So, I was watching Hardball tonight and once again, like every other night this week, Chris devoted a whole segment to the burning question, the searing debate, the roiling boil of this election season, "Will Hillary supporters turn their backs on Barack?" The question lingered in the electromagnetic glow. It sprang from Chris' gleaming lips with oracular gravitas; this "my friends," his chesire smile said, is THE BIG QUESTION.
Grinning, a mad prophet of politics Chris presented as exemplar of his case...who, you ask, some middle class hairdresser from Hoboken? Oh no, no, no. Was she a woman from Ohio who had just lost her job at DHL? Please, what would such a woman know of such a NATIONALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION. Was she a nationally recognized feminist bringing years of experience to the front lines of the gender wars to bear.
No, "my friends," the woman in question was a woman with her carefully manicured finger on the pulse of American femininity, a woman so in tune with the American, female electorate that she only need speak and her clarion call would ring out across the land calling all the dispossessed to her electronic banner: justsaynodeal.com. Again, you ask, who is this woman? She is, "my friends," Diane Mantouvalos Champion of Democracy, Defender of Freedom, and against all sexist, [black] male, campaigns will she lift her sword of Justice to fight for the interests of working women everywhere. [/snark]
After I finished retching into my popcorn, I decided to dig around in Ms. Mantouvalos history and see what her record of public service and campaign activism might be.
Campaign contributions since 1996: zero.
Okay, not everyone has the money to contribute to campaigns to help fight for what they believe in, perhaps she's been a strong advocate for equality of women in the workplace, a union activist..., something?
Ms. Mantouvalous shows up on the cultural radar in 1991 quoted in an article in The Boston Globe, "CORPORATE MERGERS; In the '90s, office romances aren't taboo - but there are limits":
Says Diane Mantouvalos, who works for a downtown investment company and eschews workplace amour: "It's mixed signals these days, real schizo. Every company's different, and then some that seem loose aren't. Where I work you're almost supposed to be social, yet there's an unwritten rule of thumb that going out with company people is a bad move. It's confusing."
Working for a downtown investment company. Doesn't sound like she's eating franks and beans every night.
Next, she shows up again to address weighty issues of modern gender politics in 1996 in a Boston Globe article on a tony fundraiser she organized for poor families. Noble, but more evidence that a member of the hoi polloi she was, and is, not.
She pops up a few more times in Boston organizing elite charity events among the upper class of Boston.
Again, I emphasize, personal campaign contributions: zip, zilch, Nada.
Now she's in Miami and has organized a serious, high minded group of down and dirty street fighters:
Diane Mantouvalos is an anger-shaker. The night before Clinton announced the suspension of her campaign, Mantouvalos was at home in Miami checking posts on her blog and sensing a mood that went beyond disillusionment, beyond sadness, beyond "I'm upset and bummed out." As co-creator of Hireheels.com, which describes itself as "a forum of power chics for Hillary," Mantouvalos hangs out on the sassy edge of the blogosphere. Feeling more empowered than embittered, the public relations consultant wondered: "Wouldn't it be great if we could thread all of these disparate factions and form one coalition?" A brassy coalition of rebels.
All this is to say, that while Ms. Mantouvalos might be a perfectly good person with her heart in the right place. She is not a committed party activist (left, right or center), she is not someone who gets out and does battle with the republicans day in and day out. She instead looks to be an intelligent, privileged women who, if she's really interested in the future of this country, should listen to the candidate she endorsed for president, SHUT HER FASHIONABLE PIE HOLE, and vote for Barack Obama.