The witch ain't dead, and Chris Matthews is a ding-dong; For one night only, a Clinton supporter

Salon: The witch ain't dead, and Chris Matthews is a ding-dong
The glee with which Matthews and other angry male pundits prematurely danced on Hillary's grave made me -- for one night only -- a Clinton supporter.
By Rebecca Traister

....So no, I have not been a Hillary Clinton supporter. But the torrent of ill-disguised hatred and resentment unleashed toward a briefly weakened Clinton this week shook that breezy naiveté right out of me, and made me feel something that all the hectoring from feminist elders could not: guilt for not having stood up for Hillary. I can't believe I'm saying this, but had I been a New Hampshire voter on Tuesday, I would have pulled a lever for the former first lady with a song in my heart and a bird flipped at MSNBC's Chris Matthews, a man whose interest in bringing Clinton down hovers on the pathological, and whose drooling excitement at the prospect of her humiliation began to pulse from the television last week before most Iowa precincts had even begun to report results....

***

Ding-dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The Clinton witch!...

***

For many of these pundits, especially those who pander to a mostly white male audience, a nearly pornographic investment in Clinton's demise is nothing new....(U)nderneath it all ran an unmistakable vibe, the loosening of a clenched resentment that it was a chick who had dared be confident about her ability to win, who had exercised infuriating control over the press, who had exerted uncomfortable and unrelenting dominion over her male competitors. When Clinton lost her grip, ever so slightly, over that dominion, there was a release of rip-roaring, rollicking fun at her expense....

The five days between Iowa and New Hampshire were discombobulating for anyone who had begun to get comfortable with the apparent ease with which American history had weirdly, smoothly made room for a female candidate. A woman had led the Democratic nominees for nearly a year with barely a whisper -- save for the occasional unflattering wrinkled photo -- of serious double-standard resistance from a nation that has yet to break its streak of white Christian guys sitting behind the Oval Office desk. It had all been so deceptively easy. But here were the buttoned-up white boys over at "Meet the Press" going all "Lord of the Flies" on her. Cintra Wilson called the spectacle "a little witch-burny," while Time's Michael Scherer blogged about a call he'd received from a conservative pundit who told him, "The witch is dead, and life is going to change." The pundits, Clinton's opponents, her colleagues -- they were making sport of Hillary's immolation. They were rolling in it. Exulting in it. It reeked of a particular kind of relief, relief from the guys who had thought they were going to have to hold their noses and get pushed around by some dame. They were behaving like men who had received a sudden and unexpected reprieve, and classily reacted by pulling down their pants and peeing on her.

And then ... people began to notice. In my circle, mothers in particular began to notice. My friends and colleagues told me of their despondent moms. Even my own, whose politics list far to the left of Clinton's, bowled me over by expressing her sadness about the treatment Hillary received. I think she was surprised herself as she confessed that she was "sad" about Iowa. "Whether or not it's Hillary," she said, "I just think this shows that any woman who's going to be aggressive enough to make a go of it is going to be too aggressive to be likable."...

***

...here's a message from the women of New Hampshire, and me, to Hillary Clinton's exuberant media antagonists: You have no power here. Now be gone, before somebody drops a house on you!

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/01/09/hillary_nh/print.html

And I don't like Tweety either, but why on earth should women vote for anyone out of a fit of pique at Tweety?

An election is too important to vote out of spite or just to piss someone off.

And the characterization of Keith Olbermann as having "leered" at the possibility of Hillary losing is completely off and just paints him unfairly with a broad Tweety brush. If anything, he was the voice of sanity trying to hold onto Tweety until the men in the white coats showed up.

As a woman, I'll vote for whoever I think is best for the job. I won't vote for anyone just to show up Tweety.

have been posting about the same thing here. The media's massacre of Hillary was seen by women everywhere as a disgusting show of sexism and double standard bias, and taken by many of we females as an attack on us all, not just Hillary. Then in New Hampshire we saw the Angry Woman vote and the Empathetic Woman vote giving the state to Hillary. That was basically it. The media gave it to Hillary.

Now the MSM -- mostly the males -- tries to avert blame by playing the race card, holding elderly women responsible, suggesting that women must have lied when they were polled, questioning the accuracy of the polling, and on and on.

And as for Keith. I forgive him, but Monday night he too piled on.

in the faces of the Old Boys MSM.

sent me this today. Loved it! Especially the last line. Made me proud. Big k & r!

In fact, I voiced them yesterday...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2645026&mesg_id=2645060

That's the second one like it I've read today. Out here in California, I wasn't paying sufficient attention to how Hillary was being treated by the media. But after reading these two articles, I have to admit that it would have been a powerful temptation to flip the bird while flipping the lever. Face it, New Hampshire is an early state, and Obama already had a good win. Why the hell not vote for Hillary Clinton? And in the end, she and Obama are still in a virtual tie.

Hekate
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N.H. Women Had Enough Insults
By Froma Harrop

You could feel the swell of female angst. It wasn't even about Hillary Clinton. It was about what she was put through. It was about running while female.

The Democratic race for president was supposed to herald a new era for blacks and women in politics. What became clear was that for the African-American, it is the 21st century. For the woman, it is 1955.

The media had declared open season on Clinton, who being middle age, was somehow deemed an easy target for special savagery. On Slate, Christopher Hitchens slimed Clinton as "an aging and resentful female." The Drudge Report simply displayed a photo of Clinton's face looking puffy, lined and fatigued. No caption necessary.
<snip>

Clinton was never my first choice for president, but the shredding of her dignity drove me crazy. I e-mailed Jennifer Lawless, a professor of political science at Brown University, to see whether I had simply lost my sense of humor. Lawless is a tough analyst who specializes in women candidates and herself ran for Congress. What did she think?

"Quite frankly," Lawless responded, "I am so disgusted with the media's coverage of Hillary Clinton that I can barely write about it without the anger rising." Lawless noted that she, too, was "by no means, a knee-jerk Hillary Clinton fan."

Towering over the personal attacks was the monstrous double standard. The woman was the diligent worker, studying the minutiae of health care, terrorism and taxation, but portrayed as an over-the-hill broad, who every 10 minutes had to answer a question about why people didn't like her. Not that this should matter, but John McCain happens to be 11 years her senior, and Mitt Romney several months older than the New York senator.
<snip>


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/nh_women_had_enough_insults.html