Kate. You are right on about the news media bias toward Senator Clinton.  Seems they have ordained Obama as "The One".  Today read a good article by Charles Krauthammer.  The article, "Emptiness behind Obama euphoria" gave a sobering commentary on the Obama worship.  It's scary.  Leigh

Brilliant.. just brilliant.

I've been lurking in the afterellen closet for years, but there are so many fabulous things about this vlog, I had to "come out".

Susan B. - The last home schooling success story. Classic! If that isn't on her headstone it should be!

I agree, Valentines Day can seem like a real hetero holiday.  I shopped early for my Valentine card for my partner and was pleasantly surprised to find a "Partner" card at my local Jewel-Osco.  It's always difficult to find a suitable card, sure you can always pick one of the "for my wife" cards, but sometimes they don't fit.  But this card actually said "For my Partner" on the cover and the inside talked of love, friendship, romance.  It really fit for once.  (I don't have the card to type out the exact words, my partner is proudly displaying it on her desk at work.)

Count me in for Hillary!  I voted for her in the Illinois primary and I'm getting quite discouraged by what is going on in the media of late.

I like the verse you came up with- how to find the G Spot hahaha!  Straight people do need every help they can get.

I totally agree- Hillary is getting pushed to the side-what is up with these people? 

A dear friend pointed out tonight that women, black white gay and straight, have been important activists in the civil right movement from the beginning of time. Name one black man that has done one damn thing for women's equality and their rights. And do not say black civil rights are women's civil rights. They're not the same.

Wake up. There is not one man in the world that thinks a woman is really an equal.

I can't speak for Susan B. Anthony and the homeschoolers of that time, but now, homeschoolers totally have proms. They have dances with varying levels of formality for pretty much every grade level. The parents think it's important for some reason. -_- I don't go, because I didn't go when I went to public school, and I'd probably just end up resenting my straight friends.

And I'm trying to care about "sexist media coverage of Hilary Clinton", but I sort of despise her and her husband as "human beings", so I just can't seem to muster up even a modicum of sympathy. Sorry if I lose my feminist street cred by pulling for Obama in this race.

_____________________
Good news: Obama won my state in the primaries. I'm convinced this is entirely because of my campaigning on his behalf.
Bad news: So did Huckabee. I'm convinced this is entirely because a way-too-large percentage of people think they're "bad Christians" if they don't support the possible coming of a theocracy.

EDIT: "A dances". That's just embarassing.

EDIT: "End of". Again, the spellchecker only sees that it's a word, and I'm typing crazy so I don't notice it makes no sense. (And I will NOT edit my double-negative there.)

I <3 this vlog.  Kate, you touched on some topics that me and my sister have been talking about.  When they cut off Hilary's super tuesday speech (for some unimportant reason that I can't remember) but let Obama's speech go on, it irked me.  Anyways, great post!

http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html

The opinions expressed here are those of the author alone, and not those of the Women’s Media Center. As a 501(c)3 organization, the Women’s Media Center does not endorse or support candidates for elected office.

Goodbye To All That (#2)   by Robin Morgan

February 2, 2008

Goodbye To All That” was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online version, see http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).

During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women’s movements, I’ve avoided writing another specific “Goodbye . . .” But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this country—been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.

Goodbye to the double standard . . .

—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who’s emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.

—She’s “ambitious” but he shows “fire in the belly.” (Ever had labor pains?)—When a sexist idiot screamed “Iron my shirt!” at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted “Shine my shoes!” at BO, it would’ve inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.

—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort “See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him.” (Personally, I’m unimpressed with Caroline’s longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)

Goodbye to the toxic viciousness  . . .

Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame. 

Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame. 

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison.  Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .

The women’s movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC’s Tim Russert’s continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN’s Tony Harris chuckling at “the chromosome thing” while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that’s not even mentioning Fox News.

Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .

Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages—not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist—but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it’s the “norm.”

So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?

Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female we wouldn’t be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn’t stand a chance—even if she shared Condi Rice’s Bush-defending politics. 

I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote—until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they’re being called “race traitors.”

So goodbye to conversations about this nation’s deepest scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.

Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men—though not all the same as one another—and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate—they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women’s rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)

Goodbye, goodbye to . . .

—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though unlike them, he got reported on). Let’s get real. If he hadn’t campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.

—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it’s “cooler” to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.

—the notion that it’s fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.  Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts “entitled” when she’s worked intensely at everything she’s done—including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.

Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.  

Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has. 

Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn’t as “likeable” as they’ve been warned they must be, or because she didn’t leave him, couldn’t “control” him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn’t bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement.  She’s running to be president of the United States.

Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.

Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .

Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous “Obama Girl” flaunting her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it wasn’t her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said “made me feel like a dork.” 

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten thestatus 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.”

I’d rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identifywith Hillary, and all the brave, smart men—of all ethnicities and any age—who get that it’s in their self-interest, too. She’s better qualified. (D’uh.) She’s a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let’s hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)  

I’d rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how—and he’ll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he’s an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who’ve worked with the Kennedys’ own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it’s only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn’t it about getting the policies we want enacted?

And goodbye to the ageism . . .

How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from torpor it’s useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country’s history: the boomer generation—the majority of which is female?

Old woman are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age—and we are the generation of radicals who said “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we’re back! 

We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more nurturing parents; who created women’s studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.

We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S. voters.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media’s obsession with everything Bill.

So listen to her voice:

“For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

“It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

“Women’s rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely—and the right to be heard.”

That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full, stunning speech).

And this voice, age 21, in “Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969.”

“We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.”

She ended with the commitment “to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible.”

And for decades, she’s been learning how.

So goodbye to Hillary’s second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves? 

“Our President, Ourselves!”

Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.

As for the “woman thing”?

Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.

Robin Morgan
February 2, 2008
New York City

###

An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books, including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.

Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel, The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in September 2006.

Wow! Your posting was thrilling!!  It is the truth!  Senator Clinton, who is so much more qualified than Obama, has to endure racism and misogynism.  Even Obama said that the reason Hillary wants to debate is that "when she's feeling down" she starts saying that  she wants to debate.  So, here he is implying she is just another emotional female.  Also, I have an African American friend who says that she is taking alot of heat from her race because she is a Senator Clinton supporter. 

Thank you again for your  posting.  Leigh

Plans of both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama seek affordability.  Clinton's plan will cover all.  Obama's plan will not.  That is fine for us who have insurance, but not so good for those who don't for whatever reason.  Clinton's plan will allow folks who change or lose their jobs to keep their health care.  If you want to change your plan or currently are not covered, you can choose from the plans available to members of Congress.  Insurance companies cannot deny coverage due to a pre-exisiting condition.  Clinton has worked a long time to improve health care.

One of Hillary's talking points is that Obama's plan will not cover 18 million people, but this 18 million number refers to those people who can afford health care insuracnce but for some reason don't buy it on their own.  Obama's plan would cover those who can't afford health insurance on their own.  He differs with Hillary because he feels that the majority of the people don't have health insurance because of the costs, not because they don't want it.  He wants to address the situation from the standpoint of regulating the insurance companies, before making health insuracne mandatory.  Making the insuracne mandatory before putting restraints on how much and how companies can charge people is not going to help the poorest among us, and those who are already struggling with the high cost of health care. 

 And the fact that insurance companies are one of Hillary's biggest supporters really makes me wonder about who's side she's on. 

Kiki McLean, one of Hillary's senior advisors talking to Tucker Carlson about Hillary's health care program:

TUCKER CARLSON: If you're going to mandate health insurance, what if people don't, don't obey? And she has said "we're going to garnish wages." Which wages, and how much? Cause she's the substance candidate.

KIKI MCLEAN: She is the substance candidate, and she's looking at the options. She's also said, Senator Obama's team has tried to put out an attack saying she's going to force people who can't afford it to pay for it themselves and that's just not true.

CARLSON: But she's said herself, she's said herself, that she'd be willing to garnish wages. I think that's pretty much exactly what she said.

MCLEAN: She said in one interview that's something to look at. I think the reality is that she's also focusing on bringing everybody -- here's the thing about universal coverage --

...CARLSON: She's soft-selling the stick. She's selling the carrot; she's not talking about the stick, the punishment for not going along with her vision of the Brave New World.

MCLEAN: The reality is, that we're going to have to bring everybody into the plan, and there's going to have to be --

CARLSON: Punishment.

MCLEAN: Outcomes. There's going to have to be an outcome for people who don't participate because it all affects us. Remember, we are a community that lives here.

CARLSON [bursting into laughter]: I love that: an "outcome"!

MCLEAN: There has to be an outcome.

And from a former Clinton adviser:

Bill Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich said this about the plan:

I'm equally concerned about her attack on his health care plan. She says his would insure fewer people than hers. I've compared the two plans in detail. Both of them are big advances over what we have now. But in my view Obama's would insure more people, not fewer, than HRC's. That's because Obama's puts more money up front and contains sufficient subsidies to insure everyone who's likely to need help - including all children and young adults up to 25 years old. Hers requires that everyone insure themselves. Yet we know from experience with mandated auto insurance - and we're learning from what's happening in Massachusetts where health insurance is now being mandated - that mandates still leave out a lot of people at the lower end who can't afford to insure themselves even when they're required to do so. HRC doesn't indicate how she'd enforce her mandate, and I can't find enough money in HRC's plan to help all those who won't be able to afford to buy it.