January 10, 2008

Camille Paglia thinks Hillary Clinton has "a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias."

Camille begins with a review of Hillary's family background. (You can bone up on the subject by reading Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge.") Hillary had a "harsh, domineering father" who abused her "feckless, loutish brothers," and she became "the barracuda who fought for dominance at their expense." Replaying that "ruthless old family drama," "Hillary could barely conceal her sneers" at last Saturday's debate. The other candidates looked like "the wimpy, cringing brothers at the dinner table."

This is rich. Let's read on:
Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

It's no coincidence that Hillary's staff has always consisted mostly of adoring women, with nerdy or geeky guys forming an adjunct brain trust. Hillary's rumored hostility to uniformed military men and some Secret Service agents early in the first Clinton presidency probably belongs to this pattern. And let's not forget Hillary, the governor's wife, pulling out a book and rudely reading in the bleachers during University of Arkansas football games back in Little Rock.

Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package...
So.... you're going to use the word "feminazi"?
...which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century.
Note: Camille does not like the official feminists.
History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.
I strongly agree with that.
How does all this affect the prospect of a Hillary presidency? With her eyes on the White House, Hillary as senator has made concerted and generally successful efforts to improve her knowledge of and relationship to the military -- crucial for any commander-in-chief but especially for the first female one. However, I remain concerned about her future conduct of high-level diplomacy. Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary's default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. It's a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias. How will that play in the Muslim world?
Go read the whole thing, but let me cut to the bottom line.

Paglia supports Barack Obama "because he is a rational, centered personality who speaks the language of idealism and national unity." This is similar to what Andrew Sullivan said — and, frankly, similar to some things I find myself thinking from time to time... when I'm not talking back to myself about what a disastrous delusion that might be.

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh is delighted by Paglia's attack on Clinton (member link):
Camille Paglia is one of the most brilliant arts professors. .... There's hardly a better writer out there, and her use of language, her turn of phrase... Her point here is that Hillary has no core values.... She stands for herself and whatever she has to do to get where she wants. It's just no more complicated than that....

This is Camille Paglia, a liberal, ladies and gentlemen, writing of Hillary Clinton, on Salon.com.

62 comments:

AllenS said...

Hillary could care less what Paglia has to say. This is what Paglia says in the last paragraph: "I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee of my party." Honestly, sometimes women are just irrational.

Anonymous said...

Paglia is also right that we'll be subjected again to the endless campaigning and polarization we suffered through during the first Clinton Administration.

Anonymous said...

AllenS,

It may be perfectly rational when all the GOP offers is a bunch of religious zeolots who intend to shove their religion down our throats under the disguise of being pro-life.

goesh said...

-then she could uleash hell onto our enemies, easily. I've always felt that way about her

Salamandyr said...

I think I still like Hillary more than Obama.

The thing is, Obama really does speak to our better natures; our desire to be inclusive, to make this a country where anyone, of any background can rise to the highest office in the land. He speaks to that belief in us, that if we just talk long enough about a problem we can come to a solution that pleases everyone.

The only problem is, it's crap. Politics is sometimes about making the hard choice, about realizing that choice you've made is going to be anathema to some portion of respectable voters, not just some nebulous other that is holding the common man down. Hillary may have a messianic complex, but it's tempered by a keen insider pragmatism. It's evident in her desire, despite her natural inclinations to foster better relations with the military. That's why I think she's the best of the Democratic field.

EnigmatiCore said...

This is all moot. The Democratic race is over, and Hillary has won it. John Kerry just endorsed Obama.

goesh said...

-poor Obama, Kerry will alienate the youth of this land but then many of them will forget to vote in Nov. anyway...

Mortimer Brezny said...

John Kerry just endorsed Obama.

So did Tim Johnson of South Dakota. South Dakota and Massachussetts are Feb. 5th states, I believe. Kerry is enormously popular within Massachussetts.

Anonymous said...

Hillary! is, and has been for most if not all of her adult life, a socialist and the kind of angry modern feminist Paglia criticizes.

What some see as strength is bullying; and what others call pragmatism is a lack of honesty and positive core values. She is the ultimate plastic woman: self-serving, shaped daily and driven solely by pathological ambition. Anyone who would trust such a creature in a position of great responsibility is a fool living a delusion.

Simon said...

"Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary's default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. ... How will that play in the Muslim world?"

Seems to me that that far from a problem, that's a very, very good reason to support Hillary, actually.

Salamandyr said...

Which is why she's a better choice for those of us who don't buy into the straight line doctrinaire liberalism. You can dicker with Hillary; find some middle ground. Sure it'll all be ugly, and bad words will be heard from all sides, but it's like the US dealing with France. You've got one face for the press and one face for the boardroom. Stuff gets done. I'll take a two-faced pragmatist over a utopian idealist 8 days a week.

Simon said...

Alan said...
"Paglia is also right that we'll be subjected again to the endless campaigning and polarization we suffered through during the first Clinton Administration."

And you think that won't happen if Obama is the nominee? Are you kidding? Polarization is the result of real people really disagreeing on issues that they think are really important. If Obama wins office, he will have to make decisions, not just talk, and those decision on a given issue will reflect his views on that issue; if that's an issue over which people intensely disagree, division will result. This immature idea that polarization is something that the politicians have created is central to Obama's conception of his campaign and it is totally false. It misunderstands the reality of politics wherein there are limits on the utility of pure reason; it misconceives the political process "as the means of arriving at some version of 'truth,' some rationalist absolute which remains to be discovered through reason or revelation, and which, once discovered, will attract all men to its support. The conceptions of rationalist democracy have been based on the assumption that individual conflicts of interest will, and should, vanish once the electorate becomes fully informed. We do not deny the occasional validity of this conception, in which rules of political choice-making provide means of arriving at certain 'truth judgments.' However, we do question the universal, or even the typical, validity of this view of political process." Buchanan & Tullock, THE CALCULUS OF CONSENT (1962). People can and will, in good faith, reach different conclusions and have different priorities; polarization has resulted from political engagement and people forming strongly-held views on which politicians may be asked to make decisions. Obama doesn't get that, and neither, it seems, do many of his supporters (goes ditto for "Unity 08" and similar efforts).

rcocean said...

I loved this article. Paglia has called Hillary a "Protestant Nun."
An apt description.

MadisonMan said...

Cat fight!

michael farris said...

So, Camille doesn't like Hillary, blah blah blah.

The main accomplishment with the HHH (Hardcore Hillary Haters) is that most people (sane people) just tune it out.
People who publicly theorize about her psychological profile risk seeming like crazy homeless people muttering about aliens and anal probes.

Camille? Love ya, but this column's recycled zingers from 10 years ago.

I'm not a fan of Clinton (either of them), but I'm really not interested in sidewalk psychoanalysis of Hillary anymore or re-hashing dead issues.

It's possible to talk policies (and even 'character') without the personal hysteria.

halojones-fan said...

I like all those "X"'s in the quote. Kind of scary. But also kind of sexy. (There's another X!) It's like, you want to know more, but you know that you're gonna have to be on your toes.

Sloanasaurus said...

The question for Democratic primary voters is, would liberal leaning independents who might vote for Obama, turn and vote for someone like McCain over hillary.

misterarthur said...

I know this is a little off topic, but I'm having a difficult time understanding what the changes are for which Hillary is claiming responsibility. (She says it's easy for Obama to want change, she says she's already changed things.)
Can anyone enumerate them for me?

Roger J. said...
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Roger J. said...

Mr Arthur: The health care system...no, wait...that didnt work out; she has changed Chelsea's diapers and probably the china in the white house; oh, and the she did change the political composition of the congress in 1994 in part due to the proposal to change health care system in 1993

Tim said...

"...Hillary as senator has made concerted and generally successful efforts to improve her knowledge of and relationship to the military -- crucial for any commander-in-chief but especially for the first female one."

I think Hillary!'s gratuitous insult of Gen. Petraeus during his testimony last September betrays Paglia's misunderstanding of Hillary!'s thorough contempt for the professional military.

rhhardin said...

Imus today acknowledges that he was fired by Team Hillary and admires their toughness ; snippets of Bob Schieffer and Carl Bernstein interviews that relate. (4 clips)

Simon said...

Tim, I assumed she meant that assessment to be relative to the baseline contempt for the military the average liberal has ab initio. ;)

Simon said...

Roger, arguably, Clinton set back the cause of federalized government-run healthcare by twenty years. She changed a course that had otherwise seemed an inevitable decline towards it. That's the kind of "change" accomplishment that I want on a President's resume. ;)

Palladian said...

"...but I'm really not interested in sidewalk psychoanalysis..."

So you're definitely not a Paglia fan then.

garage mahal said...

History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.I strongly agree with that.

Oh Christ. Nothing like the enabling the past 7 years eh? Plame anyone? No trashing there. I see the biggest insight into Hillary that we'll glean from you, Ann, is some more links to heartless, broken people who don't hate adultery or it's effects, just the Clintons. Irretrievable lost souls. If Paglia cut her arm, would she leak oil? It's no wonder we are where we are when our discourse is in the hands of hack "intellectuals" like Paglia, Dowd, or the breathless nonsense from Andrew Sullivan who will admit to us 4 years later he was completely wrong on. Let the Eagles Soar!

Anonymous said...

So.... you're going to use the word "feminazi"?

No real surprise there. Camille long ago self-professed as an admirer of Rush Limbaugh. They are sympatico in detesting both "official feminism" (as Ann puts it), and the Clintons.


"I will vote for Hillary if she is the nominee of my party." Honestly, sometimes women are just irrational.

Note what Ann says in response to this:

"History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary."

I strongly agree with that.


But then elsewhere in this blog on numerous posts, most recently just a few days ago (before Iowa), Ann has stated that she'll "probably end up voting for Hillary". So go figure.


John Kerry just endorsed Obama.

So did Tim Johnson of South Dakota.


He's still alive? His place in history is secure, being the only known instance where the Democrats tacked hard pro-life. But hey, control of the Senate was up for grabs.

Unknown said...

As far as psycho-political analysis goes, this seems about the best. Her father, and other fathers in that generation, grew up hard; they endured two world wars and a depression. Younger people cannot imagine what it was like for them. I think they unwittingly brought up their girls in a way that led to an identity like Hillary's, the Protestant Nun, the careerist, the universal victim/heroine.

Peter V. Bella said...

Question to all the people who make accusations of hatred:

When other candidates are criticized it is defended as criticism. When Hillary is criticized it is hatred. Why should she be treated any differentlyly? Is she someone special? Is she saintly? Does she have some aura that makes her immune from the same criticism and critical humor that is unleashed on the other candidates?

Or is it possible that the Hillary lovers are man haters and hate anyone to the right of Stalin?

michael farris said...

"When other candidates are criticized it is defended as criticism. When Hillary is criticized it is hatred. Why should she be treated any differentlyly?
....
Or is it possible that the Hillary lovers are man haters and hate anyone to the right of Stalin?"

Irony surrenders.

DADvocate said...

I have felt like, since Bill's first presidential campaign, that the Clintons and Clintonites were Nixonesque in how they divide and pitted groups of people against each other. Much of the balkanization of America is due to their style.

I reviewed the issues pages of the top candidates yesterday. Hillary is "A Champion for Women." No mention of men. Obama's issue page talks about the importance of fathers in the family and his fatherhood initiative. Of course, maybe Obama's trying to shove his religion down our throats underthe disguise of being pro-family.

vnjagvet said...

PatCA:

And they brought up their sons the same way with similary results.

As parents, those men did not discriminate on the basis of gender.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Re Tim Johnson:

Is he back working in the Senate? Has he spoken on the Senate floor since his stroke?

Trooper York said...

No, but Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden carried him into a check cashing place and tried to cash his pension check.

Unknown said...

That's right, vnjag, they created the boomers, for better or for worse!

Zachary Sire said...

My mother (bless her heart) loves Hillary. "I really like her!" she says, as I groan.

"I want a woman President...she's the same age as me!" she says.

"But the Clintons are so calculating and phony. They are so power hungry and conniving that I almost think that they just want to win for the sake of winning," I say in response.

"So what! This could make history...a woman president in my lifetime!"

My mother is an educated, emotionally intellectual woman...but this is her Hillary stance. Yet, after reading Paglia's convoluted, self-important drivel...I prefer my mom's take. And Hillary bashers would be foolish to ignore such a take, because it's probably the rationale for most of her support....the simplicity is infectious: A Woman President!

And compared to the relentless psycho babble from the likes of Paglia..the simplicity is quite attractive.

jeff said...

"It may be perfectly rational when all the GOP offers is a bunch of religious zeolots who intend to shove their religion down our throats under the disguise of being pro-life."

Really? ALL of the GOP are religious zealots? I'm agnostic and pro-life. How is that explained?

George, when was Plame trashed? Her husband was, and for good reason. But how was Plame? Especially in the context of
"their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary"

Was there any comparable comment to the classic "dragging a $100 bill thru a trailer park"?

Chris Arabia said...

My mother is 58 and grew up in an Irish-Catholic section of Boston. She will NEVER vote for a Republican (even in my hypothetical Repub vs National Socialist matchup--she'd stay home) even though she is more conservative than I am on many issues (I vote GOP now but split tickets during the 90s).

She will not vote for Hillary! under any circumstances and lives in a swing state now.

My point? I see lots of anecdotal evidence on both sides of this issue--it would be fascinating to see how this plays out in the official poll 10 months from now.

I think Obama would be a bit divisive, dangerously weak on national security, and somewhat ineffective domestically. I think Hillary! would be far more divisive than W. could ever dream of being, moderate on national security, and totally ineffective domestically. Hillary is Nixonian, I completely agree with that--the similarities are striking.

And the Dem is probably going to win. Joy. I just hope that the 5 non-legislating SC justices survive the 4 years (I'm one of those people who is pro-choice and anti-Roe...).

Fascinating what if -- had Bill Clinton made a deal for the good of the country and party and resigned on 21 Jan. 99, Gore would just be finishing his second full term. Presumably he would be protecting the U.S. Cue the soup nazi, now working in the Nobel cafeteria: No Peace Prize for You!

Chris Arabia said...

And I always look forward to reading Paglia, even though her opinions seems all over the place (or maybe because of that)--she's like a somewhat hinged Andrew Sullivan. It must be the way she writes--regardless of the position she's arguing, it's enjoyable to read.

Anyone have any thoughts on why her writing--which at times strikes me as a sampling of things thrown up against her intellectual wall--is so interesting?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Trooper:

LOL.

Wonder if many other readers got your topical frame of reference?

Trooper York said...

Only in New York AJ, only in New York. Jesus I sound like Cindy Adams.

blake said...

Trooper,

LOL!

Trooper York said...

Thanks Blake. By the way, everyone should check out Blake's blog, it's pretty good reading if you like movies and pop culture.

Simon said...

Stephen Snell said...
"She will NEVER vote for a Republican (even in my hypothetical Repub vs National Socialist matchup--she'd stay home)"

I'd argue that you still vote if you stay home. If you don't participate actively, you vote tacitly for whoever wins.

"I'm one of those people who is pro-choice and anti-Roe..."

Which is, it can't be stressed enough, a perfectly reasonable position, and ought to be an unexceptional one, but there has been a massive propaganda effort to erase the distinction.

KCFleming said...

Paglia wrote: "The Obamas represent the future, not the past."
Only if the future is 1934, or 1984.

"She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark ("Cue the tears!")."
Ouch.
Then she calls Bill a blowhard.
I'm guessing Paglia won't be invited to the inaugural.

For me, the only difference between Obama and Hillary is the rapidity with which my taxes increase, liberty contracts, and knowledge of words to The Internationale come to mind from repetition.

Chennaul said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Peter V. Bella said...

Camille Paglia has been an outspoken, contrarian critic for years. One of the things you can always be sure of with her is she will tell you exactly what she thinks. She loves to stir controversy.

She also has the ability to respect and even like people with opposing points of view. She also is not a hypocrite. You usually know what she believes, just never how she will express her beliefs.

Chennaul said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dave in boca said...

Good comment re: the Internationale! I prefer Obama if we have to go the Dem route because even if he is to the "left" of Hillary on the issues, he will probably be able to resist the nincompoopery that airhead leftists have in mind---Saul Alinsky fan Hillarious will probably push some sort of New Economic Plan AKA Leninist "useful idiot fodder" that the simpletons in the MSM will lap up like pussycats!

From Inwood said...

A limerick (apologies to Tom Moore)

Hillary Cackles

The time I spent in tear,
In striving so hard to steer
The threat that remains
In old gals’ brains
Has my campaign in gear.

So rewarding indeed th’ endeavor,
From a trick as sweet as ever,
Poor Wisdom’s chance
Against a glance
Is now as weak as ever.

(Not that Obama has spoken any wisdom.)

Peter V. Bella said...

Who can take an issue
Sprinkle it in dew
Cover it in rhetoric
and a miracle or two?

The Obamaman
The Obamaman can
The Obamaman can cause he mixes it with love and makes himself look good

Who can take a campaign
Wrap it is a sigh
Soak it in the sun
and make a grown woman cry?

The Obamaman
The Obamaman can
The Obamaman can cause he mixes it with love and makes himself look good

Obamaman makes
Everything he states
Satisfying and delicious
Talk about your childhood wishes
He can even do the dishes

Who can take tomorrow
Dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow
And make Hillary scream?

The Obamaman
The Obamaman can.
The Obamaman can cause he mixes it with love
And makes himself look good

The Obamaman can cause he mixes it with love. Yes he can.

Peter V. Bella said...

nincompoopery

Dave in Boca,
You rock!!!!

Trooper York said...

Very nice!

Steven said...

Just to focus on the Nixon analogy for a moment, I don't really think that the comparison is very apt. While Nixon did treat his political opponents with a certain amount of contempt, I don't think it sprang from the same source as Hillary!'s contempt. Paglia correctly (I think) identifies Hillary!'s attitude as one of "contemptuous condescension." My impression of her has always been that she thinks she's smarter than all of us, and she thinks this means that she should be in charge of everything.

I don't think Nixon's contempt had the element of condescension in it. If anything, it was the opposite -- he felt that he was the target of condescension from those nefarious East Coast elites, and that he represented the silent majority. His contempt was born of the desire to show those elites who had scorned him that he was just as good as they were.

Hey, it's fun playing armchair psychiatrist.

Peter V. Bella said...

Enough! This is just too much.

I am really concerned about the impact this campaign is going to have on the environment and our mother earth. I have identified distinct pollutants in the air that can be damaging. They are emitting serious amounts of carbon dioxide. I have contacted the Al Gore Institute for Peace and Global Warming Studies in Venezuela. I have sent them samples of my evidence. It all came back positive.

Mr. Gore met with Hugo Chavez and it was decided that he will enter the campaign to clean the environment and save our planet from the pollution being spewed from the campaigns. Mr. Chavez is backing him and putting all his resources behind Mr. Gore.

In his statement Mr. Gore stated that equine, bovine, and ovine excrement should not be a part of any campaign and they have the same effect as weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Gore believes that fertilizer should be severely restricted to planting trees to save and make peace with our planet. Mr. Gore intends to clean up politics in America then take his Clean Politics Campaign world wide.

Several world leaders lauded Mr. Gore. The King of Spain, when contacted, stated that he wished Mr. Gore would just shut up.

Kirby Olson said...

Nice song by Middle Class Man! an instant classic!

A book by a security guard at the White House claimed that Chelsea used to say to him, Come here my personal piggie, or something like that, and then said that it was her mother's way of referring to her FBI detail. The guy couldn't take it, and quit.

I think this is part of what Camille Paglia is referring to in terms of the Clintonian disrespect for males. I can't remember the name of that book by the security guard/FBI dude. It's been over ten years since I read it. Does anybody recall the name of that book? It specifically refers to the Clinton's in the title, and had a cream-colored cover.

KCFleming said...

Hillary needs to be careful not to mix her contemptuous condescension with her compassionate misanthropy.

Because contemptuous misanthropy is redundant, and compassionate condescension is Catholic. And she's Protestant.

Cedarford said...

I don't think Nixon's contempt had the element of condescension in it. If anything, it was the opposite -- he felt that he was the target of condescension from those nefarious East Coast elites, and that he represented the silent majority. His contempt was born of the desire to show those elites who had scorned him that he was just as good as they were.

Nixon's resentment against East Coast Elites is interestingly seen by Left historians as both venal and legitimate. As legitimate a class resentment as Sandra Day O'Connor graduating 2nd at Stanford Law and finding all the doors shut in her face. Nixon won a Harvard scholarship but it was for tuition and books only and he couldn't afford board given the lack of jobs. So it was Whittier (sneer!) then Duke Law (a second choice of good Yalie, Brownie, Haahhhvid Men, or Princetonians) And after graduating 3rd at Duke, Nixon found doors on the toniest corporate law firms closed to a poor country bumpkin from lack of ties to the then Establishment - and having to go back to rural California in 1937 to practice family law with a friend of his Dad's. Payment was sometimes in farm produce.
Nixon then began his rise with WWII and stellar service in the Pacific, then election to the House - but then found himself in the deep shits for attacking people above his "station in life" like Helen Douglas and especially Blueblood and Friend of FDR Alger Hiss.

Especially for Hiss, Nixon started a war with the East Coast Establishment that heaped scorn on the rube. Joined by friends and relatives of the Jewish communists Nixon bagged, who used their prominence in the media to also trash him.

This might have been resolved in another person with better people skills, but Nixon wasn't that sort of person. He was smarter than most of them and knew it, but didn't know how to dismiss a snide remark from a snotty Eating Club private school prepped State Dept type that commented it was such a pity that the VP did not know the difference between a salad fork and dinner fork or how a gentleman conducts himself. He just seethed.

Any Lefist that credits legitimate roots of class resentment in the poor, the female, the black must acknowledge Nixon was shaped by it and while people with the same poor family background had been accepted nevertheless contemporary with Nixon in that era, many Americans of the "wrong background" trying to make it seethed just as much as Nixon did, just in different ways...

Like Joe Kennedy, who worked his life to ensure his sons were not stigmatized like he was..

Hillary is the wrong person to claim a Nixonian bias though, because her whole life was of Elites opening doors for her while battling Arkansan rubes that resented her "puttin' on airs".

Methadras said...

Please. Paglia like Obama because he's a trendier and friendlier alternative to Clinton. She would vote for Clinton in a heartbeat if she was the nominee. Either way, when it comes down to it, Democrats will once again find themselves following an empty suit or an empty pant suit. Either way, they are both style over substance, which is probably why Andrew Sullivan likes Obama so much. It's a 3fer for him, he's a male, he's black, and he's not a christianist, oh wait.

Methadras said...

Blogger Salamandyr said...

I think I still like Hillary more than Obama.


But you just can't articulate why.

The thing is, Obama really does speak to our better natures;
our desire to be inclusive, to make this a country where anyone, of any background can rise to the highest office in the land.


Those are called trite platitudes. He articulates a sentimentality that America and Americans are born of the land of opportunity. In his case, it's blind luck. Considering he got his votes to be Senator going up against Alan Keyes, his sermon of platitudes really is about as generic as bland, white yogurt.

He speaks to that belief in us, that if we just talk long enough about a problem we can come to a solution that pleases everyone.

Then I wonder why the UN hasn't hired him. I'm sure under his soliloquies that organization would be solving it's problems left and right. Don't you think?

The only problem is, it's crap.

Thank you.

Politics is sometimes about making the hard choice, about realizing that choice you've made is going to be anathema to some portion of respectable voters, not just some nebulous other that is holding the common man down.

It's about diluting your choices down to the person you think will carry your water in the Oval Office. That's what the primaries are for and that's why this election cycle is so good. It's basically the choice of the penultimates of mediocrity. Two do-nothings voicing the populist message of change vs. patriarchal Republicans. Tough choices, huh?

Hillary may have a messianic complex,

That's what Paglia says, but she's just a mean, vindictive, overly ambitious, throw-you-under-the-bus man-hating bitch. Any notions of messianic complexities are born out of her entitlement mentality that she was:

A) right there during the 60's
B) protested about something stupid involving women
C) wants us to believe that she was an advocate of women and children for over 30 years, even though we don't know what she advocated and no one has asked.
D) that because of A, B, and C she is deserving, NAY, is entitled to be the POTUS because of that and because above all else, she is a woman and it's damn time a woman became POTUS, just because.

but it's tempered by a keen insider pragmatism.

No it isn't. It's tempered by the fact that she's endured a failed marriage that she continues to use as a political convenience. It's tempered by the fact that she's undergone childbirth and child rearing. And most importantly its because with all the faults that her husband has and the grief he has imposed on her publicly, she is willing, WILLING, to endure anything a measly little man or men may throw at her.

It's evident in her desire, despite her natural inclinations to foster better relations with the military.

Huh? She hates the military and always has. She hates anything that reeks of male authoritarian symbolism. That's why she feels that she is the appropriate person to be POTUS, because she will bring staunch feminism to the White House and bring equality to all halls of government. Of course, as long as they are under her watchful eyes.

That's why I think she's the best of the Democratic field.

Out of the two choice that are viable now, I can't disagree with that. How unfortunate. But then again, this is why I'm not a Democrat. Thank the Gods.

From Inwood said...

Middle class guy:

Yours is better than mine. I like it.

I guess I'm too, um, nuanced to write one as effective as yours! Or something.

Trooper York:

Ted Kennedy is not used to bringing sick or dead people anywhere personally. He prefers to leave them in their vehicles.

As I recall, it was harder to get a check cashed in one of those places than it seems to be to vote in many official polling places. The check-cashing guys were actually concerned with fraud. And it's harder for a youthful looking person to get a drink in some bars than it seems to be to cast a vote in some polling places.

Bob's Blog said...

Thank you for mining this rich piece. I am so glad you have a part of you that recognizes dangerous delusions! You are not the only one who is having these thoughts. Many of my most respected bloggers with whom I correspiond regularly have also allowed themselves to peer over that edge.

I think it might relate somewhat to the white guilt Shelby Steele writes about.