5th Big CLWN WR Event
Thursday, March 20, 2008
7:00 - 10:00 pm
SAFE-T-GALLERY
Gallery 214
111 Front Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn
FREE ADMISSION!!!
featuring
Carol Novack
Liza Wolsky
with special guests
R. Nemo Hill
Sheila Lanham
Richard Loranger
Mindy Levokove
Jane Ormerod
Adriana Scopino
Moira T. Smith
Joanne Pagano Weber
Nathan Whiting
Francine Witte
hosted by Bob Heman
editor of CLWN WR since 1971
Take the F train to York Street, walk downhill to Front and turn left under the Manhattan Bridge. For more information, maps, and directions from other subway lines please check the Gallery website at http://www.safetgallery.com
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Ok. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton: I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!
After listening to/watching PBS Channel 13 - Tom's hour, with commentaries by a few male journalists, I've decided this is it. One guy, Shield, who thinks it's appropriate that Congress hear evidence re that baseball player's alleged crimes - referred to H. Clinton as: "her claim to fame is her husband." (or substantially similar words). Well, hey, I realize that all of my so-called "progressive" friends are going for Obama, with his empty rhetoric, his messianic messages and little if anything to show substance and record. Who cares that neither he nor Hillary voted on water torture? Who cares that Lieberman's his mentor? Who cares that he voted for the Patriot Act? Who cares that he's pro death penalty and anti same sex marriage? Who cares that his pals are telecommunications bigwigs? Who cares that he's wigwagged on many issues? Who cares that he's got more money than H Clinton ... poured into wooing the super delegates? (hey, where's he getting the dough?) Who cares he's a corporate tool without a cogent healthcare plan? I do. If I have to choose between being a p.c. so-called progressive to back some inexperienced yet charismatic half-black guy, whose ancestors weren't slaves but who's playing the race card big time and duping progressives into thinking he's going to be more effective as a change agent than Hillary, who's been maligned by the big press cause she's an assertive woman, guess whom I'm going to support? This entire campaign makes me ill. We're going to end up with McCain, who knows how to dupe people into thinking he's a liberal. Ha. Good match with Obama, who's duped progressives into thinking he's a progressive. He knows little, yet speaks eloquently. Style without substance. The kiddies love him. MoveOn loves him.
So as much as it makes me not quite ecstatic to support a moderate Democrat who should send her ridiculous husband to an island for the duration of the campaign, I'm resigning myself to doing so, for many reasons, including those already enumerated on this blog --- principally, I don't buy the rhetoric and like a good lawyer, I scrutinize the evidence. This is not a choice between progressives. Face it. Be wary. I've been wary of the Obama PC Cult hype since the getgo. You should be too.
So as much as it makes me not quite ecstatic to support a moderate Democrat who should send her ridiculous husband to an island for the duration of the campaign, I'm resigning myself to doing so, for many reasons, including those already enumerated on this blog --- principally, I don't buy the rhetoric and like a good lawyer, I scrutinize the evidence. This is not a choice between progressives. Face it. Be wary. I've been wary of the Obama PC Cult hype since the getgo. You should be too.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Everyone's Progressive Hero Obama didn't bother to vote against waterboarding
Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government
14 Feb 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/
Bill Curbing Terror Interrogators Is Sent to Bush, Who Has Vowed to Veto It 14 Feb 2008 The Senate voted Wednesday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods tortures that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level terrorism suspects. The vote, following House passage of the measure in December, set up a confrontation with President [sic] Bush, who has threatened to veto it. Democratic supporters of the measure hailed its passage and immediately challenged Mr. Bush to veto it, saying that to do so would effectively endorse torture. Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, did not vote. Republican opponents of the bill were joined by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Bush, the Connecticut independent, and Ben Nelson (D-NE).
14 Feb 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/
Bill Curbing Terror Interrogators Is Sent to Bush, Who Has Vowed to Veto It 14 Feb 2008 The Senate voted Wednesday to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods tortures that have been used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level terrorism suspects. The vote, following House passage of the measure in December, set up a confrontation with President [sic] Bush, who has threatened to veto it. Democratic supporters of the measure hailed its passage and immediately challenged Mr. Bush to veto it, saying that to do so would effectively endorse torture. Democratic presidential candidates Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, did not vote. Republican opponents of the bill were joined by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, Bush, the Connecticut independent, and Ben Nelson (D-NE).
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Writing/publication News
With all the nauseating Obama whoopha & the Clinton misogyny, I think I forgot to post news of a personal nature:
1) My first prosey chapbook, "The Architect's Play," will be published by Poets Wear Prada Press by the end of March or beginning of April.
2) My revamped collaborative CD with more music & audio affects by the exquisitely talented Ben Miller and Don C. Meyer (hear a few tracks at myspace) is available for sale via Mad Hatters' Review
.
3) I'll be featured at a CLWN WR reading in Dumbo on MARCH 20TH (details to be posted).
4) I'll be featured in Buffalo, NY on APRIL 3rd (details to be posted).
5) I'll also be reading at the &NOW Festival (andnow.com) at Chapman University, CA (a bastion of rightwing mentality -- an absolutely appropriate venue for a festival of "innovative" writing), APRIL 15th through 17th (details to be posted).
6) I'll be featured in the gifted writer Patricia Eakins's Sunday afternoon series in Riverdale on APRIL 20TH (details forthcoming).
7) The MHR multi-media BENEFIT on MAY 4TH, 4 - 8pm, at The Bowery Poetry Club will be AMAZING. A list of participants will be posted shortly.
8) The delightful, multi-gifted multi-media writer, Sheila E. Murphy, and I completed our first collaborative project, a streamy, fusionary thang called ROOM. We'll begin our next one soon.
9) I'm not busy waiting for my first rejection of "Violet's Dream."
10) Several writings will most likely appear in Romanian translation in a Romanian print and online journal. Details will be provided sooner or later.
11) I am still having fun with "Gated Communities."
12) I LOVE the latest issue of MAD HATTERS' REVIEW!
1) My first prosey chapbook, "The Architect's Play," will be published by Poets Wear Prada Press by the end of March or beginning of April.
2) My revamped collaborative CD with more music & audio affects by the exquisitely talented Ben Miller and Don C. Meyer (hear a few tracks at myspace) is available for sale via Mad Hatters' Review
.
3) I'll be featured at a CLWN WR reading in Dumbo on MARCH 20TH (details to be posted).
4) I'll be featured in Buffalo, NY on APRIL 3rd (details to be posted).
5) I'll also be reading at the &NOW Festival (andnow.com) at Chapman University, CA (a bastion of rightwing mentality -- an absolutely appropriate venue for a festival of "innovative" writing), APRIL 15th through 17th (details to be posted).
6) I'll be featured in the gifted writer Patricia Eakins's Sunday afternoon series in Riverdale on APRIL 20TH (details forthcoming).
7) The MHR multi-media BENEFIT on MAY 4TH, 4 - 8pm, at The Bowery Poetry Club will be AMAZING. A list of participants will be posted shortly.
8) The delightful, multi-gifted multi-media writer, Sheila E. Murphy, and I completed our first collaborative project, a streamy, fusionary thang called ROOM. We'll begin our next one soon.
9) I'm not busy waiting for my first rejection of "Violet's Dream."
10) Several writings will most likely appear in Romanian translation in a Romanian print and online journal. Details will be provided sooner or later.
11) I am still having fun with "Gated Communities."
12) I LOVE the latest issue of MAD HATTERS' REVIEW!
Another Obama Expose + The Urgency of Media Reform
There are plenty of critiques of Hillary R Clinton. I'm more interested in the exposes of Obama, due to his attraction to voters who think he's progressive and are drawn to his youth, vitality, and vapid rhetoric (his speech writers are damn good and he speaks with silver tongue!). Americans and many others have a tendency to go for style over substance - Arnie and Ronnie are good examples of that. Frankly, I don't care for either candidate, as I've said before. There are no choices; either "Democrat," if elected, might prove to be somewhat of an alleviation from Cheney-Bush & co., but unhappily slight - certainly insufficient to undo the damage. The uber capitalistic paradigm of American democracy has failed to provide the constitutional safeguards and benefits we all need. Many of us progressives know that. Yet so many so-called liberals and progressives (eg, moveon) are in denial, wanting desperately to wave a flag and believe in a political messiah. What's the solution when our population doesn't get the truth from the mainstream media? (See, eg, "Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK's Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are "stunning." The Brad Blog.) The only possible way out of the seemingly irreversible mess must begin with the transformational takeover of media -- a daunting task, but at least some fearless Internet reporters and investigators are devoting their lives to it. If the people are not educated, the paradigm will remain the same. -- CN
_____________________
from counterpunch.org
Declaration of Independence Day Edition
July 4, 2007
Another Automaton of the Atomic Lobby
Barack Obama's Nuclear Ambitions
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and JOSHUA FRANK
It is fast becoming one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. Oil prices are expected to rise to even higher levels as the United States dependence on foreign crude is becoming increasingly unstable. And the perceived threat of global warming is making even the most skeptical of politicians nervous. The future of planet Earth, they claim, is more perilous than ever. Al Gore has made an impact.
But the Gore effect is like a bad hangover: all headache no buzz. The purported solution to the imminent warming crisis, nuclear technology, is just as hazardous as our current methods of energy procurement. Al Gore, who wrote of the potential green virtues of nuclear power in his book Earth in the Balance, earned his stripes as a congressman protecting the interests of two of the nuclear industry's most problematic enterprises, the TVA and the Oak Ridge Labs. And, of course, Bill Clinton backed the Entergy Corporation's outrageous plan to soak Arkansas ratepayers with the cost overruns on the company's Grand Gulf reactor which provided power to electricity consumers in Louisiana.
The Clinton years indeed saw an all-out expansion of nuclear power, not only in the US, but all over the globe. First came the deal to begin selling nuclear reactors to China, announced during Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit Washington, even though Zemin brazenly vowed at the time not to abide by the so-called "full scope safeguards" spelled out in the International Atomic Energy Act. The move was apparently made over the objections of Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who cited repeated exports by China of "dual use" technologies to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The CIA also weighed in against the deal, pointing out in a report to the President that "China was the single most import supplier of equipment and technology for weapons of mass destruction" worldwide. In a press conference on the deal, Mike McCurry said these nuclear reactors will be "a lot better for the planet than a bunch of dirty coal-fired plants" and will be "a great opportunity for American vendors" -- that is, Westinghouse.
A day later Clinton signed an agreement to begin selling nuclear technology to Brazil and Argentina for the first time since 1978, when Jimmy Carter canceled a previous deal after repeated violations of safety guidelines and nonproliferation agreements.
In a letter to congress, Clinton vouched for the South American countries, saying they had made "a definitive break with earlier ambivalent nuclear policies." Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg justified the nuclear pact with Brazil and Argentina as "a partnership in developing clean and reliable energy supplies for the future." Steinberg noted that both countries had opposed binding limits on greenhouse emissions and that new nuclear plants would be one way "to take advantage of the fact that today we have technologies available for energy use which were not available at the time that the United States and other developed countries were going through their periods of development."
The atom lobby during the 1990s had a stranglehold on the Clinton administration and now they seem to have the same suffocating grip around the neck of the brightest star in the Democratic field today: Barack Obama.
Barack, for the second quarter in a row, has surpassed the fundraising prowess of Hillary Clinton. To be sure small online donations have propelled the young senator to the top, but so too have his connections to big industry. The Obama campaign, as of late March 2007, has accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator.
The Illinois-based company also helped Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper's, "[Exelon] is Obama's fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."
"Senator Obama has all the necessary leadership skills required to be president,'' says Frank M. Clark, chairman of Exelon's Commonwealth Edison utility.
These gracious accolades come from one of Exelon's top executives, despite the fact that Obama proposed legislation in 2006 that would require nuclear plant operators to report any hazardous leaks. While introducing the legislation Obama noted the failure of Exelon to report a leak of radioactive tritium into groundwater near one of their Illinois plants. But the senator's criticism of nuclear power goes only so far.
During a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing in 2005, Obama, who serves on the committee, asserted that since Congress was debating the negative impact of CO2 emissions "on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable -- and realistic -- for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration." Shortly thereafter, Nuclear Notes, the industry's top trade publication, praised the senator. "Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of 'common sense solutions.' And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind."
Sadly for the credibility of the atom lobby, some of their more eye-grabbing numbers don't check out. For example, as noted in a report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuke industry claims that the world's 447 nuclear plants reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent. But the true villain behind global warming is carbon. Existing nuclear plants save only about 5 percent of total CO2 emissions, hardly a bargain given the costs and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear lobby likes to compare its record to coal-fired plants, rather than renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Even when compared to coal, atomic power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."
Clearly Senator Obama recognizes the inherent dangers of nuclear technology and knows of the disastrous failures that plagued Chernobyl, Mayak and Three Mile Island. Yet, despite his attempts to alert the public of future toxic nuclear leaks, Obama still considers atomic power a viable alternative to coal-fired plants. The atom lobby must certainly be pleased.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. St. Clair's new book on the environment, Born Under a Bad Sky, will be published in December.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.
They can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net
_____________________
from counterpunch.org
Declaration of Independence Day Edition
July 4, 2007
Another Automaton of the Atomic Lobby
Barack Obama's Nuclear Ambitions
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
and JOSHUA FRANK
It is fast becoming one of the most important issues of the 2008 presidential campaign. Oil prices are expected to rise to even higher levels as the United States dependence on foreign crude is becoming increasingly unstable. And the perceived threat of global warming is making even the most skeptical of politicians nervous. The future of planet Earth, they claim, is more perilous than ever. Al Gore has made an impact.
But the Gore effect is like a bad hangover: all headache no buzz. The purported solution to the imminent warming crisis, nuclear technology, is just as hazardous as our current methods of energy procurement. Al Gore, who wrote of the potential green virtues of nuclear power in his book Earth in the Balance, earned his stripes as a congressman protecting the interests of two of the nuclear industry's most problematic enterprises, the TVA and the Oak Ridge Labs. And, of course, Bill Clinton backed the Entergy Corporation's outrageous plan to soak Arkansas ratepayers with the cost overruns on the company's Grand Gulf reactor which provided power to electricity consumers in Louisiana.
The Clinton years indeed saw an all-out expansion of nuclear power, not only in the US, but all over the globe. First came the deal to begin selling nuclear reactors to China, announced during Jiang Zemin's 1997 visit Washington, even though Zemin brazenly vowed at the time not to abide by the so-called "full scope safeguards" spelled out in the International Atomic Energy Act. The move was apparently made over the objections of Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who cited repeated exports by China of "dual use" technologies to Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. The CIA also weighed in against the deal, pointing out in a report to the President that "China was the single most import supplier of equipment and technology for weapons of mass destruction" worldwide. In a press conference on the deal, Mike McCurry said these nuclear reactors will be "a lot better for the planet than a bunch of dirty coal-fired plants" and will be "a great opportunity for American vendors" -- that is, Westinghouse.
A day later Clinton signed an agreement to begin selling nuclear technology to Brazil and Argentina for the first time since 1978, when Jimmy Carter canceled a previous deal after repeated violations of safety guidelines and nonproliferation agreements.
In a letter to congress, Clinton vouched for the South American countries, saying they had made "a definitive break with earlier ambivalent nuclear policies." Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg justified the nuclear pact with Brazil and Argentina as "a partnership in developing clean and reliable energy supplies for the future." Steinberg noted that both countries had opposed binding limits on greenhouse emissions and that new nuclear plants would be one way "to take advantage of the fact that today we have technologies available for energy use which were not available at the time that the United States and other developed countries were going through their periods of development."
The atom lobby during the 1990s had a stranglehold on the Clinton administration and now they seem to have the same suffocating grip around the neck of the brightest star in the Democratic field today: Barack Obama.
Barack, for the second quarter in a row, has surpassed the fundraising prowess of Hillary Clinton. To be sure small online donations have propelled the young senator to the top, but so too have his connections to big industry. The Obama campaign, as of late March 2007, has accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator.
The Illinois-based company also helped Obama's 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper's, "[Exelon] is Obama's fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."
"Senator Obama has all the necessary leadership skills required to be president,'' says Frank M. Clark, chairman of Exelon's Commonwealth Edison utility.
These gracious accolades come from one of Exelon's top executives, despite the fact that Obama proposed legislation in 2006 that would require nuclear plant operators to report any hazardous leaks. While introducing the legislation Obama noted the failure of Exelon to report a leak of radioactive tritium into groundwater near one of their Illinois plants. But the senator's criticism of nuclear power goes only so far.
During a Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works hearing in 2005, Obama, who serves on the committee, asserted that since Congress was debating the negative impact of CO2 emissions "on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable -- and realistic -- for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration." Shortly thereafter, Nuclear Notes, the industry's top trade publication, praised the senator. "Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of 'common sense solutions.' And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind."
Sadly for the credibility of the atom lobby, some of their more eye-grabbing numbers don't check out. For example, as noted in a report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuke industry claims that the world's 447 nuclear plants reduce CO2 emissions by 30 percent. But the true villain behind global warming is carbon. Existing nuclear plants save only about 5 percent of total CO2 emissions, hardly a bargain given the costs and risks associated with nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear lobby likes to compare its record to coal-fired plants, rather than renewables such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Even when compared to coal, atomic power fails the test if investments are made to increase the efficient use of the existing energy supply. One recent study by the Rocky Mountain Institute found that "even under the most optimistic cost projections for future nuclear electricity, efficiency is found to be 2.5 to 10 times more cost effective for CO2-abatement. Thus, to the extent that investments in nuclear power divert funds away from efficiency, the pursuit of a nuclear response to global warming would effectively exacerbate the problem."
Clearly Senator Obama recognizes the inherent dangers of nuclear technology and knows of the disastrous failures that plagued Chernobyl, Mayak and Three Mile Island. Yet, despite his attempts to alert the public of future toxic nuclear leaks, Obama still considers atomic power a viable alternative to coal-fired plants. The atom lobby must certainly be pleased.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book is End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, co-written with Alexander Cockburn. St. Clair's new book on the environment, Born Under a Bad Sky, will be published in December.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008.
They can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Goodbye To All That -- on the Clinton v Obama Campaign
Goodbye To All That (#2)
by Robin Morgan
February 2, 2008
"Goodbye To All That" was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking
free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting
women (for an online version, see
http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and
contemporary women's movements, I've avoided writing another
specific "Goodbye . . ." But not since the suffrage struggle
have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this
country—been so set in competition, as the contest between
Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls.
So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden
who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for
politics.
—She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever
had labor pains?)
—When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it
was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my
shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and
pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby
Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed
Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort
"See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the
forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm
unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the
Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short
memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a
dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles."
Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group,
"Citizens United Not Timid." John McCain answering "How do
we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have
dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?"
For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between
splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we
would be righteously outraged—and they would not be
selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election
history, including one with the murderous slogan "If Only
Hillary had married O.J. Instead!" Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a
storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's
vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far
enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This
is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is
sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would
recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about
race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such
vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense
of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from
MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments
(www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim
Russert's continual sexist asides and his all-white-male
panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony
Harris chuckling at "the chromosome thing" while
interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And
that's not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male
and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations,
ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages—not
only African American and European American but Latina and
Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab
American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn't
exist if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist
countries may exist—but sexism is everywhere. No matter
how many ways a woman breaks free from other
discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world
still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our
womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle
that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are
justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which
whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to
pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and
then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female
we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be
in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a
chance—even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending
politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on
African American women deciding on which of two candidates
to bestow their vote—until a number of Hillary-supporting
black feminists told me they're being called "race
traitors."
So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest
scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and
sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this
planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape
and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy;
being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the
disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted,
the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule,
religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced
feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital
mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted
gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances,
and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about
qualifications after all. We know that at this historical
moment women experience the world differently from
men—though not all the same as one another—and can
govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet
and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran
for this high office and barely got past the gate—they
showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke
fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists
so famished for a female president they were even willing to
abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even
including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though
unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he
hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over
what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking
their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by
politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience,
and skill is actually seen as attractive, when
celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that
it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to
understand the vast global complexities of power on a
nuclear, wounded planet.
—the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky
president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to
George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his
inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when
she's worked intensely at everything she's done—including
being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my
state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women
who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their
own fears, failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe
someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the
last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the
women's movement that quipped, "We are becoming the men we
wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing
their hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've
been warned they must be, or because she didn't leave him,
couldn't "control" him, kept her family together and raised
a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had
ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush
twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn't
bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the
rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is
not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist
movement. She's running to be president of the United
States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and
other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir
rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as
proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of
government so far have been related to men of
power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows:
Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed,
Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and
more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the
first pathway "in" permitted to women: Representatives Doris
Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan
. . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting
her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it
wasn't her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and
dictated the clothes, which she said "made me feel like a
dork."
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by
showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who
actually threaten thestatus quo), who can't identify with a
woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky
power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if
they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any
age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not
electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're
already free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet
Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save
hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground
Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, "I
could have saved thousands—if only I'd been able to
convince them they were slaves."
I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young
women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart
men—of all ethnicities and any age—who get that it's in
their self-interest, too. She's better qualified. (D'uh.)
She's a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of
foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail,
ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while
retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping
on. (Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections
and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was
awfully glad about those when she raised dough and
campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might
make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned
by practical know-how—and he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile,
goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually
he's an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who've worked
with the Kennedys' own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson.
If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run.
But isn't it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on
history, papering over real inequities and suffering
constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How
dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to
rouse U.S. youth from torpor it's useful to triage the
single largest demographic in this country's history: the
boomer generation—the majority of which is female?
Old woman are the one group that doesn't grow more
conservative with age—and we are the generation of
radicals who said "Well-behaved women seldom make history."
Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man
prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality
of the United States. And though we never went away, brace
yourselves: we're back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit,
better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a
family-focused workplace; the women who established
rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and
date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody
rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and
environmental movements; who insisted that medical research
include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more
nurturing parents; who created women's studies and Title IX
so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are
the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography,
who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed
demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are
the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud
successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years,
won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S.
voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire.
There's not a woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't
recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by
campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with
everything Bill.
So listen to her voice:
"For too long, the history of women has been a history of
silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to
silence our words.
"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied
food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken,
simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of
human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery
of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when
women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to
death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are
raped in their own communities and when thousands of women
are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a
violation of human rights when a leading cause of death
worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are
subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human
rights when women are denied the right to plan their own
families, and that includes being forced to have abortions
or being sterilized against their will.
"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the
right to speak freely—and the right to be heard."
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State
Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World
Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full,
stunning speech).
And this voice, age 22, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary
D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government
Association, Class of 1969."
"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us
understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic,
and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity,
the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another
in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an
integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust
and respect is one with desperately important political and
social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we
just don't have time for it."
She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the
skill of our being: the art of making possible."
And for decades, she's been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real
question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we
women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?
"Our President, Ourselves!"
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in
furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely
treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was
butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women
globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We
need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly,
with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to
volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money,
argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best
qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I
support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm
bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with
ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every
point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are
identical with Obama's—and the few where hers are both
more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I
support her because she's already smashed the first-lady
stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I
believe she will continue to make history not only as the
first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.
As for the "woman thing"?
Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman—but
because I am.
############################################
About the Author: An award-winning writer, feminist leader,
political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the
Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books,
including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the
now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood
Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of
contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in
the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent
books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's
Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots
of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel,
The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A
Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in
September 2006.
by Robin Morgan
February 2, 2008
"Goodbye To All That" was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking
free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting
women (for an online version, see
http://blog.fair-use.org/category/chicago/).
During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and
contemporary women's movements, I've avoided writing another
specific "Goodbye . . ." But not since the suffrage struggle
have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this
country—been so set in competition, as the contest between
Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls.
So.
Goodbye to the double standard . . .
—Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden
who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for
politics.
—She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever
had labor pains?)
—When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it
was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my
shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and
pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
—Young political Kennedys—Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby
Jr.—all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed
Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort
"See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the
forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm
unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the
Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short
memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a
dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles."
Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group,
"Citizens United Not Timid." John McCain answering "How do
we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have
dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?"
For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between
splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we
would be righteously outraged—and they would not be
selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election
history, including one with the murderous slogan "If Only
Hillary had married O.J. Instead!" Shame.
Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a
storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's
vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far
enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This
is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is
sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would
recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about
race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such
vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense
of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from
MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments
(www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim
Russert's continual sexist asides and his all-white-male
panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony
Harris chuckling at "the chromosome thing" while
interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And
that's not even mentioning Fox News.
Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male
and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations,
ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages—not
only African American and European American but Latina and
Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab
American and—hey, every group, because a group wouldn't
exist if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist
countries may exist—but sexism is everywhere. No matter
how many ways a woman breaks free from other
discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world
still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."
So why should all women not be as justly proud of our
womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle
that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are
justly proud of their struggles?
Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which
whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to
pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and
then found unforgivable). If she were blackor he were female
we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be
in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a
chance—even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending
politics.
I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on
African American women deciding on which of two candidates
to bestow their vote—until a number of Hillary-supporting
black feminists told me they're being called "race
traitors."
So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest
scar—slavery—which fail to acknowledge that labor- and
sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this
planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.
Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape
and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy;
being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the
disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted,
the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule,
religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced
feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital
mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted
gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances,
and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about
qualifications after all. We know that at this historical
moment women experience the world differently from
men—though not all the same as one another—and can
govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet
and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran
for this high office and barely got past the gate—they
showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke
fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists
so famished for a female president they were even willing to
abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)
Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even
including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though
unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he
hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over
what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking
their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
—an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by
politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience,
and skill is actually seen as attractive, when
celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that
it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to
understand the vast global complexities of power on a
nuclear, wounded planet.
—the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky
president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to
George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his
inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.
Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when
she's worked intensely at everything she's done—including
being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my
state.
Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women
who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their
own fears, failures, fantasies.
Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe
someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the
last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the
women's movement that quipped, "We are becoming the men we
wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.
Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing
their hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've
been warned they must be, or because she didn't leave him,
couldn't "control" him, kept her family together and raised
a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had
ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush
twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn't
bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the
rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is
not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist
movement. She's running to be president of the United
States.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and
other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir
rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as
proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of
government so far have been related to men of
power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows:
Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed,
Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and
more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the
first pathway "in" permitted to women: Representatives Doris
Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan
. . . far too many to list here.
Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting
her bikini-clad ass online—then confessing Oh yeah it
wasn't her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and
dictated the clothes, which she said "made me feel like a
dork."
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by
showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who
actually threaten thestatus quo), who can't identify with a
woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky
power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if
they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any
age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not
electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're
already free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet
Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save
hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground
Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, "I
could have saved thousands—if only I'd been able to
convince them they were slaves."
I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young
women who do identify with Hillary, and all the brave, smart
men—of all ethnicities and any age—who get that it's in
their self-interest, too. She's better qualified. (D'uh.)
She's a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of
foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail,
ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while
retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping
on. (Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections
and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was
awfully glad about those when she raised dough and
campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)
I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might
make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned
by practical know-how—and he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile,
goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually
he's an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who've worked
with the Kennedys' own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson.
If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run.
But isn't it about getting the policies we want enacted?
And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on
history, papering over real inequities and suffering
constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How
dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to
rouse U.S. youth from torpor it's useful to triage the
single largest demographic in this country's history: the
boomer generation—the majority of which is female?
Old woman are the one group that doesn't grow more
conservative with age—and we are the generation of
radicals who said "Well-behaved women seldom make history."
Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man
prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality
of the United States. And though we never went away, brace
yourselves: we're back!
We are the women who brought this country equal credit,
better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a
family-focused workplace; the women who established
rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and
date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody
rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and
environmental movements; who insisted that medical research
include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more
nurturing parents; who created women's studies and Title IX
so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are
the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography,
who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed
demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are
the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud
successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years,
won us the vote.
We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S.
voters.
Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire.
There's not a woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't
recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by
campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with
everything Bill.
So listen to her voice:
"For too long, the history of women has been a history of
silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to
silence our words.
"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied
food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken,
simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of
human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery
of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when
women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to
death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.
It is a violation of human rights when individual women are
raped in their own communities and when thousands of women
are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a
violation of human rights when a leading cause of death
worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are
subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human
rights when women are denied the right to plan their own
families, and that includes being forced to have abortions
or being sterilized against their will.
"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the
right to speak freely—and the right to be heard."
That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State
Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World
Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full,
stunning speech).
And this voice, age 22, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary
D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government
Association, Class of 1969."
"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us
understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic,
and penetrating mode of living. . . . [for the] integrity,
the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another
in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an
integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust
and respect is one with desperately important political and
social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we
just don't have time for it."
She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the
skill of our being: the art of making possible."
And for decades, she's been learning how.
So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real
question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we
women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?
"Our President, Ourselves!"
Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in
furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely
treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was
butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women
globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We
need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly,
with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to
volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money,
argue, rally, march, shout, vote.
Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best
qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I
support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm
bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with
ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every
point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are
identical with Obama's—and the few where hers are both
more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I
support her because she's already smashed the first-lady
stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I
believe she will continue to make history not only as the
first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.
As for the "woman thing"?
Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman—but
because I am.
############################################
About the Author: An award-winning writer, feminist leader,
political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the
Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books,
including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the
now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood
Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of
contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in
the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent
books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's
Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots
of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel,
The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A
Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in
September 2006.
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