But seriously: The traditional role of First Lady as White House redecoratin’ maven was born from a more sexist era but still persists and frames our expectations. Recall, after all, the negative public reaction to the arrival of a woman with a career of her own to the role of First Lady who didn’t feel like baking cookies all day in the kitchen. I still think that was one of Senator Clinton’s best moments as a public figure.

Good Lord, doesn’t anyone have any work to do today?

Because Bill Clinton doesn’t work or live in Hillary Clinton’s office.

Let’s make a little matrix.

(Winning) male candidate wins new office, (losing) female candidate returns to old office. Joke: “Male candidate’s spouse will be picking new drapes, female candidate will be redecorating office.”

Female candidate wins new office, female candidate returns to old office. Joke: “Female candidate’s spouse will be picking new drapes, female candidate will be redecorating office.”

Male candidate wins new office, male candidate returns to old office. Joke: “Male candidate’s spouse will be picking new drapes, male candidate will be redecorating office.”

Female candidate wins new office, male candidate returns to old office. Joke: “Female candidate’s spouse will be picking new drapes, male candidate will be redecorating office.”

Huh. In every possible gender combination, the joke is the same. It’s almost as though the joker is treating every person involved as a human being, without their gender making any difference whatsoever.

I don’t think the phrase iteself is sexist but the way that he used it was. thanks for the catch.

I’ve ranted before on this, but you rarely see any actual analytical discussion of the candidates’ positions and a comparison among them. It’s all either covering it like it’s a sports competition or about image issues. In this case, Obama’s image is that he’s one hell of an inspirational speaker, so all that makes it into the 30-second sound bite is the broad inspirational phrases.

Of course, the bottom line there is that the media sells what people want to buy. Judging by how everything else is marketed and sold and how political discourse works in general in the U.S., people do not and will not take the time to do research and think; they make their judgements off of feelings. Kind of like selling cars by how they look and whether or not “when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?”. Sure, some people buy Consumer Reports and see how reliable the car is and what the expected repair history is. But let’s face it; People far outsells Consumer Reports, and more people can name who won American Idol than can name their Senator and Congressperson.

sylphhead Writes:
February 29th, 2008 at 1:36 am

While I sympathize with your concern, Sailorman, I’d remind you that the Democrats have a sad, detailed history of nominating candidates who are long on “policy proposals” and “issues”* and short on emotional connection with voters. It’s easy to ask a party to martyr itself again before sky high notions of philosophical integrity when it’s not the one you’re rooting for.

I was born a Democrat,. and I’ll die a Democrat. And if Obama wins the nomination I’ll vote for him as the least worst candidate. But I still hate him.

As for me, I’m not particularly moved by Obama. But I’m just one person, and I know that Obama has the ability to inspire a great number of people, so out of practical concerns, I support him. That in addition to the fact that the way he chose to organize his campaign sets a very good precedent (and hopefully destroys Terry McAulliffe wing of the party) and that the recent conduct of his rival’s campaign had me considering what good guys Nader, Bloomberg, Paul et al are. (Yeah, I know two of those three are not actually running.) Notice there’s nothing in there about policy positions, because there isn’t a nanometer’s worth of difference between Obama and Clinton. If I wanted issues, I’d have gone with Edwards or tried to write in Gore. I did, I lost, I wept, and I moved on.

*I air-quote these because I do not consider stale pandering to soccer moms or NASCAR dads to be real policy proposals.

Wow, that comment isn’t sexist at all, Robert.

And nobody I know of has suggested that of Obama, either, except for people on the Democratic side raising the fear that Republicans might ask if Obama had ever sold drugs.

You can’t hold up one side’s fear-mongering as evidence of what the other side is going to do. Hillary Clinton’s desperation for political power is not Republican racism.

While we’re on the subject, I think Obama deserves some credit for his candor and forthrightness on the drug issue. It was also good political maneuvering, as it took the one thing in his past that could be problematic and turned it into an asset. (”Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Democratic candidate who admits their past mistakes and moves on, instead of stonewalling and spinning?”)

Michele Obama isn’t yet picking out drapes for the White House, but I think Sen. Clinton is about ready to start thinking about redecorating her Senate office.

And I don’t know how the hell y’all can live in the United States of America and not have heard of the stereotype that black men are drug pushers. C’mon now!!

As far as drug use goes, there were comments during President Bush II’s first campaign about his cocaine and alcohol use. It didn’t go anywhere, just like this stuff with Sen. Obama hasn’t gone anywhere, but it was brought up.

I detest the concept that ‘change” or “belief’ or “patriotism” are ways to run a country–that how a politician feels about something is more important than what she does about it. And to me, Obama represents the pinnacle of emotional appeals, and I hate him for it. It’s like religion, but with votes.

1) I left out a very important word in part of my post above — I meant to say that I do not agree with ALL of the racism allegations, not that I don’t believe any of them. For example, I definitely believe the Jesse Jackson comment was racist. I definitely do NOT believe the fairy tale comment was racism. I can see how the MLK/LBJ comment has racist connotations, but I also see what she may have been trying to say, which I agree with. But, I think the way she did say it was racist. I think the drug use comment was probably a racist dog whistle, but I don’t think it is overt racism — talking about past drug use is a pretty common tactic in any political campaign (just look at Bill Clinton, himself). I think you have to make the connection between drug use and race in your own mind –and maybe that was the purpose, pandering to those who DO make that connection (in a negative way). But I don’t think it’s inherently racist.

2) I think it would be hard to argue that the sexism from the Obama camp is covered nearly to the extent that the racism from the Clinton camp is covered. I’ve heard about the latter on CNN, MSNBC, my local news, NPR, and nearly every liberal blog there is. I’ve heard about the former on feminist blogs. That’s it’s (NPR did have a one-day piece on the sexism against Clinton, but they only looked at the sexism in the media, not from the Obama camp, and most callers completely dismissed the sexism and said it didn’t really exist, that Clinton was just trying to garner sympathy).

3) When Fox News made a comment about Michelle Obama’s “claws coming out,” the cries of sexism from the Obama supporters was overwhelming. But, when Obama, himself, uses that Exact. Same. Phrase wrt Hillary, the attempts to deny the sexism (”oh, I could totally imagine him saying that very same thing against a male candidate, it’s not sexist at all”) was overwhelming.

4) When speakers from the Clinton camp say things that are racist, that’s seen as a negative against Clinton, herself (e.g. the drug abuse statements). I don’t wholly disagree with that — someone who is officially tied to the campaign does, to some extent, speak for the candidate. But, when a speaker from the Obama camp makes homophobic and anti-gay statements, suddenly it’s all “that’s one speaker’s opinion, that doesn’t say anything about Obama’s stance on gay rights.”

I’m not even going to get into the slams against 2nd wave feminists. Gah, it’s too depressing

5) WRT Jimmy Carter — there you had a guy with almost no experience (both in state legislature, he was governor for 1 term, Obama in the US Senate for 2 years) who empassioned people with his claims of TRUST, coming in during a time where Americans needed to believe that they could have something different (a Beltway Outsider) who could and would bring about change. Someone who talked a lot about trust, and how we would bring it back to the office of president, without a lot of discussion on how he would do that. Someone who was able to mobilize a large grass-roots movement to win the presidency by being extremely charismatic and able to get large groups of people to become impassioned, without ever really explaining how we would do these things. And, yeah, there’s no way to know how any other Dem. would have handled the situations he faced, or if they would have even handled them better — but his lack of experience certainly didn’t help when those unprecedented incidents occurred, and if nothing else, allowed the right to take control by talking about how his inexperience made things worse. And there’s no doubt that McCain will use this same argument. Note: I admire Jimmy Carter greatly. I think he is an amazing man, who has done more for people than probably any former president ever. But that’s all stuff he did after being president, and through grassroots and non-profit work, not through politics.