January 11, 2008
Regarding Chris Matthews assertion that Clinton did not win on her own merits……
Mika Brzezinski: Do you think…that there was a turn at the last minute for some voters, given the really sharp twist in the media in terms of how they went negative…
Chris Matthews: It’s not in the polling. I’m just saying, it’s not in the polling data. [snip] Matthews: I think the Hillary appeal has always been about the mix of toughness and sympathy. Let’s not forget, and I’ll be brutal, the reason she’s a US Senator, the reason she’s a candidate for President, the reason she may be a front runner, is that her husband messed around.
Brzezinski: Yeah, but…
Matthews: That’s how she got to be a Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn’t win it on her merit, she won because everybody felt, “My God, this woman stood up under humiliation,” right? That’s what happened. That’s how it happened. In 1998, she went to NY and campaigned for Chuck Schumer as almost like the grieving widow of absurdity, and she did it so well and courageously. But it was about the humilation of Bill Clinton.
What the hell is wrong with Chris Matthews? With all of the media people? Their personal loathing of Hillary Clinton has tainted every disdainful, contemptous pundit show’s opinion this week.
Matthews asserts that Ms. Clinton’s standing is a result of her husbands sex habits? and he is STILL on the air?
Mr. Matthews is so full of himself that he has no problem telling every voter who voted for Ms. Clinton that you voted for her due to your sympathy for her humiliation by her cheating husband. Such audacity is appalling to the senses. How stupid of the masses!
And so…….it is the medias failure to grasp what the first serious female Presidential candidacy means for women, including those who are not committed Clinton supporters, or fully decided on any candidate, that had consequences in New Hampshire. Consequences I am sure hackled the hairs of many media pundits and it showed in their subsequent broadcasts.
The media should wake up to the fact that people don’t vote for a woman because they feel sorry for her, or because she is a woman. Indeed, increasingly, women don’t have to vote for men simply because they have no other choice. That holds so very true for the race card now too.
The “White Man Only” club is about to be broken and they are shaking in their boots!
January 11, 2008 at 6:41 pm
You’re statement implies that while sympathy is a bad reason to vote for someone, their gender is if you’re a female.
January 11, 2008 at 8:44 pm
want to expand on your statement and tell me why you would think that that is what it means?
January 11, 2008 at 9:16 pm
While you say “[sic]…people don’t vote for a woman because they feel sorry for her, or because she is a woman. Indeed, increasingly, women don’t have to vote for men simply because they have no other choice.” this is contradicted by your assertion on how important it is that Clinton is a woman.
Maybe I mistook the tenor of the post; if so, I apologize.
January 14, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I would suggest that it IS important, in a way, that Clinton is a woman and that Obama is black. I back up that statement with the fact that our presidents over the many years have all been “white males”.
I think that the white male only club is threatened by the “viability” of these candidates.
The media is, in my opinion, trying to thwart the candidates with the race card and the gender card.
Each of the candidates have very good platforms, thus, whether they are black, white, male or female should NOT matter. But they are, none-the-less, slandered or at least marginalized by the media. I do not see the same characterizations of the other candidates, do you?
For Chris Matthews to say that Ms. Clinton got where she was because of sympathy for her (her husband cheating) is disingenuous and frankly, despicable. I mean really….
Rudy cheated on his wife…McCain did also.
Do you see the same attacks on these candidates? No you do not.
So, Chris Matthews, in effect, marginalizes women by suggesting that it is somehow the womans fault that a man cheats, and that it is at the same time…ok for a man to cheat by not calling the same on the above mentioned candidates.
In fact, Matthews has referred to Clinton as “She devil.” He has repeatedly likened Clinton to “Nurse Ratched,” referring to the “scheming, manipulative” character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest who “asserts arbitrary control simply because she can.” He has called her “Madame Defarge.” And he has described male politicians who have endorsed Clinton as “castratos in the eunuch chorus.”
Matthews has compared Clinton to a “strip-teaser” and questioned whether she is “a convincing mom.” He refers to Clinton’s “cold eyes” and the “cold look” she supposedly gives people; he says she speaks in a “scolding manner” and is “going to tell us what to do.”
Unlike our current “Decider” (which is a white male)?
So in conclusion, perhaps you did not mistake my post, it is important in a way.
However, it is not important when you take all the candidates and measure what they stand for, and why you would vote for them.