Comments on Re: Cool It In Ohio

Allow me to paraphrase: WAAAH!

Oh, please. Dowd never had prayer with any of the jocks. Not even the tennis team.

Here we go again...

This is a new and interesting topic.

Who likes Maureen Dowd? I find her practically insufferable.

TL;DR

If Dowd wasn't a woman, we wouldn't have to parse her writing this closely.

constructive criticism for ECB~

i immediately stop reading any post of yours if it is more than 2 paragraphs long. not because i disagree with you or that you aren't a good writer, but because it just your post is too damn long. it becomes a rant that i have no time nor desire to fill my day with.

keep it short!

You would think Dowd would get tired of writing the same drivel again and again. It's like some days she has nothing new to say so she just goes back to these lame assertions.

geeks created jumps for a reason...

I think this says it all.

TGFECB.
Rock on.

maureen dowd still hasn't forgiven hillary for her alleged hand in trashing the women who accused bill of sexual harassment. so she channels her feminist rage into deranged, misogynistic attacks on hillary. go figure.

Maureen Dowd is just dumb. Dumb, dumb,dumb. And completely insufferable when she's on Meet The Press. Ugh!

no matter how much i like and respect and admire hillary, it will be a mistake to let her have the nominatyion. she will cause so many people who might've voted for obama in the general election to vote for mccain instead--simply BECAUSE THEY DO NOT LIKE HER. it doesn't matter whether their dislike is unfounded. if they don't like a person, they won't for him/her. so giving her the nom would be just as bad for the dems (who i presume want to actually WIN the presidency this time) as it was for the prosecution when they got an LA trial jury for OJ.

(i suppose it's possible that the dems don't actually want to WIN the general election--they sure as hell have fucked up before. for christ's sake, how could you lose against BUSH JR?? and how could you lose against him in his RE-election bid?? i've heard some repubs say that it might be good for the repubs if they LOSE this time--since the next pres will inherit such a shitbowl situation. the next pres will have to try to get us out of a bad war, huge deficit, huge debt, recession, etc.)

My lords this is a long post. Erica has been holding it in for weeks. I am almost tempted to read her whole post, but why bother when it is just another closet neo-con hit piece for Clinton. By the by, I wonder why the fixed election in New York for Clinton has never been mentioned on Slog, or the rest of the main stream media. Bloomburg, the Mayor of New York, said it was fixed. Makes me wonder what is going on in Ohio, and if those that dig Clinton’s pro war foreign policy are going to do themselves a favor. But if Slog Democrats focused on fixed elections, they could not blame Nader for the last 7 years.

@15, you are right, the general election is not and never been about "best leader for the nation' It is about who you would rather hang out with and have a beer with.

Americans vote for cool and likeablity. And in that case McCain wins over Hillary. Sorry folks but that is the reality and the polling numbers reflect that reality.

or this, or this, or this, or this, etc etc etc etc barf

wow...that went on longer than a medley of "Enchanted" songs and was just as unentertaining.

Though I agree that Maureen Dowd is often off-base in regards to gender politics, I actually agree with her point in this column. Obama most embodies the qualities I hoped we'd get from a woman president.

I don't care if my president is a man or a woman. I want a president who is brave enough to admit mistakes and reach out to enemies, and who will step away from the macho cowboy attitude that every president since Carter left office has adopted.

I think Obama is that person. Hillary is not.

Just like Project Runway, some time in the last year Maureen Dowd jumped the shark.

The problem for the GOP and Hillary is that Obama is not just not effeminate, he is manly in a Ward Cleaver, Father-knows-best, kind of way.

The diry task for the GOP (and Hillary at this point, I guess) is not to paint him as effeminate, but rather to knock him off his pedestal and turn him into "an angry black man." I'm a little frightened about what the desperate right wing might be willing to do to try to elicit this response.

@21 When was Maureen Dowd ever cool?

ECB!!!!!!
This post rocked! I am so tired of MDowd's unrelenting columns on feminism and Hillary et al. She takes a tone as though women actually appointed her to speak on our halves. Bullshit, Maureen.

What a baby you are, Erica.

Obama most embodies the qualities I hoped we'd get from a woman president ... I want a president who is brave enough to admit mistakes and reach out to enemies, and who will step away from the macho cowboy attitude that every president since Carter left office has adopted.

I don't see why you'd think you are more likely to see this in a female president. It's not hard to read Hillary's hawkishness in rhetoric and refusal to admit mistake on Iraq, for example, as a misguided effort to avoid being perceived as weak-willed and stereotypically feminine. I think female candidates might (unfortunately) often feel the same pressure, while male candidates might feel they have more room to admit error.

One would have thought the shout out from Tina Fey on SNL would have been enough for you, Erica.

No worries.

So...a bunch of underemployed men sitting around wasting time on the Slog are complaining because ECB posted something that was too long for them to read?

If you can put down your Obama love/Hillary hate=ECB hate blinders for a minute, you might actually see that this reflects a disturbing pattern in our media. Not just Maureen Dowd, but many commentators dismiss the first serious candidacy by a woman in history with misogynist terms that damage our ability to deal with real issues of sexism in our society.

If you think Obama is a better candidate or president--fine. But everyone should be concerned about the kind of Hillary hatred that seems acceptable in today's world.

maureen down is an embarrassment.

@26 I actually do think that Hillary's hawkishness and refusal to admit mistakes is partly her attempt not to be portrayed as a weak-willed woman. She's definitely in a tough spot, as ECB has pointed out many times in the past: act too feminine and she's weak, act too tough and she's bitchy. But I don't think that the best way to deal with that is to mold her politics to match or defy people's expectations. If she would quit worrying about people's perceptions of her and stand up for the things she actually believes in, she would be a lot closer to earning my vote, and I think she would do a lot better politically as well. I think we've all had enough insincerity to last us a long time.

To more directly answer your question, I don't actually think a woman president is more likely to embody those qualities. But I hope to eventually see a leader (of any gender) who embodies the stereotypically female virtues of compassion and diplomacy. You're probably right that any woman who has a shot the presidency any time soon is unlikely to fit that description. That's actually part of why I support Obama. I think that if he were able to change the tone of national politics (a big "if", I realize), it would be a lot easier for a woman to run for office without having to contort herself to avoid the snares of gender politics.

Whatever Hillary does or does not, it's either:

Too much, too early, too emotional;
Too little, too late, too bitchy.

She is not running for Prom Queen. She is not going to drop out because so many of you think it would be best if she just made nice and disappeared.

Plus, if she suddenly did drop out, capitulate, cede, surrender, admit her grave shortcomings - what the fuck would all of you have to talk about then?

Oh yeah - the unfairness of those foreign actors winning Oscars who actually deliver acceptance speeches with subjects & predicates, wit & elegance. Or pit bulls who drink milkshakes. Or why doesn't Obama legally change his middle name to Fitzgerald. Or whether McCain can still get it up.

Do discuss.

ECB, I normally really enjoy your posts, I think you're making an interesting point here, and I would love to see Hillary become president. But don't you think it's more than a little bit inappropriate and unfeminist to dismiss a woman's political analysis with the suggestion that she must have been unattractive in high school? I mean, come on.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Just because you can use blockquotes doesn't mean you should. Links are better sometimes, especially when the main SLOG post is multiple screen pages on my giant monitor.

Is this passive-agressive retaliation for us telling you to stop posting NSFW images when you guys are hung over?

8x "Page Down" key to reach bottom of post = long fucking post

@28

I am an Obama supporter after the exit of Edwards, but I too have been shocked by the vicious mysogyny opening displayed in our public discourse toward Hillary. However, it has substantially eminated from the right wing and the mainstream media, not Obama supporters.

I have concluded that until women of all political viewpoints join together to attack the mainstream media when it is a conduit for women hatred, that a women will not be elected here in the United States. I am very suprised by this.

Also, I don't think the male power brokers running her campaign care about her or her dignity as a women. I think the just hung her out to dry like an object. I don't think Mark Penn and those other mopes have a genuine understading of her strengths as an indvidual personality.

@32: Get out of my head.

Also, ECB, perhaps one of your colleagues could teach you the phrase "after the jump"?

So bolding certain words in ten million articles someone else has written and then ending on a snarky comment is considered journalism? I was an Edwards supporter previously and am personally saddened that both the Obamatrons and Clintonistas have failed to distinguish themselves on core lefty issues.

If Clinton, the Sequel, is such a great leader then why is she running such a sloppy campaign? Maybe Erica needs to get over her Dowd fixation and answer some of the issues like these from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/opinion/24rich.html?em&ex=1204088400&en=3e9996b4403c243c&ei=5087%0A :

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.

That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. Mr. Penn, whose operation has billed several million dollars in fees to the Clinton campaign so far, has never given up his day job as chief executive of the public relations behemoth Burson-Marsteller. His top client there, Microsoft, is simultaneously engaged in a demanding campaign of its own to acquire Yahoo.

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

Awesome, Marya, and so right. ECB: This "she never got over being dissed by a guy" shit from anyone else would, I'd think, make you furious. What's up with regurgitating it yourself?

Waaaah! Doesn't Maureen Dowd realize Hillary has a vagina? that makes her immune to any and all criticism. Dowd is a misogynist for not supporting a woman like her. Barack Obama is a big mean black Muslim man who will implement Sharia law. I can't believe how unfair these attacks are. Somebody pay attention to meeeeeeeeee!

Man, what a bitch!

Column vomit cleanup in aisle ECB!

ECB-- this has been your best post ever on the sexism that has ruled this race, and how "liberals" are completely ignoring it. It's not a Hillary vs. Obama thing. It's just the disgusting way misogyny has crept into the dialogue. We should all be truly upset on how our candidates have been reduced to neo-con talking points. If you don’t see it you’re probably an idiot. The proof is unequivocal.

Wow,

Now a skank (ECB) is all worked up becuase a skank (Hillary) has blown her whole campaign on dougnuts and sandwich fixins..

Skanks for president UNITE!!!!!

Mmmmmmm.......doughnuts......

And, @28, I don't think Aislinn is an underemployed white man ... at least not last time I checked. Or Marya for that matter ... in fact most of us work full time on SLOG.

Aislinn didn't whine about the length of the post and may not be underemployed.

But anyone who prattles in multiple posts about the length of a SLOG posting has clearly lost sight of what is important.

Anyone who is posting in SLOG has lost sight of what is important almost by definition....

USE A FUCKING JUMP! NOONE wants your fucking rants taking up 1/3 of one slog page!

It just shows lack of consideration for your fellow writers.

I agree. The sexism directed at Clinton from Dowd (and so many others) is bullshit. I fully support the post, if there wasn't so much sexism, it wouldn't need to be that long. I wish you would also note the racism directed at Obama. Discrimination is discrimination. As a Black woman both racism and sexism affect me. As a white woman both racism and sexims affect you too.

Seeing the words 'Maureen Dowd' is enough for me to stop reading.

Erica Barnett is right. MoDo has been banging away at this trope for a long time. In fact, I have some recollection of her pushing an "Al Gore is a pansy"-line way back in 2000. Crikey.

Wow! Best piece I have read so far that illustrates the bias towards HC. I am so sick of seeing sexist anti Hilary pieces that I will vote for her if given the opportunity!