"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Gee, if she'd been like this during the primaries I might have even supported her
Posted by Jill | 5:35 AM
So...was it enough?

I'm not sure. My gut tells me no. It's never enough when you're dealing with people who have become unhinged; people who have become so entwined with their grievances that they can't see straight. This is how we get women who can come up with the conclusion that the way to make a feminist statement is to vote for a misogynist who thinks jokes about wife-beating and rape are funny, whose wife seems to be injured a lot (just sayin'...) and with his support for overturning Roe v. Wade and his silence on the Bush Administration's upcoming HHS rule that would define many methods of contraception as abortion, WILL set women's rights back forty years. This is how we get people like Alex Jones, hardly a leftist, in Denver to stir up trouble by baiting another grievance-crazed nut, Michelle Malkin.

But some people are determined to cut off their noses to spite their faces no matter what, and I still believe that Hillary created this monster that has now spiralled out of her control. The speech was good, but I don't think she was emphatic enough that a) she is OVER IT; b) this election should NOT be about HER; and c) that she vehemently opposes so-called supporters who do not fall into line. She left just enough of a crack in the door for her own ego to sneak through, and that's enough to keep her grievance-crazed supporters foaming at the mouth. Today's New York Times is reporting that a number of Clinton fundraisers are still angry and unlikely to help Barack Obama. And check out one of the reasons why:

The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick.

Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech.

More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers.

“I’ve had more contact from the McCain campaign since the nomination than from the Obama campaign,” said Calvin Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer, major Clinton fund-raiser and longtime Democratic donor who is not in Denver this week.

Mr. Fayard said he was considering supporting Senator John McCain, the Republican, citing what he perceived as Mr. Obama’s inexperience.


With all due respect, Mr. Fayard, if you do this, then I would argue that not only should you turn in your Democratic credentials, but I would question whether you are smart enough to even vote. I mean, getting pissy about where your hotel rooms are? Is there anything more indicative of the screwed-up priorities of the so-called Feminism of Affluent White Women than thinking that the Obama campaign isn't bowing and scraping and genuflecting before you quite enough?

I remember early feminism. I remember the feminism of the affluent suburbs during the early 1970's, when women whose husbands had high-powered jobs or had inherited money, who in the stately colonials of Westfield, New Jersey, held consciousness-raising groups about how oppressed they were. Early-stage feminism had little common cause with the women slinging eggs over easy at the diner, or cleaning the bedpans in the hospitals and nursing homes, or the ones teaching their children. It was about restrictive country clubs and examining their own vaginas. You could almost understand this in the early stages of a movement. Those who need it the most are too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads and don't have time for activism. But even after all this time, these women are willing to sell their daughters' right to control their own bodies and the lives of their sons who will become cannon fodder. They're willing to do this just because they're pissed off that an affluent white woman who was able to jump directly into the Senate without having to be so much as a County committeewoman because her husband was president; an affluent white woman who was humiliated by said husband on a national stage, isn't going to get to be president.

Clinton alluded to this disconnect last night, but I think she wasn't emphatic enough that these WATBs who are clinging to their anger as if it were the most cherished of possessions should just grow the hell up. She talked about the woman who adopted two autistic children and had no health insurance and was dealing with cancer. She talked about the young boy whose mother was on minimum wage. But she assumed that a bunch of people who think that they were dissed on their hotel rooms and to what lobbyist parties they were given passes, even care about these people. Because these Clinton fundraisers, and the PUMA crazies, and the rest of these self-involved, self-indulgent, narcissistic people, don't care about the woman working two part-time jobs with no health insurance. They don't care about the woman who goes into people's homes and takes care of the elderly and the sick, being paid minimum wage while the agencies for which they work charge the clients four and five times that. They don't care about the woman emptying the bedpans in the hospital, or the one cleaning the room in the very hotel where they're bitching about the rooms. They don't care about the fourteen-year-old impregnated by her father who can't get an abortion because that father would have to give permission. They don't care about the lunch lady at their child's school whose husband was just laid off in his fifties and they have a disabled adult child at home and continued health coverage under COBRA is $1200 a month -- which is almost her entire take-home pay.

No, all that matters is that they feel Hillary Clinton -- a woman who will be able to back to the Senate and perhaps be the successor to Ted Kennedy, who can go home weekends to her nice house in Chappaqua, who never really HAS to work again -- didn't get the nomination for president.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Labels: , ,

8 comments
Bookmark and Share
8 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Amen! The Daily Show had a bunch of these nitwits on last night and had a child psychologist on talking about how they need to deal with their anger. Heehee.

IMO,most of these people were GOP to start with.

I'd also like to see someone look into the money these people raised(esp.the PUMA crowd),how legal it was,where it got spent,etc. Something tells me that there's some scamming that went on.
8/27/08, 6:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Geez Jill... Her speech was wonderful. I love to see the faith that you have in women. I mean, I frequent a lot of feminist blogs- radical feminist- and I don't see a whole bunch of people willing to vote for McCain. I've seen one, maybe.

I just don't understand the bitterness and bullying. Really, I don't. I was never a supporter of HRC's in this campaign, sadly, and I'm less than thrilled with Obama. That has nothing to do with Hillary. For the same reasons that I could not support her (Iraq, etc.), I'm not thrilled with Obama (FISA, etc.). I honestly don't see how anyone can be thrilled with any Dem candidate anymore. But I will 99% likely vote for Obama. Not because he's good enough, but truly because McCain is as big a threat to this country as Bush.

But God, the constant rah-rah you've got going for Obama, the constant bitterness about "feminists." Any true feminist who would vote for McCain is nuts. I'm sure it occurs to you that perhaps there was a lot of anger because of the historical issues between African-
Americans and women supporting African-American causes and then being left behind. Oh, I don't know, like when it came to abolition and voting rights? Women waited a long time to vote, after so many had devoted themselves to abolition and then watched African-American men get the vote and not a whole lot of them spoke up for women's rights. True, Jim Crow laws made winning voting rights a hollow victory for African-American men, and I'm not going to for one minute say black men were not murdered, etc., trying to pursue their rights.

I think some of these women, in the face of that history and the bitter sexism in the campaign (and there was racism and there will be a lot more coming from McCain's camp), had little tantrums and said stupid things. But I don't think they are going to vote for McCain anyway. Not by the time this is all over with.

I have written several similar posts and deleted them, because I don't really want to come on your blog and be all pissy, but seriously...
8/27/08, 9:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Oh and PS---

My mother took me on marches and rallies back in the '70's. I actually attended CR meetings with her when I was a child. A vivid memory was of a woman who had boy-girl twins named "Christopher" and "Christine." It was just so cool to know a brother and sister both named "Chris." But if you want to say that my mother was some affluent, spoiled brat who spent too much time examining her vagina, then I call BS big time.

My mom grew up in a house where the bugs would crawl up their arms if they slept with their hands over the side of the bed. And she had to share a bed her entire childhood and teen years with two of her sisters. Yeah, she's white, but God I get sick of people saying '70's feminists were all upper class female twits. Her and those two of her sisters, all of whom were feminists, could never have been labeled country club feminists. That is just offensive to me already. Really, really offensive.
8/27/08, 9:47 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...
I guess those crazy Cougars or whatever just don't know when they're beat.
8/27/08, 11:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
IMO,most of these people were GOP to start with.

Ummm, right ... the 18M people who voted for HRC were GOP.
8/27/08, 12:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Thank you Jill....for putting it on the line. And also, I have a nasty feeling that some of them are not simply disenchanted feminists, but racist. It is nicer to dress up as a feminist than a closet racist, after all. And I don't see why a feminist would have to "be nuts" to vote for Obama. One surely would need to be nuts to sit home and let McCain win, though!
8/27/08, 12:46 PM  
Blogger Bob said...
After watching an interview with one blubbery Clinton delegate who was going into meltdown - a black woman, yet - she was borderline need to be hospitalized & sedated - you'd think Barack had done something really evil to win the nomination. They rejected 100 Clinton delegates for interviews before they found her. She was a lulu.
8/27/08, 4:23 PM  
Blogger Myrtle June said...
The puma and the nobamas are not democrats. They are rovers and anyone who cannot respond to their candidate's heartfelt and genuine grace and dignity of losing this one can go shit in their hats. Hillary Clinton showed what she's made of and it was something more than herself. Finally, something more than herself! I've been waiting for thaaaaat. I'm proud she did that.

Pumas and nobamas are republican imposters. Period. They always have been.

Great post Jill!!
8/28/08, 4:19 AM  
Post a Comment
<< Home