Sherry Chandler

from Echidne, A Wolff In The Land Of Dry Pussies

Michael Wolff has written an interesting meditation on the difficulties of being a middle-aged man in the United States. Suddenly, in the midst of life, he walks into a dark forest of despair and depression, and why? Not because of those cholesterol values or that mortgage payment or all those youthful plans he once had, plans, which are now as dry as the dandruff on his stooped hard-working family-man shoulders, no. It’s because he can’t get wet and gushy pussy anymore, young and bouncy and eager pussy.

from Digby, Sexual Politics (cherrypicking my clip here in a way that is totally unfair):

Now, I don’t know about you, but among my friends, this just doesn’t come up.

And the incomparable Lance:

I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead since by now a mob of “the post-sexual set” has probably dragged him from his office in the Conde Nast building and hauled him uptown to Central Park where they’ve hung him up by his genetalia from Cleopatra’s Needle…

I promise to clean up my language here in a day or two. I’ve sort of been on a roll lately.

On a more serious note, there’s this from commenter Lost in Space at Corrente Some one like me doesn’t fit in much:

A PoC who has much trouble supporting Obama’s candidacy, surrounded by PoC who either actively or casually support him. The PoC I talk to are not as rabid as the Blogger Boiz, and most never knew of Obama’s actual positions - or lack thereof - nor his history when I talked with them. Many either still don’t know - or don’t care about this.

However, there is another issue at work here: I have noticed that the tenor of the online backlash of Obama and his candidacy has started to spread as a backlash against African-Americans as a whole. Not so much here [at Corrente], but I’ve seen this acrimony grow on many other Clinton-leaning sites - and now, like a cancer, may be on the verge of metastasizing.

This is a dangerous proposition. Should Obama get the nomination - and get bounced by McCain (which is most likely going to happen) - the blame will most likely be placed on the shoulders of African-Americans for the crime of voting for someone who happens to look much like them (let’s remember that America -in general - regards people with even as much as a drop of African ancestry as “Black”); speaks like them (sometimes); and comes across as someone who has been through the same struggles of life in America as they have (even though he has not). I don’t hear as much vitriol about the Leisure class sect that flooded the caucuses to pad Obama’s early totals - and this saddens me. Also, there is not alot of discussion of the SCLM complicity in both Obama’s ascension and H. Clinton’s denigration these days - sadly, there is almost no online discussions regarding the SCLM at all (save Somerby’s great analyses at Dailyhowler.com). Nor does there seem to be much discussion on the political games by Dean and Pelosi.

Actually, I figured any blame for any failure of Democrats this election would be placed on Hillary Clinton’s shoulders, but I want to make it abundantly clear that most of my rants about racism and sexism on this blog have to do with the collusion between Obama and the media, planned or unplanned, to demonize Hillary Clinton and her supporters.

Nor do I think that the African American community has turned against Hillary and Bill Clinton as vehemently as Obama’s white supporters and the pundits on the news media.

Update: Indiana’s new voter ID law proved itself yesterday. It turned away a clatch of rogue nuns. Retired:

WASHINGTON — At least 10 retired nuns in South Bend, Ind., were barred from voting in Tuesday’s Indiana Democratic primary election because they lacked photo IDs required under a state law that the Supreme Court upheld last week.

John Borkowski, a South Bend lawyer volunteering as an election watchdog for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said several of the retired nuns had been voting all of their lives but were told they lacked the required identification cards and could only file provisional ballots.

Since 2005, Indiana’s toughest-in-the-nation law requires every voter to produce a state or federal photo ID card. The Supreme Court, after weighing scores of legal briefs from conservatives who backed the statute and liberals who opposed it, upheld the law by a 6-3 vote, saying there was little evidence that it was unduly burdensome for voters.

Borkowski said Sister Julie McGuire, one of several nuns on poll duty, wasn’t pleased to turn away the nuns, some of whom were in their 80s and 90s and no longer had driver’s licenses.

“Here’s the supreme irony,” Borkowski said. “This law was passed supposedly to prevent and deter voter fraud, even though there was no real record of serious voter fraud in Indiana. Here you have a bunch of nuns whose votes can’t be accepted by a bunch of nuns … who live with them in the polling place in their convent because they don’t have an ID.”

Should I put nuns on the same page with all this language?

Watch at YouTube

Link from Suburban Guerilla.

Update: One good thing to come out of this long primary is that I’ve developed a new network and found some women whose work I admire greatly. One of them is the woman who posts as Frenchdoc at Corrente. She said just exactly what I’ve been thinking:

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like a battered woman, and tonight is the night I decided to walk away and not look back.

Tomorrow, if HRC is still in the race, I’m contributing as much as I can.

I might back off the battered a bit but definitely abused and expected to keep quiet about it and put a good face on things for the good of the party.

The news media and pundits gave us 8 years of George W. Bush and now they’re trying once again to pick our president. They played Obama’s game last night, refusing to call Indiana for Clinton until after midnight and robbing her of the chance to make a primetime speech, giving Gary’s mayor a chance to grandstand and hold votes hostage, calling Obama’s win in North Carolina a loss for Clinton when she was never expected to win in North Carolina. And once again calling and calling and calling for her to drop out because she just can’t possibly win.

I quote Eric Boehlert of MediaMatters:

Here’s another first: the press’s unique push to get a competitive White House hopeful to drop out of the race. It’s unprecedented.

Looking back through modern U.S. campaigns, there’s simply no media model for so many members of the press to try to drive a competitive candidate from the field while the primary season is still unfolding.

Why am I so angry? Because perfectly “respectable” magazines print dreck like this from Michael Wolf:

The Hillary story is—and how could it not be?—largely a sexual one. This is not so much a sexist view as a sexualist view: What’s up here? What’s the unsaid saying? What’s the vibe? Although it’s not discussed in reputable commentary, it’s discussed by everyone else: so what exactly is the thing with Hillary and sex, with the consensus being that she simply must not have it (at least not with her husband; there are, on the other hand, the various conspiracy scenarios of whom else she might have had it with). It’s partly around this consensus view of her not having sex that people support her or resist her. She’s the special-interest candidate of older women—the post-sexual set. She’s resisted by others (including older women who don’t see themselves as part of the post-sexual set) who see her as either frigid or sexually shunned—they turn from her inhibitions and her pain.

Susie Madrak calls this the dry pussy demographic and responds in the only reasonable way:

Well, for starters, this is right in line with my theory that the men who really, really hate Hillary Clinton are men with Serious Mother Issues. Because it’s not just about the idea of Mommy having sex (”Not MY mother! No way!), it’s this sexually immature (not to mention shallow) illusion that only firm, tight, photogenic youngsters are worthy sexual beings.

Honey, you have no idea.

Obviously Vanity Fair has no idea, being the magazine that has given us the Lolita posturings of Miley Cyrus so Humbert Humbert aka Michael Wolf can drool over her.

I have been chided for not being fair to Obama, but in my view, I am being fair to Obama. I’ve said what it will take for me to vote for him and one of the things is for him to speak out against the sexism and politics of personal destruction that is being waged against his DEMOCRATIC opponent.

Update 2: For the record, I agree with this analysis from Anglachel:

…I don’t consider [African American] support of Obama to be pernicious. Electorally frustrating, yes, but, unlike the Hillary Haters who want to attribute the worst possible motives to her supporters, I don’t think that is so of the majority Obama’s black supporters. They see an opportunity to vote for a candidate who reflects them, and they will do so, no matter the odds. Given my unwavering support of Hillary despite the long nomination odds, I can’t really cry foul on someone else’s supporters who feel just as strongly as I do. Obama’s campaign is certainly doing pernicious race-baiting, but mostly to initimidate critics and shame wavering white voters. I don’t think it’s earning him more than a few slivers of votes from the [African American] community, and is probably costing him more votes on the whole when white attrition is counted against black gains.

It is not the black community that is crying racism against the Clintons or against Hillary Clinton’s supporters, as far as I can see. They are voting for their favorite son.