I'm irked when bloggers surrender their precious independence, but others are tsking that the candidate has besmirched herself with the ugliness associated the blog. WaPo's Sleuth takes Hillary to task for "guestblogging" on Firedoglake, where Jane Hamsher usually blogs, because of that time Hamsher blogged on Huffington Post and published a photoshopped image of Joe Lieberman in blackface. The Sleuth digs up the obviously not unbiased opinion of a former Lieberman spokesman (Dan Gerstein):
Gerstein said he understands the Clinton camp wanting to reach out to lots of potential voters, especially women. But given that Clinton, "under the microscope to a much higher degree of scrutiny," Gerstein said, "I don't think this was necessarily a good idea for her."Oh, good lord. Imus again. That's a hilariously attenuated connection between Hillary and "nappy headed hos."
He suggested that Clinton's decision was particularly politically dangerous in light of the senator's vocal criticism of Don Imus after the shock jock's racially demeaning comments about the Rutgers women's basketball players.
Clinton could have chosen a blogger with "less baggage," Gerstein said. "Just as pure strategy, why would you want to take a risk and invite scorn and controversy and an accusation of hypocrisy when you don't have to?"
Bloggers -- and shock jocks -- need to be free to swing wildly. But candidates need to be careful. We know the Clinton campaign is working on taming and coopting the bloggers. I hate that. I mock that. But I wouldn't pin that blackface nonsense on Hillary.
Still, Firedoglake is a hardcore place, and Clinton doesn't belong there. To illustrate, let's look at a couple things published on Firedoglake the day after Clinton "posted."
There's this:
Oh, Michelle, you moron. Granted, dressing yourself up in what appears to be the anime version of a cheerleader costume may make all the fat, sweaty, unibrow-ed armchair warriors who read your blog squirt in their pants, but if you're going to jump around and cheer, you should at least make an effort to remove the stick from up your ass. It would make your jumps a far sight less stiff and spastic-looking....Then there's a post titled "What All Those Little Beat-Offs At Red State Really Hate When They Say They Hate Abortion" -- with a video of Pink singing "U & Ur Hand." We see the singer in a sports bra, jumping rope bouncily, posing sexily, and singing about rejecting a man. The punchline in the lyrics is that the only sex he'll have tonight is masturbation. (I don't get the connection to abortion. Wouldn't women be more likely to reject sex and consign men to masturbation if abortion were illegal?) Does Hillary want to be associated with this? I mean, I think it's funny to picture her rejecting Bill by singing "U & Ur Hand," but it's just not quite right for the campaign.
To your Rightard masters, you are essentially a talking dog, a novelty act, an amusing freak. You are their Token Asian. (Although, I'm sure they don't have any compunctions about calling you "Oriental" behind your back, like you're some kind of rug or something.) You are a minority woman who sees absolutely no conflict of interest in making a mint out of (to use your own charming phrase) "stoking racial demogoguery"....
If there is any justice at all in the world, God will see to it that you will spend your declining years eating dirty hospital linens for a living.
So I can see why Firedoglake is popular (with about 80,000 visits a day -- not 100,000 as WaPo says). It's sexy and wild and viciously political. That's fun for the people who agree with the politics and who enjoy brutal, sexual humor, but it should be poison for a mainstream candidate. Let the blog be the blog and the candidate be the candidate.
Separation of blog and campaign forever.
IN THE COMMENTS: Reader_iam says:
I must say, that Malkin video is truly stupid and badly done. Embarrassing, really--but Malkin's playing to the more puerile, simplistic part of her base. (The fact that she does this so often is one of the big reasons that I have little use for her.)UPDATE: Firedoglake -- via the guy who named himself after a big dinosaur, TRex -- attempts a response to this post.
TRex is doing the same thing, only he includes the sexist, racist nonsense. What really grates is the "sneaky" (I'd call it transparent, myself) way he goes about it:
To your Rightard masters, you are essentially a talking dog, a novelty act, an amusing freak. You are their Token Asian. (Although, I'm sure they don't have any compunctions about calling you "Oriental" behind your back, like you're some kind of rug or something.)
In this way, he gets to say this shit hiding behind, in essence, the " I'M not thinking these things, I'M not saying these things, I'm saying THEY'RE thinking and saying these things" excuse.
What complete and utter bullshit. He's exactly the person saying and thinking those things. To describe this as "projection" is to imply a level of subtlety and unconsciousness that we shouldn't let the TRex's of the world hide behind.
Slightly shorter version: He's a pretentious jerk, precisely the sort of sexist, racist lefty that unjustly smears all liberalism and provides ammo to his mirror images on the right.
Go over there and read it. (I can tell you their links bring few people over here to actually see what he's talking about first hand.)
It's a rambling, incoherent mess that either fails to grasp or misrepresents what I've said. TRex seems think no one will notice that he doesn't get my point. What can I say? He mainly drifts into a lot of blabber about how much he hates Michelle Malkin and rightwingers and me. It's all one big mush in the commodious dinosaur head. He's a nasty guy taking wild shots at a woman, a professional woman close to Hillary's age. He's cursing at me, raving about "boobs" (i.e., breasts). Sigh. He's only making it clearer that Hillary Clinton should not want to appear to be guestblogging for Firedoglake.
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It could have been worse.
She could have been interviewed in the new 40th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone along such other diverse thinkers as George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Michael Moore, Jackson Browne, Norman Mailer, Patti Smith, Jane Fonda, and Bob Weir, all of whom agree, of course, that George Bush is the worst president in U.S. history....Nixon wasn't so bad compared to Bush...Iraq is Vietnam...and that the '60s were cool but, like, now there's more consciousness because, you know, the whole world's at stake.
Wow. Nothing learned from the John Edwards fiasco, huh?
Hillary's blog post would have fit in better with a few "f**k those Rethuglicans" thrown in, but otherwise it was on par.
As for the topic, "But women have been paid less than men for decades"... What total and absolute nonsense. If women in this country were really paid just 77 cents for every dollar that men were paid for the same work, what do you think would happen? Lawsuits, lawsuits, everywhere. and yet, there are none (or few). Now why is that?
Because the figure is crap.
Pogo,
Nothing learned from the John Edwards fiasco, huh?
So true, so true . . .
2 comments:
1. The Imus-Lieberman connection via FDL gets some resonance because of Hillary's recent pandering to the racial blackmail industry led by Al Sharpton. Throw in those audio clips of her with the over-the-top "black" accent and her denouncing Imus while accepting big cash from purveyors of "Ghetto-gangsta rap" and a pattern develops.
2. Hillary, who is supposed to be smarter than her husband, doesn't seem confident enough to provide a Sista Soldjah moment. She so driven to win that she's lost the vision to see that surrounding herself with Sharpton, FDL, gangsta rappers and the lecher-in-chief are going to have consequences downstream.
Wow--is that old 77 cents on the dollar thing still floating around?
Fortunately for purveyors of that figure, many americans, including most of the press corps, are functionally innumerate.
The song ties into the '(right-wing) men hate strong sexual women' meme. Certain third-wave feminists like to throw a 'Republicans can't touch dis' attitude because they belive right-wing men harbor secret sexual fantasies about letting loose with hot liberal babe. The Crowe-David entity put on some of that same attitude when they figured Karl Rove should have felt honored to be touched by Crowe. Right-wing women are either cold sexless harpies (Ann Coulter) or have sold out for a meal ticket (Malikin gets frequent allusions to being a Republican 'comfort woman' ala WWII Japan). Abortion links in because the way that Republican men plan on controlling women is burdening them with children. Abortion frees the hot liberal babe to give the hand to nasty right-wing man while inviting the sensitive liberal man into her bedroom.
If Hillary gave Bill the 'U & Ur Hand', I have a image of Bill giving a school-boy smirk and thumbs-up after her back turned, and heading down the hall humming 'Love in an Elevator'.
Good point on the "guest blogging" thing. Blogs are ego driven. Hamsher wants to be Hill's hamster. How cute
I love the nakes racism and sexism on display when the lefies bash Michelle Malkin. Tolerance much?
Hillary is just playing to her base. She is most comfortable there, and has to get the nomination first.
She calculates the center won't notice, or will have a short memory.
anime? token Asian? squirting in pants? I guess what really gets me is trying to see when media became so mean and petty -- shockjocks or bloggers. It shows how superficial we are, that there is no way to better articulate an argument(if the guy indeed even has one worked out in his head) when such insults aimed at race and sex are entertaining/interesting to readers and listeners and considered plausible thought. It just shows how dumbed down we are as a society when guys like this are widely read, or with guys like Imus on broadcast for decades. Seriously...the bar needs to be raised. There's making a valid point, and then there's just persuasive, sensationalist propaganda -- and that's fine, but when it crosses the line to insult and aims at someone on a personal level (unrelated to the issues at hand), it's childish and certainly not conducive to our culture. Is this really the way we want to be perceived?
Oh, yes, and then there were the references to Ms. Malkin's twins and viewing online porn? Family should be considered off limits. Too personal and hurtful to be worth anything. I think of regular readers of that crap being like people who crowd around a streetfight and egg the bully on.
Wow, a left wing blog uses racism and sexual content best left to the Hustler letters in place of reasoned discourse and logic.
Alert the press. Who knew this would ever happen?
Trey
I must say, that Malkin video is truly stupid and badly done. Embarrassing, really--but Malkin's playing to the more puerile, simplistic part of her base. (The fact that she does this so often is one of the big reasons that I have little use for her.)
TRex is doing the same thing, only he includes the sexist, racist nonsense. What really grates is the "sneaky" (I'd call it transparent, myself) way he goes about it:
"To your Rightard masters, you are essentially a talking dog, a novelty act, an amusing freak. You are their Token Asian.Although, I'm sure they don't have any compunctions about calling you "Oriental" behind your back, like you're some kind of rug or something.)"
In this way, he gets to say this shit hiding behind, in essence, the " I'M not thinking these things, I'M not saying these things, I'm saying THEY'RE thinking and saying these things" excuse.
What complete and utter bullshit. He's exactly the person saying and thinking those things. To describe this as "projection" is to imply a level of subtlety and unconsciousness that we shouldn't let the TRex's of the world hide behind.
Slightly shorter version: He's a pretentious jerk, precisely the sort of sexist, racist lefty that unjustly smears all liberalism and provides ammo to his mirror images on the right.
***
By the way, I despise the "-tard" construction, whether "right" or "left" precedes it. Anyone who uses it automatically gets a certain number of "jerk" points placed in their account. That's of no import, of course, in even the small scheme of things, but why that stop me from throwing in my two cents?
It's funny when someone who has staked their entire blogging career to leeching hits of off instapundit chastises someone else for their lack of independence.
Bas-O-Matic said..."It's funny when someone who has staked their entire blogging career to leeching hits of off instapundit chastises someone else for their lack of independence."
Oh, really? How exactly did I do that?
Oh. My. Lawdy. More lib bashing from Instapundit's favourite "liberal" blogger. Now why would they say those horrid things about you, Ann?
What you don't get is that you could take TRex's quote, substitute "liberal" for "Asian" and "cunt" for "Oriental" and he could have written that about you.
Hey, better delete this one. It'll take up space your brownnosers could have filled.
"I can tell you their links bring few people over here to actually see what he's talking about first hand."
Well, I can tell you I always follow the links, because the reality of your posts is always so beautifully captured by our giant Theropod friend. I really enjoy reading your original and seeing how perfectly ole Rex has distilled the essence of your hackery (and how badly you miss the point in your rebuttals.) Endlessly entertaining.
For example; complaining that T-Rex is sexist and racist because of his attacks on Michelle "Round up the Ay-rabs" Malkin. Rex isn't attacking her for being an Asian woman. He is attacking her for being a racist and a tool of racist, sexist forces. That should be obvious to anyone with a third grade level of reading comprehension.
Given the context of Malkin's work Rex's attacks on her are mild (and a lot funnier) in contrast to your gratuitous sexist attack on Jesica Valenti, a woman you knew nothing about except that she was young, attractive and had (gasp!) breasts. At least T-Rex has good reasons for disliking Malkin. We're still wondering why you felt it was necessary to attack Valenti.
I'm tempted to say something about pots calling kettles black here, but I'm afraid it would be misinterpreted, like everything else around here...
A Hermit: "We're still wondering why you felt it was necessary to attack Valenti."
Exactly why would you think that I am supposed to be limited to what is "necessary." I do what I like, what pleases me, what interests me, what amuses me, what I think my readers will enjoy. You'd love to contain and limit my efforts, wouldn't you? That won't happen.
And you can't justify racist attacks on the ground that you think your target is a racist. Think it through. Doesn't work. Doesn't work at all.
You're not sucking back enough Shiraz there, Althouse.
My wife just asked what was noew on the blogosphere, and I read the racist, potty mouthed attack on Michelle Malkin. Her face got pale, her lips disappeared (I know I was in trouble then) and she jumped into a lecture about what I wrote was beyond the pale and totally and completely improper.
I agreed and assured her that I did not, and would never write such racist vitriol.
But then she is a wonderful human being who is kind and thoughtful. And a conservative. She was offende, angry and scolding when she thought I wrote that shit.
I am so proud of her! And this speaks volumes about the racist plantation bosses on the left. They are mad because Michelle is not a house Asian. She is a field Asian, and the plantation is quite wary of them.
Trey
Bas-O-Matic says: "It's funny when someone who has staked their entire blogging career to leeching hits of off instapundit chastises someone else for their lack of independence."
Just to set the record straight, Glenn links more often to Mickey Kaus and Eugene Volokh's sites. I guess Sexist-O-Matic above doesn't question them about the links because they're men or maybe he (or she) just agrees more with their viewpoints. If other bloggers link to women, it must be because the woman is somehow a leech, rather than an autonomous blogger who has something important to say. How sexist is that?
Thanks, Helen.
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