Women’s groups are trying to make lemonade out of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid.
Stacy Mason, executive director of a political action committee called Women Count, and others are demanding a plank in the Democrat Party’s upcoming convention protesting slights committed by exuberant supporters of likely presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama.
“There were so many examples in the media of sexist commentary,” said Ms. Mason, “where we never heard from, the party leadership or Barack Obama.”
Like what?
Quoth the Los Angeles Times: “Some Clinton supporters have complained of jibes against the New York senator by TV talk show hosts, off color novelty items that surfaced during the campaign and incidents such as one where hecklers yelled, ‘Iron my shirt!’”
Oddly enough, this sort of thing never happens to the iconic Madonna or Paris Hilton, the light as air hotel princess noted chiefly for her notoriety.
Hilton recently flitted through a recent John McCain video, her presence in the video cinching the point that Obama is largely a Hollywood production full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Far from sulking in his tent, Obama, rich as oil companies in campaign funds, rose to this insult and instantly produced a video response charging that McCain was an aging bag of suppurating insults.
Questions arise: Will an instantly forgettable plank in a Democrat platform be enough to persuade male sexists – there are such boggles as female sexists, we all know – at future campaign rallies to lay aside their prejudices and embrace feminism?
Probably not.
To what extent will any attempts to prevent big media from insulting women candidates affront the U.S. Constitution? Other than beating reporters with planks, how do you prevent them form covering hecklers at campaign rallies? If the women are as wise as serpents like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) , a group dedicated to using quasi constitutional instruments such as the Canadian Human Rights Commission to gut free speech in Canada and elsewhere, they will succeed beyond their wildest dreams.But should we rejoice in such success?
The murderer of film maker Theo Van Gogh was successful in intimidating both cartoonists and newspapers at home and abroad. In fascist China, the authorities have been successful, with a little help from American based internet providers, in purging the internet of disagreeable speech. But a plank in a Democrat platform is only useful for beating Democrat politicians who have already morally surrendered to women’s liberation – roughly, all of them.
Ms. Mason will have to become far more revolutionary before the courageous ink stained wretches and keyboard pounders at such institutions as the New York Times and DailyKos, a leftist progressive site, will be brought to heel. Jane Hamsher, the proprietress of FireDogLake, another progressive site, ran on her blog a doctored picture of Clinton in Blue’s Brother’s sunglasses and Sen. Joe Lieberman in blackface.
Lieberman, the scourge of progressives who abhor him because he supports American military victory in Iraq, has come in for some rough handling from the left. A gentleman over at MyLeftNutmeg titled one of his sunbursts “Is Joe Lieberman An Alcoholic Pedophile?”
Ms. Mason will have to become more revolutionary before the courageous ink stained wretches and keyboard pounders at such institutions as the New York Times and MoveOn.org will be brought to heel.
Over the board criticism is nothing new in American politics. During the Jefferson, Adams campaign, one hostile Federalist referred to the author of the Declaration of Independence as “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father … raised wholly on hoe-cake made of coarse-ground Southern corn, bacon and hominy – with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog.”
Ms. Mason would do well to take a lesson from furious federalist; it may be time to take a deep breath and understand that women in the political kitchen (no disrespect intended) should get used to some heat and splattering.
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