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Showing posts from April, 2008

Pansy-bashing

Today sister Pam Spaulding has a thing or two to say about North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley's gay-baiting endorsement of Hillary Clinton , a week ahead of his state's presidential primary. Quoting the reporting of Eloise Harper of ABC News, Pam tells us: The Governor formally expressed his support saying that there was "nothing I love more than a strong powerful woman." Easley concluded his remarks saying Clinton -- "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy". Sez Pam: Note that Hillary, who was right there with the NC gov, said nothing about his remark. Of course Easley infamously received the endorsement of Equality NC in his re-election bid, then in a debate said he'd sign a marriage amendment if it hit his desk, so why should we be surprised. And who is Hillary trying to court here -- the "traditional Southern conservative." Take the homo money and run, as it were. CLICK HERE TO READ "N.C. GOV. EASLEY BACKS CLINTON WITH TACKY GAY-BAITING

Dear would-be leaders

Image
A friend calls your blogstress's attention to a rather striking development in Democratic campaign portraiture: social realist or constructivist posters officially sanctioned by the campaigns. According to l'amie de ton écrivane , it appears as if Obama's going for the Leninist aesthetic, while Hillary's down with Mao. Is this really a good idea?

Baby Jesus lost His head

In a fit of spring cleaning, your blogstress set about washing her tchotchkes . No sooner had she immersed her figurine of the Blessed Mother holding the toddler Son of God, when baby Jesus's head detatched itself from His body. Your blogstress asks for your prayers, fearing this to be some sort of omen, perhaps resulting from her publication of yet another piece about the pope -- this one asking whether he seeks to provoke violence with certain symbolic acts. You can find it at The American Prospect Online . Meanwhile, your Webwench has fired up the hot glue gun.

Make it stop

At this point, your blogstress no longer really cares who wins the Democratic nomination for president; she just wants the race to end. Le fin, s'il vous plait.

Want a real debate? You're a whiner!

At least according to the New York Times 's resident conservative commentator, David Brooks . After saying that he understood the likely complaints to come from viewers that the questions nearly all focused on the campaign's hot buttons, such as Barack Obama 's pastor and Hillary Clinton 's false memory of her own heroic trip to Bosnia, Brooks went on to laud ABC hosts George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson for asking "stupendous" questions, which included a challenge to pledge not to raise taxes on a certain income group of voters. Herewith your blogstress's favorite passage from a blog post from Mr. Brooks, posted after last night's awful debate: Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Just for the record, your blogstress is all for the "emasculation" of domestic programs. We would all benefit from their feminization.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
How do you close the deal?

Hillary : I'll tell the superdelegates that I'm a fighter. That's how, dammit! Barack : Defining moment in history. People lost trust in gov't -- not just Dems, but indies and Repubs, too. Change happens from the bottom up. That's why we don't take PAC money. Woman, 74, never voted before, says she's voting for me. (Gotta call that round for Hill, huh?) All right; shake hands; go home.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Gasbagging on gas prices

Hillary Clinton just said that we should stop putting oil in the strategic petroleum reserve, and "sell some of it off"? How strategic is that? Great. We have depleted armed forces and then we'll have depleted oil reserves. I barely heard what Barack Obama said, because it just sounded like the same old. Nobody mentioned public transportation. Our rail system, if you can call it that, is the embarrassment of the industrialized world. We have very little in the way of viable public transportation in the suburbs, never mind rural areas. People need to get out of their damn cars. (How does your blogstress maintain her girlish figure? Her bicyclette, mes amis .)

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Merciful words

Charlie Gibson : "We're running short on time."

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Pardonez-moi; got a little bored

...what, with all this talk about Iran, Iraq, the economy and taxes. Let's keep this thing focused on sniping about race and class, kids! We need some good TV here!

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Stage Wright

That Jeremiah Wright -- he just won't go away. Charlie Gibson just asked why Barack Obama disinvited Pastor Wright from the launch of his campaign, if he did not indeed know of Wright's comments about 9/11. Obama explained that he was responding to different comments by Wright that had been published in Rolling Stone . For her part, Hillary Clinton sounded very defensive when asked to defend her assertion that she would have left the church if Wright had been her pastor. Later, she said that Obama's explanation "is something that deserves further exploration." Then she went on to assert that Wright had "given over the church bulletin" for a message the leader of Hamas.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Jujitsu

Obama just invoked the furor Clinton 's famous cookie-baking comment to say that she was doing the same thing to him -- in light of his "bitter" comment -- as was done to her in 1992.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Dagger look at George

Moderator George Stephanopolous earned a steely look from Hillary Clinton when he ask her not to respond to his assertion that she had told Bill Richardson that Barack Obama cannot win the presidency. Then Stephanopolous framed a question in such a way that Clinton and had to say that Obama could win the presidency.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Obama: I understand why they're offended

Obama seems to be doing okay explaining his apparently condescending comments about why regular people turn to guns and religion when they're frustrated, saying that it wasn't the first time he had "mangled up" a statement. Thing is, he didn't mangle this one. What he said made sense, and was rather eloquent.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Why not take your opponent as your running mate?

When Charlie Gibson asked, why not take up Mario Cuomo on his suggestion that each of the Dems promise to take the other has his or her running mate, he was greeted with a pair of dumbfounded smiles. Then Clinton gave an answer that seemed to imply that she doesn't expect to get the nomination.

Live-blogging the ABC Philadelphia debate
Neither of us was included

Opening volley: extremely civilized. Barack Obama spoke of the voters' "frustration" over the economy, and issued a subtle dig at Hillary Clinton by speaking of frustration, also, with "special interests" in Washington. Clinton made a point of the "firsts" that she and Obama represent, by mentioning the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, saying, "neither of us was represented in those founding documents."

Cooking up some media.

Your blogstress had the great pleasure of spending last weekend at WAM!, the Women, Action & Media conference that's become an annual spring-break confab rooted at MIT's Stata Center -- a Frank-Gehry designed oddity -- and sponsored by the legendary Center for New Words. While there, your Webwench found herself in the company of a number of women who, dissatisfied with the offerings of today's media, just up and made their own. At the Women's Media Center Web site, you may find your ecrivaine 's rundown , complete with links to lots of cool, independent media products. CLICK HERE TO READ "THANKS, WE'LL MAKE OUR OWN MEDIA" AT W.M.C.

Martin Luther King: Remembrances

I remember the news coming muffled to my room from my parents' room across a narrow hallway, where a black-and-white set stood on a metal stand, recounting the unaccountable tale of an assassin's bullet cutting down the leader of a people. I remember the men of my all-white town whispering of getting guns. Fresh were the memories from the summer before of the orange skies above Newark, the majority-black city of which our white-flight town was a suburb. I remember hearing of cities erupting around the country and even directly to our south, in Trenton, the destination of class trips to the barracks of the Hessians. I remember telling classmates the day after the assassination that Negroes did not deserve the welfare that our parents' work had paid for. I remember things of which I am not yet able to speak. A lyrical and visceral remembrance from the other side of the divide comes from Reuben Jackson , D.C.'s own bard, who delivered a stunning essay today on WAMU's

Racism 101

In case you didn't know, mes amis , Patrick J. Buchanan appears to be a racist. And it seems to be perfectly fine with his bosses at MSNBC. Your blogstress has a piece up at The Guardian's lively bloggish site, Comment Is Free, that looks at the boorishness with which Buchanan is permitted to get away, such as this little critique of Barack Obama speech about race and his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright : It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, 'everybody but the rioters themselves.' Hat-tip to guitar-god David B. Cole for passing the Buchanan screed along to your Webwench. For more on Buchanan, read sister Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend.