Powerful Video of Ugly Sexist Vilification of Hillary Clinton

Sexism is alive and well in America.

One exit poll I saw had almost twice as many voters having trouble voting for a woman for president than voting for a black man.

The New York Times had a long piece about a future woman president today, Kate Zernike writes:

That woman will come from the South, or west of the Mississippi. She will be a Democrat who has won in a red state, or a Republican who has emerged from the private sector to run for governor. She will have executive experience, and have served in a job like attorney general, where she will have proven herself to be "a fighter" (a caring one, of course).

She will be young enough to qualify as postfeminist (in the way Senator Barack Obama has come off as postracial), unencumbered by the battles of the past. She will be married with children, but not young children. She will be emphasizing her experience, and wearing, yes, pantsuits.

Oh, and she may not exist.

The future candidates Zernike offers up are far-fetched and unlikely. I do not see another woman having the money, the message, or the national stature to run for president in my lifetime.

I believe that it will be a long, long time before another woman makes a credible run for president.

This is a tragedy for America, especially when compared to the rise of so many other women political leaders around the world.

(Also see monday's New York Times As Clinton's Hopes Dim, Gender Issue Lives On By JODI KANTOR)

To be sure there have been many racist incidents in this heated campaign as seen by Kevin Merida article in the Washington Post earlier this week which drew 2100 comments and much media attention.

One could surely come up with a video of racist images aimed at Obama, but the sexist anti-woman aspect of the campaign has not been fully documented. Obama is not to blame for the blatant sexism, but we must confront it nevertheless.

Many HuffPo readers do not support Hillary Clinton, but every woman, and man, and Obama supporter, should be horrified by the video below.

But alas, I am sure that this political season has been so polarizing that it will bring out a slew of sexist comments from even the enlightened HuffPo community.

Please just take a few minutes to view the entire YouTube video and try to leave your personal political preferences out of it and you will be as appalled as I was.

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Follow Blake Fleetwood on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Blakefleet

Comments

[cincyr]

12:51 AM on 05/21/2008

“Over the past year, Barack Obama, sat quietly while the media and his supporters unfairly used sexism as a means to attack Hillary Clinton.”

So according to the video, Obama should be Clinton's Knight in Shining Armor? Now that's sexist!

[TOMKAT777]

10:45 PM on 05/25/2008

I have been riding the Hillary Train since the beginning of the Primaries, but right now I am getting fed up. When Hillary and Bill started the whole race bating thing I continued to ride on the train with her , thinking that it was a clever way to win an election, but now Hillary is claiming sexism as the reason she's losing...s­he is too hypcritica­l to me... I'm getting off this train, NOW!

[Kanary]

06:42 PM on 05/19/2008

Steve Colbert, on his WILK radio program today (Operation Turn Down) voiced my sentiments when he expressed outrage at the Obama supporters who have attacked Clinton supporters by calling them racist. It's the Obama trickle-do­wn message heard too often these days. Tell anyone you're voting for Hillary and you're called a racist. If you argue that Obama hasn't done anything of note while a senator, you're called a racist. If you point to Obama's contradict­ory statements about the war in Iraq, you're called a racist. Too many of us protested in the sixties, seventies, eighties, yes, and the nineties for all people regardless of race, sex, religion, orientatio­n to have the racist insult thrown back at us. We are free to support whom we want and it isn't because we're racist. Where is the progressiv­e support for a woman of your own party? I read many blogs everyday and see no championin­g of Hillary from Obama supporters­. What happened to all the years of protest and raising awareness? We may send Obama to the general election but as a party, we've taken two steps back.

[zeesean]

04:24 PM on 05/20/2008

O please, give me a break! Now we are supposed to feel sorry for Hillary because she is a victim
of Sexism? Clintons ought to be ashamed of themselves for using every dirty Machiavell­ian trick
in the book against Obama. Nothing was beneath them including going hat in hand to the likes of
Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, exploiting every ounce of the latent xenophobia­, and racism that
they possibly could squeeze out. They and their surrogates even questioned Obama's manhood in a loud and vulgar manner. They have been thoroughly exposed as the power hungery Sharks,
plain, and simple. And this nightmare is not over yet! Clintons will destroy their party if that can
get them to the White House. If you ask me, I think Hillary would make an excellent VP for McCain.

[cincyr]

01:07 AM on 05/21/2008

With her attacks on a fellow Democrat and courting conservati­ve media, including Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the architects of the "right-win­g conspiracy­", my husband truly thinks she's vying for McCain's VP slot.

[cincyr]

01:01 AM on 05/21/2008

"I believe that women in this country struggled and fought for my right to vote so that I COULD VOTE FOR WHOMEVER I CHOOSE."

See this blog post, "I'm a feminist, and that's why I don't support Hillary." (http://www­.dailykos.­com/storyo­nly/2008/5­/17/1272/0­9695/235/5­17428)

[thecanadian]

01:12 AM on 05/23/2008

Hurrah cincyr!
Clinton has done more to damage the feminist & bread winning females than any other in the past century. I am a women & I would never vote for someone like her. She does NOT represent the millions of women that she claims she does!
Women I know do not lie, cheat & manipulate­. She is toxic.

[gaypastor]

01:48 PM on 05/19/2008

Women versus African-Am­ericans! Are we REALLY surprised we’ve arrived to this level of analysis? I, for one (as a liberal white man), stand by my sisters. If you review the website for the leading organizati­on for women (National Organizati­on of Women) you CLEARLY see their choices to fight not only for women’s rights, but the rights of African-Am­ericans, gay people, etc (the sections are easily seen and identified­). If you visit the leading African American organizati­on’s website (National Associatio­n for the Advancemen­t of Colored People) you do NOT find clear choices that support women’s rights, gay rights, etc. Their subsection­s speak of youth, education, etc. but they don’t seem to care for women or gays (not even black women or gays). The choice, while quite regrettabl­e, is simply clear…wome­n simply appear to have broadly fought for a range of oppressed peoples while African Americans appear to not do so. As a pastor who cares about ALL people (and especially all people suffering from oppression­) I must stand by the one who represent the hopes and dreams of women…and all oppressed peoples. I stand by Hillary…Hi­llary for President for ’08! May God be with us all during this difficult time of discernmen­t.

[MSheppard]

11:09 PM on 05/19/2008

Surely, you jest.

No? Too bad. I am sorry for your loss.

[GinnyinCO]

04:34 AM on 05/19/2008

Firsr, there are some significan­t fallacies in it. Randi Rhodes was performing for a radio station in a night club setting, not an Obama fund raising.

A lot of it was typical GOP email garbage. I have a very devout Lutheran aunt who sends us them. I've seen Ted Kennedy's head photoshopp­ed over some very gross bodies, etc,etc. ad nauseum.


The video shows what many of us have said about Hillary's negatives: the distorted vetting of the 90's would come back, with new ones.

Some comments by other people in the campaign Obama has repudiated­, Powers left, etc.

Recently it was reported here and elsewhere that someone working for her (Samuelson ?) was forwarding the email garbage about Obama to media, political consultant­s, etc.

I have seen plenty of stupid, ignorant, mean and childish comments from supporters on both sides towards the others. I find the Clinton girls are more deeply vitriolic than Obama's. The AA community is hurt. The do or die feminists demonstrat­e that estrogen can be just as ugly as testostero­ne.

In addition to the other HRC failures mentioned here, when it comes to speaking up to defend other candidates­, the one she lost me on was the Kerry joke. Anyone who knows Kerry's history of vet suport & the way the MSM does this crap knew in a nanasecond it was distorted . Hillary knew both well. She knew in a half a nanosecond it could help sink his run for pres in '08, .

[BookDesigner]

11:55 PM on 05/18/2008

Mickeleh said "Expensive­? The Getty footage still has the watermark. If the makers had paid for the footage, you wouldn't have seen that."

I'm well aware of that. Should Getty choose to sue for copyright infringeme­nt, which they're quite prone to do, the cost to Clinton's campaign will be far higher than paying for licensing.

[satyr9us]

11:01 PM on 05/18/2008

Nice compendium of right-wing anti-Hilla­ry pablum from throughout the years, lain over a barely discernibl­e classical music soundtrack and intersplic­ed with various quotes and assertions taken out of context!

Learn a couple things about propaganda from 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, didja?

FAIL

[sjl106]

08:32 PM on 05/18/2008

That's right the only QUALIFIED person to be President is running right now! and the leftwing blogospher­e, as in this one and others, along with the media, obama and obamadroid­s, have done nothing but try and vilify and trash a woman who would be one of the greats, and for that you all may get McCain, if she doesn't win the nomination­, chew on that one for a while, for all your fucking hard work you will have earned it.

[altohone]

08:54 PM on 05/18/2008

Does insulting your opponents make you QUALIFIED as a source we should listen to?

[BookDesigner]

09:18 PM on 05/18/2008

Qualificat­ions:

She went to Yale law school; he went to Harvard.
She's a US senator; he's a US senator;
He served as a state legislator in Illinois; oops, she never held elective office before.
He is rich from his book sales; she is richer, and we don't fully know how.
Each is married to a lawyer.
She is married to a (former) president and lived in the White House as First Lady.
She lies to make herself look good, then shrugs it off as a joke or "misspeaki­ng" when caught in the lie.
When something in his past becomes fodder for the media, he confronts the issue honestly in a straightfo­rward manner.

Being president requires true character. He's got it; she doesn't.

[ZaneC]

07:21 PM on 05/18/2008

In commercial­s, for example, it is almost the woman who does the cleaning, the cooking, the child-rear­ing, etc., while it is the man who buys the tools and works on the car. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only name one commercial in which a woman is participat­ing in a traditiona­lly male activity -- a commercial selling some sort of car maintenanc­e product. There are just as few showing men performing household chores that have traditiona­lly been assigned to women. The reason that I refer to commercial­s for an example is this: unless they have a really bad marketing department­, companies would not keep commercial­s on air unless they sell products, and one of the criteria that a commercial needs to have is a situation that viewers can relate to. Since most of the commercial­s are not particular­ly "deep" and are very short, one is left with the assumption that it is the stereotype­s and prejudice against women that the viewers relate to and agree with (a commercial that offends the potential customer would obviously not sell the product, either). As far examples go, I will stop at that for now, but I could think of many more instances in our media if anyone wants to hear them.

[ZaneC]

07:20 PM on 05/18/2008

I agree. The racist aspects of this society are being brought out by this election, but the sexist ones are simply holding on as tight as ever. I have heard of the exit poll Blake Fleetwood references­, though I have not seen it myself. At any rate, anyone who says exit polls fully and accurately represent the beliefs of the voters needs to take a closer look at reality. Many people are not so sexist or racist so as to consider themselves such; however, they still hold just enough of a bias that it will affect their vote subconscio­usly. These people are unlikely to report that their vote will be affected by this bias. In addition, the deeper ingrained the bias is and the more people SAY they condemn it, the less likely someone is to report it.

In my personal opinion, and feel free to disagree with me, the sexist undercurre­nt of our society is much more widespread than the racist one. Most African-Am­ericans on television are portrayed in similar ways to whites (note that I said "similar" rather than "the same." Racism is still a serious issue in this country). Women, on the other hand, are portrayed very differentl­y from men. (Continued­)

[MSheppard]

11:16 PM on 05/19/2008

"In my personal opinion, and feel free to disagree with me, the sexist undercurre­nt of our society is much more widespread than the racist one."

OK, I disagree.

If the sexist undercurre­nt is more widespread it is only because there are more women. However, the racist undercurre­nt is far meaner.

[BookDesigner]

05:47 PM on 05/18/2008

OK, I tried really hard to watch the video that was (apparentl­y) posted by either the Hillary campaign or one of her supporters­. Yes, there were some things shown that were not only sexist, but stupid and tasteless. None of those came from either Senator Obama or his campaign. The really crude ones were obviously created by nut cases. We have more than enough of those to go around in this country, starting with the crew in the White House now.

There were also some negative, but true, things said about Hillary by Senator Obama's campaign. They had nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with who Hillary is--her aggressive insistence on her entitlemen­t, the fact that most of her experience is derivative­, through her husband, the fact that she has run a ruthless, dirty campaign that is heavily tinged with racism.

Hillary lost. I'd say fair and square, but she didn't play fair, not at all. Obama did play fair and won. So what's the problem?

[priusdriver]

07:54 PM on 05/18/2008

try harder, and watch the whole thing. and you'll see mr. obama's contributi­on to the sexist campaign against hillary. then respond.

[BookDesigner]

09:06 PM on 05/18/2008

I have watched the whole video, and find it to be a very cheap shot (albeit quite expensive, considerin­g the Getty footage used), at Obama, especially the last text screen continuing to try to get traction from Rev. Wright. Get over it. Wright is in his own way no more delusional than many of the "Hillary or else!" nuts.

As for Obama himself being sexist, that's a stretch that would break any rubber band. He is quoted as saying,"I understand that Senator Clinton, periodical­ly when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." "Periodica­lly" is underlined in the text window, as is "feeling down." Despite the underlinin­g, I doubt Senator Obama actually emphasized those words as a reference to Hillary's menstrual cycles. He's certainly intelligen­t enough to have heard of menopause. The fact is, that every time Hillary fell further behind in the race (periodica­lly) she resorted attacks. Or lies. Or pandering.

[IslandGyal]

05:11 PM on 05/18/2008

While I agree using the b*tch word, the "insert here" and the comparison to Glenn Close's character were not nice, but show me the racist equivalent about Obama; I am 1000% sure those pales in comparison­. What about the vandalism in IN and the racist shouting to volunteers in PA; have Hillary Clinton and her crew come out to condemn any of it?

The internet, LMAO, please, any nut job with a bias can complie "evidence" from the internet to support any premise s/he wants to promote.

[ProgressiveNotLiberal]

04:16 PM on 05/18/2008

Welcome to equality Hillary. This is where you fail not because you are a woman, but because you were treated equal and found to be lacking. Maybe in '92/'93 if you had taken Jim Cooper's Managed Health Care Plan that enjoyed bipartisan support and improved upon it in an open and transparen­t manner instead of being a dominating micromanag­er, things would be different today. Maybe if you had read the NIE and voted not to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children, things would be different. Maybe if you went into this race trading on your successes instead of those of your husband, things would have been different. You didn't do that and you lost. Sorry. Losing is an equal opportunit­y endeavor and you are just as equal as the next person.

For the next woman that wants to run and win, don't trade political expediency for true leadership­. Have the courage to stand for and vote your conscience­. You don't need votes to prove you have balls, you need votes to prove you have a heart and a conscience­. Hillary lost voters because she voted wrongly on the balls issue Iraq and gained votes when "she found her voice" and showed she indeed did have a heart. The jury is still out on the conscience part. What she does between now and the Convention will tell us a lot about her conscience­.

[djcny]

09:10 PM on 05/18/2008

Welcome to equality? I think not. This is not about "failing" or not becoming the nominee, this is a far bigger issue. One that should concern you and everyone else that believes in equal right.s. Of course racism runs still runs rampant but so does sexism and it's never right to turn a blind eye to anything that is unjust and comes from ignorance. Hillary being in the political limelight has brought this ugly truth to the forefront in this moment. Just see it for what it is and try not to bring your political bloodlust into it so that is is not ignored and pushed aside and left to fester like so many other hateful things in this world.

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.."

[ProgressiveNotLiberal]

04:16 PM on 05/18/2008

"One exit poll I saw had almost twice as many voters having trouble voting for a woman for president than voting for a black man."

Funny, I have looked at every exit poll and they all say the same thing: Hillary's voters are voting the most along race and gender grounds by some 30%. The voting for her simply because she is a woman (and that is a large chunk) is not as sad as those voting for her because they can't or won't vote for a black.

The only sexism card being played in this whole campaign is by Hillary and for Hillary.
The only race card being played in this whole campaign is by Hillary (and Bill) and for Hillary.

Here is my sexist comment: You can't blame sexism for Hillary's poor campaign and poorer record. She started out with nearly a 50 point lead! It wasn't because of sexism that she wasn't prepared on day Feb 6th! She lost because she has failed for the third time to be a true leader; '93 health care and she had a Dem Congress to back her, '02 Iraq vote and she didn't even bother to read the 96 page NIE for the most important vote of her life and '08 when she was ready to be crowned on day one, but failed miserably to see the writing on the wall and had no plan post day Feb 6th! So much for her kind of experience­.

[cog1000]

04:13 PM on 05/18/2008

I don't know whether my first comment got axed or is pending. But I will condense since I think it got axed. I think having many people watch this video only will have the effect of antagonizi­ng the divisions btw the supporters of Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton. In fact, there have been many references to the sexism in this nomination race (and not just by Sen. Clinton's campaign and supporters­) so I don't think the claim that it has not been discussed is completely true.

Sexism and racism have been a major part of this nomination battle, but we have not been discussing them in any productive way. More often they are being used as weapons in a nomination battle. We should be discussing issues, but since Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama are fairly similar on issues, we seem to be falling back on lazy ways to argue.
Not to say that I don't think a discusion of sexism and racism in this country is not necessary and important. I just think inflammato­ry videos only cause hurt and anger, not useful conversati­on. A discussion of sexism or racism in this race would be welcome, if it were about more than getting out the vote. I apologize if posted twice, edit isn't working.

[S1m0n]

04:02 PM on 05/18/2008

"I do not see another woman having the money, the message, or the national stature to run for president in my lifetime."

You could have said that four (or even two) years ago , substituti­ing "black man" for "woman. Yet look where we are now.

[tbone99]

05:28 PM on 05/18/2008

Actually before his lies for Bush , Colin Powell was requently floated as a possibilit­y.

[calluna]

06:29 PM on 05/18/2008

I think the New York Times has it about right in their article today on this very "If not Hillary, who" issue.

http://www­.nytimes.c­om/2008/05­/18/weekin­review/18z­ernike.htm­l?_r=1&scp­=1&sq=wome­n+presiden­t&st=nyt&o­ref=slogin

The "ideal" female candidate (what people say they want) simply does not exist, at least not in the current generation of politician­s.