Completely Unnecessary

People assume that I’m a Clinton supporter because I’m writing my thesis on her. It took me a long time to make a decision, but I eventually came down on the side of Obama.

With Obama making plans in Iowa for Tuesday night - presumably to claim the nomination - it seems a good time to reflect on the campaign and prospects for the future.

The problem is that I love Hillary Clinton. I think she’d make a great president, which is why it’s been so painful to see her campaign struggle and wildly misjudge the electorate. She undoubtedly faced a hostile press, but seemed unable to stop herself and her surrogates from continually harming her campaign.

Yet, Kate Zernike’s short opening question in her Week in Review piece laid bare the deep sorrow I’ll feel when Clinton seemingly inevitably gives in:

If not her, who?

And how long will we have to wait?

It’s not that I think a woman will necessarily represent me better than a man - just as I resent the media for assuming I am a woman candidate’s natural constituency - but I do sometimes wonder how much of a difference it would make in the lives of American women if we had a woman president.

Might some glass ceilings be shattered? Might some laws about women’s bodies be prevented? Might this never-ending cycle of women as ‘firsts’ be broken so that it stops holding back other women who run for office?

Anyway, looks like we won’t know this year.

But for many women, whether or not they support Mrs. Clinton, the long primary campaign has left them with a question: why would any woman run?

Many feel dispirited by what they see as bias against Mrs. Clinton in the media — the “Fatal Attraction” comparisons and locker-room chortling on television panels.
…
For this reason, [Karen O'Connor] said, she doesn’t expect a serious contender anytime soon. “I think it’s going to be generations.”

Others say Mrs. Clinton had such an unusual combination of experience and name recognition that she might actually raise the bar for women.

In fact, the biggest point of agreement seemed to be that there is no Hillary waiting in the wings.

Except, of course, Hillary.

I find this article almost absurdly depressing. I feel like Clinton and I have both let each other down.

Confidential to Hillary Clinton: If we’re wrong about Obama, you come kick his ass in 2012, okay?

Links:
She Just Might Be President Someday [NYT - Week in Review]
Obama to Return to Iowa, Possibly to Claim Victory [NYT]

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Fascinating article on Clinton in today’s NYT. Some highlights below in terms of gendered language.

I know a hell of a lot about Hillary Clinton, but there were some really interesting things I’d never heard before. For instance, she’s the one who came up with the term ‘war room’ for the 1992 Clinton campaign strategy team. Incidentally, War Room is an interesting documentary about that time, featuring Carville and Stephanopoulos, who looks all of about 15-years-old in 1992.

“She makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy,” North Carolina’s governor, Michael F. Easley, said in endorsing her, and a union leader in Portage, Ind., praised her “testicular fortitude.”

This kind of language and pugilistic imagery, however, also evokes the baggage that makes Mrs. Clinton such a provocative political figure. For as much as a willingness to “do what it takes” and “die hard” are marketable commodities in politics, they can also yield to less flattering qualities, plenty of which have been ascribed to her over the years. Just as supporters praise her “toughness” and “tenacity,” critics also describe her as “divisive,” “a dirty fighter” or “willing to do anything to win.”

I’m amazed that they totally leave aside the ‘bitch’ memes that float around her (or expressed on national television by Newt Gingrich’s mom). There are only vague references to troubles with her public persona. ‘Uppity’ is about the closest they get to describing the usual ‘aggressive’, ‘too…’, ‘not enough…’ language that usually turns up.

That’s not true actually - the NYT just has someone else say it:

“To me it showed her brittleness, her coldness, her spoiling for a fight,” said Mr. Cooper, an Obama backer.

Anyway, I think it’s a really interesting article, both in the construction and the content. Especially, as it’s currently running with a flattering picture of Obama and his daughter as a sidebar.

ps - couldn’t hate the gas tax ‘holiday’ more if they were offering to fuel cars with puppies.

Link:
Ruthlessness and Grit Seen in Clinton’s Style [NYT]

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This week’s Times Magazine features everyone’s favorite Senator-pinching loudmouth. I started to read it online, and then saw that it was nine pages long. I quickly decided I wasn’t that interested in Chris Matthews’ life.

So what does the first page have to tell us?

Firstly, Matthews enjoys extended and belabored metaphors about game fish (i.e., Hillary Clinton). He also really likes women. And touching them, even if they’re strangers.

Actually, I really like Mark Leibovich’s observations:

The spin room is a modern political-media marvel whose full-on uselessness is perfectly conveyed by its name, but Matthews appeared in his element.

or

I imagined a little superego hamster racing against a speeding treadmill inside Matthews’s skull, until the superego hamster was overrun and the pause ended.

and, the best:

He is, in a sense, the carnival barker at the center of [the media/political echo chamber], spewing tiny pellets of chewed nuts across the table while comparing Obama to Mozart and Clinton to Salieri. At one point, Matthews suddenly became hypnotized by a TV over the bar set to a rebroadcast of “Hardball.” “Hey, there I am — it’s me,” he said, staring at himself on the screen. “It’s me.”

Sadly, this brings us to the end of page one. I have promised myself to actually start writing my thesis today, which means there will probably be many more blog postings today.

Look forward to it.

By the way, I’m becoming impressed with how still annoyed I am by that Clinton cheek-pinching. It’s been months, and I want to smack him every time I see the still from that video.

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Dith Pran died today of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.

Dith is most famous for his partnership with NYT journalist Sydney Schanberg. The two covered Cambodia during the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

Unlike Schanberg, who had an American passport, Dith was unable to escape Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. He lived through a time in his country’s history that remains nearly unspeakable to this day.

It seems impossible to believe that he survived so much, only to be felled by his own cells. It is tragic that his life (as well as the lives of all who died as a result of the KR regime) was cut so short.

If you haven’t read The Death and Life of Dith Pran, I highly recommend it. Dith and Schanberg were also the subjects of the Academy Award-winning film, The Killing Fields. The film is good, but I recommend the book. If you get interested in the Khmer Rouge period, I also recommend, Stay Alive, My Son.

The NYT also has a photo gallery of Dith, including some of his work with the paper after his escape.

Link:
Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65 [NYT]

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As told by the Age and the NYT.

I’m too tired to deconstruct these girls, but thought a side by side comparison of the first two pars would be interesting.

The Age:

Israeli forces killed 61 Palestinians in a land and air blitz in the Hamas-held Gaza Strip today, medics said, amid warnings that the violence had “buried” the peace process.

It was the deadliest day since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 and one of the most lethal Israeli operations since the Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.

The NYT:

Israeli aircraft and troops attacked Palestinian positions in northern Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 54 people and wounding more than 100 in the deadliest day of fighting in more than a year. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded, the military said.

The Israeli attacks, mostly from the air on a clear, bright day, were aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, the Israelis said, especially after Ashkelon, a large city 10 miles from Gaza, came under fire from more advanced, Katyusha-style rockets of Iranian design.

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I’m sick of the NYT/McCain scandal already.

Did he have improper lobbyist relationships? Did the NYT go to print with second-rate sources? And, most importantly, did Senator Straight Talk screw that lady that looks just like his second wife?

Because he was married before you know…

The NYT kneecap was sleazy enough. They might have had a good story with the lobbyist ties, but they messed it up by going for the sex angle with bad sourcing. Isn’t it enough that a senator who prides himself on being above Washington trash gets caught with his hands in the dumpster? Especially when he got bit it in the 90s for the same thing?

No.

So now, some lefty blogs - and I’m just picking on Crooks and Liars because it was a particularly bad example - are going to town on the sex angle. Here’s how John Amato opened up a Thursday post called ‘Cheaters Write Letters‘:

I find it interesting that McCain didn’t deny having a relationship with Iseman all that much, but that’s not the big story since he had cheated on his first wife anyway.

Mother of hell. Every liberal who ever criticized Republicans for railroading Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal had better take a long, hard look at how they want to cover this story. That quote above is just some tacky, tacky horribleness.

Not to mention that all liberals had to do was sit back and let the right wing hate on John McCain all the way to an Obama/Clinton White House. Rush and all the usual suspects fancy McCain in the White House only marginally more than they like either of the Democratic contenders.

I read somewhere that this story - since it really started in December - might have originated as a right-wing hit piece to keep McCain from becoming the nominee. Well, that didn’t work. But now, with the ‘liberal’ NYT attacking McCain - and in such a audacious fashion - they’re all coming to his aid.

Plus, McCain had happily hamstringed himself with the FEC, and now he’s got donations coming in because of this story.

At least the NYT should have proved, once and for all, its lack of liberal bias - because they just played right into the hands of the McCain campaign. And the lefty blogosphere is doing the same.

So what I have to say is: Just Stop.

No more sex stories. No more pictures/captioning like this. Because every time the left behaves like what we detest, Rush and Co will stir up their base with stories of how horrible we are.

And the terrible part is, we’ll deserve it.

Links:
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk [NYT]
McCain Gathers Support and Donations in Aftermath of Article in The Times [NYT]
Cheaters Write Letters [Crooks and Liars]
McCain story proves incendiary among journalists, conservatives [LA Times]
Analysis: McCain Loses Leverage [AP]
McCain’s FEC Problem [TPM Muckraker]
Rep. Rick Renzi Indicted For Extortion, Wire Fraud, Money Laundering And Other Crimes [Think Progress]

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The NYT.com ran this Getty Images picture this morning in relation to the Pakistan bombing. I’m not going to post the picture because it not only violates copyright law, but I think it violates media ethics, at least my personal version thereof. Suffice to say, it shows a good deal of blood and body parts covered by blankets.

I can’t think of a time when Americans (or really white people in general) are shown dead in the streets with such nonchalance. Dead brown people are part of the story, whereas dead white people are part of the tragedy. Think, for instance, of how quickly the falling bodies were cut out of the 9/11 footage reels. It was deemed inappropriate to show the victims - but a bombing in a developing country routinely involves coverage of the body parts of the victims.

This is bad practice. If it is inappropriate to show the bodies of victims in America or Western Europe, then it should be equally inappropriate to show the bodies of victimized Pakistanis.

There was a really interesting article in the Chicago Tribune yesterday - which I’ll probably write about tomorrow - talking about the neglect of the world to the horrible situation in the Congo. One of the reasons for this, as suggested by one interviewee, is that Darfur yields better (read: more stark) images of suffering.

We like suffering in our news, yet we would scream to high heavens were the bodies of the Virginia Tech victims shown.

Different standards. Given the power of images, there shouldn’t be any.

Update: I found the image as the first in the NYT’s slideshow, though it’s not directly linked to the story anymore.

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Snap.

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