Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream
My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack's transformational appeal.
For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.
It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.
At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew that she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the Sixties. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an anti-war force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.
But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.
Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.
To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.
To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the Sixties. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?" She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents. [75] Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Truehaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. [all citations from Carl Bernstein's sympathetic biography, A Woman in Charge, 2007, pp. 67,69,70,75, 83]
All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the Sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright whom Hillary attacks today represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?
It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American Right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.
It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with Fox News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic super-delegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House whether or not she is the nominee.
Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.
Tom Hayden is with progressivesforobama.blogspot.com and author of Writing for a Democratic Society [City Lights, 2008].
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I am 50 and I must say everytime I see Kiki on television I scream "Wipe that phoney smile off your face bitch"! I plan to fly via Charlotte, NC on May 6th and my husband warned me not to drink on the plane in fear I may confront some Hillary supporter. I plan to have my Obama stickers all over my luggage and my body. Bring it on !
I totally agree. I don't yell at the tv anymore, I change the channel. I learned from watching the "talking heads" that they don't know more than I do. I detest Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchannan and the ever-smirking KiKi. Forget about Fox altogether. I live in Illinois and have already voted. All I can do now is hope and pray that North Carolina and Indiana drive a steak through Hillary's black heart. Ages and Ages ago when this primary thing started, I was involved and watched everthing and read everything. But at this point I'm a nervous wreck. Somebody do something. Make her stop. P.S. Why is she yelling? She always seems to have a microphone. Does she think it's not on?
That's why I love Tivo. I have gotten to where every time I see Hillary's face I fast forward. I can't listen to her and I am SO tired of that pointing finger.
She is almost as ungenuine as Hillary Clinton. Kiki I mean. She drives me just a wee bit crazy too but not hardly as much as Lanny Davis. Him I curse at!
I've written it before and I'll write it again: 2008 is not the first time there's ever been a close contest for a Presidential nomiination. Back in 1976, Reagan and Ford were vying for the nomination, and Reagan wasn't that far behind. But he didn't conduct a smear campaign against Ford the way Hillary has against Obama. Reagan realized that such negative campaigning was bad for the party. He used to say his eleventh commandment was , "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican
2008 is not the first time that there has ever been a close contest for a Presidential nomination. In 1976, on the GOP side, remember that Ford and Reagan competed for it? Reagan would not have had to have done that much better in the primaries to have won. Yet Reagan NEVER countenanced the kind of smear campaign against Ford that Hillary Clinton lets go on against Obama. Reagan used to say that he had an eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican
I am white, female, age 58. Hillary, Kiki and Lanny make me scream too. I thought, mercifully, Kiki was over after Tucker's show folded, but she has reappeared on Larry King. Now I have a good excuse not to watch King anymore either. They are torture.
Your wife screams. I cringe. Even my 12-week-old puppy barked at a streaming video of Hillary last night. This puppy, until then, has only barked when the town conducts its weekly test of the tornado siren.
Every time Hillary comes on my TV, the paint peels off of the walls and all my plants die.
I just wrote a cousin who happens to be Mayor of Evansville, Indiana. It addressed Obama's short-hand version of what's set forth in Tom Franks' book What's the Matter with Kansas. I wish Obama would address the subject again, not in shorthand, but in terms of history, what brought "Middle America" to the conservative side. He needs to define it. The fear of change, the threat to the core values and beliefs of Middle America. It started in the 60's and just built and became more reinforced with each administration. CHANGE is not welcomed by people who fear change, who perceive change as a threat. Change needs to be defined as something more secure and positive for all Americans, not something to dread. Hillary understands this. She's subtly and more obtusely lately playing on this fear of change. She does in fact represent the familiar (even if it stinks). McCain does too (even though he stinks). The MSM will bring it up again, as will the Repubs if he wins the nomination. He needs to answer them.
Not only do I cringe when I hear Hillary speaking, our 12-week-old puppy barked at the streaming video of Hillary last night. This is a pup that, until then, only barks when the town's tornado siren is being tested.
That's funny, I have the same reaction as your puppy. It literally hurts my ears to hear Hillary's voice, my children (middle and high school), keep saying, "she's a liar". I'm so proud of them for following the election.
"To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are."
Nailed the Hillary supporters 100%! Biiiittttteeeerrrr!
"Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist."
In a nutshell.
Hey, I'm not banned anymore!!!! Woohoo!!!
I envy your wife's restraint, for I myself feel hardpressed to restrain myself from putting my foot through the television screen every time Hillary appears.
I was delighted when she announced - I had always thought she was a great lady and would make a wonderful president.
Now I will never, ever vote for her. The sight of her on my TV makes me change the channel. The sound of her on my radio makes me turn off the volume.
She has burned every bridge in her nasty campaign. She has scratched and clawed her own party in half. She is anti-hope, anti-peace, anti-progress. She wants to make history - well guess what, if she ruins this, she will. Every history book will tell the story of the woman who killed the party for the sake of her own selfish, repugnant ego.
So where do we go from here? I honestly don't know. This is new territory. As a progressive Edwards turned Obama supporter, I honestly don't know which option would be worse if Hillary somehow manages to steal the nomination: four more years of the Bush-Clinton oligarchy, or four more years of McSame-McBush? I don't see much of a difference, when my assessment of Hillary is that she is remarkably similar in many ways to Joe Lieberman, who is remarkably similar in many ways to John McCain. Hmmmmmm...
I'm thinking maybe if Hillary goes on to steal the nomination that I would be happy and extremely supportive of Obama calling *Bull$hit* on the Democratic Party and breaking off abruptly to form his own new party, and run with it in the general election (if that's a feasible option per the rules). Now, THAT would make for one hell of an interesting general election. Odds are McCain would be the favorite, but who knows? And the worst thing that could happen would be McCain winning and having to deal with the incredible mess made by GWB, which after four more years could result in the virtual collapse of the Republican Party under its own corruption and incompetence.
Ooooh...in
So yeah, to your point, I'm voting for him in November. Period.
GREAT idea!! of Obama going independent should the Dems not see that he's earned the nomination. Great idea.
I was once an admirer of Dean. No longer. I heard him say that the Supers should vote for whomever they think is the most electable. And he wants them to do it soon. It sounds to me like he may be setting the stage for a Hillary coup.
OK, Tom. We agree (at least most of us -- even the NYT). When are you going to start organizing us to get the message out? Someone's got to start the process, and we know you have the experience to get the job done.
I have a brick sitting next to my television set.
It is a foam brick.
It gets used A LOT.
Every time one of those damn DLC-type Clintonian all over my screen, the brick flies.
I get my daily exercise by getting up and picking up the brick, returning to my seat and letting it fly when "I feel that pain"..
*scrrreeee
Damn DLC.
Everything turns into its opposite..
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