A quick snippet from Maureen Dowd's NYT op-ed today:
But maybe the qualities that many find off-putting in Hillary — her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness — are the same ones that make people willing to vote for a woman.
Few are concerned that Hillary is strong enough for the job. She is cold-eyed about wanting power and raising money and turning everything about her life into a commodity. Yet, the characteristics that are somewhat troubling are the same ones that convincingly show she will do what it takes to beat Obama and Rudy. She will not be soft or vulnerable. She will not melt in a crisis.
Full article.
This is exactly right. The constant chattering on whether or not Americans are ready for a woman president, if Hillary can overcome the gender thing, etc. has been so annoying to me precisely because it is a sideshow. Everybody knows she's got the biggest dick in the whole horse race. The list of qualities that Dowd lays out here - opportunism, triangulation, questionable ethics, ruthlessness, et al - effectively cancel out any perceived weakness HRC's femaleness may engender.
But does our reaction to this list of characteristics stop at "Great, the woman thing won't be an obstacle, because she more than compensates on these other fronts!"? I hope not.
Is ruthless opportunism and secretiveness and flip-flopping what we're looking for in our next president? Are these the things that will repair at least some of the damage of the last seven years? Strength, sobriety, discretion ... these are all good - always good - in leaders. But does Hillary Clinton take these to a level where they become problematic? Certainly, on some levels, many people's viscerally negative reaction to her has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with a fundamental understanding that she is just as Ms Dowd says she is.
31 October 2007
10 October 2007
c'est vrai
"...[P]artisan rancor and mutual recrimination are the sad legacy of two self-destructive administrations in a row. Bill Clinton's lies about his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky paralyzed the government and tainted his legacy, while George Bush's poor judgment and managerial ineptitude have mired us in an endless, brutal war with little chance for a happy ending.
I find it hard to believe that my fellow Democrats want to backtrack and relive every tedious scandal from the Clinton era. But that's what we'll get if Hillary is the nominee -- a long, sulfurous night of the walking dead, with chattering skeletons tumbling out of every closet. I've been discouraged by the clumsy missteps of the Edwards campaign, but I'm still hopeful about Barack Obama, who had the guts and good sense to publicly oppose the Iraq war from the start and whose ascent promises a clean, invigorating break from the sordid past."
Paglia's been a bit stale lately in her Salon column, but in this month's (which is a letter-answering one), she exactly summarizes my sentiments on our choices for 2008.
Full article here.
I find it hard to believe that my fellow Democrats want to backtrack and relive every tedious scandal from the Clinton era. But that's what we'll get if Hillary is the nominee -- a long, sulfurous night of the walking dead, with chattering skeletons tumbling out of every closet. I've been discouraged by the clumsy missteps of the Edwards campaign, but I'm still hopeful about Barack Obama, who had the guts and good sense to publicly oppose the Iraq war from the start and whose ascent promises a clean, invigorating break from the sordid past."
Paglia's been a bit stale lately in her Salon column, but in this month's (which is a letter-answering one), she exactly summarizes my sentiments on our choices for 2008.
Full article here.
08 October 2007
the end of enda?
The ENDA, or Employment Non-Discrimination Act, will be the first federal law protecting the rights of the LGBT community ever if and when it passes. Unfortunately, the if factor is growing, due in no small part to the political pressure on Democrats by gay rights groups.
Read a full article from Salon.com opinion here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/08/lgbt/
(Thanks, John Aravosis.)
The question Aravosis raises here: Is it worth tossing out this bill, putting it on indefinite hold, or just point-blank dooming it to failure if it does not include gender identity in its protections? (The original version covered only sexual orientation, a category of protection missing from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transgender/transexual/etc components of gay rights agendas precipitated the addition of "gender identity" into the bill, which is what may be its downfall.)
For a little background reading, check out this excerpt from a March 2001 Camille Paglia column, from the same:
...Which brings us to another subject, the furor this past month over a report by psychiatrist Robert Spitzer of Columbia University that, from his rather cursory interviews with 153 men and 47 women, the "reparative therapy" endorsed by conservative Protestant groups can in some cases change sexual orientation from gay to straight. That Spitzer had helped to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to drop the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 makes his current study harder to dismiss.
Nevertheless, screeching gay activists immediately descended on the media to denounce and defame Spitzer as a tool of the far right. This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. Why should the fluidity of sexual orientation threaten any gay secure in his or her identity?
What gay ideologues, inflated like pink balloons with poststructuralist hot air, can't admit, of course, is that heterosexuality is nature's norm, enforced by powerful hormonal cues at puberty. In the past decade, one shoddy book after another, rapturously applauded by p.c. reviewers, has exaggerated the incidence of homosexuality in the animal world and, without due regard for reproductive adaptations caused by environmental changes, toxins or population pressure, reductively interpreted bonding or hierarchical behavior as gay in the human sense.
Because of the unblushing dishonesty of strident activists and campus "queer theorists," whose general knowledge of science would fit into Marie Antoinette's thimble, we are ironically further from understanding homosexuality than we were in 1970, when popular culture was moving into the seductive gender-bending era typified by the brilliant David Bowie. With the emphasis on external "politics," all respect for psychology has been lost. Did no one notice the grotesquely misogynous dialogue put into gay men's mouths on "Queer as Folk"? That kind of catty aversion to the female body is learned, not inborn, and it can be partly traced to early family relations, before personal memory has even gelled.
My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility. In vicious attacks like the one on Spitzer, gay activists, with all their good intentions, are aligning themselves with the forces of ignorance and repression. Too little reliable work is currently being done in homosexuality because free inquiry cannot be conducted in a politicized atmosphere of harassment and intimidation.
(Emphases mine.)
I feel the need to point out that, despite all the ire she continually incites (much of which she deserves and, dare I say, enjoys), Paglia is herself a gay woman and has identified as such for at least 40 years. This is perhaps a bit over the top, but her central point continues to be true, and the same attitudes she is writing about (in light of the repression of scholarship) are potentially driving this essential legislation into the ground.
Read a full article from Salon.com opinion here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/08/lgbt/
(Thanks, John Aravosis.)
The question Aravosis raises here: Is it worth tossing out this bill, putting it on indefinite hold, or just point-blank dooming it to failure if it does not include gender identity in its protections? (The original version covered only sexual orientation, a category of protection missing from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transgender/transexual/etc components of gay rights agendas precipitated the addition of "gender identity" into the bill, which is what may be its downfall.)
For a little background reading, check out this excerpt from a March 2001 Camille Paglia column, from the same:
...Which brings us to another subject, the furor this past month over a report by psychiatrist Robert Spitzer of Columbia University that, from his rather cursory interviews with 153 men and 47 women, the "reparative therapy" endorsed by conservative Protestant groups can in some cases change sexual orientation from gay to straight. That Spitzer had helped to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to drop the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 makes his current study harder to dismiss.
Nevertheless, screeching gay activists immediately descended on the media to denounce and defame Spitzer as a tool of the far right. This was a good example of the fascist policing of public discourse in this country by nominal liberals who have become as unthinkingly wedded to dogma as any junior member of the Spanish Inquisition. Why should the fluidity of sexual orientation threaten any gay secure in his or her identity?
What gay ideologues, inflated like pink balloons with poststructuralist hot air, can't admit, of course, is that heterosexuality is nature's norm, enforced by powerful hormonal cues at puberty. In the past decade, one shoddy book after another, rapturously applauded by p.c. reviewers, has exaggerated the incidence of homosexuality in the animal world and, without due regard for reproductive adaptations caused by environmental changes, toxins or population pressure, reductively interpreted bonding or hierarchical behavior as gay in the human sense.
Because of the unblushing dishonesty of strident activists and campus "queer theorists," whose general knowledge of science would fit into Marie Antoinette's thimble, we are ironically further from understanding homosexuality than we were in 1970, when popular culture was moving into the seductive gender-bending era typified by the brilliant David Bowie. With the emphasis on external "politics," all respect for psychology has been lost. Did no one notice the grotesquely misogynous dialogue put into gay men's mouths on "Queer as Folk"? That kind of catty aversion to the female body is learned, not inborn, and it can be partly traced to early family relations, before personal memory has even gelled.
My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility. In vicious attacks like the one on Spitzer, gay activists, with all their good intentions, are aligning themselves with the forces of ignorance and repression. Too little reliable work is currently being done in homosexuality because free inquiry cannot be conducted in a politicized atmosphere of harassment and intimidation.
(Emphases mine.)
I feel the need to point out that, despite all the ire she continually incites (much of which she deserves and, dare I say, enjoys), Paglia is herself a gay woman and has identified as such for at least 40 years. This is perhaps a bit over the top, but her central point continues to be true, and the same attitudes she is writing about (in light of the repression of scholarship) are potentially driving this essential legislation into the ground.
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