The idiocy of appropriating the ethnicity of the Other right when you're flaunting your racial progressiveness: Stop saying "sherpa"!

I'm reading "Why Stephanie Cutter says Dems need a new SCOTUS strategy/On this week’s show, Playbook author Ryan Lizza talks with Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter about what it’s like to be a sherpa for a Supreme Court nominee" (Politico).

Cutter guided Sonia Sotomayor through the process, and some of the discussion is good:

[P]utting the first Black woman on the Supreme Court will be celebrated by most Americans...  [W]e were about to put the first Black woman on the court. That will be celebrated. The other thing that potentially could happen is some Republicans could overshoot this, and you already see some senators talking about how this is a quota pick or an affirmative action pick....

This person is not going to come off as an affirmative action pick. This person is going to come across as the most qualified person for the court, if you just look at the women on the proverbial short list. They can continue their racist dog whistles on this. But I think most people are not going to have the stomach for it, and it will turn around and bite them just to continue the dog analogy there.

That focuses the problem precisely: Democrats want to inspire a degree of celebration that feels good to their supporters and to tempt their antagonists to cry "affirmative action" in a manner that feels unkind to those who like that subject to be handled with discretion.

But Politico keeps using the word "sherpa." I'm amazed that they're still talking like that, appropriating the name of an ethnic group. That must once have seemed cool or cute, but now it just seems as though they're not even listening to themselves. It's awfully discordant to appropriate the ethnicity of an Other when you're flaunting your racial progressiveness.

Flowers in the sewer — the misogyny of the disgust for Bill Clinton's lover.

On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd was interviewing Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta:

CHUCK TODD: Is your goal of this debate is to get under his skin? Is that why you gave Mark Cuban a ticket right in the front row?

JOHN PODESTA: No, I think Mark Cuban is one of the business leaders who was never involved in partisan politics who's endorsed Hillary because he thinks she'll do better for the-- for the economy. I think that, you know, you saw his reaction, which is to do his favorite sport, which is to dive in the sewer and go for a swim.

Trump's reaction, you remember, was "Perhaps I will put Gennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" Now, I have a feminist problem with Trump's remark, one that I haven't seen anyone else notice, and that is the idea that he can "put" the woman where he likes. Flowers is a person, not an object — like a vase of flowers — but Flowers has already responded positively to the notion of getting placed in front of Hillary.*

So let me move on to the feminist problem I have with what Podesta said. He says the name, Mark Cuban, and vaunts him as a business leader who is above politics, but he won't say the name of the woman and he speaks of her as a creature of the sewer.

Todd pushes him: "You said-- you referred to diving into the sewer, so you believe that inviting Gennifer Flowers is diving into the sewer?" And Podesta has the smarts to resist further disrespecting the woman. But later, there's a panel, and one of the participants is Stephanie Cutter (who was Obama's deputy campaign manager in 2012 and who helped John Kerry prepare for debates in 2004). Todd asks her about "the idea of gamesmanship, which is the Clinton Campaign deciding to put Mark Cuban in the front row," and the response had me shouting at the TV:

STEPHANIE CUTTER: ... What Clinton and Trump are doing are trying to throw each other off their game. The difference is Hillary Clinton is doing it with a legitimate businessman, also, a celebrity. And as John Podesta put it earlier on your show, Trump is just jumping right down in the sewer and swimming in it by inviting Gennifer Flowers.

The man is "legitimate," and the woman is a "sewer."

Chuck Todd turned to another panelist, Steve Schmidt (a senior adviser to John McCain in 2008).

STEVE SCHMIDT: [The tactic of inviting Cuban] was clearly designed to provoke Donald Trump and it provoked Donald Trump, it provoked Donald Trump into going down the Gennifer Flowers rabbit hole....

The Gennifer Flowers rabbit hole?! Don't call a woman a "hole." Don't speak of a human being as a lower animal, a rodent. Whatever these people want to say about Trump, they should say it about Trump, but they instinctively jumped to express disgust toward the woman — who's really just a bystander to the pre-debate mind-games. Is this misogyny? The argument that it is not depends on the idea that the disgust is with sexuality — what happens when the man and the woman — Bill and Gennifer — get together and not with the woman herself. But the instinct — in both Podesta and Cutter — was to take the man out of the picture. Bill, like Mark Cuban, is legitimate. That horrible woman over there should be treated as a nonentity — down in a hole, there in the excrement, a rodent, a filthy pest. Anyone who would name her or treat her with equal dignity has himself fallen down into the sewer with her — "swimming in it," swimming in shit.

Being on the side of the female candidate does not absolve you of misogyny. It blinds you to it. 
_____________________________

* The full tweet is: "If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to sit in the front row, perhaps I will put Gennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" You can see that Cuban's autonomy is respected in the word "wants." What does Cuban want to do? By contrast, Flowers can be put where Trump wants.

"If Secretary Clinton runs, she’ll be the nominee — the first female nominee of either party."

"That breaks through the ‘old’ tagline that the Republican geniuses are cooking up because, if handled correctly, women of all ages will absolutely be inspired by that. I don’t recommend that be the totality of her message or platform, but there’s no way to hide that fact and it certainly shouldn’t be discounted."

So says Stephanie Cutter, the political consultant and former Obama adviser.

In the past, it's been said — notably by Rush Limbaugh — that Hillary as a female candidate will have special problems looking old. Cutter is flipping that around: Being female is such a positive factor that it will overshadow the oldness. She might even be suggesting that oldness is less problematic for a woman, because there are so many women out there who will be inspired to see an old woman out there still fighting, still in the game.

WaPo article "On IRS issue, senior White House aides were focused on shielding Obama" seems to be about throwing White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler under the bus.

Here's the article.

[White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and other senior White House aides] agreed that it would be best not to share [news of an upcoming inspector general’s report on the Internal Revenue Service] with President Obama until the independent audit was completed and made public....

... Obama’s top aides were trying to shield him from any second-term scandal that might swamp his agenda or, worse, jeopardize his presidency....

But Ruemmler and McDonough’s careful plan for the IRS was upended on May 10, when Lois Lerner, a senior official at the agency, broke the news.... Senior White House officials were stunned to see the IRS trying to get ahead of its own story...

I don't know how much of this to believe, but the article strains to portray Ruemmler as narrowly legalistic:

"All Stephanie [Cutter] wants is results."

"She is an old-school, take-no-prisoners political operative. Losing is not tolerated."

In her role as Mrs. Obama’s chief of staff during the 2008 campaign, Ms. Cutter (who signed on after Mrs. Obama’s widely publicized comment that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country”) is largely credited for turning the would-be first lady from a potential liability to an enormous asset....

In addition, Ms. Cutter helped develop “Let’s Move!,” Mrs. Obama’s childhood-obesity initiative, and prepared Sonia Sotomayor for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Ms. Cutter’s prep work involved not only peppering Ms. Sotomayor with sample questions and overseeing media coverage, but also taking on the more delicate task of asking Ms. Sotomayor to tone down her giant dangly earrings.

“She has an attention to detail that builds huge confidence on the part of the people she works for and, I say this parenthetically, especially women,” said Anita Dunn, Mr. Obama’s former White House communications director.

Women. Advancing. Right?