Misogyny I Won't Misss

from The Washington Post: MISOGYNY

Thanks, Marie! I've been ranting and raving about this from the get-go. Keep scrolling down and you'll see!

Misogyny I Won't Miss

By Marie Cocco
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A15

As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Marie Cocco is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com.

Mexican donkey jailed for ornery behavior on Yahoo! News

HEE HAW HEE HAW!


Print Story: Mexican donkey jailed for ornery behavior on Yahoo! News

ACLU Blog: BLOG OF RIGHTS

ACLU Blog

Immigration agency plans new family detention centers - Los Angeles Times

& here we go: future headline: Nine-year old Iranian Girl
Victim of Water Torture. No, I'm not kidding. - CN

Immigration agency plans new family detention centers - Los Angeles Times

This house, a mansion of the 1890's, was evacuated on May 19, 1942, by a farming family in this agricultural area in Yolo County,

Thanks to Dean Perchik, publisher of The Symzonia Review, SYMZONIA, I got the sudden urge to google "May 19, 1890." So I found this news report from May 19, 1942.


This house, a mansion of the 1890's, was evacuated on May 19, 1942, by a farming family in this agricultural area in Yolo County, four miles from Woodland. Farmers and other evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be given opportunities to follow their callings at War Relocation Authority centers where they will spend the duration. Photographer: Lange, Dorothea Woodland, California. 5/20/42


In case you haven't heard about Homeland Insecurity's raid on "illegal immigrants" in Iowa last week (and apparently ongoing atrocities to keep America safe for the "Americans"), you might want to check out the Des Moines Register: RAID. Not quite a parallel but close enough to be more than slightly disturbing. Whom are the Feds going to target next?

Good News in the Fight against Big Bad Corporate Media

Just moments ago, by a near-unanimous vote, the Senate stood up to Big Media. They voted to throw out the FCC decision to let the largest media companies swallow up even more local media.

This is simply an astounding victory, and it would not have happened without the massive grassroots effort by thousands who called their senators, sent more than a quarter million letters, posted thousands of pictures and stories on StopBigMedia.com, and testified at public hearings held by the FCC.

Today was a huge step forward, but there is still much to do. The fight against the FCC now moves to the House, where our elected representatives need to hear from us.

President Bush has promised that he will try to veto this bill. But tonight the Senate and the American people have spoken with one voice. This historic vote sends a clear message that the only people who support more media consolidation are Big Media lobbyists and the White House.

We are in this struggle to bring more minority ownership, diverse perspectives and independent voices to the media. We need to make media consolidation an election-year issue. And we need to start talking about how to break up the giant conglomerates.

Corporate news today -- with its propaganda pundits, horse-race election coverage, and celebrity gossip -- undermines our democracy. We must continue to speak out and demand that the public airwaves be used to actually serve the public.

In just three weeks, thousands of people will be gathering together in Minnesota to build the movement for better media. You can join them at the National Conference for Media Reform, just visit www.freepress.net/conference.