My Hillary Clinton Mother’s Day Card and Word from West Virginia

After church yesterday, I enjoyed dinner at the home of my son Steve and his wife Nancy. Steve waited expectantly as I opened the envelope containing my Mother’s Day card. The front of the card featured an attractive photo of Hillary Clinton and the words: “I know the job is probably the hardest in the world. It involves dealing with wars, handling disputes, and trying to manage unbelievable problems and challenges every single day.”

Inside, the card read: “But enough about being a Mom.”

Chatting with Steve and Nancy out on their sunny deck, I was reminded that on Mother’s Day 1980, I joined thousands of women in Chicago’s Grant Park to march in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Our slogan on that occasion was “Give Mom equal rights for Mother’s Day.”

In the meantime, while I basked in the sun and enjoyed my grilled turkey burger, Hillary was hard at work on the campaign trail, touring the birthplace of Mother’s Day in West Virginia. Clinton visited the home of Ann Jarvis, credited with founding Mother’s Day 100 years ago.

The AP reported:

“Clinton spoke to reporters afterward and told stories about women who have changed history by pressing for equal rights and breaking into male-dominated careers.

“She highlighted her own mother's working-class upbringing and quoted from letters she said mothers have written her recently.”

Over at CNN, Bill Schneider is pondering how a big win for Clinton in tomorrow’s West Virginia primary might impact the Democratic race. Noting that the latest polls show Clinton with a 43-point lead, Schneider contends: “A big Clinton win will send a powerful message that there are a lot of Democrats not ready to get on the Obama bandwagon.”

It looks as if Kentucky is waiting in the wings to give Clinton another big win in that state’s primary a week later.

All of this is to say that Obama hasn’t got the nomination wrapped up yet and it’s always smart not to count Hillary Clinton out.

And besides, a lot of us mothers have got her back.

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.