It's Not Misogyny. Really It Isn't.

I don't read as many magazines as I used to. I've let all of my subscriptions run out and only occasionally do I make an effort to pull a few back issues of titles that interest me and check them out and bring them home to read. (Current issues of magazines can only be read in the library and may not be checked out.) So it is that I am a little late in reading and responding to Newsweek magazine's feature Hear Her Roar (Newsweek March 17, 2008).

I was saddened and frustrated when I learned in Tina Brown's lead essay that many middle aged women in Ohio had been drawn to work on Hillary's campaign because of the perceived misogyny, gender discrimination and "good old boys glass ceiling" they see in the opposition to Ms. Clinton's presidential ambitions. It feels a it like the old trick question "...and when did you stop beating your wife?". To make a point of publicly stating as I do here and now that I fully support gender equality and would definitely vote for a female candidate for President of the United States, were I satisfied with her record of achievements, her policies and priorities and her character and competence seems, to me, to give the impression that such a proclamation is merely pro-forma and intended as a fig leaf to legitimize the clear cut calls for misogyny and discrimination soon to come.

Hillary Clinton has a long history, as a lawyer, as a political spouse and power behind the throne and as a United States Senator of never failing to put the interests of Big Business over the interests of ordinary Americans, and indeed above all other interests save her political ambitions which to me seem so clearly the one high principle Ms. Cinton has always been consistently devoted to.

I oppose Sentaor Clinton's candidacy because of her strong financial ties to Wall Street, her insurance company enrichment program err failed National Health Care program and because I can clearly foresee a Hillary presidency netting us eight more years or paralytic partisan gridlock in Washington and a nightly replay of all new versions of all of the trumped up bullshit scandals of the Bill Clinton years. Near the beginning of this campaign I stated in this post that I believed that nominating Hillary was the only way the Democrats could possibly lose and nothing that has happened since then has caused me to reconsider that conclusion.

It seems to me perfectly reasonable to oppose Ms. Clinton's candidacy on the basis of her policies, past performance and enormous political baggage. And it occurs to me that we will be a lot further along the road to gender equality those Ohio women claim to want when it is safe to o without be regarded as anti-feminist trying to roll back the tide of gender equality.