A radical notion sure to get me lynched. Somewhere.

[veronica_rich]

For all the women screaming "sexism!" about how neocon media outlets treated Hillary Clinton, I have one question: You don't think those same agencies wouldn't have welcomed her with open arms and lauded her ideas if her name had been Elizabeth Dole, or her surname Bush? I bet they would've.

What about the vitriol against Obama for race? Or, more accurately, criticizing him for not being "black enough" because he was not descended from "pure" black family lines or slaves? Or for turning his name into some pseudo-Muslim-terrorist e-mail forward? (Which, hell, took the majority of *peaceful* Muslims' names down into the mud along with his.) Shit, what would Faux News and CNN have done for fodder if he'd been named Tom Smith?

Ladies - let us take a moment to remember John Kerry. The man had a fucking Silver Star (maybe more than one, I don't recall) for service, and the campaign for Bush - a man who spent those same years snorting blow, drinking his weight in liquor, and probably fucking everything to cross his path in party-boy mode - still managed to convince a bunch of fellow veterans to LIE PUBLICLY about Kerry's experience in which his patrol killed a child. This is something Kerry admitted well before then in an interview, explained the circumstances that led to the accidental shooting, and expressed great regret about. Now ... even BEING a woman, if I were also a veteran, I would take more offense at being called on the carpet for my service by a draft dodger than I would at some stupid men proving yet again that the male brain IS, indeed, housed in the penis.

Personally, I think it's about time we see some anti-McCain propaganda about how he's not "soldier enough" for wanting to subject even more young men and women to the POW treatment he endured for several years. Or he's not "neocon enough" because for a while he DID abandon any support for Bush or this war - right before he went back to kissing the old chimp's ass and yelling "rah rah oil!" I'd sure like to see him be required to undergo a mental as well as physical medical evaluation - I know more than one medical professional who has watched him and commented "There's something wrong with him (medically)" and at least one longtime doctor with experience to make judgments, who said "He seems to be displaying a lot of pre-Alzheimer's symptoms."

But hey! He's white, he's old, he has a penis, he has Jesus on his side (because we know Obama isn't REALLY Christian, despite all the public airing of his relationship and break with his former longtime minister - it's just a front to dispute all that terrorist stuff!), and most importantly: He sure wouldn't allow two queers to fuck under the legal sanction of marriage in this God-blessed U.S. of A.!

Comments

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

You actually EXPECT the same standards to be applied to all? How *dare* you, you . . . . you . . . you . . . LIBERAL!

Seriously, I doubt you're going to see much if anything that attacks McCain's service record, because he was a POW. IMO, That's the one thing I can respect him for, but that's beside the point. McCain is displaying the classic signs of someone wearing two faces, afraid to be seen with Bush Jr. in public, yet oh-so-willing to take the money Bush supporters bring to the table because Bush asks them to. Just not in front of the cameras. As for his not being "neocon" enough, the criticism is out there. Huckabee did manage to win a few states before he caved, after all.

As for Fox News, they've made it very clear that the rumor about Obama being Muslim is as fake as "read my lips".

I'm not going to address the "anti-feminism" slant being given to the criticism of Clinton in the media, except to wonder how HRC will use it to her advantage.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I don't know, man - you're not in your twenties and you're not in grad school. I don't know if you KNOW enough about feminism to be talking about it with any authority ....

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

You may have a point. After all, I did vote for Obama, even though I am a woman.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

We're just outdated, we are. Our schools didn't teach the sense being disseminated on campuses today, since nobody heard of feminism before 1996. ;-)

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

Gee, there's obviously something wrong with Bush's brain, so anything McCain might have can't be too far removed. Personally I think McCain is a pawn and the real President will be his #2. Huckabee, I'm tellin' you.

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

The thought of Huckabee being in charge is truly frightening. He has about as much intelligence and wisdom as Bush Jr.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

He does have more charisma, though. He'd make a great talk show host.

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

That's occupational hazard from his being a minister.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I have a Republican friend who has said much the same thing, and that THAT is what worries her about McCain - that he'll get a nutso who thinks the government ought to be run by a minority's intepretation of a religious text written thousands of years ago (and in another language, which I am confident has not been translated all THAT faithfully for usage by other denominations).

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

If Huckabee is picked as McCain's #2, then we better hope to hell Obama picks Hillary. THAT's his only hope of beating a McCain/Huckabee ticket. And it will come down to 2000 again, where we have states contesting results, voting machines not working and people crying foul.

Unless they're even more sheeplike than I'm afraid they already are.
I am beginning to have serious concerns over the national psyche. And yes, there is one. It is why the Obama phenomenon happened (an unknown getting the Dem nom), people can sense things need to change, they're not sure how, but the psyche knows we're going in a perilous direction, down a road of more conflict and more hardship if the current "Let's kick the shit out of everyone who hates us," policies are allowed to continue.

[finding-neo.livejournal.com]

I should have stated, "SOME people can sense..." The sheeples cannot sense anything beyond the stench of their own shit.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I am beginning to have serious concerns over the national psyche. And yes, there is one.

No offense, but you're just now worried there is one? This is a nation that happily put a FAILING warmonger back into office four years ago, and a bunch of his buddies back into Congress, to boot. This is a nation who I believe would accept Hitler himself, back from the dead, if he said he was a born-again Christian. (Why the word of one of those is taken as more important than the *actions* of one, I'll never understand, since Bush's actions clearly did not match his posturing. But it worked.)

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

It worked because Bush and Co. are fearmongers as well as warmongers.

[caniad.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind someone offering an opinion from a more right-side perspective, I think that the problem isn't so much people voting because of what the so-called "conservative" candidate believes but because of what the candidate on the opposite side of the spectrum believes. To be honest, I don't like much that McCain has to say, and I wouldn't dream of voting for Huckabee. (I may be a Christian, but I'd never entrust the governing of my country to a Baptist.) And I know a good number of people on the right who feel this way. A very large number, in fact. But I'm unable support Obama's proposed policies -- largely because of his position on capital gains -- so I feel backed into a corner about voting on the right. I was all set to "vote my conscience" in this election and go third party, but that looks like a bad option as well. Please understand that many people who say they support McCain only do so because they're unable to support Obama. I'm afraid I can't explain anyone who would support Huckabee.

(And I'm really not trying to get into a major debate, so apologies if this irritates anyone. I just wanted to present a different perspective and, if possible, show that many of the people who tend to align themselves with the GOP aren't there by design but by default. My husband and I are far from your typical conservatives -- we hate the war, and we're practically tree-huggers -- but we find ourselves in too much disagreement with the left.)

On the side, I AM in my twenties and fresh out of grad school, and I've heard enough crap feminist ideas to sink a ship. Besides, don't these people know -- feminism is becoming outdated, and New Historicism is all the rage :)

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

No irritation here. It's rare these days, on both sides it would seem, to see someone who is willing to make an educated vote rather than voting merely because of gender, skin color, religion, or cultural bias, or because the other person is "too liberal" or "too conservative". :)

[solitaryraven.livejournal.com]

*I'm toasting you as we...er...type.*

[justawench.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

I hope they flog the Jack Abramoff scandal and dig up the Keating Five stuff again too, while they're at it. It seems to me that running an ad consisting of nothing but soundbytes of McCain's flip-flopping should be enough to sink him, but when people actually think Obama wants to enslave whites, I could be wrong.

For your amusement:



http://pics.livejournal.com/justawench/pic/0019fax0

http://pics.livejournal.com/justawench/pic/0019e89x

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

That middle link is hilarious, considering McCain wants to privatize Social Security - you know, because 401(k)s have done so well in the stock market. I wish every old, middle-aged, and 40-year-old voter realized this.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

My family was talking about this at dinner in response to someone who wasn't even voting for her, but felt that the media has given her a raw deal. I agree. (In the interest of disclosure, I voted for her, but I will certainly vote for Obama in November). The example that the letter to the editor gave was that one headline, in response to a delegrate sweep in some state: "Hillary steals election." I think you can look at that BOTH ways. As in, steal in baseball, which is positive. OR steal as in illegal and immoral. I have watched for weeks the sound bites coming out of Comcast as I bring up my screen. ALL NEGATIVE. And this way was before Obama had cinched the delegate count. It would be nothing more than a sentence, but I would click on it, and be surprised to see that the story behind hte negative soundbite was nothing more than a simple reporting of the facts.

Being a journalist, I'm sure you're no stranger to the concept of the hook. Make the headline dire or punative or "catchy" in order to draw the reader in. I have been, frankly, horrified at the sort of headlines that have appeared in the internet media. Nine times out of ten they did NOT reflect the story itself, and were either sensationalistic to get you to click or were downright misleading to create a negative opinion about her. The media has, IMO, hated the Clintons from day one. Remember that insane business about Bill's haircut. Which, it turned out, WAS COMPLETELY MADE-UP!!!!

So, yeah, sexist pigs.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

From a purely study POV, where are you getting these headlines from? What agencies or sources do they derive from?

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

See example I use below. Comcast has been playing this one all night on it's news feed.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Um ... my apologies, but I'm just not seeing the hatred in this article. It's definitely an editorial with an opinionated slant, but it's not damning or mean-spirited. It's one writer's opinion, and it is credited as such. And the writer is hardly alone for raising the question about Clinton's appearance and image - analysts of Kerry after his loss questioned what might've been if he'd come down harder on his critics, faster. Analysts of Huckabee and Romney wondered if their religious fervor might have hurt them.

I confess ignorance. What am I missing?

And, it's a female writer. I'm certainly not going to cop to the "women can't be misogynists" line, because it's not true (Ann Coulter? Michelle Malkin?), but I have to admit that reading this from a female writer probably makes it more palatable to me, than from a male writer.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Or - as it suddenly occurs to me long after I hit "reply" - are you talking about the headline itself? No, it isn't the best headline an editor could've picked for it, I'll say - but it's less offensive and just more untrue, since women WERE her core base all along. (It is better than some I've seen in my career. On rare occasions, I have seen headlines that made me "WTF?" after I read the article.)

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

It's about the headline. But this is just one is a series of, what, maybe, 30 headlines in the last six months that made my eyebrows scrunch. I have not seen similarly innuendo-esque sort of headlines either about McCain OR Obama.

An example that I would think is similar is that McCain just had some sort of scan to see if he was cancer free (he had melanoma many years back). He got a clean bill of health, nice to hear, but the headline for him on comcast would have been something like, "McCain in picture perfect health?" To my mind, if that had been Hillary the headline would have read something like this, "Hillary Cancer Free?" It's that sort of bullshit that I'm talking about and it's been going on for MONTHS.

[pir8fancier.livejournal.com]

PS:

Just saw another one tonight on comcast: "Clinton finally reaches out to women."

I think that's pretty loaded. I think they hate her. She LOST and they still hate her.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

And Comcast is eb0l. I'd like to storm their corporate headquarters and string up all the male execs by their nuts, anyway. I don't need another reason.