Sherry Chandler » 2008 » April » 19
I found this Reuters video posted by egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Woman. I think Deborah Tannen makes some very valid points about what is going on in this Democratic primary, a problem that she calls “The Hillary Factor.”
You also need to know that there’s been an absolute media storm over the perception that Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous treated Senator Obama unfairly at Tuesday night’s debate, though few, few have protested the long history of such unfair treatment of Senator Clinton at previous debates:*
My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.
Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?
Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.
That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining.
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.
It is, in fact, his status as media darling that makes Big Tent Democrat an Obama supporter. He thinks that will give Senator Obama the edge he needs to win the general election. But Tuesday’s affair may indicate that Obama’s media buddies are fair weather friends. And if, as is reported, Mr. Obama performed poorly under the barrage of character questions on Tuesday, he needs to get over it and learn how to deal. Hillary Clinton has done so.
“If as reported” I say because I don’t watch television debates and I agree that questions about flag pens are just possibly not as important as questions about torture policy. On the other hand, if you’re going to protest this treatment of one candidate, then you must protest this treatment of all candidates or your protest is just partisan whining.
Senator Obama gets pretty snarky about the debate, whether or not he deliberately flipped the bird at Senator Clinton. (Where have I seen this kind of behavior in a young male pol before? Oh yeah. Here.) Call me stodgy but I don’t find this behavior presidental, and I cannot imagine either Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton behaving in quite this way, no matter how avid the crowd.
He is also planning to pour $2 million into ads in Pennsylvania over these last four days of the campaign there. No wonder the media love him. And if Clinton ekes out even the squeakiest victory, she has done so against incredible odds. And it might say something about the real will of the people.
If I have learned anything in my 63 years, it is that you can’t often predict the consequences of events. Whatever the outcome of the presidential primary, I hope one consequence is that young American women wake up to the fact that the fight for women’s equality is not won, even here where women have gained a lot of ground. Around the world, the condition of women is pitiful.
Update: Let the powerful words of Robin Morgan speak for my hopes that women will become activists again. If you have not read her Goodbye To All That #2, I suggest you do so:
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”
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*egalia also points out that some women’s organizations have begun a belated protest.
This post was written by sherry
Strange dreams haunt this spring. One night my son woke me, a bit freaked because I was crying out in my sleep. I spent all last night writing code that, when posted, would reveal the Bush administration’s perfidy. That would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Historically, cats have featured in a lot of my troubled dreams. Once, when my twins were crawling age, I dreamed I was walking down a bank beside my grandfather’s barn, one child cradled on each arm, when they morphed into wildcats, leapt out of my grasp, and ran like lightning for the thicket.
This post was written by sherry
