Voting Against Sexism

I have quit debating people about Hillary Clinton, and you will note that my blogging on the subject has also diminished. For most of us here in the Midwest, the entire argument is only academic anyway (since both Missouri and Illinois have already held their primaries) and, regardless of how they may feel today, I assume that most people with whom I converse are going to support whomever the Democratic nominee turns out to be, since McCain is a complete WHACKJOB!

I’m tired of feeling like I have to apologize or explain why I support the person I feel to be more qualified – in both experience and temperament – to lead this country. And it has been particularly upsetting to hear some of the most sexist, double-standard comments coming from people I care alot about.

But if I didn’t support Hillary for any other reason, Digby provides a nice panoramic view of the latest wave in the media’s sexist tantrum. As Robin Morgan said: “I don’t support Hillary because she is a woman; I support her because I am a woman.”

And just to finish things off, here’s a little section of the longest, most drawn out insult to Clinton supporters I have yet to read, from the New York Magazine:

Yet the flip side of all this is why Clinton’s demographically determined
constituencies haven’t felt the Obama magic, why for them he’s an acquired
taste, like espresso. It’s not only that the people who create and run the
media—and who love Obama—occupy the social and cultural upper rungs. The world
depicted in “the media,” broadly construed—not just straight journalism but
everything we watch and read and hear—is overwhelmingly a bright, shiny,
upscale, youngish world. Uneducated white people, residents of the so-called C
and D counties, and the elderly—in other words, Hillary Clinton voters—are
seldom allowed into the mass-media foreground, and when they appear it’s usually
as bathetic figures, victims or losers. (And working-class black pop culture is
considered part of the sexy mainstream in a way that working-class white pop
culture is not.) The shocking eclipse of Hillary (an eight-figure net worth,
maybe, but at least she’s got a normal American name and a Wal-Mart shopper’s
bad hair and big bum) by this fashionable (black!) media darling is one more
slap in the face for the people chronically excluded from the pretty mediascape
version of America, one more damn new new thing that they don’t really get. It
makes them … bitter, and the bitterness makes them cling to the Clintons.

So Clinton supporters are only the “uneducated white people and… elderly”, who are nothing but “victims and losers”, and he can’t stop himself from the sexist judgment that Hillary has “a Wal-Mart shoppers bad hair and big bum”, which would explain why we are, of course, “bitter”.

There can be no reason other than racism for any MAN to support Clinton, though it’s obvious why we bitter, older women with big asses and bad hair do so.

If Obama wants to understand better why he can’t connect with certain groups of supporters, perhaps he should check out his own bandwagon. It explains a lot.