s entire scorched-earth campaign, which featured the public crucifixion and sexist smearing of not one but two women candidates, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. What a bringer of hope and change he will be to our nation! My god, I bet a rainbow will permanently hover over Axelrod’s office in the West Wing and kittens will just spontaneously appear whenever he walks in the room.
Incompetent Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is on the short list for Attorney General, which makes me wonder if Obama and Patrick chipped in together for some kind of package deal with Axelrod. Obama’s entire propaganda line (hope and change, etc.) was an ad campaign dreamed up by Axelrod and first used by Patrick. Obama bought the whole shtick second-hand — even the text of the speeches — and we can only hope he got a good used-car price on the deal. I see no earthly reason for Patrick to be in an Obama administration, unless maybe that was in the fine print back when Obama purchased the rights to Patrick’s speeches.
But the number one pick for Attorney General isn’t Deval Patrick, but Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. That’s right, Tim Kaine: the pro-life, anti-abortion, pro-abstinence-education Tim Kaine. For Attorney General. Hey, you Stockholm Syndrome ladies over at NOW — are you paying attention? Maybe ask the patriarchy to adjust the duct tape so you can see better, ‘kay?
The Supreme Court short list includes Deval Patrick again (definitely some kind of package deal thing there), but the most terrifying possibility, and the real front-runner, is Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is an intellectual trainwreck of a man who is notorious for defending President Bush’s right to torture, imprison, and spy on anydamnbody he wants to with impunity.
Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, is on tap for National Security Adviser or something at State. Nice synchrony there. Power, by the way, is the one who called Hillary Clinton a “monster.”
The top name for Secretary of State is that globe-trotting mastermind of international relations, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. I think we know now what 30 pieces of silver equates to in today’s political economy.
UPDATE: I missed one — Jesse Jackson Jr. for Secretary of HUD! Aaaaaagggggghhhhhh!
That was me, talking to my brother in March or so of this year. We were discussing the Democratic primary and the prospect of an extended battle for the nomination. My point was that there was no reason for Hillary to drop out, no historical basis for the insistence from Obama supporters that it was somehow bizarre and destructive to the party for Hillary to continue her campaign. There have been many years when the nomination was still open well into the summer, even right up to the convention, but 1968 is the most obvious analog for 2008: two (or more) powerful candidates, a divided party, an impassioned electorate. When Bobby Kennedy was killed in June, he had just won the California primary — and the nomination was still wide open.
And that’s what you say: “Bobby was killed in June.” You don’t say “remember, Bobby Kennedy won the California primary in June,” because that would be like discussing JFK’s trip to Dallas in November 1963 without mentioning what happened in Dealey Plaza. You think of Bobby in California in 1968 and your mind immediately goes to the Ambassador Hotel, the scene in the kitchen, Bobby on the floor, the shock, the horror. My God they killed another one. The nightmare of that moment is burned into your brain, inextricably bound up with the political fact that Bobby Kennedy had just won the all-important primary in California. It would feel almost obscene to talk about the one without immediately acknowledging the other.
In fact, I can guarantee you that if I had said to my brother something like, “well, gosh, remember that Bobby Kennedy won California in June,” my mother or father or some other member of my family would have immediately broken in with a reference to the assassination, and the conversation would have halted while we all paused to remember and reflect. Because that’s what you do. That’s how your mind works.
HRC: People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa.
Q: Why?
HRC: I don’t know. I don’t know. I find it curious. Because it is unprecedented in history. I don’t understand it. Between my opponent and his camp and some in the media there has been this urgency to end this. And historically, that makes no sense. So I find it a bit of a mystery.
Q: So you don’t buy the party unity argument?
HRC: I don’t because again I’ve been around long enough. My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it. There’s lots of speculation about why it is.
Q: What is your speculation?
HRC: I don’t know. I find it curious. And I don’t want to attribute motives or strategies to people because I don’t really know, but it’s a historical curiosity to me.
There was nothing remotely sinister or even remarkable about Clinton’s statement, which is why the Argus Leader editors didn’t remark on it. It was perfectly obvious that Hillary was talking about primary contests that lasted into June.
But the Obama campaign, aided by its allies in the media, managed to turn this innocent exchange into the grounds for a witch-hunt. They spread the lie that what Hillary said (or meant) was that she was staying in the race in case Obama was assassinated. It’s the kind of interpretation that you would never in a million years come up with on your own, but if somebody primes the pump by telling you that’s what Hillary said — before you’ve seen the tape yourself — then you might believe it. Especially if you’ve been bombarded for months with the message that Hillary Clinton is a monster, an evil bitch who will do anything to get elected, a would-be murderer, a Glenn Close type from Fatal Attraction, someone who would poison Obama’s food if she could get to his chef.
(Similarly: remember the Mickey Kantor “white nigger” tape? Just before the Indiana primary, an Obama supporter circulated a doctored clip and transcript from the documentary The War Room, in which Mickey Kantor’s question to another Clinton campaign aide, “how’d you like to be in the White House right now?” [this was election night 1992] was re-transcribed as “how’d you like to be a worthless white nigger?” [allegedly referring to the people of Indiana]. As incredible and completely nonsensical as that is, it nevertheless persuaded the Obama true believers. Go dig up the comments at any blog where the story was covered. “You know, now that you mention it, I can definitely hear him saying “white nigger!” Such is the power of suggestion. It was probably enough to cost Hillary a few points in Indiana.)
Obama’s team pushed the RFK smear aggressively, just as they had pushed all the other smears against Hillary: the Somali garb smear, the Muslim smear, the darkening of Obama’s photo smear, the Bosnia smear, the fairytale smear, the MLK/LBJ smear, and on and on and on. The Obama machine functioned smoothly in all its parts, from campaign headquarters to media outlets, from netroots astroturfers to hysterical commenters shrieking for blood. They’d done it all before, but the RFK business ratcheted things up to a new level. The public hatred of Hillary reached a fever pitch. The sheer noise drowned out all rational speech. And the Obama camp’s cynical exploitation of race, history, and our nation’s tragedies made it virtually a thought-crime to point out that the whole thing was a put-up job — not to mention that if anyone was playing the role of Bobby Kennedy in this election, it was Hillary herself.
People who had been watching the race closely (as opposed to watching Obama campaign ads and gazing adoringly at copies of Dreams of My Father) already understood that behind the “hope and change” propaganda, the Obama folks were hard-core Chicago machine types, experts in dirty politics, ruthless and utterly without scruple. About as far from “a new kind of politics” as you could possibly get. But even so, the RFK smear was eye-opening.
There are moments in history when a political movement shows its hand, when it reveals itself for what it truly is. With the RFK business, it became clear: Barack Obama is a demogogue. And that’s all he is. It is the very essence of the man. He is not a moral leader temporarily caught up in the fever of a hard-fought election. He is not a devoted public servant with a solid record of achievement whose followers just happen to get a little carried away. That’s probably what you want to believe, and it’s what I assumed was true — had to be true — for a long time. But look again.
There is literally nothing in Obama’s record except his own career advancement. There is literally nothing in his movement except the aggrandizement of Obama himself. And there is literally nothing he will not say or imply, no passion or prejudice he will not exploit, to achieve power.
Is that really what we need in this country? A demagogue backed up by a mob of fanatics who will believe anything they’re told?
In 2005, Harvard President Larry Summers told an audience of distinguished women scientists that instead of worrying about sexism, they should consider the “evidence” that women are simply genetically inferior to men in terms of aptitude for math and science. This genetic inferiority, he erroneously asserted, was more likely to be the reason for women’s relatively low levels of achievement in math-related fields than any social explanations, such as sexist bias. Summers even offered an anecdote about his daughter (who named her toy trucks “Mommy truck” and “Daddy truck”) as evidence that females are intrinsically more suited to taking care of babies than doing hard math.
All of this was of course nonsense: there is no evidence that women are genetically inferior in their aptitude for math. But there is abundant evidence that women in math-related fields face enormous obstacles from sexist men like Larry Summers. In fact, the number of women offered tenure during Larry Summer’s reign at Harvard dropped by almost two-thirds — a factor difficult to attribute to genetics.
Larry Summers was eventually forced to resign from Harvard, but his name continues to be a byword for the gross male chauvinism that still flourishes in academia.
In 2008, Barack Obama invited Larry Summers to be a senior adviser to his campaign.
Sarah Palin hung in effigy outside West Hollywood home
As the creator of this “Halloween decoration” explains, a similar image of Barack Obama would of course be terrible because the image of a black man with a noose around his neck is offensive. But violence against women is “art.” It’s funny. Halloween fun! Lighten up!
No doubt millions agree. Barack Obama’s campaign — first against Hillary Clinton, now against Sarah Palin — has completely legitimized violence against women, whether rhetorical or actual. They’re just stupid cunts and bitches and they need to shut the fuck up. Don’t mess with The Precious!
DOWNINGTOWN, Pa.—At the next train stop, I’m going to stand behind Sen. Obama when he speaks. When he’s decrying the trivial distractions in politics, I think he may be crossing his fingers behind his back.
As the senator’s campaign train wound from one speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics to the next speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics, his campaign hosted a conference call to engage in the practice the candidate was busy denouncing. I suppose it would have been an even greater act of chutzpah for the Obama campaign to host the conference call while Sen. Obama was denouncing that kind of behavior, but not much more of one.
Obama campaign aides scheduled the call to talk about Hillary Clinton’s fantastical story about her breakneck race to shelter under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia. You might think this would be the last story the Obama campaign would be pushing because in Wednesday’s debate, the senator mistakenly suggested his campaign had only discussed the issue because reporters had brought it up—not because they were trying to take advantage of Clinton’s extended work of fiction. To push the story again now would make Obama look even more insincere about that claim.
In the same debate, Obama also suggested the story was pretty much off-limits. When asked about Clinton’s Bosnia problem, he said this: “I think Sen. Clinton deserves, you know, the right to make some errors once in a while. … I think what’s important is to make sure that we don’t get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history … for us to be obsessed with this—these kinds of errors I think is a mistake. And that’s not what our campaign has been about.”
On his train tour Saturday, Sen. Obama continued to condemn the petty distractions that keep Americans from focusing on real issues. He decried Clinton’s “tactics of Washington,” in which she attacks him with every possible weapon. “She’s got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying. The buffet is coming at me … when we get involved in the constant distractions, the petty tit-for-tat politics … that may be good for the television ratings, but that’s not good for you.”
While the candidate was denouncing the distractions, his aides were promoting them. Three veterans of the Bosnia conflict joined for a conference call to explain just how crucial this particular distraction was and why we should ignore Sen. Obama’s guidance and get obsessed with this issue.
Maj. Gen. Walter Stewart explained that because Clinton had fabricated on the issue of sniper fire, Clinton would not be able to perform the traditional ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier who, he averred, was undoubtedly killed by sniper fire. “She will lack the moral authority to lay the wreath on Memorial Day,” he said. She would also be unable to honor the veterans remembered on the Vietnam memorial because many of them had also been killed by sniper fire. Capt. Aaron Clevenstine offered a variation on this theme: “As someone who trained snipers, I take offense to the notion that she was under sniper fire.” Michael Kotyk, a retired veteran of the Navy, broadened the significance of Clinton’s yarn: “We’ve had eight years of dishonor. We need honor. If you’re going to tell stories, then you’re not displaying honor.”
Shortly after the conference call ended, Sen. Obama’s train pulled into Downingtown, and he worked the crowd into a frenzy by denouncing the scourge of petty, distracting attack politics.
One interesting thing to note is that Sen. Clinton’s memory lapse about the Bosnia incident was almost certainly innocent. I say that not as a Hillary supporter, but as someone who’s interested in the vagaries of human memory. The human mind is not a tape recorder; it confabulates, confuses, and creates memories all the time. In the case of the Bosnia trip — which happened more than a decade ago — it seems clear that Sen. Clinton unconsciously confabulated the details from two different landings during that trip (one of which did involve sniper fire), the warnings of the pilot about enemy fire, and perhaps her own fears.
That’s not a lie; it’s a mistake.
Here are some examples of obvious, deliberate lies, the kind people tell to keep from getting in trouble:
1. Telling the press that your only connection to the criminal slumlord Tony Rezko is “five hours of work” your law firm did for him once — when in fact the guy has been your buddy for years, helped you buy your house, and donated a quarter of a million dollars to your campaign.
2. Telling the press that William Ayers is just “a guy who lives in [your] neighborhood” — when in fact he launched your political career in his living room, gave you a crucial job as the head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and worked side-by-side with you for years.
3. Telling the press that you’ve never heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright say the kinds of things he’s said in various videotaped sermons — when in fact he’s been your pastor and spiritual mentor for 20 years, and you are so well-aware of his outrageous views that you refused to let him appear next to you on the day you announced your run for President.
Barack Obama’s campaign has, since the beginning, operated on two levels. There’s the “hope and change” level, which is just for show — but of course that’s the only level his supporters choose to see. The other level, the real campaign, the background stuff through reporters and netroots mouthpieces, has been relentlessly negative. The dress rehearsal for his campaign’s assault on Sarah Palin (which I’ll get to in another reminder) was the year-long spree against Hillary Clinton, in which Obama exploited every last drop of wingnut hatred and cultural misogyny in order to destroy — not just defeat, but destroy — Sen. Clinton.
Here are a few examples from eriposte (only up through March 2008), and note that this doesn’t even include most of the misogyny and sexist dogwhistles:
February 2007 onwards: Obama repeatedly claims Sen. Clinton lacks judgment when it comes to national security and foreign policy.
Summer 2007: Obama campaign urges press to look into Bill Clinton’s "post-presidential" sex life (a favorite topic of Republicans).
June 2007: Obama campaign peddles false story that the Clintons were trying to profit from 9/11.
June 2007: Obama campaign circulates borderline racist "D-Punjab" attack against Sen. Clinton.
August 2007: The Obama campaign contacts the press to tie Norman Hsu to Sen. Clinton - even though Hsu was a donor and fundraiser to/for Sen. Obama as well.
October2007: Due to a flagging campaign, Sen. Obama and his campaign/surrogates falsely paint Sen. Clinton as a liar, basically adopting the fraudulent words that Bill Bradley used to trash Al Gore in 2000 - words that were subsequently picked up by George Bush and the GOP and used very effectively against Al Gore in the 2000 general election. This is one of the classic examples of "providing ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party’s nominee" - after all, these words were used by Bush and the GOP to significantly tarnish Gore. Even more audacious, if you will: Sen. Obama’s character attack on Sen. Clinton was over a stance she took that was essentially identical to the stance Sen. Obama took in his own book.
November 2007: Obama mocks and minimizes Clinton’s experience as First Lady - a standard right-wing attack.
November/December 2007: Obama campaign uncritically pushes baseless smear story by right-wing fraudster Bob Novak alleging that the Clinton campaign was about to peddle some below-the-belt story about Sen. Obama.
November 2007/ January/February 2008: Sen. Obama paints Sen. Clinton as being unprincipled, poll-driven and calculating (very effective lines of attack used by the GOP) while he himself out-spent Clinton on polling and demonstrated enough "calculation" and "lack of principle" to keep us busy.
December 2007: Obama campaign mimics the media’s (and GOP’s) fraudulent attacks on Al Gore (in 2000) - in order to attack Sen. Clinton.
December2007onwards: Obama campaign launches false attacks on Sen. Clinton’s healthcare plan using the worst kind of Republican talking points - and by borrowing Harry and Louise type ads from the 1990s. This is another one of the many classic examples of "providing ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party’s nominee". In using this tactic yet again, the Obama campaign effectively borrowed the tactics used by the GOP that helped defeat the Clinton healthcare plan and partly led to the defeat of Democrats in Congress in 1994.
December 2007: Obama surrogate once again raises Bill Clinton’s sex life and ties it to Sen. Clinton’s electability.
December 2007: Sen. Obama explicitly questions Sen. Clinton’s electability using approval ratings and her negatives (he’s of course done this on many occasions).
December 2007: Sen. Obama unfavorably compares Clinton and Bush eras.
January 2008: Sen. Obama accumulates an extensiverecord of usingoften false, right-wing/GOP talking points to criticize progressives and fellow Democrats including Sen. Clinton.
January2008: Sen. Obama paints Sen. Clinton as divisive and questions whether people who vote for him will vote for her in the general election. This is another one of the many classic examples of "providing ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party’s nominee". In using this tactic yet again, Sen. Obama effectively adopted a longtime Republican talking point used against Sen. Clinton by the GOP - one that would be particularly damaging to her in a general election setting, coming from a fellow Democrat.
January/February 2008: Obama campaign and surrogates participate in one of the ugliest smear campaigns against a fellow Democrat ever - by falsely painting the Clintons as race-baiters or racists (NOTE: Also see this post about whether Sen. Obama’s advisors and surrogates speak for him).
January / February2008: Obama campaign paints Sen. Clinton as someone who would say or do anything to get elected - another one of the many classic examples of "providing ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party’s nominee". Indeed, Sen. Obama’s positions and claims (some of which are linked to here) have made it clear he was very much guilty of exactly what he accused Sen. Clinton of.
February 2008: Sen. Obama talks up Sen. Clinton’s negatives by falsely caricaturing her as a person whose "natural inclination is to draw a picture of Republicans as people who need to be crushed and defeated" and then adds about himself "I’m not a person who believes any one party has a monopoly on wisdom".
February 2008: Obama campaign repeatedly attacks Clinton Presidency and paints Clintons as harbingers of Congressional losses in elections (The latter was a particularly deceptive and amusing attack - almost like they were asking for George Bush to remain in office since Bush was instrumental in Democrats taking over Congress in 2006).
March 2008: Sen. Obama claims that although he does not measure experience using longevity, if longevity is the metric to judge experience McCain would win on experience (undermining Sen. Clinton’s statements about her years of experience). Obama campaign also puts out a memo in which they refer to McCain’s history of "straight talk and independent thinking", which, along with Obama’s character attacks on Clinton, would no doubt be used by McCain and the GOP against Clinton if she became the nominee.
March 2008: An Obama advisor refers to Sen. Clinton as a "monster" and is forced to resign.
At a campaign stop a few days before the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton seemed to mist up briefly or get a slight lump in her throat while talking about her commitment to public service and her hopes for America. Or maybe she was just suppressing a cough; hard to tell.
Jesse Jackson Jr., the National Campaign Co-Chair for Barack Obama, ridiculed Hillary as “crying” over “her appearance”:
Father Michael Pfleger, a long-time friend and confidante of Obama’s, ridiculed Hillary as a racist weeping in frustration over a “black man stealing [her] show”:
Barack Obama’s pastor, spiritual mentor, and close personal friend of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explains that women have never been discriminated against:
Quote:
“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had her people defined as non-persons. Hillary ain’t had to work twice as hard just to get accepted by the rich white folk who run everything or to get a passing grade when you know you are smarter than that C-student sitting in the white house.”
