I agree with Jennifer Lehr:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
–Geraldine Ferraro

I woke up this morning, read the above quote and wanted to kill myself.

Hey, welcome to the club Jen.

(I have a friend whose mother and brother did commit suicide and even he says things like “The weather is so bad today I want to kill myself.” So what I mean is, I didn’t want to die die, but I did want to die.)

WTF?

No dear, spell it out - what - the -fuck?

I had to think for a minute what Ferraro was trying to say and why she was saying it. I mean aren’t there a million other “good” things she could say about Hillary or other negative things she could come up with against Barack to support her candidate. I couldn’t even understand her point really. What was she trying to say exactly?

Did she mean that Barack is lucky to be black at this point in our nation’s history because on the whole we Americans feel so guilty about our despicable treatment of African Americans that we will vote for Barack to make ourselves feel better? That the guilt we feel over denying women equality is nowhere near as strong as the guilt we feel over slavery and segregation?

She couldn’t have been saying that, could she?

Oh yeah, she could. And did.

And that is exactly the kind of crap that turns a lot of progressives off to Hillary because you know damn well Ferraro and Clinton are sisters-in-whine when it comes to this sense of chip-on-the-shoulder entitlement.

Lehr:

Doesn’t she realize that that is one of major reasons Barack is ahead? That we’re sick of that bullshit?

She could spell bullshit and not fuck? WTF?

Enough already ladies. I don’t want to want to kill myself anymore because I’d love to see a woman I can respect lead this nation.

OK Jen, enough of the suicide humor, we get it.

But the real insulting part of Ferraro’s comments is that somehow, some black people are lucky, no make that damn lucky for being black.

Not when looking for homes to rent or going on job interviews but politicians in America apparently lucky to be black.

I wonder if someone like Ferraro would acquiesce to their own ‘Watermelon Man’ scenario where tomorrow she would wake up black and have to spend the rest of her life in that situation? Would she go for it?

My, oh my, Obama is soooo lucky to be a black man running for President in 2008. Luckier than Jesse Jackson was back in the 80s apparently. You remember Jesse don’tcha Geraldine?

Perhaps Ferraro is closer to Rush Limbaugh’s view of Obama as some kind of ‘Magical Negro‘ who, like Jesus, will atone for the sins of white America by shouldering our burden as his own?

In any case, if Ferraro doesn’t see her own racism in her statement, it’s a statement about what some conservatives, with some justification, call ‘limousine liberals’ who love the proletariat as long as they don’t have to live next to them. Another such creature that comes to mind is Nancy Pelosi. And to be fair, so is Ted Kennedy, but then again, aren’t all Kennedys?

Real feminists aren’t racists. That should be rule one.

I like what Pam had to say here:

That one is pretty breathtaking on several levels, considering her selection as VP was most certainly due in part to the fact she is a woman.

In any case, using this particular line of thinking…

* If Clinton were a black man, Hillary would have been told to drop out of the race after losing 11 contests in a row, after all, John Edwards had to get out after losing only 3.

* If Obama were white, as it has already been noted elsewhere, he’d already be the nominee, because it’s pretty clear that while there are blacks voting for him because of his race, there are certain demographic groups who didn’t vote for him because he’s black, and those are the Reagan Democrats that Hillary is chasing.

In any case, since he’s biracial, does that factor into Ferraro’s deluded thinking? What would happen, for instance, if Obama were not visibly identifiable as black (as in, he could pass), but identified as such — does that make any difference in perceived advantage? It’s crazy-making.Yes, indeed.

My oh my what a dustup we’ve had this week in The Washington Post!

Troglodyte Thatcher-worshipper Charlotte Allen shopped this column to the Washington Post and, whaddya know! They printed it! Wow! That easy, eh, for a writer to get her material into the ‘liberal media?!’

Here are her brilliant rejoinders during a moderated chat about the article in the Post.

A feminist reply the Post chose to publish.

Media Matters lengthy rebuttal to Ms. Allen’s assertions.

A Feministe posting revealing that Ms. Allen is at least consistent in her self-hatred.

Some choice bits:

“Women ‘Falling for Obama,’ ” the story’s headline read. Elsewhere around the country, women were falling for the presidential candidate literally. Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich has counted five separate instances in which women fainted at Obama rallies since last September. And I thought such fainting was supposed to be a relic of the sexist past, when patriarchs forced their wives and daughters to lace themselves into corsets that cut off their oxygen.

I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say, “we women,” of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women “are only children of a larger growth,” wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?

Perhaps only in your case, Ms. Allen. And I distinctly remember when women wrote gushing ‘may I fuck him pretty please?’ pieces when President George W. Bush, codpiece and all, appeared in a flight suit under the sign that said “Mission Accomplished.”

But that kind of hero worship is OK if its directed at a manly Republican eh Ms. Allen? As you stated in the Post’s discussion:

Dallas: I thought your article touched on some very good points, the main one being that men constantly are ridiculed and satirized (Homer Simpson) but not women. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that we should have a woman president, because she wouldn’t feel the need to show her “macho” side every single time a two-bit dictator said something unseemly about the U.S. Do you think that a woman president would have invaded Iraq on such flimsy evidence?

Charlotte Allen: Uh, who voted for the invasion of Iraq? And believe it or not, we live in dangerous times. I’m glad to see macho men around, myself, such as our brave troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Viva Prince Harry!

Earth to Ms. Allen: we have always lived in dangerous times. Just as Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. And I certainly hope that her husband is a ‘macho man’ whatever that might be (at least in straight parlance). It seems as though Ms. Allen may have been a disciple of Maribel Morgan (she of the 70s ‘wrap yourself in Saran Wrap for him’ school of wifely composure) and so her taste in men is, well, perhaps a little less sophisticate than more modern women. Perhaps she would feel more womanly getting on her knees for the hero who killed the puppy. Perhaps that’s her speed in a man.

But I digress.

I’m not the only woman who’s dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us. It’s a frequent topic of lunch, phone and water-cooler conversations; even some feminists can’t believe that there’s this thing called “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or that Celine Dion actually sells CDs. A female friend of mine plans to write a horror novel titled “Office of Women,” in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox.

Ms. Allen: if you’re not properly servicing your macho hero, he might land up going to a strip club. Perhaps, as part of a research experiment, you should visit one some time. If you think slavish devotion to Oprah is something, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen a bunch of drunken macho heroes hooting at a poll dancer!

But that’s OK, right?

From the online chat:

Washington: Were you trying to start a constructive debate with your opinion piece? Do you think that’s happened? I think by concluding that women are “dumb” because of real sex differences that exist just pisses people off, and thus precludes any real debate on this issue — and it’s something I think should be explored openly. Name-calling doesn’t get us anywhere.

Charlotte Allen: I called no names, but to be quite honest, I wasn’t trying to start a debate, constructive or otherwise. I was just expressing my views.

She called no names?

Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst — and, yes, stupidest – presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex. As far as I’m concerned, she has proved that she can’t debate — viz. her televised one-on-one against Obama last Tuesday, which consisted largely of complaining that she had to answer questions first and putting the audience to sleep with minutiae about her health-coverage mandate. She has whined (via her aides) like the teacher’s pet in grade school that the boys are ganging up on her when she’s bested by male rivals. She has wept on the campaign trail, even though everyone knows that tears are the last refuge of losers. And she is tellingly dependent on her husband.

She either has a very selective memory or has a far different definition of what ‘names’ constitute.

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.” Here’s the book’s autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn’t pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that’s the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by — get this — picking up a Latin lover!

This is the kind of literature that countless women soak up like biscotti in a latte cup: food, clothes, sex, “relationships” and gummy, feel-good “spirituality.” This female taste for first-person romantic nuttiness, spiced with a soupçon of soft-core porn, has made for centuries of bestsellers — including Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel “Pamela,” in which a handsome young lord tries to seduce a virtuous serving maid for hundreds of pages and then proposes, as well as Erica Jong’s 1973 “Fear of Flying.”

The problem we have here is not just women’s selection of books but men’s as well. As a bookseller, I can tell you with a straight face that men’s popular reading is no less idiotic, in the main, than womens. I know of several men personally, one carpenter and the other a retired judge, who love romantic suspense. Yechhh! But its a personal preference, isn’t it? And for ever man that reads Camus, there are ten whose yearly literary output consists of books like Drew Carey’s “Dirty Jokes and Beer.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But generally the book discussion clubs I know of are all exclusively made up of women and their choices of books are quite eclectic. Men, generally, don’t read for enjoyment in America and the sports page doesn’t count.

But the dumbing down of American culture is not merely a sin to be laid at the feet of women. It’s a problem that crosses the sex boundary. But of course, it doesn’t fit in with Ms. Allen’s bashing women mantra. For if she were honest, she’d have to criticize American taste, which, as a conservative, she won’t do. It would be unpatriotic.

I swear no man watches “Grey’s Anatomy” unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of “The Friday Night Knitting Club.” No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either — although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn’t some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat.

Well, let’s be honest: no man that she knows, i.e. no real man. Get it? Homophobia between the lines. And that “Cream of Wheat” reference? Not name calling, of course, but right up close.

I wonder what Ms. Allen would think of The Bell Curve?

Oh, she’d probably agree with it (from the article):

The theory that women are the dumber sex — or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents — is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy. While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid.

It’s clear she has an interesting take on history (from the chat):

New York:”Women aren’t a historically oppressed minority.” Really? So we’ve always had the right to vote, not to be raped and have control over our bodies? Can I have some of whatever wacky antifeminist weed you’re smoking?

Charlotte Allen: Minority? Not when I last counted. And when did women get the vote–1921? 1923? Rape was a capital crime under Roman law. You know–the Romans, 2,000 years ago. As for “control over our bodies,” I guess you mean abortion. Wasn’t Roe vs. Wade decided in 1973?

Oh my, where do we begin here? She can’t even remember the date of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. And she was wrong on both of her guesses. How is anyone supposed to take anything she says about feminism seriously?

But later in the chat when called upon it, she reverts to the usual excuse of conservatives: knowing basic facts doesn’t matter:

East Bridgewater, Mass.: You seriously don’t even know what year women got the vote? Who on earth hired you to write about women’s issues?

Charlotte Allen: Why is the exact year germane to anything?

Your credibility, Ms. Allen. But you get a pass from the so-called ‘liberal media’ because you’re a conservative.

And its too bad no one asked her point blank if she would have rather been a man or a woman in America right up until the 1970s.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies.

This is probably the most in-your-face insult to all women she could have constructed.

And what is the point?

The same goes for female fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, Supreme Court justices and brain surgeons. Yes, they can do their jobs and do them well, and I don’t think anyone should put obstacles in their paths. I predict that over the long run, however, even with all the special mentoring and role-modeling the 21st century can provide, the number of women in these fields will always lag behind the number of men, for good reason.

Because they’re innately inferior? Yeah! Cheers! But what should women be doing?

So I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.

I bet Margaret Thatcher made a very fine home in between her busy days as Prime Minister. She would have been a failure in Ms. Allen’s eyes otherwise, no doubt.

Very simply put Charlotte: if you wish to think of yourself as the weaker and dumber sex, that’s your right. As a man, someone like you would not be attractive to me at all because, well, you are, as you so succinctly put it:

Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts’ content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . .

kind of dim.

Being a guy, I thought it might be better to have a woman going through the difficult process of choice talk about it.

So this is Nina Darnton in HuffPo, who posits the key question to Hillary supporters who accuse other women of being ‘traitors to feminism:’

What happened to supporting your sister’s freedom of choice? It turned out it was often only evident when she chose what you chose.

It got me wondering why it’s no problem for so many guys to support either a woman or an African-American without having to go through all this self-examination?

An obvious answer is that patriarchy allows us guys to shift gears without having to justify ourselves, since our freedom to choose is never in peril.

And yet, while that might be the book answer, there’s more to it than that. Sure guys do have to deal with the social approval of their peers. And I bet there are some guys who support Clinton or Obama who are lying about it to their social peers who, say, may be Republican.

At least, it seems, women are more willing to broach difficult subjects like politics with their female friends than men are. And yet, they seem to pay a greater social price for it, even to the point of losing friends.

An example - it was easy for me for many years to sublimate my social and political positions while a member of a fantasy football league that included some of my very longtime friends from high school.

But as I aged and got more bothered by what I was seeing and experiencing in my society, their barbs against gays, casual pot smokers, liberals of all stripes and those that didn’t support the Iraqi War (the deal breaker at last) were harder for me to stomach.

Finally, I dropped out and closed the door on some near 30 year friendships. It was remarkably easier to do than I thought it would be.

I think women, from what I have experienced, have a harder time letting go of friends. Again, it might seem a sociological point - men may tend to make more friends of convenience than women who seek friendships for life.

So I think it may be a far more serious point for women to have sharp disagreements over fundamental social issues and remain friends than perhaps, for men, who I believe, find it easier to play the game for social advancement.

If I’m wrong, tell me.

But it seems, as Darnton writes, that the Obama-Clinton dichotomy among women has become another battle front from the ‘mommy wars’ that she helped start with her 1990 article about choices women had to stay at home or seek a career.

I think that Hillary Clinton may have assumed more of the women’s vote than she realized and I think this was a big mistake on her part. It seems that the desire among many first and even second-generation feminists to have a member of their cohort in the White House was regarded as a given that would lead Clinton to victory.

But there was another divide Clinton didn’t consider - generational.

It’s been a big debate in the feminist community - how much do the first and second generation feminists really have in common with women under 30 now? There have long been grumblings among over 50 feminists that the younger sisters take too much for granted and fail to appreciate the sacrifices and hard work of the women who laid the groundwork for what they enjoy.

But I believe that it has been exactly those open doors - both physical and psychological - that have made the candidacy of Barack Obama such a hit among younger voters.

It may be as simple as this - when younger women look to Hillary Clinton they see their mothers. When they look to Barack Obama, they see a person they went through college with.

But there’s even more to it, which brings me to Marie Wilson’s column, also in today’s HuffPo (fancy that coincidence!):

How else could we arrive at such a moment when the male democratic frontrunner for the presidency is likened to a woman — and is celebrated for it? Feminism has not only made inroads for women into the worlds of business and politics; it has challenged long-standing assumptions regarding masculinity, significantly expanding the box in which men and boys experience and display their maleness.

More and more men are taking an active part in the raising of their children — and loving it — thanks to both the policy shifts and cultural shifts brought by feminism. Workplaces are more family-friendly, gender roles are more flexible, and even the most masculine of institutions — the armed forces — boasts beneficial changes because women have entered the ranks. These transformations are palpable and positive, and have led me to wish for a major ad campaign spanning television screens, radio waves, and the sides of buses nationwide depicting how greatly men have benefited from the women’s movement. Its caveat would read: “This Opportunity Has Been Brought to You by Feminism. “

This revelation, of course, will do little to salve the hurts of Clinton fans who feel, not without some justification, that even though Obama has benefited from feminist zeitgeist, it still robbed a qualified woman from leading the nation.

Wilson ends with this:

Our country certainly needs to incorporate feminine styles of leadership — cowboy diplomacy has left us in quite the dire domestic and global state — and so I applaud our nation’s approval of Obama’s feminine approach. Yet this endorsement is a product of hard-fought feminist fights, many of which are far from won. And so as we honor this new era that we find ourselves in, and as we celebrate Women’s History Month, I hope that the disparate and unfair situation in which women leaders often find themselves in is acknowledged and rejected as well. I hope Obama’s rise is accompanied by a new movement on the part of male leaders to ameliorate their leadership — and that we can learn, as a nation, to truly accept women leading alongside them.

Which also begs two questions:

Had Obama not run, would this Democratic nomination race been a cakewalk for Hillary Clinton?

and

Will the feminine qualities Wilson ascribes to Obama be shot to pieces by John McCain’s campaign proving that America is still not willing to accept a ‘non-Cowboy’ type of leadership?

On the first point, one might well ask if Obama was more of a problem for John Edward’s otherwise fine campaign that Clinton was? That is, the male vote could not have been split without guaranteeing a Clinton victory - given the belief that women were voting in a bloc?

Apparently that didn’t happen and now we are dealing with a crossover youth vote from both sexes and races flocking to Obama’s candidacy. And they’re doing that, in part, simply because Hillary Clinton didn’t speak to them. This is something that perhaps should give the first generation feminists some pause - many of them will be able or have retired with nice pensions. But the under 35 crowd, say, has some serious issues with the current structures of society and the economy. And Clinton never seemed to stop talking to her own cohort enough to give the young people a reason to believe. If you don’t believe that - ask them.

This jaded generation flocked from Clinton to Obama precisely because he gave them something to believe in other than policy papers. He genuinely inspired them in a way that left the Mark Penn and company reeling, trying to figure it all out. And they more they and the press call it a ‘cult’ the more this generation rally around Obama.

In a roundabout way of saying it, I think Clinton may have made short work of the rest of the field without the figure of Obama in the hunt. And I think you can definitely make the case, as Wilson does, that his form of leadership wouldn’t have gotten him this far without the feminist movement.

And on the second begged question, will Obama’s kindler, gentler form of leadership survive the reactionary dragons of the general election?

If I were a betting man, I would say no. After all, remember how war hero John Kerry was slimed by the swift-boaters.

The difference may be that Barack Obama is no John Kerry and that as long as he sticks to the JFK playbook, he just might pull it off. Being virtually unflappable helps enormously in a country where showing any kind of emotion, extreme or otherwise, on the campaign trail, is as good as death.

Edmund Muskie couldn’t cry, neither could Hillary Clinton. And Obama knows this. Nor can he scream like Howard Dean or in any other way, show anything but a calm reserve.

Of course, its not fair. The reactionaries and their media friends will forgive McCain any slip-up. Obama, or Clinton, for that matter, will have to be twice as reserved and steely to make a difference.

So it seems that feminism has not changed everything. We’re still Cowboy Nation, for the most part.

But in the end, regardless of what happens today in Ohio and three other states, one can say we really have come a long way from two white guys being the obvious candidates. And as Darnton and Wilson point out, that’s something all feminists and progressives can point to with pride.

As long as we respect our freedom to make the choice between the two of them.

Need a day-maker? Check out these outstanding stories courtesy of one of my favorite kick-ass blogs Big Fat Deal:

The Full Body Project on the Colbert Report

In case you’ve not seen Leonard Nimoy’s project, check it out here. (not work safe though).

And I love this quote from Colbert which says it all:

 Here’s my problem with it, mister. Society has agreed what beautiful is: blonde, thin, big tits. This is questioning what society has agreed upon!

What I seem to hear you saying is that ‘everybody is beautiful.’ What kind of message is that? There’s nothing to shoot for then!

heh heh.

Then the readers at BFD do something wonderful for a 14-year-old girl who has been taught to be ashamed of her body.

You might need a hankie.

Media Matters

Here’s the headline:

Scarborough to Brzezinski on Morning Joe: “[D]on’t make me backhand you”

But here’s the transcript:

From the January 30 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

HARWOOD: I think, Joe — I know you were holding back, but I think that [Florida Gov.] Charlie Crist [R] endorsement might have had even more juice than a Scarborough endorsement. What do you think?

BRZEZINSKI: I think so.

SCARBOROUGH: I, actually — I don’t endorse anybody because, as you know, I’m a journalist. However, there’s no doubt, there are two things –

BRZEZINSKI: [laughing]

HARWOOD: I get it.

SCARBOROUGH: –that hurt — Mika, don’t make me backhand you. Mika is –

MIKA: Oh, lord.

SCAROBOROUGH: — in a very bad way this morning because she’s a big McCain fan, her brother works for McCain, so she’s very excited.

BRZEZINSKI: Well, I’m happy for my brother.

Now if Scarborough had actually said that to the Zbig Man, he would have simply pounded Joe. But Joe wouldn’t have made such a sexist, vulgar and inexcusable comment to Zbig. He’s a man in full; powerful and important. But to his female co-host its just a funny, funny thing to threaten to backhand her for the mistake of making an impudent remark.

So Scarborough thinks he’s Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, eh? Just exuding macho violence from every sexy pore, eh? I don’t think so.

And the sorry thing is that Mika didn’t get up and give this little pompous shit a roundhouse kick to the chops. I would have paid very good money to have witnessed that. And MSNBC, of course, won’t do a thing to one of their ’stars.’ After all, verbal threats of violence against uppity women is as American as apple pie, right?

But in any case, Media Matters needs to change the headline. And someone needs to send Scarborough back to charm school.

He still won’t get fired. But check out who is bringing the heat:

Watching “ill-disguised hatred and resentment” toward Clinton in the days before New Hampshire made writer Rebecca Traister feel guilty that she hadn’t stood up for Clinton before.

“Had I been a New Hampshire voter on Tuesday, I would have pulled a lever for the former first lady with a song in my heart and a bird flipped at MSNBC’s Chris Matthews,” Traister wrote in Salon.

Blogger Christy Hardin Smith in Firedoglake also seethed.

“Chris Matthews, it’s high time for you to go,” she wrote. “None of us dainty ladies out here who depend on our husbands to get anywhere in life will pull out our lace hankies, drop into our fainting couches and cry a single tear when you’re gone.”

Matthews said he believe it was a time of great sensitivity in America and that nerves are rawer now over gender than race. People are looking for ways to make statements and criticizing him is one way to do it, he said.

“I will say this about Hillary Clinton, I’ve said it a thousand times on my show, when I’m with Hillary Clinton, I like her,” he said. “If it has to do with the two of us getting along or me respecting her intellect, it’s obvious to anyone who has seen us together … that she is intellectually stimulating as a human being and is always positive.”

Jill was right.

So I’m thinking maybe this is a cunning move by Matthews, who may be really a big Clinton booster, to get women to support Hillary by his almost constant maligning of her.

Nahh, he’s really not THAT smart despite what people think.

But now I get the Hillary backlash movement.

Hell, it happened to me the other night.

I went to a local civic organization’s annual initiation dinner Tuesday night. I won’t be crass enough to name the organization (of which I am now an officer) because the activities of one member shouldn’t reflect on the whole organization.

It was during the social hour prior to the dinner. This guy was pushing around a savage Internet generated ridicule of Hillary Clinton on the women at the table I would be sitting at. I tried finding it just now and I couldn’t although I can honestly state it was neither the time nor the place nor the audience for such a stunt.

The guy’s wife was one of these conservative types that thought it was hysterically funny. The rest of the women at the table were, how shall we say, uncomfortable. I know most of the people in this organization are moderate to conservative. But the way this guy was going on, I could tell that Hillary was getting some previously untapped support, or at least sympathy.

Later on in the dinner, this guy said it would be great if Burke Lakefront Airport was plowed under and gambling casinos put up in its place because “sin sells” and Cleveland needed sin money to save itself. Sooooo, I suggested that to be consistent, why not legalize prostitution on the site as well and, wow, think of how the money would roll in.

I nailed him. He had to agree with me to be consistent. And then his wife and the rest of the women at the table let him have it.

I know, I’m a baaaaadddd boy.

But the more that clueless, socially retarded troglodytes like this guy keep shooting their mouths off about Hillary Clinton in the most objectionable ways, the more sympathetic support she will receive. I now understand this completely, as I thought how great it would be to be in this guy’s designer kitchen the morning after Clinton’s election to hear the coffee table angst and see the look on his face.

Now I don’t nor would I ever support Hillary Clinton, no matter how badly she gets beat up by obsequious blowhards like Chris Matthews.

But I wouldn’t mind seeing some of her most base conservative critics have to deal with her winning.

This morning on Morning Joe:

Scarborough defending a member of the broadcast ‘news” fraternity (Matthews) got some help from Pat Buchanan, to wit:

“It’s not about Hillary Clinton - It’s about CENSORSHIP!”

 Yeahhhhhhhh, right.

As I said before, they will circle the wagons to protect their own. The viewers have little power to make changes of people who have been vetted for their corporate reliability. They are not our airwaves.

Check out Jeff Darcy’s cartoon in the PD from Thursday

Now comes the Washington Post’s Robert Novak:

With that background, Sen. Clinton’s lachrymose complaint in New Hampshire on Monday that “this is very personal for me” was widely compared to Muskie’s crying jag in Manchester 36 years ago, which began his downfall. But whereas Muskie’s tears were involuntary, only the naive can believe Clinton was not artfully playing for sympathy from her sisters. It worked.

Andy Borowitz thinks it’s funny (thanks to Jill Miller Zimon at WLST):

Saying that she has learned valuable lessons from her victory in the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) today announced that she was scheduling an official crying jag for the eve of the South Carolina primary on January 26.

Speaking to reporters in Las Vegas this morning, her eyes noticeably watery, Mrs. Clinton said that her election eve crying jag would be scheduled for 4 PM EST on January 25 .

The aforementioned Jill weighed in with this post:

Women Are Never Front-Runners in the New York Times today by Gloria Steinem.

Let me tell you something. Agree or disagree. But I’m telling you, from experience:

You say that it’s now anyone but Hillary? I tell you that that’s the quickest way to drive women together. They may not tell you that, but they feel that protectiveness. Sure, not everyone. Not the John McCain supporter who squealed, “How do we beat the bitch?” at a small McCain event.

You think those tears hurt her? That her anger hurts her? I’m telling you - women’s feeling run very, very deep. Do not underestimate Clinton and do not underestimate women and do not misguess the location of the line between being a bully and being a fighter who will win.

Hillary Clinton has not been and continues not to be my top choice for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the more the media and the other camps try to make something out of nothing or irrelevant incidences, the more the standing of the media and those camps degrade in people’s eyes.

If you do not want to be manipulated one way or the other, step away from the red herrings. And write a list for yourself, that you review every day, about what matters to you when you make your choice.

Much like Phillip Morris weighing on race, I find myself in the minefield of sexual politics by commenting on all of this, but Ive never been the most cautious sort of person.

Is Hillary Clinton shrewdly manipulative enough to have engineered her little emotional moment on the eve of the New Hampshire primary?

Does the Pope enjoy sauerbraten?

Can we, for just a second, act like adults here? Can we realize the depth of manipulation that some people come by naturally? Can we just admit for one second that sometimes, some people are skilled enough to make the tears come on command?

To say she may, and I emphasize may, have faked the emotion is to open one up to the charge of being a typical male. But c’mon, this is Hillary Rodham Clinton we’re talking about here.

In the end, it was a no-lose proposition. There’s always a segment of people who take their politicians’ emotions at face value and, in this case, sober and serious people say those people (18 percent of the voters) made their decision on primary day and largely for HRC. And there are always skeptics who can be demonized, especially if they’re male.

And I don’t like Robert Novak at all. But we would be fools to believe that he’s the only one who believes Clinton may have seized the emotional moment. And yes, I bet there are some conservative women who were rolling their eyes at the sight of her ‘moment.’

But what are we to make of Jill’s comments. With all respects due, is the American female electorate that easily manipulated that they will ‘rally ’round the sister’ at the mention of ‘anybody by Hillary?’

I mean, seriously?

Look, I always thought that many women used to get enraged when conservative men would marginalize them into parlor discussions because they didn’t understand or care about ‘throw-weights’ (remember that?). Women wanted to be taken seriously for a serious understanding of issues that affected them, their careers and their families.

I can’t help but think there are many smart women (and I’m not talking about obvious cranks like Michelle Malkin) who seethed over this whole incident. I would like to hear from a few of them.

My question: rather than advance the cause of women in politics, did HRC’s ‘moment’ actually set the cause back?

And as a PS, remember that Muskie in ‘72 was defending his wife in front of the offices of the Manchester Union-Leader when he started bawling. There may be more to the connection than even Jeff Darcy realizes.