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March 2, 2008
Video: Hillary on SNL; Feminists: Must race and gender battle each other?
Saturday, Hillary Clinton left the press corps in Dallas boarding a flight to Ohio while she secretly flew to New York to appear on Saturday Night Live; Monday night, on the eve of Tuesday's primaries in Rhode Island, Ohio, Texas and Vermont, she will be a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Later: I wonder if this is what Net campaign guru Joe Trippi (for Howard Dean, John Hall, John Edwards) meant when he twitted today, "Clinton has changed to bottom up, top down is dead with Democrats!"
With the writers' strike finally over, alt-TV is back and, perhaps not surprisingly, Hillary is courting it. It was startling to see the big-media tilt mirrored the other way, even if it was just on satirical late-night comedy news.
After a skit skewering everybody in last Tuesday's Ohio debate -- but mostly NBC'S own old-boy debate moderators -- Hillary Clinton kicked off Saturday Night Live last night, joined by her SNL double, the identically dressed (down to the earrings) lookalike Amy Poehler. What followed was funny.
NBC has finally stopped playing Whack-A-Mole at YouTube, stomping out homemade clips, and newly offers its own "Share" code for these links. Above is Hillary's live Editorial Response to the fake debate below, which ends,
"...no politics. But I would like to take this opportunity to say to all Americans, be they from the great state of Ohio, or Texas or Rhode Island or Vermont, Pennsylvania... Live, from New York, it is Saturday Night!"
(The AP summary: 'Live, from New York,' it's... Hillary?)
The debate skit below includes Darrell Hamond as Tim Russert and Will Forte as Brian Williams playing air violin when Hillary suggests she gets the first question most often -- no time to think about it -- and that their tone toward her is more hostile. Barack Obama, played by Fred Armisen, gets to answer second, after Russert has fed him the answers. There's also a cameo by Vincent D'Onofrio from Law & Order: Criminal Intent:
Link
Comments on the video at NBC are poignant -- as I grab this, those showing all come from below the glass ceilings. Here's a sample:
Thank you SNL. I sat in a business meeting on Thurs. so similar to your skit, it scares me. Hillary's "secret" is a lifetime battling discrimination. You nailed it: when women complain about sexism, the violins come out. Hillary is the only one of us who has made it this far. While it is politically impossible for her to tell the truth about that, it has to be told, and you told it. SNL forever!
The show also featured Robert Smigel's (Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog) "The Obama Files," an edgy cartoon surprisingly tough on Obama, skewering him for keeping Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson from being seen campaigning for him. (In reality, Sharpton hasn't endorsed Obama, and Jackson's main concern seems to be a rift in the party.)
Glazing our own ceilings: Robin Abcarian in the L.A. Times: Drift away from Clinton frustrates many women is all interesting, and as well as reporting the dismay in its headline, includes this bit of hard talk:
For some women, the rise of Obama rips open a persistent wound: an older, more experienced woman is pushed aside for a younger male colleague.
One of the most impassioned cris de coeur came from feminist poet and novelist Robin Morgan, 67 in an essay (Goodbye To All That (#2)) that became something of a cyberspace sensation after she posted it last month on the Women's Media Center website (and it was forwarded by many people, including Chelsea Clinton).
Morgan decried the casual acceptance of sexism on the campaign trail this season -- from the two young men who shouted "Iron my shirt!" at Clinton to the Hillary-themed nutcrackers available in airport gift shops.
But Morgan reserved her greatest ire for women who decline to support Clinton "while wringing their hands because Hillary isn't as likable as they've been warned they must be. . . . Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms. Perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She's running to be president of the United States."
Good questions, no answers yet: Ultimately, war and domination is probably not the best model for campaigns that hope to bring about national peace and unity. The change we seek is still ahead of us.
In a sobering essay that has no answers, a group of major feminists met over coffee to confront the not so pleasant irony of the first female and first black fighting each other for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The participants included,
· Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus;
· Beverly Guy-Sheftall, director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College;
· Johnnetta Cole, chair of the board of the JBC Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute;
· British-born radio journalist Laura Flanders;
· Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at Columbia and UCLA;
· Carol Jenkins, head of the Women's Media Center;
· Farah Griffin, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia;
· Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority;
· author Mab Segrest;
· Kenyan anthropologist Achola Pala Okeyo;
· management consultant and policy strategist Janet Dewart Bell;
· Patricia Williams, Columbia law professor and Nation columnist.
The result was Morning in America in The Nation:
...How, we wondered, did a historic breakthrough moment for which we have all longed and worked hard, suddenly risk becoming marred by having to choose between "race cards" and "gender cards"? By petty competitiveness about who endures more slings and arrows? By media depictions of white women as the sole inheritors of the feminist movement and black men as the sole beneficiaries of the civil rights movement? By renderings of black women as having to split themselves right down the center with Solomon's sword in order to vote for either candidate? What happened, we wondered, to the last four decades of discussion about tokenism and multiple identities and the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class?...
On the one hand, we celebrate the unprecedented moment in which a black person and a female person have risen to the lead in the Democratic race for President of the United States. On the other hand, both of them are constantly pressed to deny their race or gender, to "transcend" it, to prove by their very existence that misogyny and racism no longer exist. This, even as both are popularly and reductively caricatured in perniciously stereotypical ways. Clinton as a woman with balls, Obama as "unqualified" and "grandiose," Chelsea Clinton being "pimped" by her mother while Bill O'Reilly declares that Michelle Obama should be "lynched."...
Cut to the chase:
..."Can't we all just get along?" could have been the mantra of this power breakfast--though certainly not forever, nor for all purposes. Just long enough to roust the Republican rascals: the oil barons and Enron fraudsters and pre-emptive warmongers and sadistic torture-masters and trigger-happy antiabortionists and Blackwater mercenaries and the tribal extremists of various religious stripes who seem to look forward to Armageddon finally segregating humanity into true believers and recalcitrant, disposable trash.
In the confusion of this triumphalist but precarious moment, therefore, it is important that the alliance between a now global feminism and a now global civil rights movement not be turned against itself and ultimately defeated. Obama and Clinton, each a complexly archetypal "role model," represent, at their best, a new kind of American possibility. If we could get over our fixation on a fantasy that many of us hoped to see realized in our lifetimes, maybe we could finally turn to the issues that each of them brings to the table. We cannot remain tangled by stereotypes that demean with their sweeping divisiveness and historical cliché.
As we gathered up the empty plates, we recommitted ourselves to further joint discussions about how to attain that collective better future, however many early mornings, late nights and urns of coffee into the future that may take. We hope women across America will choose to do the same.
We might have hoped these icons pooled their wisdom and agreed on solutions. They didn't. Is it too late? Should Obama and Clinton run together? Could they, after all the rancor? Does a white man have to be on either ticket? If not... Who's on top?
Later still: Hating Hillary, loving Barack by Larry Watson at Cape Cod Today.
Posted by Sheila Lennon 
at 2:54 PM | Permalink
REAL News You won't See on TV: Dick Cheney's NEXT Big Energy MONOPOLY Power RIPOFF:
Obama is the pre-packaged "New & Improved Chocolate Flavor" Presidential candidate PRODUCT - being hyped & PUSHED by GE and its WHOLLY-Owned subsidiaries NBC & MSNBC...along with Westinghouse & its subsidiary CBS...while slamming the Clintons all day every day. (Assisted by...CNN/FOX/ and a lot of newspaper & radio media dependent on advertising$$.)
GE is the 2nd largest corporation on the planet.
Obama is IN with the Nuclear Industry: Excelon Corp of Illinois has been one of his largest contributors from his entry into politics to the present. Excelon is the largest nuke operator on the planet;owns Con-Ed of NY; more nukes in Illinois than any other state.
GE, Westinghouse, Excelon & 3 consortiums of other companies are planning to build 29 new nuclear power plants. Their Wholly-Owned & Wholly Influenced "News" media are selling the Obama Product because Obama is in favor of Nukes.
In 2005 Obama Voted FOR the Cheney Energy Bill (H.R.6) which ENABLED the nuke industry to make its Plans to build 29 new nukes-by Guaranteeing Taxpayer Payback of any nuke loans that default. (No nukes were built for the past 30 years because the banks wouldn't loan the money - too risky)
Obama Voted FOR the Cheney Energy Bill-despite the fact the Congressional Budget Office rated the risk of default on the nuke loans at 50% or greater. (Does that sound like...GOOD...JUDGMENT to You?)
[NY Times has several articles about the nuke plans & a map showing all 29 locations; Wikipedia covers the subject]
Clinton Voed AGAINST the Cheney Energy Bill and said her Energy Plan does not include nuclear.
? "Its about the FUTURE...Turn The PAGE" ?
Nope. ts about Turning the PAGE BACK to the PAST: Obsloete 50 yr old nuke power plants-the dirtiest most expensive kind/centrally-controlled MONOPOLY POWER-instead of inventing New, Clean, Green De-Centralized inexpensive Energy.
An ad campaign has already begun on the TV media to re-package & re-name nuclear power plants as: GREEN & CLEAN -for-everybody too young to remember the 1970's anti-nuke movement and all the Bad News about nuclear energy.
Don't be taken in by the ad campaigns-Google:'nuclear waste dumps' & read about the hundreds of BILLIONS of gallons of nuke waste at the Hanford Washington dump; 140 tons of plutonium stored at Rocky Flats, Colorado; Barnwell, South Carolina; leaking into groundwater and rivers; plutonium released into the air around Denver from 500 instances of fires at Rocky Flats; stored on-site at every nuke reactor in America...presenting hundreds of potential "dirty bomb" targets for terrorists.
Is it true that Obama takes No Contributions/NO MONEY from Registered Federal Lobbyists?
Yes. It's a LawyerSpeak/Trick of: Speaking a Small truth covering up a Big Lie.
Nope, doesn't take money from REGISTERED FEDERAL Lobbyists.
DOES take money from STATE Lobbyists, Not Registered Lobbyists, AND the wives, husbands, law partners, aunts, uncles cousins...of Registered Federal Lobbyists. Gets money from the same big corporate donors as any other candidate.
Obama's campaign finances are involved in the prosecution (by Patrick Fitzgerald) and trial of his friend of 20 years Antoin Rezko. Some of the funds... allegedly...extorted by Rezko went into Obama's campaign coffers. Curiously, Iraqi Power Plants amd fraud are also involved in Rezko's trial. (Google: Obama -Rezko- Alsammarae-Auichi- IRAQ POWER PLANTS)
GE & the same wealthy people who sold the "new & improved vanilla flavor" Presidential PRODUCTS: Reagan & Bush/s 1 & 2 - are behind the massive ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN to sell you OBAMA.
At the beginning of this campaign season a large majority of voters were looking forward to electing Clinton. Then Obama stepped in and started the dirty campaigning that has created the DIVISION he so hypocritically decries. Obama played "the race card" so he could win in South Carolina. He was caught red-handed playing that race card-but the media blamed it on Clinton-even though they all knew they were pushing the Big Lie.
With nearly ALL "the mainstream media" pimping for Obama & slamming, smearing, and lying about the Clintons-it is truly amazing enough voters have seen thru the Media-Created Obama "movement"-for Clinton to STILL be in the race.
The only way a very small minority can CONTROL a very large Majority is: DIVIDE & CONQUER-Exactly the same Republican Strategy/Deception they have successfully pulled for most of the last century And ALL of this century, so far. . .
GE, the nuke industry/wealthy have hedged their bets & they will get Billions of your money via 29 new nukes IF either Obama or McCain is elected President.
Ladies & Gentlemen, Dads & Moms buy nothing GE & Westinghouse are selling - not Obama, not a washing machine, a dishwasher, 29 nuke power plants, or a garbage disposer .... because there is no garbage disposer for Radioactive Nuke Waste. Do not allow them to poison the earth and your children anymore.
Posted by: elme on March 2, 2008 6:33 PM
yikes..almost heard a Dean Scream in the rebuttal...
Posted by: steve knudde on March 3, 2008 12:28 PM
Why any woman would support Clinton, who has enabled her husband's sexual predations and vilified his victims, including a 21-22 year old girl whose life seems to have been ruined, is beyond me.
Posted by: janet on March 3, 2008 7:28 PM
janet, McCain left his disabled wife for that trophy blonde. Nobody's howling about that.
Or is the double standard okay with you?
"Enabling" is not the same as "putting up with" which many more women do every day than you know about. Unless you're saintly yourself, why vilify a woman caught between a rock and a hard place? Divorce isn't the answer for most of your neighbors, is it?
Hillary has a lot of guts to take the crude, unveiled sexism that's come to the surface in this campaign and become casually accepted. Most of us feel it as though it was pointed at us. Except you.
You're still fighting the last war. Or can only Ms. Perfect be president in your world? We ain't seen a Mr. Perfect be president yet.
Posted by: SarahB on March 4, 2008 3:42 AM
Sarah,
I don't support McCain, I support Obama, who, like many people, has somehow managed to stay married without cheating on his spouse.
Although that is only one of many reasons I support Obama. Hillary has a long history of at best disregarding the well-being of other women, going back to her attacking the credibility of a 12 year old rape victim when she was a defense attorney. I am astounded that she has the support of some feminists.
I am also pretty tired of people saying that Hillary is the victim of sexism. I am sure there is some of that, I have experienced it against myself in my own work. But most people I know who are against Hillary have a visceral dislike of her because of her character problems, not because of her gender.
Her vote for the war, without reading the intelligence report, and because she thought if she voted against it she'd be called soft on defense - how many thousands have died because of that? Is that what we want in a commander in chief? Or do we need someone like Obama, who had the courage to speak out against it to begin with?
Her false claims of 35 years of experience, which means she is counting from age 25, which is just silly. The Washington Post has exposed her resume padding in claiming to have been involved in "bringing peace to Northern Ireland," when the people actually involved say that's nonsense. That's just one example. Who seriously believes being First Lady qualifies as experience for the Presidency - and if she did something substantive then, besides her disastrous failure in health care, why won't she release the papers covering those years?
She has done nothing of substance in the Senate, while Obama worked with the Republican Senator Lugar to pass a bill restricting weapons favored by terrorists abroad, and has worked tirelessly on helping veterans, such as in the Walter Reed scandal.
But it is her character flaws that loom largest. Her inability to admit mistakes, that is really scary to contemplate in a President. It reminds me of Nixon.
Her blaming everyone else when things go wrong, like her incredibly mismanaged campaign. The states that voted against her "aren't important." Her deviousness in trying to change rules after the fact when she agreed to them and the other candidates have abided by them.
Her going extremely negative in campaigning, such as her surrogates spreading the false rumor Obama is Muslim, and Bill stirring up bigotry between Blacks and Whites. Her plain out lying about Obama's work, as in saying he has neglected committee duties involving the war in Afghanistan, when he is not involved in that work. She is willing to unjustly damage the chances of Obama, if he becomes the Democratic nominee, winning in November, in the interests of her getting the nomination.
I think she is very much unfit to be President, now at a time when we need the best President possible.
I would have loved to have seen someone like the late Barbara Jordan running.
Posted by: janet on March 4, 2008 6:08 AM
