Clinton's absurd girly act
To the women who are twisting themselves into knots to support Hillary Clinton for the presidency while ignoring her obvious and enormous failings: You can't have it both ways.
One of the silliest sideshows of the campaign thus far –- we can be confident that there is much worse to come –- is the flood of complaints that the boys “piled up” on Clinton in the most recent of the phony candidate debates. Her campaign staff began and fueled the complaints.
The letters column of the New York Times was full of such nonsense a few days ago, and the blogs and other opinion-friendly spaces continue to get countless megabytes of such commentary. A couple of better-known female columnists joined the gang whine, although more said, as I do, that the complaints are absurd and counter productive to the cause of the letter writers.
Clinton has worked hard to prove to the bomb-loving right that she's as ready as Dick Cheney to kill, torture and ignore the Constitution in order to “support freedom.” She's given away much we know to be reprehensible and much more that has not yet been publicly identified to gain the support she now has from people like news and propaganda baron Rupert Murdoch, arms makers and others who have never seen a U.S.-involved slaughter they couldn't profit from.
She has kicked sand in the faces of Democrats who have made overwhelmingly clear that they want this country to withdraw from Iraq and, even more, to prevent the White House lunatics from attacking Iran.
Kicked sand? Hell, she happily grinds your faces in it, while out of a corner of her mouth she says she really does like peace – sorta, sometimes, when it's convenient and won't cut into profits or her campaign treasury.
But the corporate media keep telling us she's by far the front running candidate of the Democratic wing of the Corporate Party, and they've pounded and pounded and pounded that message into our earholes until most people believe it, and, believing it, make it true.
And what do other candidates do with a “front runner” when allowed by the media to say something? They attack, of course. Always have, always will. They have to call attention to the opponent's lies and hypocrisy when given a chance.
They try very hard to show the leading candidate's failings – which in this case is not difficult, given the number and degree of Clinton's sins against traditional Democrats and liberals, against honest people everywhere.
It would not be different if the media-created leading candidate were a male, even one with fewer egregious shortcomings.
So having Clinton, who has worked very hard to prove how bloody-minded and ruthless she is, now doing “the boys are picking on me” act is the height of absurdity.
It's also another demonstration of her cold calculation and lack of ethical core.
James Clay Fuller, principal (and principle) author of this site, is a sort-of retired journalist who has worked in newspapers and magazines for more than 45 years. His day job for 30 years was at the Minneapolis StarTribune, where he was a business and economics reporter, features writer, and sometime music critic, as well as an editor in charge of several specialized sections of the newspaper and a number of investigative projects. He was nominated for Pulitzer Prizes in 1977 and 1992, and was the instigator and senior editor on a project that was nominated for a Pultizer in 1997. He has
written for many national publications.
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