A couple of thoughts about Susan Bordo

First off, from what I know of it, I like Susan Bordo's other stuff. The stuff on Descartes is good -- the analysis of inwardness and of the Cartesian masculinization of thought. And I liked the "Male Body" cultural/ historical overview, the comparison of gazes and so on.

These days, though, Susan Bordo has joined the ranks of those for whom feminism is about one, and only one, person: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton will be available on Amazon.com starting tomorrow, and there's a free passage available at The Guardian. So here are some thoughts about the free passage:

1) First off, I'm not entirely clear that Hillary Clinton has in any sense been "destroyed." The election was hers to lose, and she lost it -- to a reality TV star who spent half of what she spent on it. She doesn't appear to have lost any of the resources which would allow her to run again in 2020. What's the big deal?

2) Secondly, Bordo wants to blame young women for Clinton's loss, lining up a litany of their supposed flaws. The litany includes this observation:

They didn’t witness the complicated story of how the 1994 crime bill came to be passed or the origins of the “super-predator” label (not coined by Hillary and not referring to black youth, but rather to powerful, older drug dealers).

Unfortunately for Bordo, the "superpredator" label was originally intended as a description of Black youth. Here's the original reference. (Kudos to Benjamin Porenski for pointing this out over on Facebook.)

3) Then, of course, Bordo wants to blame Bernie Sanders. Here's the critical passage:

Any rift between feminist generations, however, would almost certainly have been healed by Donald Trump’s outrageous comments and behavior, had younger progressives not become bonded, during the primary, to a Democratic male hero who both supported the issues they were most passionate about and offered young women independence from the stale and, in their view, defunct feminist past.

I guess the fact that Sanders ran a clean campaign, looked the other way at pro-Clinton election fraud, and campaigned for Clinton in the run-up to November offers no consolation for his unforgivable sin of daring to run against her.

But Bordo 4) doesn't want to stop there. Sanders' further sin is that:

Sanders was taking Hillary down in a different way: as an establishment tool and creature of Wall Street.

I'm sure that Clinton was and is none of those things. Your assessment, Professor Bordo? Well, here's something below:

Like progressive, establishment is a pretty meaningless term, particularly when lobbed at one Washington politician by another. Neither Sanders nor Clinton had been working outside the system.

Superficially this is true. The problem with Bordo's dismissal, of course, is that the term "establishment" becomes stunningly meaningful once you start doing a social network analysis of the candidates, at which point the donors to Clinton's foundation and her paling-around with corporate titans becomes something to notice. Bernie Sanders, OTOH, will still appear as a marginalized Senator from a small state whose major wish-list items are routinely voted down.

So there it is, folks. If you like seeing a feminist standard-bearer telling the tragic story of one who, like Veruca Salt in Roald Dahl's famous tale, didn't get everything she wanted -- and if you want to read about a feminist now-icon who married into the business (and who earned the label "most qualified" from those who consistently failed to ask what she was in fact qualified to do), buy the new book. If you're interested in culturally-literate, articulate feminism, check out the author's previous works.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

This is why Her needs to go the hell away and STAY away from any kind of public life - Her stains, corrodes, and corrupts everything and everyone in Her vicinity.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@TheOtherMaven She is a black hole. Like the Typhoid Mary of moral and political capital.

blackholedrwho_0.jpg

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

She is a black hole. Like the Typhoid Mary of moral and political capital.

Are you telling us that Her Heinous really, really sucks?

Most of us, yourself included, already knew that, of course.

Bordo's blaming everyone for Hillary Clinton's failure in 2016 except the sole responsible party, the unrepentant Goldwater Girl who tried running as a Democrat by name while remaining a Republican in all other discernable ways, is journalistically irresponsible. History will show this as a major foot shooting:

[video:https://youtu.be/XTGmTrQXrwg width:500 height:350]

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@thanatokephaloides @thanatokephaloides Are you telling us that Her Heinous really, really sucks?

Most of us, yourself included, already knew that, of course.

Well yes, of course, but I was trying to make a slightly different point:

When people try to lend Hillary some of their moral credibility--even people who seem to have an unassailable fund of moral credibility, like John Lewis, Dolores Huerta, or Barack Obama (and yes, I know that one of those things ain't like the other ones, but Obama basically had the Reagan teflon armor in that he was considered Always Good and Always Right, and anybody who said different was bad)--anyway, whenever someone tries to lend Hillary moral credibility, it's like light disappearing down a black hole, never to return. She never looks better because someone with cred says something good about her. The only thing that can make her look better is contrasting her with someone a lot worse than her.

It's actually unique in my experience. I've never seen another public figure who simply cannot be elevated by association. Someone who can't be helped. Even the work Black leadership did for her last year didn't end up elevating her with the Black population--they voted for her in the primary, because they trusted their leaders, and then, for the most part, stayed home for the general. That tells me that Hillary couldn't even get over with them. She couldn't hold onto their support between June and November. And when Barack Obama tried to guilt them into turning out in November--he pissed them off. I didn't think that was possible, that Black people would not only get pissed at Obama, but show it in public. Hillary accomplished the almost-impossible: she drove a wedge--a small one, but a real one--between the nation's first Black president and the African-American base. Obama's attempt to be a surrogate for her backfired into his face and he lost credibility and she gained none. And Obama, whatever else he is, is a skilled politician. That shouldn't have happened.

But it's not the first time. Helping Hillary is like throwing a boomerang at just such an angle that it comes back and hits you in the face.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Steven D's picture

were emotionally invested in having a woman President, especially older professional women who saw Hillary Clinton as one of them. They view her loss as a direct rejection of their lives and identities. It's personal to people like Bordo. They cannot be objective about Hillary Clinton and her baggage. So, to protect themselves they need a story that can protect their own identity and self worth and that story is one of the oldest ones we know - their hero was betrayed and defeated by evil villains, the same people who have been oppressing them their entire lives.

Why do you think the "Bernie Bros" slander was invented? Or that Sanders was criticized as a sexist and misogynist? Because it fits the narrative these Hillary supporters need to tell themselves. That's why these women like Bardo are angry with younger women like my daughter who saw through Hillary Clinton's facade as a supporter of women and of people in general instead of a corrupt politician who did the dirty work that benefited her corporate donors. They didn't want to hear the truth about HRC because they wanted so badly to see someone with whom they identified win and become the most powerful political leader on the planet, thus validating all the struggles they went through in their own professional careers.

Yet, their own life experience is vastly different from younger women and working class women, who also suffer from sexism, but much more from class warfare. Indeed, HRC's support often came from corporations that were sexist institutions who most often applied sexist attitudes and discrimination far more at the rank and file level as opposed to the managerial and professional level, yet that never troubled her, and I imagine that many HRC supporters have no idea what the lives of younger and poorer women are really like.

This is why you will never convince them Hillary wasn't taken down by a vast conspiracy that included sexists, all Sanders' supporters, Green party members (who ran a much better woman as their candidate), working class "racists," and of course, Russia. Telling them that Obama overcame a far greater handicap to win two terms because he was an African American will also fall on their deaf ears. Their emotions are ruling their judgment regarding Hillary Clinton and always will, as well as their ignorance and lack of empathy for those who do not live the privileged lives they lead.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Cassiodorus's picture

@Steven D @Steven D Her other books (or at least those which I've read) display an intelligence which vastly exceeds this fragment.

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Steven D's picture

@Cassiodorus make us stupid. One can be very intelligent and yet still be biased against people different from ourselves and hold a number of nasty stereotypes about other people in one's beautiful mind.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

gulfgal98's picture

@Steven D toward me from women in my peer group because I did not vote for Hillary Clinton. When I tell them that I voted for Jill Stein, they do not even try to disguise their anger toward me. The most common responses are "how could you not vote for Hillary?" or "it is your fault that we now have Trump as President." These people are incredulous that I did not have the same personal investment in Hillary that they did.

When I explain my reason for not voting for Hillary which is her war mongering, they seem to not want to actually know what her real positions on war and regime change are. I told one friend who claimed that Hillary was against war, that she (Hillary) was for the no fly zone in Syria and was the architect behind the debacle in Libya. These people simply are blinded to the Hillary baggage of war mongering. I have never seen anything like it before, not even with Obama. It is almost cult like. Hillary cannot fail, she can only be failed in their eyes.

From what I have personally experienced, the older Clintonites are angrier at people like me whom they believe owed their votes to Hillary than at those who voted for Trump or Johnson, even though Jill Stein received considerably fewer votes than Johnson. And now, even five months later, they continue to be angry at voters like me who believe my vote belongs to me and not to any one candidate.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Steven D's picture

@gulfgal98 but not surprised. Groupthink can be quite malicious to those who don't accept its assumptions and conclusions.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

gulfgal98's picture

@Steven D @Steven D I thought Clinton's campaign slogan of "I'm With Her" was incredibly narcissistic and insulting to the voters. It was all about "Her"and nothing about them.

The same is with the latest "Resist" campaign. What in the hell does "Resist" mean in the real world of people's lives? What are the Democrats (read Clintonites) offering the public as an alternative? "Resist" is a meaningless slogan but many of these same people are buying it now. It is all anti-Trump with nothing to offer in return.

I guess brain washing works. These are well educated and mostly professional people too. It is sad, actually.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

snoopydawg's picture

@gulfgal98
Look at how many of his horrible cabinet members they voted to confirm. Ben Carson as the head of HUD? Just one of many people who have no experience in the positions that they are heading. DeVos is another great example for not having any experience in education except for pushing charter schools and for religion to be taught in them.
Just finished reading the diary on DK about the article and I am still amazed that people will not see the true Hillary Clinton that many of us do. Especially the fact that she is as big a warmonger as John McCain.
Same with Obama who in their minds ended two wars and hasn't started any new ones. I have no idea how they can't see that he and Hillary are responsible for what happened to Libya and Syria. Unless they bought the propaganda that those leaders had to be removed from office. But those reasons were the same type of BS as Saddam's WMDs.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@Steven D to Bordo. I found the Gaurdian piece shocking in its banality. I expect more from an academic than the lies and distortions put forth in the excerpt of this book. First, no thinking person (certainly not a professional thinker) would use the superlative to describe anyone or anything. It's juvenile in instinct and bespeaks a weak mind. To repeat as if by rote the trope that Clinton was the most qualified candidate EVAH- without even providing so much as a metric for this conclusion- should embarrass her. There is no rational basis from which to conclude she was the most qualified. If it's merely a matter of resume, Bush pere would get the title. If by professional accomplishment, she is not even in the running. As what pointed out during the campaign, her judgment is for shit.

The shallow analysis about Sanders hurting Clinton simply by providing an ethical contrast is pathetic enough. But Bordo goes so far as to lie in order to defend Clinton when she claims the superpredator comment was not directed at black youth. It has been quite enlightening throughout this election to witness the number of people who would sell their integrity to defend Hillary Clinton. It's a fascinating phenomenon that hopefully will be the subject of books to come.

It's a sad commentary on contemporary higher education that this kind of bilge is produced by tenured faculty. I understand why the kids is not learning.

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Cassiodorus's picture

@orestes She's really quite good once you forget -- this.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

@orestes

This seems symptomatic of the type of corporate media brainwashing we used to recognize as being used against right-wingers. Golly, gee, once many of the same corporate interests and billionaire began to fund Clinton and the corporate media went all in for Her, the same issues began to appear among Her supporters.

The Sane Progressive is right, deprogramming for corporate-media-watching Americans is required - heck, imperative.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Wink's picture

@Steven D

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Fionnsboy's picture

@Steven D I think you hit the nail on the head, Steven.Incredible how so many otherwise intelligent, rational people become just the opposite when HRC is brought up. For an academic to write such a tawdy, emotional piece-- utterly devoid of HRC's murderous foreign policy problems, conflicts of interest, lies, obvious lack of empathy to an almost sociopathologoical level, etc-- incredible. Her piece sounds like it was written after half a bottle of booze on election night.

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Semper ubi sub ubi

thanatokephaloides's picture

@Fionnsboy

Her piece sounds like it was written after half a bottle of booze on election night.

If that's the case, she needs to switch to Cannabis, subito!

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cassiodorus's picture

@thanatokephaloides it's an entire book. I'm still working on a book, and here these literary giants are putting them out left and right...

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Cassiodorus Not too hard when one is regurgitating stale propaganda. She doesn't even have to invent the propaganda herself.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Did she even have to write it, or was it handed to her already ghosted, if not written in her usual style, stuffed full of money/threats? With the notorious Clinton corruption machine, I wonder about such things...

Edited for a typo I saw during the wait to post...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Fionnsboy's picture

@thanatokephaloides Indeed she does! Or perhaps her therapist said, "So yes, your anger. Okay, so write a letter, but don't mail it." And there you are.

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Semper ubi sub ubi

Creosote.'s picture

@Fionnsboy
and for the Guardian to have featured it, several days running, was strikingly reprehensible.

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Ken in MN's picture

...for not getting the fuck back into line...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jkNNNRkYlM]

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I want my two dollars!

@Ken in MN

Thanks so much!

Someone had posted this at some other place (and the part where the ants figured it out) quite some time ago, and I'm thinking that such inspirational snippets work wonders for the mood, as your post certainly improved mine!

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

The people commenting on the Guardian were having none of it. This is one time no one is going to believe the lie no matter how many times they tell it. Once you see the emperor naked, it can't be unseen.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Wink's picture

@dkmich
meme has come undone. Even those that bought it hook, line and sinker, bobber, boat and water are begining to reexamine.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

CS in AZ's picture

The Clintons and their minions have effected a takeover of "feminism" in which Hillary is cast as the Goddess incarnate. "I'm with Her" was the creepiest campaign slogan ever. They didn't even pretend the election was about anything beyond giving to Her what she deserves and demands.

This is at the top of my list of reasons why I genuinely despise her (although the top spot is getting crowded).

I have said since 2007 that the Clintons' manipulative co-option of feminism and their cult-building enterprise would be a huge setback for women and equality. The very idea that the "most qualified person ever" would be a woman whose so-called "qualification" is who she married is downright offensive and the antithesis of feminism. I'm glad their cynical use of her gender as the reason to elect her failed. But the cult carries on, unfortunately.

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Wink's picture

@CS in AZ
"I'm With Her" almost had to think Hillary had it won before the first Primary vote was cast. Worst campaign slogan ever.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Wink No kidding. /facepalm

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

gulfgal98's picture

@CS in AZ What did Hillary Clinton actually do to support women? She came from a background of privilege by nature of her education. She worked on the Watergate Committee, she sat on the board of WalMart, and she was appointed Secretary of State without having any prior experience in world affairs other than being first lady. As a feminist, she pushed for regime change in multiple countries and stepped up bombing in those countries, resulting in the deaths of many innocent women and children. How is this being a feminist.

The article talks about how badly treated she was as if it was her gender that caused it. But other women have risen to very high office without being subjected to the scrutiny that Clinton was. Perhaps the problem is with Clinton herself, not her gender. The part about how unfair Bernie was to her by telling the truth that she was the establishment candidate really reeks of sour grapes.

There are many of us women who had to endure far greater trials in the workplace than Hillary Clinton ever did. I am the same age as Her and I was systematically discriminated in the workplace in the terms of pay and benefits. I am now retired, but I will never recover those years of lost pay and it is reflected in my pension. So, Ms. Bordo, cry me a river about how hard Hillary has had it. Paving the way for her nomination by rigging the process certainly does not speak well of her qualifications that she needed to cheat to get the nomination. The problem with Hillary Clinton is not sexism. It is with Clinton herself.

BTW, I could not make it through the entire article. Banal is the correct description.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

and persuaded her way to the very top rank of the Democratic Party, which is no mean feat. But I think a lot of people perceived that the driving force that got her there, was not devotion to feminism nor any other particular ideal, but rather a markedly unprincipled lust for power. I'm not sure how accurate that perception is, but a large proportion of Americans have it -- both male and female.

However, I think sexism probably did play a role in Hillary's defeat. It is widely considered to be more acceptable for a male to be power-hungry, unprincipled, ambitious -- even occasionally cruel -- than for a woman to openly display these traits. What might have been good for the gander was not good for the goose. At least, not in the case of Hillary Clinton.

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native

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@native I don't think sexism is the problem. The people who have that problem would never be part of her voter base anyway, even if she were Eleanor Roosevelt. All she could do with them is work around them and wait for the vaunted demographic shift as some of them died off. Some would come around eventually if she provided Rooseveltian (Eleanorian?) policy consistently and really fought for the working class. Or would have, had she chosen to do that eleven years ago when she started on her Path to the Presidency.

But no sensible campaign manager would suggest that she try to win on the basis of those votes anyway, anymore than Barack Obama could have won by appealing to white supremacists; you have to work around those things by getting enough of the rest of the people on your side.

Hillary is remarkable because she's hated by both ends of the political spectrum as well as a significant chunk of the middle, something not attained by many US politicians since Hoover. Maybe Nixon...but it seems to me a lot of right-wingers kept the faith with Tricky Dick after his fall. It's hard to get that many people hating you at once, and in her case, I think the problem is that she doesn't even bother to tell a plausible lie. She considers the electorate so unimportant that she doesn't even make a serious effort to gain credibility with them. Cass is right; this is basically how she approaches the electorate:

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cassiodorus's picture

@native even well-meaning people forget why she lost. She lost because a great number of people who voted for Obama once or twice failed to mark their Presidential ballot at all last year. There was no sexist uprising against Clinton. Instead, Clinton failed the most elementary test of a Presidential candidate: she couldn't get the folks already in her camp to vote for her.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Wink's picture

@native
Was Hillary. I couldn't imagine voting for her, but it wasn't becuz she had feminine plumbing. There's "something about Hillary" that rubs many of us the wrong way, and it's got nothing to do with her plumbing. Teachout, Warren, maybe one or two others, I can see myself easily voting for them. Hillary? Never in a million years.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Bollox Ref's picture

and the push back at the Guardian site was noticeable.

All rather embarrassing really. Especially if you're an academic with a reputation to maintain.

At some point, the Clinton diehards are going to have face up to the fact that 'Her' was a very flawed candidate.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

snoopydawg's picture

Guardian and DK where people say that her giving speeches to the banks happened before she declared that she was running for president. They are saying that she gave those speeches as a private citizen and they should have no bearing against her because the Obamas got paid $60 million to write their books and that Bill and Barack get or will get paid high speaking fees.
The point those people are missing is that the Obamas and Bill aren't in the position to give the banks special treatment and Hillary would have been if she became president. And anyone who doesn't believe that Hillary hadn't planned to run is fooling themselves. Of course she was going to run.
And this is the biggest point to be made. Now that she isn't the president the Clinton global initiative has been shut down because no one is donating to it anymore. That's the proof that people were paying for special treatment from Hillary when she became president.
I just don't understand why people say that she was such a good advocate for women and children.
Outside of the schip program, what did she do for them? And that program was created by Ted Kennedy IIRC.
As gulfgal stated, Hillary was on Walmart's board and she didn't push for anything that would have helped the women who worked there. And anything else she did is undone after she pushed for welfare reform that pushed millions of women and children into poverty not only back in the 90's but because of the rules written into the bill, people are still being affected as what happened last June when thousands of people were no longer able to qualify for food stamps. Add to what her foreign policy views did to millions of women and children in the Middle East and anything she did decades ago is totally wiped out in my book.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

shaharazade's picture

Who is this woman? Who gives a rats ass what she has to say. I'm really freaked out about the so called left's buying into this elitist shit. Is this not a by-partisan site? Why are we rehashing and concentrating on the fake bs. emanating from the powers that be. Let them go. They are nothing I want anything to do with. Get real people as long as you believe that the current so called resistance including Bernie and Caitlin Johnstone goes your stuck. They all revolve around the the sad sick story perpetuated by the powers that be. This is a tale all of it none of it warrants belief in. No facts no nothing.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Read more at: https:/

/www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williamsha155103.html

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@shaharazade She was a prominent figure in 1980s academic feminism--which actually was a thing, when I was coming up. Though academic feminism should never have been in charge of feminism as a whole, it wasn't actually bad to have a large number of scholars engaged in debate & discussion over the issues feminism brings up. Bordo was engaging in a philosophical discussion of how Western culture (Euro-derived, Europe and its former colonies, basically) viewed the human body, and how that affected concepts of race, gender, and beauty. She was also one of the scholars that attempted to talk to a general audience as well as to other academics.

So that's why we care. This is the Clinton camp mobilizing one more surrogate, and that means one more ally gone. It also represents one more piece of what used to be feminism chopped off and hauled back to the Clinton camp as a prize of war, but since I consider US feminism to be dead anyway, it's more like watching a velociraptor tear a hunk off the wildebeest it killed the day before. It hurts me less than losing Bruce Springsteen, (or Frank Coniff).

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@shaharazade @shaharazade on culture. She warps it out of shape. Just through her political weight, she gets people who used to occupy one cultural position to occupy another: you get John Lewis shushing Black protesters singing at the rally of a rich white politician; you get Bruce Springsteen thinking that Hillary would be a great president; you get Bernie Sanders publicly engaging in Bear Scare rhetoric; you get Gloria Steinem using an anti-suffrage talking point against younger women--there's many examples. You get Dolores Huerta saying that people were chanting "English Only" at her when they weren't, and then, when America Ferrera says it doesn't matter whether they were chanting "English Only" or not (!), remaining silent. You get Noam Chomsky selling us the lesser of two evils talking point. And because we have a stupid idea of the self, those people, in moving from one cultural position to the other, drag the meanings formerly associated with them along into the new position.

Thus the meanings of "racism" and "sexism" and "anti-racism" and "anti-sexism," like the terms "liberal" and "conservative" before them, get yanked out of shape. If it keeps happening for long enough, you lose your movement. It's like tug-of-war. Once someone has managed to redefine the core values of your movement, it's not yours anymore--it's theirs. But it retains, again like a spoil of war, the credibility it had when it was run by others. And the establishment uses that credibility like a club until it breaks--until the credibility has been exhausted. And then, your movement is really, permanently dead, in that nobody will be able to use the word you once used to describe yourself without eliciting scorn.

This is what just happened, over the last 40 years, to the party of FDR. That is the exact process they used to warp the terms "Democrat," "left," "liberal," and "progressive." I'm not saying we're wrong to cede the Party--continuing to fight for it is obviously a losing game. However, back in the mid-80s when Al From and his friends decided to destroy the Democratic Party, this was the endgame they were looking for: driving everybody who occupied a position left of Reagan Republicans out of politics by taking over the Democratic Party and rendering it poisonous.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Applauds loudly.

Yuuuuuge numbers of corporate PR teams work on such things, as do governments using them - and were apparently warned some time back to keep no records of meetings and not to discuss such matters in elevators or any place where they may have any potential of being overheard by anyone who might inform the public of whatever.

As I rather vaguely recall, it was some memos sent out which were circulated about this, illustrating the point...

Secrecy for them; their microscopes trained upon our lives.

Edit: missed an s. The metal filings which worked into my keyboard while stored uncovered near some metal-working equipment at his place seem to move randomly, but at least they don't scrunch so much any more. But I typo quite often enough on my own, lol.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.