From Huffington Post’s OfftheBus: “Witches, Werewolves, and Sarah Palin”

The misogynist assault on Sarah Palin continues. In an earlier post I linked to an LA Times article reporting the lynching of Palin in effigy, supposedly as a Halloween prank. Today, the Huffington Post is soliciting photos of Halloween pranksters dressed as political figures for its OfftheBus feature. The subject line of the email I received from HuffPo reads: 'Witches, Werewolves, and Sarah Palin."

Evidently, this “fun” OfftheBus feature was inspired by a Caucus (NY Times) post reporting that Palin is turning out to be one of the most popular costume figures of the Halloween season. Here’s the first comment to the Caucus post - obviously from an Obama supporter:

“A pig mask, or a pit bull mask, and a cheap tube of lipstick, are the low budget way to do the low budget Palin.

“Your choice whether to go the porcine or canine route.

“It likely depends on your preferred animal noises.”

In the ever-swirling cesspool of vulgar attacks on women throughout the 2008 campaign, there has been no limit to the depravity. Check out this article in the Guardian titled Fair game? "She's the subject of a porn film and a sex doll has been made in her image. So why hasn't there been a bigger backlash against the misogyny aimed at Sarah Palin," asks Kira Cochrane.

Cochrane writes:

“Over the past few days, a music video entitled Red, White and Milf (short for "Mom I'd like to fuck") has appeared all over the internet. It features a cowboy singing a novelty song about Sarah Palin ("she came to us from the hills of Wasilla / the babes are hot, but the winters are a killer"), while three women resembling the Republican vice-presidential candidate dance in skimpy outfits in the background. Actually, dancing is the least of it. One runs her tongue along the barrel of a rifle, one whips another with a US flag, one dips her finger into a pie and feeds it to another, before smearing it over the woman's face and licking it off. It's a lot of suggestion, basically, leading to the moment when the cowboy opens a beer, holds it to his crotch and sprays it over the three women. They respond - how else? - by smearing it ecstatically across their chests.

“For better or worse (I would say the latter), Palin is the highest-profile female politician in the world now, which makes the constant objectification of her particularly galling. This began within days of her nomination, of course, when doctored pictures of her showed up on the internet, head superimposed on to a rifle-toting model in a stars-and-stripes bikini. At the same time, a company started manufacturing a "naughty schoolgirl" Palin doll.”

Read more.

The Well-Oiled Obama Machine Gets Some Advice from Concerned Critics

For months, Obama’s netroots supporters gleefully compared their man’s well-oiled political machine, blatantly ginned up by the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, to the messily run Clinton campaign during the Democratic primary. The netroots, composed of mostly youthful white males, not as yet distracted by the necessity to earn a living, aggressively argued that Obama’s calm (no drama), secretive (never a leak to the press), tightly run campaign proved the One was qualified to be president of the United States.

Since the Palin effect first broke a couple of weeks ago and McCain seized the lead from Obama, pundits and former campaign advisors for the first time have criticized the Obama team led by his honor, David Axelrod.

For example, the NY Post’s Kirsten Powers in a piece titled, How Obama Blew It: Pays Price in Polls for Bungled Attacks on Sarah, writes:

“YESTERDAY'S Gallup poll had John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by an astonishing 10 points among likely voters. A Washington Post poll had that lead at only two points, but clearly showed a McCain surge - especially among women. This wasn't what Democrats were expecting when they left Denver - yet they have nobody to blame but themselves.

“Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy.

“No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a ‘former mayor’ when she is in fact a sitting governor.

“When she retaliated (justifiably) by mocking his stint as an organizer, the Obama camp was clearly rattled. Obama himself actually began arguing about the importance of community organizing. His supporters amplified this cry - claiming Palin's attack was a racist slur and passing around e-mails titled ‘Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor.’

“Meanwhile, the rest of the country was probably wondering what being a community organizer has to do with being president.

“Lured by the McCain camp, Obama supporters engaged in an argument about who had more overall experience - the top of the Democratic ticket or the bottom of the GOP ticket. This diminished Obama.

“Meanwhile, the media lit up in all their cultural-elite splendor.”

Read More.

Sarah Palin Replaces Hillary Clinton in the Chauvinist Left’s Crosshairs

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d link from Katalusis to an article by Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard. But this headline in the Huffington Post just did it for me: Sara Palin: Dems Pounce on McCain Pick. And pounce the Dems did with the same vituperation mustered in their concerted efforts - in collusion with their media allies - to force Hillary Clinton out of the race for the Democratic nomination. Always at the ready, Obama’s online shock troops quickly chimed in by savaging the Alaska governor with over 7,500 readers’ comments. If you can stomach the vilification of the youthful Palin, go here.

Over at the Weekly Standard, none of the above came as a surprise. Bill Kristol’s piece titled Let Palin be Palin: Why the Left is scared to death by McCain’s running mate now seems prescient. Kristol writes:

"A spectre is haunting the liberal elites of New York and Washington--the spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism, rising out of the American countryside, free of the taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress, able to invigorate a McCain administration and to govern beyond it.

"That spectre has a name--Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska chosen by John McCain on Friday to be his running mate. There she is: a working woman who's a proud wife and mother; a traditionalist in important matters who's broken through all kinds of barriers; a reformer who's a Republican; a challenger of a corrupt good-old-boy establishment who's a conservative; a successful woman whose life is unapologetically grounded in religious belief; a lady who's a leader.

"So what we will see in the next days and weeks--what we have already seen in the hours after her nomination--is an effort by all the powers of the old liberalism, both in the Democratic party and the mainstream media, to exorcise this spectre. They will ridicule her and patronize her. They will distort her words and caricature her biography. They will appeal, sometimes explicitly, to anti-small town and anti-religious prejudice. All of this will be in the cause of trying to prevent the American people from arriving at their own judgment of Sarah Palin."

Here’s the link I thought I’d never make: to read Kristol’s piece in its entirety, go here. By the way, note Kristol’s sustained tone of civility. Wonder if the Left will ever master that particular skill. I doubt it.

The Assets and the Baggage Biden Brings to the Obama Campaign

Tom Edsall at the Huffington Post offers a reasonably objective report on what Joe Biden brings to the Democratic ticket in The Good, Great, Bad, and Ugly.

Edsall writes:

“Joe Biden brings a host of assets to the Barack Obama campaign - chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; working class Irish Catholic roots; toughness on the stump; and the crucial, if difficult to describe, attribute of likability.

“At the same time, the five-term Delaware Senator carries some baggage, including two alleged incidents of plagiarism; an episode of resume inflation; a tendency to shoot from the mouth - only sometimes on target; and the dubious distinction of becoming the first national party nominee with known hair plugs.

‘“That said, the Biden choice is likely to be far less consequential to the outcome on Election Day than the current flurry of commentary suggests. Although political analysts and political scientists have explored the importance of vice presidential picks, ‘the quantitative research finds nothing,’ notes MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III. ‘You can't even really say that there's a 'first do no harm' principle involved, since there are plenty of examples of 'problematic' vice presidential choices, running from Johnson (alienated Kennedy's core) to Bush I (alienated Reagan's core) to Quayle (lightweight boy blunder).’”

(To read Edsall’s post in its entirety, go here.)

I think we can all agree that if Hillary Clinton were at the top of the Democratic ticket or in the VP slot, the Democrats would be generating a lot more excitement and enthusiasm in a race in which an average of the national polls show Obama’s lead over McCain has shrunk to 1.4 points. However, we’re stuck with Obama’s light resume and his ability as a motivational speaker paired with Biden’s experience and his tendency to put his foot in his mouth.

The highlights of next week’s convention have to be the roll call vote with Sen. Clinton’s name on the ballot and the speeches she and Bill Clinton are scheduled to give. Obama’s appearance at that football stadium is destined to be anti-climactic.

Obama Supporter: “I guess we’re just not nice people”

There are a few of us who continue to be shocked by the comments by Obama supporters who swarm the message boards across the internet. I picked up the comment
below from the Huffington Post this morning. The writer was responding to the video of Father Pfleger’s tirade against Hillary Clinton last Sunday at Obama’s church, Trinity UCC.

“Father Pfleger was so funny. I swear I tried to be appalled but I couldn't hold back the laughter. Neither could my husband. I guess we're just not nice people.

“Independent for Obama 08”

I guess not.

A Scary Pre-Caucus Analysis of What Drives Voters at the Huffington Post and Second Thoughts About Obama at the Daily Kos

In a scary pre-caucus analysis titled Iowa: It's Emotions, Stupid! published in today’s Huffington Post, Peter Emerson and Michael Maslansky predict:

“It will not be the experience of a candidate; it will be the emotion of the voter that decides this election. New studies of the brain by neuroscientists and psychiatrists prove that emotions trump logic.”

In supporting their case, Emerson and Maslansky point first to the “likeability” factor in the two previous elections that helped Dubya, the guy you’d most like to have a beer with,” defeat first Gore and then Kerry.

If the Emerson and Maslansky analysis is correct, America will continue on the dangerous course set by Dubya by choosing Obama, the candidate registering higher on emotional appeal than support for his qualifications for the presidency.

But one well known voter is taking a step back from his earlier support of Obama: in today’s Daily Kos, Markos shares second thoughts about the candidate he’d previously endorsed:

"You know, I was going to vote for Obama and even announced that a week or so ago. But this is a great example of why it's best to wait and see how things shake out. Not being blinded by candidate worship, it's easier to sniff out the bullshit. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that's not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy's hearts a flutter.

"I don't get to vote for another month, so we'll see how the next four weeks go. Certainly none of these guys have earned my vote yet.

"Amazingly enough, none of them walk on water, no matter what their frenzied supporters might think."

That's a good thought to keep in mind as the Iowa count down begins.

More Misogyny Than Racism in 2008 Campaign

It’s sad to be discussing the frequency of misogynist attacks against Hillary Clinton compared to the racist slurs against Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign. This tells us what a long way Americans have yet to go to overcome the twin evils of misogyny and racism in a nation some have described as “a shining city on a hill,” begging the question, for whom?

In today’s Huffington Post, Marie Wilson reports:

Monday should have been a great day for Senator Hillary Clinton, as she worked to regain her footing and momentum in the Iowa Caucuses. She appeared on NBC's Today Show to showcase a hard fought endorsement by the Des Moines Register and Tribune. While being interviewed, she flashed on the screen with a wide grin that was hard to maintain after a grilling that was out of proportion to the occasion (and I have not complained about the press treatment of Senator Clinton heretofore). But my afternoon was shaken by an article by Jonathan Tilove, a National Correspondent for the Newhouse News Service, citing a Web search, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, had conducted to look for "racist invective" aimed at Senator Obama

What she found was a mess of misogyny directed towards Senator Clinton that was far more distressing. Read More.

The above-noted misogyny might possibly explain why there has been so little coverage in the MSM and blogosphere about the American Research Group’s findings in its latest poll in Iowa (released Dec. 24, 2007) showing Clinton in a commanding lead over Edwards and Obama.

Fearlessly Facing a Hostile Media

Any half-awake, semi-literate follower of the coverage so far of Campaign 2008 offered by either the mainstream media or the blogosphere is aware the media is still controlled by the good old boys network in America.

Nevertheless, I was surprised yesterday to read a casual comment by Kos himself in a post on his leading left of center blog, The Daily Kos, confirming the obvious: one of Hillary Clinton’s challenges in her run for the Democratic nomination is a “hostile media.” (If you need further verification of the media's abusive treatment of Clinton, check out a recent item on Media Matters.)

From screaming negative headlines exaggerating poll results in Iowa favoring Obama by one or two points and either tucking news of a Clinton lead away in an obscure corner or not reporting it at all to skewed coverage of a debate by the Democratic candidates, it’s hard to find clear, objective, and honest coverage of campaign 2008 anywhere in the online media, including the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

The reader comments following a typically biased article from supporters of front-runner Clinton’s rivals is scary. This is especially true at the Huffington Post where within the past several days, Obama supporters have used every obscenity in their apparently limited vocabularies to accuse the Clinton camp of everything from staging the hostage crisis in New Hampshire to get favorable publicity and perpetrating the YouTube video titled Obama Obollywood. (You can see the video from this site by clicking on Obama’s image from the YouTube icon in the sidebar to the right of this post.)

“Good old boys” has always been something of a misnomer for a power structure that blocks advancement of talented, capable women. Sad to say, the boys have always found allies among those women who can’t tolerate sharing the limelight or power with a successful sister who shows signs of breaking through yet another major glass ceiling. Particularly disappointing have been the personal attacks on Hillary Clinton by Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington.

Lately, I’ve been reading Huffington’s book, On Becoming Fearless, that suggests at least a modicum of awareness on her part of the obstacles to success American women continue to face: “Our presence in powerful positions, on corporate boards, and as heads of our own businesses continues to grow. Fortune magazine reports that as of 2005, roughly half of all management and professional jobs were filled by women. In the last ten years, the number of Fortune 500 companies with at least one quarter of their boards filled with women directors went from eleven to sixty-four. And women now own 48 percent of small business.

“That’s all going in the right direction, but women are still not even close to parity, especially in pay. The compensation-package half-empty view looks like this: According to catalyst, a non-profit research group, women still account for just under 15 percent of Fortune 500 board members. And for the past ten years, the rate has been increasing only 0.5 percent a year. This means we won’t hit the 50 percent mark until 2076 – a nice tri-centennial present for America, but still, should it take three hundred years?”

Obviously, Huffington talks the talk on behalf of women’s rights, but don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect her, Maureen Dowd, or any other representative of the American media, male or female, to support Hillary Clinton in news coverage or opinion pieces because she’s a woman. I do, however, demand fair and equal coverage of Clinton’s undeniably fearless front-running bid for the presidency.

“Hillary Takes Gold; McCain - a Wooden Nickel”

In today’s Huffington Post, Amitai Etzioni, Professor of International Relations at George Washington University, previews the foreign policy agendas of Hillary Clinton and John McCain as presented in essays published in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs.

Etzioni finds McCain in the neocon mold:

Senator McCain's new essay could have been written by a Neo Con in 1995, 2000, or maybe even late as 2003. But even in those days, it would have taken an extremely untutored politician to hold that nations can be democratized in short
order, especially where the sociological conditions are not well prepared. The title of McCain's essay says it all: "An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom." As he sees it, "the protection and promotion of the democratic ideal, at home and abroad, will be the surest source of security and peace for the century that lies before us." Well, if wishes would be horses, beggars could ride.

Regarding Clinton’s essay, Etzioni states:

I have spent too many hours with Hillary, in White House dinners, at the Renaissance Weekend, and elsewhere to be a starry-eyed fan. Still, this essay nails it. She writes: "as we know at home and as we see today in Iraq and Afghanistan, opportunity cannot flourish without basic security." Her use of the term "basic" is essential. We previously defined it as "... the conditions under which most people, most of the time, are able to go about their lives, venture onto the street, work, study and participate in public life (politics included), without acute fear of being killed or injured-without being terrorized. To seek full-fledged security, to obviate all threats, to end fear, puts us on the slippery slope at the bottom of which is a police state." (http://www.securityfirstbook.com/)

Clinton recognizes that forming a Muslim democracy in Afghanistan is a "daunting task". In Iraq, her policy would call for "helping Iraqis, not propping up the Iraqi government." Regarding Russia, although she criticizes Putin's repressive policies, Clinton would focus first of all on issues that concern security; ours, theirs and that of others. She would put high priority "on issues of high national importance, such as thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions, securing loose nuclear weapons in Russia and the former Soviet republics..."

In general, although Clinton views the promotion of democracy and freedom as a central component of US global leadership, she argues that "we must return to a pragmatic willingness to look at the facts on the ground and make decisions based on evidence rather than ideology." The contrast with McCain could not be clearer. At least in this round, Hillary takes gold; McCain - a wooden nickel.

It's About Oil, Stupid!

Marty Kaplan in the Huffington Post shows how once again the mainstream media has been left behind in important news coverage. This time it's the recent record-high crude oil prices, and Kaplan effectively connects the dots to Greenspan's acknowledgement that we went to war in Iraq for no other reason than that nation's oil reserves:

A useful news story would have included Alan Greenspan acknowledging "what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." A helpful account would have cited Gen. John Abizaid, the former CENTCOM Commander, explaining that "of course" the Iraq war is "about oil." Journalism that cares as much about sobering context as it does about B-roll bs would have reminded us that Halliburton's Dick "Secret Energy Task Force" Cheney dissed conservation as a panty-waist "personal virtue" a few months after he was sworn in as Regent. Instead of exhuming archival footage of gas station lines from the '70s, producers might have re-aired the more recent tape of former Harken Energy director George W. Bush strolling hand-in-hand through the Crawford bluebonnets with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, just in case anyone was wondering about the durability of the generations-long House of Bush-House of Saud alliance. And speaking of His Highness, perhaps it also would have been useful to see the There He Goes! Here
He Comes! Andrews Air Force Base shots of Cheney's 14-hours-each-way flight to see King Abdullah for eight hours in Riyadh, a no-press-corps/no-press-conference trip just after Thanksgiving last year which surely had nothing to do with oil, ya think? And as long as we're connecting the dots, it wouldn'thave hurt if some reporter with a decent megaphone had reviewed the number of times that Republicans in Congress and the White House have fought against windfall profits taxes and for juicy new tax breaks for ExxonMobil.

But I still don't get why the press hasn't been all over this whole oil-soaked scene or why more Americans aren't up in arms over it.

If you have any ideas, please leave a comment.