Pundits Continue to Exorcise Their Misogynist Demons by Bashing Hillary

The pundits haven’t quite got their crude misogynist feelings out of their system yet. A competent powerful woman ran for president and garnered a majority of the popular vote – how threatening that must be to the likes of E. J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Bob Herbert, David Brooks, Mark Shields, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Keith Olbermann, et al, not to mention their codependent female allies, including Maureen Dowd, Arianna Huffington, and Susan Thistlethwaite.

So even after the weaker candidate, Barack Obama, has been handed the nomination, the sadistic, hate-mongering members of the media continue to trash Hillary Clinton for taking a couple of days to process events and prepare for Obama’s coronation.

Yet - even in that cesspool of misogynist gloating over at the Huffington Post - there’s a glimmer of gratitude to Hillary Clinton for her hard-fought campaign. I’m speaking of today’s post by Ilana Goldman, President, Women's Campaign Forum. In “An Open Letter to Hillary,” Goldman writes:

Dear Hillary -

I say this to you almost daily, but since it's normally to you on the TV screen, I thought I should find a way of saying it where you might actually receive the message: Thank you.

Thank you for what you have done. For your sheer tenacity, strength, and stick-to-itiveness. Thank you for working so hard every day when you must have been exhausted. For showing us what leadership looks like: doing something well, with grace, in good times and bad. Most of all, I thank you for not quitting.

Your many supporters will tell you what your race means to them and history will write what it means to the world, but it also means so much to me and to the little world I live in. I thank you on behalf of the women who have been so special in my life:

For my daughter -- who is, as of yet, just an idea in my mind. But I imagine her one day reading the story of this historic campaign. I am so grateful that the story she will read will be of a complete campaign, with the biggest numbers possible -- states, votes, and delegates. That story will show that our first woman presidential contender was truly competitive -- like, nearly won competitive - and show a little girl her own vast possibilities in this country. Thank you for giving her a history worth reading.

For my mother -- who is one of those women who work tirelessly to support her family, worries over rising healthcare costs and frets that her grandchildren may not have social security. She's always been passionately interested in politics, but never before found a politician who she felt understood her. She'll be 65 next year and she wrote the first political check of her life to you. Thank you for validating the day-to-day concerns that she faces.

For my grandmother -- who was, as it was noted at her memorial, "a woman ahead of her time." I think of her every time I see one of your senior women supporters who were born before women first got the vote and were out on the streets filled with hope that they would inaugurate one in their lifetimes. Thank you for showing them that their efforts to make women loud and proud actors in American politics created real change.

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