Barbara Ehrenreich on Hillary Clinton.

[saltpoint]

This piece is from THE NATION.

It packs a punch.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080526/ehrenreich

[mythyc]

1. Packs a punch indeed

best line; she nails the facetiousness of the feminism card in HRC's campaign better than anyone I've read:

"Hillary Clinton smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority in the worst possible way--by demonstrating female moral inferiority. We didn't really need her racial innuendos and free-floating bellicosity to establish that women aren't wimps. As a generation of young feminists realizes, the values once thought to be uniquely and genetically female--such as compassion and an aversion to violence--can be found in either sex, and sometimes it's a man who best upholds them."

Barbara Ehrenreich is great. I teach her Nickle and Dimed in one of my classes. :thumbsup:

[saltpoint]

3. Hi, mythyc. It's a good present to young people when their teacher

asks them to read Ehrenreich.

Good for you. And lucky for them.

[mythyc]

20. it was an accident really

the wrong book got delivered and the students still demanded that they read it after shelling out all those clams. they liked her so much that they've been sending all their friends to my class ever since. yeesh.

I've been thinking about playing the old swictheroo with someone like ole chomsky, but i'm afraid they'd revolt over his cambodia claptrap and send me straight to the dean mumbling generative grammar balderdash under my breath as i seek to explain that it was all tangled schemata. shudder at the thought of it.... good thing i like ehrenreich eh

[saltpoint]

24. How good for all of us that those students are pimping writers to

their friends.

Why, this could get out of hand, and we'd have a republic of ideas on our hands to deal with.

Good work.

[mythyc]

27. have you read gao xingjain's soul mountain?

top notch book. I read it to recover from koestler's darkness at noon (one of my 5 favorites ever) but it ended up messing with me more....

[saltpoint]

29. Have not. But now I want to.

[mythyc]

35. a very rough resemblence to auster

in mood though not trend. make auster a chinese playwright on the lam from the post-cultural revolution thought-police and you sort of have xingjain. i know that sounds impossible (work with me here), but it's only a half-resemblance, maybe more of a square root actually. both drove me way crazier than normal at any rate. i like that in a book, though it takes a couple years to recover from ones that onioned. just finished delillo's white noise along those lines. much softer tones in that one actually---brilliant work of art: i never thought someone could make postmodernity so damned sublime, but he sure as hell does....

[saltpoint]

37. DeLillo? Yes. He's frighteningly gifted, and you describe his landscape

beautifully and accurately. WHITE NOISE is acclaimed, but IMO still under-rated.

Have you visited the Dallas of his LIBRA? Bring a teddy bear, Dr. Phil, an ecumenical council of spiritual advisors, and some powerful liquor. It's a bit of a minefield and it is marvelous.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Now that's a great writer

One muscular sentence after another, to keep the theme going.

"She's been visibly angry for months, if not decades..." Hillary's Dad was an ass; she has my sympathy there, but that's about it.

"Lynndie England for U.S. Senate."

K&R

[saltpoint]

5. Yes. Ehrenreich is very high on the list of fearless souls out there

in Writer's Land.

My guess is she steps off an airplane with considerable confidence.

I like her.

[OzarkDem]

4. Ehrenreich - the Peggy Noonan of the left

:eyes:

[democracy1st]

6. tell us how you really feel

[saltpoint]

7. Poor analogy. Ehrenreich never sold out to the Reagan crowd.

Also, unlike Noonan's establishmentarian right wing grounding, Ehrenreich's progressive slant argues against class division.

It permeates her work.

[OzarkDem]

12. She's a phony

Interested only in self promotion and making bucks off the backs of poor people.

[saltpoint]

13. Her readers would beg to differ.

The points she raises in the piece have gone undisputed in your replies here.

[VeraAgnes]

18. That is now my perception of the Nation as well.

I'm disappointed indeed....The vote on the War of 2002 is no longer an issue. I support Clinton's plan for troop withdrawal. I understand her vote for the War...she trusted a criminal...it happens everyday and her state, New York was attacked. Clinton is the most progressive candidate because she is the one who has made changes ....especially women's issues!

I just am very disappointed in the weak research the Nation has exercised. It's all Obama propaganda these days.

[saltpoint]

22. Clinton could just as easily have made her case for the progressive

agenda and did not.

THE NATION, as with any publication in the country, is free to endorse as it sees fit.

I don't see grounds for your objecting to that.

[OzarkDem]

33. Clinton leads and acts on progressive issues

instead of just writing and cashing in on them.

Ehrenreich should be ashamed for attacking someone who has done so much to help women, families and the working poor. The fact that Clinton's record and accomplishments are so much stronger on these issues than Obama's shows how truly shallow Ehrenreich is.

[saltpoint]

36. We disagree on Clinton's emphasis on progressive issues.

As I have posted here before, I honored and admired the Hillary Clinton of IT TAKES A VILLAGE.

That voice -- that call for inclusion and cooperation -- has been spectacularly absent from her campaign since at least January of 2007.

[moc]

46. Clinton "leads and acts on progressive issues"?

:rofl:

[cali]

30. It may not be an issue for YOU, but it sure as hell is to me and millions

of others. It speaks to Hilly's abysmal judgement.

[JTFrog]

38. No longer an issue? Happens everyday? Maybe in Republican land, but not in my world.

Progressive votes?

IWR
Kyle Lieberman
Bankruptcy Bill
Gas Tax Holiday
No on banning cluster bombs
Yes to ban on flag burning
Patriot Act
Silent on Telcom immunity
No Child Left Behind
WFRA
FEPA

Progressive messages?

Obliterate Iran
White's Won't Vote for Obama
The Republican Candidate is Better Than Our Candidate

AND FOR YOUR INFORMATION - THE VOTE ON THE WAR OF 2002 WILL NEVER BE A NON ISSUE - Especially to the thousands of families like this one: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=5513310#5526053


SHE VOTED FOR THAT WAR AND WE WILL NOT FORGET

Hillary was one of the most vocal democrats pushing for the IWR. In her speech she proved that not only did she know she was voting for war, but she even laid out the blueprints on how to use force the same way her husband did.

NO AMOUNT OF DENIAL OR COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AMONGST HER SUPPORTERS WILL EVER CHANGE THESE FACTS.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0303-23.htm

See Hillary Run (from Her Husband's Past on Iraq)
by Scott Ritter

Senator Hillary Clinton wants to become President Hillary Clinton. "I'm in, and I'm in to win," she said, announcing her plans to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 Presidential election. Let there be no doubt that Hillary Clinton is about as slippery a species of politician that exists, one who has demonstrated an ability to morph facts into a nebulous blob which blurs the record and distorts the truth. While she has demonstrated this less than flattering ability on a number of issues, nowhere is it so blatant as when dealing with the issue of the ongoing war in Iraq and Hillary Clinton's vote in favor of this war.

This issue won't be resolved even if Hillary Clinton apologizes for her Iraq vote, as other politicians have done, blaming their decision on faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMD capabilities. This is because, like many other Washington politicians at the time, including those now running for president, she had been witness to lies about Iraq's weapons programs to justify attacks on that country by her husband President Bill Clinton and his administration.

"While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposed conclusions, I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq," Senator Clinton said at the time of her vote, in a carefully crafted speech designed to demonstrate her range of knowledge and ability to consider all options. "I know that the Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998."

Hillary would have done well to leave out that last part, the one where her husband, the former President of the United States, used military force as part of a 72-hour bombing campaign ostensibly deemed as a punitive strike in defense of disarmament, but in actuality proved to be a blatant attempt at regime change which used the hyped-up threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as an excuse for action. Sound familiar? While many Americans today condemn the Bush administration for misleading them with false claims of unsubstantiated threats which resulted in the ongoing debacle we face today in Iraq (count Hillary among this crowd), few have reflected back on the day when the man from Hope, Arkansas sat in the Oval Office and initiated the policies of economic sanctions-based containment and regime change which President Bush later brought to fruition when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

...much more at link

Scott Ritter served as a former Marine Corps officer from 1984 until 1991, and as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 until 1998. He is the author of several books, including "Iraq Confidential" and "Target Iran". He also co-authored "War on Iraq" with William Pitt.


AND NEVER FORGET THAT SHE DOES NOT CARE IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT SHE VOTED FOR WAR:

"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from," Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

She even went so far as to interrupt Senator Byrd's ANTI-WAR speech and take away his floor time in order to CRAM THIS WAR DOWN OUR THROATS.

The consequences are obvious regardless of her ability to accept responsibility for her votes and her actions. Hence the impending demise of her political career.

[merh]

44. For many of us, you just described hillary

n/t

[mythyc]

9. careful-- you'll get an aneurism pulling the wool over your eyerolls with a red herring that fetid

[Doctor_J]

49. You're missing the point of the article

which is that Hil's campaign tactics ("I am the preferred candidate of white voters") do nothing for the causes of feminism and progressivism. Many were hoping that the first viable female candidate for president would run on a platform of inclusion, compassion, and change. Instead she's tried to eke out a win using divisiveness, slime, and a continuation of neocon foreign policy. It not only failed, despite the best efforts of Limpballs, Fox News, and Big Media, but for many of us it spoiled thoughts we might have had of getting behind her in the future.

[VeraAgnes]

8. I did not renew my subscription to the Nation.

It was wrong for them to endorse a candidate before the convention. I don't want to subscribe to Obama propaganda.

[Ken Burch]

10. Once Kucinich and Edwards were out, Obama was the only candidate progressives could support

with anything like a clear conscience. Why shouldn't The Nation have accepted this?

There was never a progressive case for backing HRC.

[VeraAgnes]

21. The vote on the Iraq War is a moot issue.

Obama was not even in Congress at the time of the vote....it's easy and misleading to claim he was against the War. I never heard of him marching against the War...ever. Talk is cheap.

[chascarrillo]

26. "Never heard of him marching against the War".

Oh good grief. Give it up.

[saltpoint]

40. I've found that people who think talk is cheap aren't very good at it.

Hillary believed that she could undermine Obama by ridiculing one of his gifts -- language.

Which he has employed to astonishing effect this winter and spring generally and in Philadelphia on race especially.

Clinton lost a substantial lead. She led in public polling literally all 12 months of 2007 up to the last week of December, the days before the Iowa vote.

Barack Obama and John Edwards defeated her in Iowa. She was left at the bus station in Cedar Rapids with several thousand snow shovels.

While she eked out a win in New Hampshire, she was bludgeoned in a good handful of the Feb. 5th states, and those losses exposed the absence of a campaign plan past that date on the calendar owing to her arrogance in believing she would not need one.

She has delivered exactly zero public addresses of the caliber of Obama's announcement of his candidacy in Springfield, IL.

Talk may be cheap at the barber shop or beauty parlor, but it soars and lifts a populace in the right hands.

[nichomachus]

45. There are around 10,000 American families for whom the war is not "moot"

They've had to bury their loved ones because cowardly senators gave Bush a blank check to launch an illegal and immoral invasion.

[roguevalley]

54. talk isn't cheap. she said yes to the war resolution and tens of

thousands of people are dead. not cheap by half.

[saltpoint]

11. The Constitution sanctions THE NATION, or anyone else, to endorse

anyone they please at any time.

Update your file.

[chascarrillo]

15. I hope you ditched the New York Times for endorsing Clinton before the convention as well.

Jesus.

[saltpoint]

28. And the Des Moines REGISTER, too, on the eve of the Iowa caucus.

That damned liberal media!

[mythyc]

23. is there an echo in here?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

14. Ouch!

[saltpoint]

17. Yes. I thought the hinge prompt was interesting -- Faludi in the TIMES

and then Ehrenreich in THE NATION.

These are heady time and gifted writers both, but there is a last-gasp feel to Faludi's that the TIMES' editors must have sensed, though the construction is strong and sentiment remains for HClinton's candidacy.

She's posed for a big win today in West Virginia, and likely another in Kentucky on the 20th.

Obama will likely do very well in Oregon, though, and the flood of supes is seeping in to the Clinton kitchen, making the mop-up all the more difficult. She might wish she'd held onto that sink.

[Kaleva]

16. "she's been visibly angry for months ..it can't all have been PMS"

[saltpoint]

19. When I read that line, I thought to myself, "Well, Ms. Ehrenreich, it's

probably better for YOU to have written that than for a male writer to have."

The line is brutal but it captures a larger point, that of HClinton's temperament in this primary cycle set against the backdrop of female instinct for compassion and inclusion.

[sfam]

25. That's a great great line! In that sense it is Peggy Noonanish...

Peggy may be off her rocker but she really has some zingers.

[Apollo11]

31. I am not fan of Thatcher, but it was the military junta in Argentina who started the Falklands War.

By invading the Falkland Islands against the will of its English-speaking British-identifying inhabitants who had been living there peacefully for hundreds of years, the Argentine regime provoked a response just as sure as if Canada would invade Alaska or if Iraq invaded Kuwait or if Japan attacked Hawaii (I think history will support my case).

If anything - the military Junta of Argentina started the Falklands War to boost their own approval ratings!

Although their plan backfired when the British military took back the islands.

My conclusion is that Barbara Ehrenreich is not always right.

[saltpoint]

34. At a philosophical level, and certainly at the level of the

philosophically feminine, Thatcher's war was of a piece with Reagan's assault on Grenada, that is, the pointless show of force by superpower-caliber nations against virtually helpless opponents.

Nothing was really at stake. Freedom was not at stake. No essential conflict was presented and none was resolved. The spin out of both governments was of a freedom-saving nature, and there are barely a few dozen people who give half a damn about either incident in those terms today. And properly so.

Ehrenreich's context for that allusion was the female instinct for peace versus its absence in traditionally masculine stereotypes generally and political or military constructs specifically.

[Apollo11]

39. "Freedom was not at stake." WTF???

Try telling that to the thousands of Falkland Islanders who were occupied by the Argentine Army.

Try telling it to the families of the British soldiers who fell as part of the effort to take back the islands.

Maybe we can blame Thatcher for not preventing the invasion of the islands by defending them better?

But it is difficult to make the case that Argentine aggression should have been rewarded.

[saltpoint]

41. I reassert that it was a show of force.

A no-lose proposition for Thatcher.

And a pointed betrayal of the tenets of feminism, as Ehrenreich appropriately and accurately asserts.

The BBC is instructive on the UK's manipulation of the "Falklands War" :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4597581.stm

[Apollo11]

42. How is rewarding military aggression a "tenet of feminism"?

It seems to me sexist to assume or even imply that all women are opposed to all wars in all circumstances.

Especially when it concerns either defending against an invasion or launching a counter-attack against an invasion.

I cannot comprehend this attitude:
If Churchill was a broad then she would have said - "What the heck? - let Hitler take as much of Europe as he wants".

[saltpoint]

43. Ehrenreich is quite clear on this point.

You can re-read the piece for what she has to say.

I am in agreement with her.

[Window]

32. K/R.

:kick:

[invictus]

47. K & R

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

48. Para 2

I share Faludi's glee--up to a point. Surely no one will ever dare argue that women lack the temperament for political combat. But by running a racially tinged campaign, lying about her foreign policy experience and repeatedly seeming to favor McCain over her Democratic opponent, Clinton didn't just break through the "glass floor," she set a new low for floors in general, and would, if she could have gotten within arm's reach, have rubbed the broken glass into Obama's face.

Oh, my! :blush:

[saltpoint]

50. If only we could get Barbara over her shyness to speak her mind.

In the larger frame, I believe many people have sensed this about the Clinton decision to go negative after their Wisconsin internals showed a strong win for Obama.

Then we heard the plagiarisim charge, next Ferraro's race-baiting, then that a mere speech was all Obama brought to the table, etc. It got mean in a hurry when Clinton had no plan in place.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

51. Hillary is to feminism what Maggie Thatcher is to feminism. K&R

[saltpoint]

52. Yes. I think Ehrenreich is with you on that. She invokes Thatcher

as a pseudo Warriar gal, a kind of hard-bitten post-Chamberlain get-it-done prime minister.

Like whoa, you defeated a few dozen pissant thugs in the Falklands! Awesome!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

53. Even Maggie never threatened to "obliterate" Argentina.

I guess she isn't as "tough" as Hillary.