people like Joan Walsh (do we even care about Taylor Marsh and Ferraro anymore?) of Salon.com are a serious disgrace to the progressive movement and the Democratic party
I have lost whatever respect I had for Joan Walsh (editor of Salon.com, website that I used to enjoy going to)... now that she penned this op-ed
http://www.salon.com/... after Obama won the nomination.
After she penned that oped there was a response to it here:
http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.... (thanks to John Cole for posting it)
from Joan Walsh:
We saw the face of the angry white female backlash against Obama over the weekend, and it was hard not to turn away. On Friday, Geraldine Ferraro complained in a Boston Globe Op-Ed that she's been demonized for saying that Obama's presidential run benefited from his being black, and called her treatment "reverse racism." On Saturday, Harriet Christian replaced Ferraro as the overwrought voice of white female resentment. There she was at the Democratic National Committee meeting, screaming at reporters that Democrats were about to nominate "an inadequate black male who would not have been running had it not been a white woman that was running for president."
Beyond Christian's deplorable reference to Obama as an "inadequate black male" was a wail worth hearing. She also said, "I'm proud to be an older American woman!" I can feel her pain. Reading the sexist attacks on Clinton and her white female supporters, as well as on female journalists and bloggers who've occasionally tried to defend her or critique Obama, has been, well, consciousness-raising. Prejudice against older women, apparently, is one of the last non-taboo biases. I've been stunned by the extent to which trashing Clinton supporters as washed up old white women is acceptable.
and here are some of the best response by Too Sense:
Even as Ferraro pens Op-Eds proclaiming that resenting people because of their race isn't racist, and Christian decries the "inadequate" black man running for president, Walsh is so consumed with self-pity that the only bigotry she can see is that which might be directed against her.
what the hell..the whole thing is worth reading
Even here, Walsh takes a page from Ferraro and distorts what Ferraro actually said, which was:
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position...And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."
That is not, as Walsh characterized, "saying that Obama's presidential run benefited from his being black," that is saying he's only winning because he's black. It's ridiculous in its watered down version, but it's most telling that neither Walsh nor Ferraro herself can actually bring themselves to repeat her actual comments while defending them.
Yet it was Obama who had to distance himself from Father Pfleger and Trinity United once again last week, after Pfleger took a shot at Hillary as "an entitled" white woman. But former Clinton surrogates like Ferraro can blurt one racist diatribe after another without tarnishing the candidate she was formerly associated with. Even more frustrating is Walsh's proclamation that sexism is "the last non-taboo bias," even as she cites Ferraro's racist Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.
In reality, white racism is as "non-taboo" as sexism, as long as it is couched in weak euphamisms like "racial resentment". Then there's this complaint from Walsh regarding the MSNBC "pimping" incident:
So what can Obama do now? One of Obama's friendliest analysts on MSNBC asked me Tuesday night if I thought he should give a speech about gender. I sighed. Please God, no. I don't think Obama standing in front of flags in, say, Seneca Falls and talking about the history of sexism is going to soothe angry Clinton supporters. It bothered many women that he never spoke out about the sexism Clinton faced during the campaign. Certainly when she was accused of "pimping out" her daughter Chelsea on MSNBC he had a great opportunity to come to her side, and he missed it.
You mean the way Clinton spoke out against the "Muslim" smears, supported him during the firestorm over Jeremiah Wright, and told the media that despite his comments about small town America, the black man who grew up the son of a single mother was no "elitist"? Because she told her supporters that if you were voting for her because of Obama's race, that she didn't want their vote? The level of deference Walsh is demanding here from Obama could not be possible without white gloves, a jockey uniform and a sunny spot on the lawn. And if Obama actually had come to Clinton's defense, they would have called it condescending and paternalistic.
And where exactly was the Clinton Feminist Defense Corps when O'Reilly was talking about lynching Michelle Obama, and as the Right began to paint her as an extremist much in the mold of Hillary Clinton in 1992? They didn't seem to have a problem with sexism directed at their opponents wife. The short answer is the Clinton feminists don't see Michelle Obama as "one of them," three guesses why.
These feminists (like Steinem, leadership of NOW, Ellen Malcolm of Emilys's List etc) are the very same people one who used the civil rights causes to advance their own agenda for reproductive rights and equality at work and pay and so on, and now they are so drunk with power that they cannot see the soulless political opportunist that Hillary is and always was and who did and said anything to win. They discarded the notion that she waged a on the border racist campaign to appeal to the lowest common denominator in white folks (and her leading supporters encouraged it) and played the fear card and it never bothered them even once that Hillary voted to authorize a war in which thousands on women and children are now dead. No it doesn't matter to them that Obama married a very well accomplished and smart and has 2 daughters and is in fact the real feminist. no they just want a lady in pantsuit who share their similar ideas of limousine liberalism and shallow corporate money grubbing disguised as neo liberalism. this has opened my eyes to what the feminists movement of the 60's was. Another organization whose leaders were hell bent on power and while fighting for independence and women's rights , latched on to the very power structures that would guarantee their servility to the establishment.
By the way Andres Martinez of Washington Post also has a fabulous post about whether sexism played a role in Hillary's defeat
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...
It would be insulting to the American people, and grossly unfair, for Clinton and her supporters to push such a postmortem.
Clinton's candidacy was always more about advancing the cause of one political dynasty than it was about advancing the cause of women -- and much of the visceral reaction against her bid was a visceral rejection of her familial claim to the throne. Clinton had a chance to become the first woman to occupy the White House, yes. But another historic milestone would have been her status as the first presidential spouse to be elected president. That she and her husband would have moved back into a White House most recently occupied by the son of a former president would have only perpetuated the notion that our nation's presidency is in danger of becoming a nepotistic trophy.
When Clinton first embarked upon her quest for the Democratic nomination, there was no sense that hers was a long-shot candidacy seeking to break through the proverbial glass ceiling. No, her candidacy was first and foremost the establishment/dynastic steamroller. The other Democratic candidates were deemed hapless underdogs. And remember those rumblings about whether staffers who dared to join other campaigns would ever again find gainful employment in Washington?
Clinton's campaign enveloped itself in a degree of inevitability practically unheard of in a non-incumbent primary campaign. (That's what accounted for much of the early negative press coverage; if journalists hate anything, it's a foreordained result.) Her seeming inevitability didn't stem from the novelty of her gender, of course. But it wasn't undermined by her gender, either. What made her the formidable front-runner, in a field in which she was neither the most experienced candidate nor the most charismatic one, was the fact that she was a Clinton -- able to command her husband's political network and to rely on the strength of the family brand.
Her desperation at seeing the nomination drift away from her grasp fed the impression that she and her husband would say anything, or do anything, to win. Harsh criticism of Clinton's opportunism had nothing to do with sexism. Indeed, it's myopic to equate "negative" coverage with unfair coverage or to demand that all candidates receive equal doses of negative coverage. Candidates don't all behave with equal measures of callousness.
Hillary Clinton is undoubtedly capable and qualified to be president. But her failure to secure the nomination cannot, and should not, be interpreted as a repudiation of women in politics or as a sexist verdict. Consider it a repudiation of dynastic arrogance.
Amen