You can have my PS2 when you pry it from my cold, dead hands
Hi Guys, Ross A Lincoln here!
Time to come out of the closet. I am utterly opposed to Hillary Clinton running for president in 2008, or any year.
Before I’m misunderstood, let me state outright that I do happen to think we’re ready for a woman to lead us. Furthermore, it’s long, long overdue. There are countless bright, innovative, gutsy and courageous women right now who would make excellent first citizens and comanders in chief, and that the first noteable woman to run for president (in the modern era) was Liddy Dole and not a prominant democrat is shocking and infuriating.
I think it’s shameful that the Democrats haven’t made it a matter of party policy to place more women on the fast track to high leadership positions. But then, the Democratic party is awful at grooming anyone to take the reigns of power. Whether this is due to myopia, stupidity, or just plain corruption is beyond me, but part of the reason Republicans are kicking us around so effectively is that they’re soo good at party building, for administrative AND for PR reasons.
They’re astoundingly good at promoting minorities and women with controversial veiw points, not only to deflect criticism of those views, but to give the (HIGHLY FALSE) impression that their party represents diverse interests. Well written blog The Talking Lion had a good take on this earlier today with a post entitled African-Americans. are. not. stupid:
Say whatever the fuck you want, George. Promise’em the sky and the moon. Pretend you don’t mind shaking their hands you elitist asshole. They’re still not going to vote for your tax-cutting-for-the-obscenely-wealthy, anti-civil-rights ass.
However…
The RNC is aiming at converting black voters to their side by supporting controversial conservative minority puppets for local office. This is a scary strategy that may yield long-term dividends for the R’s.
So, Democrats, you listen up too. You have a lot of minorities in your camp. Put them in office. Let’s show some good faith efforts to represent the diversity of our party in it’s elected officials. There are smart people of every color.
(Post quoted in its entirety. Please click the link and spend a lot of time reading their other wonderful posts.)
They’re right of course, and this applies to everyone.
So why mention Hillary? Because if we stop deluding ourselves, we’ll see that the fact that we’re talking about her as a shoo in in 2008 isn’t due to her actually being a good choice for the spot. It’s that there just isn’t a significantly powerful female Democrat with the name recognition and moneyed backing neccesary to comepete against the other (inevitably republican-appeasing) male competitors she’s likely to run against.
That my friends is insane.
But back on topic, what reasons do I have for opposing her. Well, you can relax, because I promise I’m not going to get bogged down in the “She’s too divisive” argument, or at least, not in the way you think.
Is she too divisive? I don’t know, honestly. I don’t think her politics and persona are more divisive than the weakest Republican. However, I’m from Okahoma, and I’ll bet 100 bucks right now that she will never, ever, ever win that state. And I can say with some authority that Texas wouldn’t go for her, and neither would Arkansas, Georgia, nor Missouri, or most of the South and a sizeable portion of the West.
People in that part of the country HATE HER with a passion that make so-called Bush hatred look like a Roman Empire-style triumph. For those people, Hill is the living embodiment of every single thing they hate. Consider the following:
* They believe she is a murderer.
* They believe she is a stupid, mewing woman who tolerates her husband’s abuse.
* They believe she is a lesbian, which of course proves to these insane people that she’s not a “real” woman, and therefore a threat.
* They believe that she’s an evil, man hating feminist who wants to destroy masculine culture.
* They believe she’s a machiavellian super criminal who, with her husband, is behind a string of murders and crimes that even John gotti couldn’t pull off.
In short, they are as crazy as rabid dogs when it comes to their hatred of Hillary. No contradiction is too galling, no sci fi cliche is too obvious. If it’s evil and someone pins it on Hillary, they’ll eat it up.
They also number in the hundred of thousands, maybe millions, and they are the dominant electoral base in entire regions of this country. I am not saying that she couldn’t ultimately overcome that, (Though I personally think it would take her giving all of these people $1,000 each), but I promise you that if she runs, we will see a fringe right wing mobilization that will astonish us. Pretending otherwise is dangerously naive.
However, I’ll explain why I think her “controvery” isn’t the problem a lot of people assume it is in a moment. I actually have two major complaints about her that actually, truly, inform my reasons for being extremely opposed to her being our candidate, and I think they’re much more sound. I hope, anyway.
First, I hate dynastic politics, and I’m deeply, deeply disturbed by their increasing prevelance. I’m absolutely opposed to them even when it might benefit us, (though it won’t in her case.) I don’t care how cool her husband was. I don’t care how helpful her name recognition may be. I don’t care how supposedly liberal and feminist she is. (I’ll explain in a second why I don’t believe that either.) The fact is, as a matter of principle we should not allow our country to to become divided between one or two warring families. That’s not democracy, that’s not liberty, and that certainly shouldn’t be America.
Reason #2 for opposing her - If we look back and be honest with ourselves, we’ll see that she’s not a good politician. Nothing in her career suggests anything but total lack of judgement, at least when it comes to actually building a political identity. Her health care plan was hopelessly complex, easily lampooned, and presented as an arrogant inevitability. Worse, she failed to forsee that people might scream nepotism at her appointment to the task force. Then again, she was pushing for radical changes, and radical changes require brazen stubborness, so that in and of itself isn’t enough.
So, she made that condescending Tammy Wynette comment in 1992. She abandoned her feminist persona after the Health care thing and came off looking like an opportunist ditching her true colors when it became politically inconvenient. And then she became a senator in New York, probably the only place in America she was actually eligible to run where she could actually win. Her victory in NYC is a testament not to her electability, but to her personal popularity in a city that apparently doesn’t give a damn about carpetbagging. It isn’t anything to do with her actual political prowess.
Finally, however, she just isn’t a true liberal anymore. Whatever her brilliance, and she is brilliant, and whatever her feminist credentials (and they were considerable in her younger years), she has proved herself as a senator to be nothing but a toadying moderate, loyal enough to her consituents, for which I salute her, but absolutely not the sort of strong, independent and proudly opposing voice that would justify the support she gets from the left.
So she’s an inpet politician and a fake liberal, who as a senator has had more in common with joementum than someone who really represents the future of our country, and (what should be) our party. And you know what? She just gave me one more reason not to vote for her.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is calling on federal regulators to investigate the latest version of “Grand Theft Auto,” a popular video game series that allows players to go on simulated crime sprees.
In a letter she is sending Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission, the New York Democrat expresses concern over reports that anyone who uses a free code downloaded over the Internet can unlock sexually graphic images hidden inside the game, called “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.”
Clinton asked the commission to determine “the source of this content,” especially since the game can fall into the hands of young people. The game industry’s self-policing unit, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, is investigating whether the maker of the game violated the industry rule requiring “full disclosure of pertinent content.”
Oh, why is it always a Democrat who steps up to flip out about scary media? Why can’t dems just be the mature, able to handle stuff like grown ups party? But political pandering aside, the game is rated M (FOR MATURE ure ure ure). You know, for grown ups only. And furthermore, as an adult, I don’t want my right to access media that I like, to be hindered because some child might accidentally see it. I am a grown up and I’m tired of being forced to cater to the tastes of children whose parents can’t be bothered to handle raising them.
This game isn’t meant for them anyway, and it’s not my fault if they see it. Sure kids might get access to it. Kids might also steal their parents’ car keys, break into their liquor cabinet and download porn. That problem can easily be solved if parent take an extra five minutes to pay attention to their kids’ activities.
Furthermore, I don’t have kids, and there’s a lot of people like me who vote. But even if I did, what does it matter if I make the decision to let them play this game? My parents trusted me enough to let me watch A Clockwork Orange on video when I was 13 years old. You know, because they assumed that I know the difference between art and reality.
Do Democrats, the supposed party of tolerance, actually trust people to make these decisions, to handle it? Do they come out on the side of moderation, restraint, and the first amendment? No, of course not. So for answers to why the Dems can’t seem to win anymore, look no further than this latest attempt to out-prude the republicans.
I wonder why Hill and her ilk haven’t realized that Al Gore was crippled by this kind of thing years ago? He had already lost a lot of potential support back in the 80s, simply by being married to the founder of the PMRC. I know a lot of people who refused to vote Bill Clinton in 1992 because of that fact. That lingering resentment probably contributed considerably to his (albeit HIGHLY unfair) image as a stuffy dork, when he ran for president in 2000.
Meanwhile, Bush’s nudge-nudge-wink-wink stealth party boy persona contrasted well against Gore’s rep. You know, the “I’d like to have a beer with that guy” delusion that convinced a huge number of idiots to sacrfice their freedom for coke fueled fascism. I know back then that a lot of libertarians and social liberals, who should have known better, somehow convinced themselves that Bush would be less of a threat to free speech than Gore, or at least, that they were an equal threat. Obviously, this is a ridiculous notion on its face, and the source of many arguments I’ve been in since, but one that still infuses the opinions of hold-out naderites who continue, to this day, to insist that things would be exactly the same had Gore won.
Call them idiots all we want, but if we keep letting people Like Hillary play the moral outrage card like this, they’ll keep being able to make that point somewhat convincingly. Mallarkey like this little PR stunt isn’t going to help.
All over the country, the Democratic rank and file, sympathetic but unaffiliated liberals, and even their critics are begging, pleading for Democratic party to be an opposition party. In the case of the Dem rank and file, and liberals in general, who by the way make up far more of the population than conservative hard liners, we would die for the dems, just once, to treat us like a desireable constituency.
The Democrats’ assumed natural constituents, treated for too long like lepers, don’t really care about this kind of thing, and we’re leaving the party in droves because of it. We don’t need you to show us how moral you are, and we should be. We already have a party whose only purpose aside from money is to shame us out of liking sex. We do need you to actually fight about stuff that actually matters. And we need to you distingush yourselves from the republicans.
Hill is already the single most controversial politician in this country, because we are apparently retarded and blind. Do I think it’s appropriate, or that she deserves it, or that it’s a valid reason to base your opposition to her on? Heck no. Bush or cheney or any number of batso republicans ought to be more controversial, but they aren’t.
So why not just go with that AND BE THE CONTROVERSIAL CANDIDATE THEY ALREADY THINK SHE IS. What does she have to lose? Nothing, but she has everything, including democratic self esteem, to gain. The reason republicans hate her is because they’re sexist and opposed to sexual freedom and women’s equality. That will never change. No matter what she’s done, even as she’s been far from being a paragon of these virtues in her political career, she has functioned as a lightening rod for popular outrage against social progress.
If she thinks that petty nonsense like this will somehow protect her, she’s clearly not as smart as her reputation assumes. She should be well aware of the fact that democrats have never won elections by out republicaning the Republicans, and that no amount of trying to make nice will make them stop calling her “Billary” behind her back. Why she thinks this little stunt will succeed for her where countless others have failed is proof that she isn’t qualified, nor appropriate to be our next president.
But no, instead she’ll be a moderate loser, and like in every other election, our hard work and good will be betrayed as she moves to the right and pretends not to know us three times before, well, you get the point. Opposing Hillary doesn’t have to be about condescendingly telling feminists to wait. There’s no reason they (and I’d like to think, we) should have to wait anyway. But knowing we’re ready for it doesn’t mean we have to shoot ourselves in the foot trying to get there. Let’s ignore Hillary, and start actually filling the Democratic ranks with real diversity. You know, before the republicans get their first and steal the PR thunder from us.
And for the record - GTA Rules. It’s violent, mean spirited, repugnant and without any cultural value. And it’s a ton of fun.
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Gosh, I would love to disagree with you…but I can’t. Much as I admired her early on, the slow slide to mushy politically expedient non-positions lost me. And to top it off, I loathed Tipper for just this type of thoughtless, reaction-only interaction with the world. Now someone I once had great respect for is following the lead of that fool! Maybe we can convince Barbara Boxer to run. Word is she actually stands up for her convictions.
Comment by addy — July 14, 2005 @ 7:19 pm
I’m with Addy. Throughout all this, I just kept thinking “Barbara Boxer.” When I wasn’t doing that, I was nodding in agreement about Hillary Clinton. She soesn’t stand out as being any different from most politicians who put strategy before conviction.
Comment by manxome — July 14, 2005 @ 10:46 pm
It’s easier for a more conservative person to run as the first minority/woman/etc. because they attract conservatives who believe their philosophy and minorities/women/etc. who want to see one of their own in office. That’s why Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court.
Comment by George — July 15, 2005 @ 8:01 am
“the first noteable woman to run for president (in the modern era) was Liddy Dole and not a prominant democrat.”
Patricia Schroeder (D-Colorado) was in the House of Representatives when she ran for President in 1984.
I think you may be giving the Republicans too much credit, Ross, unless 1984 predates the “modern era” and/or serving in Congress doesn’t make one “prominant” [sic].
Comment by jim — July 15, 2005 @ 8:40 am
Sorry, my bad–it was 1988, not 1984. But still, this predates Elizabeth Dole’s campaign by 12 years.
Is 1988 so long ago that it belongs to a different era? Or am I just getting old? At what point was the slate wiped clean, so that now Elizabeth Dole and the GOP seem like pioneers, even to liberal commentators?
Comment by jim — July 15, 2005 @ 9:00 am
good pont, though since she has zero name recognition, hasn’t remained a spotlit dem figure, and has low low political celebrity, I chose not to include her. Perhaps I was remiss, and I apreciate your bringing her up, but I think calling her prominent, especially when we’re talking about people with profiles lke Liddy and Hill, is a bit reaching. The fact is, Patricia was ignored and pretty much cast aside. The fact is tha very few people remember her candidcacy. I’m not saying its right.
Perhaps you misnderstood me, but I’m not saying the republicans are pioneers, I’m saying that they’re craven and that the dems are failing to actally live up to their goals and ideals. I hope you understand that I think the republicans are insincere, but hat dems are lazy hypocrites who have a great opportunity and are missing it.
If she had been given prominant political rewards fr having ran, like Liddy was, or if her public profile had emained high, like Hill, I’d agree with you.
Comment by ross lincoln — July 15, 2005 @ 9:12 am
I agree with you. I kept thinking Boxer as well. I’ve been fed up with Hillary’s position for a while now. The fact is, no matter who the Democrats nominate, he/she will be labeled “way too liberal,out of the mainstream” by the Republicans. So, we might as well nominate someone who actually is liberal/progressive!
Also, re: Republicans nominating minorities for positions. Yes, the strategy works for the reason that George gave, but also so that they can play the race card. Remember Gonzalez’s and Rice’s nominations - With Alberto, they said Democrats were racist and anti-Hispanic, when it was really about the little torture thing. With Rice, they cried “racism”, when it was really about spectacular incompetence.
Comment by Dave in CA — July 15, 2005 @ 11:06 am
You know what? I could care less how calculating the Republicans are when it comes to minorities. If they just want to be able to play the race card, so be it. A minority in a position of power is still better than no minority because it helps expand the image of what that minority is capable of accomplishing in America. That’s why as much flack as I’ve taken over the past few years, I’ve supported the Republican Party’s efforts at appointing powerful minorities. I was even pleased to see that the GOP was apologizing for The Southern Strategy, which is an effort I think is kind of useless (like the Senate’s apologizing for not doing more to outlaw lynching).
I’m with you, Ross, on the dynastic politics tip. I think I wrote about it in my blog once. I think it would be ridiculous if at some point in the future a kid opened a history book and saw that our country had been run by two families for an entire generation. Still, I can’t help but think it would be good for the party and for the country if a major party’s ticket were headed by a woman. I still think that 2008 is going to come down to Rice vs. Clinton.
Comment by E-Rock — July 15, 2005 @ 2:44 pm
Steve Gilliard posted on this GTA/Hillary thing as well. I am going to recycle my comment from over there:
While I think Hillary is a fucking jackass for this stunt, Rockstar is not innocent in this. The sex scenes are in the game and this download is just a way for users to “unlock” them.
From SF Chronicle:
Rockstar is selling the game with AO content in it. Sure, it’s hidden, but to me they are liable.
It would be akin to Maxim or FHM shooting the models naked, but overprinting with a special ink swimsuits and strategically clutched bedsheets onto nude bodies in order to be sold on the regular newsstand. Then afterwards it’s revealed that you can scrape off the ink and all the chicks are naked!
Come on.
I have zero confidence any of the html I just did will look right.
Comment by Mr Furious — July 15, 2005 @ 2:58 pm
I’m forced to agree that overall, what they’re doing, no matter how obviously craven, it’s going to generally make people more comfortable with having previously excluded minorites and women in positions of greater power, and despite the fact that they’re recruiting useful plants to advance their decidedly unprogressive agenda, it’s has good points.
I didn’t say so quite as directly as I intended to, but I really am annoyed and angered by the lack of a similar effort in the democratic party. Certainly, one could argue that Sharpton’s inclusion last fall was such an effort, but I don’t buy it. he was a vanity candidate and obviously not going to win.
The democratcs simply don’t seem to have anything remotely resembling a party building structure to recruit youth, women and minorites into the party for the next generation of politics. Why, it’s almost as though they know that such recruits would, inevitably, be much more liberal than the useless, pandering fools (such as Joementum and Hill) who currently dominate the party.
Wait, “almost”? I mean “obviously”. I don’t like pissing all over my side of the fence, and even though I’m an extremely insigificant blogger, I don’t want my words twisted to imply support for the republican party in any fashion. But honestly, as craven as I believe the republicans are, I can’t find anything in the behavior of the dems to indicate any better position.
The fact is, every time the dems get their asses handed to them, the first thing they do is turn on the party faithful, on liberals, on anyone trying to make a difference. They moan and weep about how they were taken too far to the left, or some such BS. My reaction is always “prove it”. Prove to me that John Kerry actually adovated a radical departure from Bush, and I’ll believe it.
Never mind that these hacks did nothing but distance themselves as far from these people as possible during the election cycle. You’d think they’d get that distancing themselves in every way shape or form from their base has been a LOSING strategy for them.
Meanwhile, they’re bleeding supporters like political hemophiliacs. And the problem is that the people leaving the party can’t seem to band together and form a competing consensus party. Instead, we get minutia-obsessed, single issue protest parties like the greens, who actually do only represent a tiny proportion of the body politic.
Everyone always says we need a third party, but so far there just isn’t a real choice. What a viable party should do is offer a home for various competing BUT NOT conflicting points of view.
That said, I stand by my many earlier statements. The problem in this case isn’t the willingness of us hard liberals to work in a group. The problem is that ungrateful dicks like the moderate hobags in charge of the dems simply can’t wait for the first opportunity to ditch us, betray us, insult us, or ignore us. Consensus is going to have to go boths ways, and we on the left are tired of being the only ones who ever compromise.
Anyway, enough. my point is that it is, in fact, ass shakingly annoying how little effort the dems have made to advance party members who actually represent the totality of their constituency. Even though everyone “knows” we’re the party of diversity, we’re getting our asses handed to us because the republicans are better at looking like it.
Comment by Ross A Lincoln — July 15, 2005 @ 3:03 pm
And look, in any game there are test scenes that end up left on the final product that the average (read: Almost every) player will never be able to see. The steps you have to take to see the supposed scenes are difficult, and beyond most gamers’ abilities. Remember that this guy wrote code to reveal scenes that were locked up.
Leaving half-finished test scenes in a game is supremely common, and this explains why games also have cheat codes and hidden levels (See Super Mario brothers “Negative Zones” for more on this). Not only that, but this game is available on PS2, Xbox, and now PC. Only a PC gamer could ever find it, assuming they’re willing to go through the effort, and that’s because there is no command line on consol games. You can’t hack them. unless you’re a super techie and that’s just not most people, or even most gamers.
At most, Rockstar is guilty of being too intent on releasing this game fast to clean up everything. This so called scene has never shown up on any hidden features forum, on any cheat forum, or anything. This guy found something that was lazily left on the game, something he spent hours digging up, and now he’s trying to get his 15 minutes contributing to America’s puritan freak out. He’s a dick, and rock star has nothing to apoligize for.
And furthermore, it’s an adult game. People seem to be forgetting this. Not my problem if some kid gets into it, and certainly not my fault. Games with sex scenes that require zelda like efforts to see won’t fuck kids up at all unless they’re already fucked up. We have more to worry about from a war obsessed presidency that lied us into thousands of deaths.
Comment by Ross A Lincoln — July 15, 2005 @ 3:07 pm
Thanks for pointing out things that need to be said. Sometimes it feels as if we progressives are nobody’s base anymore. Just the loonies both leaderships like to point at and react to as if we were a heavy chain around their ankles. Heath care for all, privacy rights, concern for the air and water, freedom of speech…why that’s just crazy talk!
Thank god for Howard Dean’s beautiful big mouth. Sharpton too, easy as it is to make of him everything that came out of that man’s mouth was gold.
Comment by addy — July 15, 2005 @ 4:02 pm
OK, a couple things:
1.
That’s true as a general statement, but when it comes to specifics, you have to weigh just how much you’re willing to trade for that “image of what the minority is capable of accomplishing in America.”
Case in point: Janice Rogers Brown. She’s black, but was the “image” of a black woman on the DC Circuit Court really worth tilting a closely-divided court to the far right with someone so right-wing she thinks Social Security is unconstitutional??
2.
Liable to whom? Only to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, methinks. Rockstar arguably violated their contract with ESRB in order to get a more favorable rating, but legally, this remains a dispute between two private corporations. The courts should handle it, not a grandstanding Senator.
There is no law to enforce the ESRB ratings! And it’s hard to argue that there could or should be such a law, unless you’re willing to jettison decades of First Amendment law. Hillary may be willing to do that, but that’s just more evidence for Ross’s point: Hillary isn’t a true liberal, and we shouldn’t root for her to be the Democrats’ nominee. (Though if we’re stuck with her through an echo of last year’s primary process, I’d still support her - grudgingly - over any foreseeable Republican nominee.)
In fact, I can see videogame manufacturers doing this legitimately. Let’s say you wanted to produce a game in two versions: one targeted to an M rating, and another targeted to an AO rating. From a programming standpoint, the easiest way to do that is to write the AO game, but put a flag in it to control whether the AO content displays. Then you just have to change one byte to produce both versions of the game. If someone (who doesn’t have an ESRB contract) later finds a way to trick the M cartridge into playing the AO content, I can’t really say the original manufacturer should be held liable.
Comment by Mathwiz — July 16, 2005 @ 10:50 am
Can we not just admit that the only reason we keep hearing about Hillary in 08 is because FOX news and the RNC want her to be there in 08?
As has been said most of the South and every damned male chauvinist in America will not vote or her and many will actively seek to oppose her. Anyone even specualting on her running or a woman for that matter is either wanting to lose or living in a fantasy world that doesn’t accept the facts of America as it currently is.
No insults intended or implyed. While idealogically it might be fine to back a woman running for president and to believe they can do just as good a job and the world is a grande fair place where their femaleness is not an issue, the truth of the matter is it is not a unbiased world, America is not ready to ELECT a woman president and the only people who really want to see her run in 2008 are Republithugs and the bought and paid for MSM who will have plenty to talk about for months if not years afterwards.
Comment by IXLNXS — July 17, 2005 @ 9:55 pm
Well, I’m not sure I agree with you. Perhaps I am wishfully thinking, but I’m of the opinion that if we’d just act like it’s the inevitability that it is, it would by default become inevitable. The idea that we’re not ready seems ridiculous to me, and a bit of a cop out.
Now I do think hillary is being built up because republicans think she’s the candidate they’ll have the easiest time beating,but dems have sadly been resigning themselves to her being the nominee too. This has little to do,in my opinion, with America’s general tolerace for female leadership, and I’m certain that your pessimism is unfounded.
But anyway, perhaps you’re responding to a post on another blog, because I don’t remember being that pie in the sky about this topic.Plus, why hasn’t Hill’s hating on my PS2 generated more outrage?!?! I need videogames!!!
Comment by Ross A LIncoln — July 17, 2005 @ 11:42 pm
How many times have we cursed those “average” republicans who still continue to support the Bush administration, who still vote republican because they want small government and low taxes, who just can’t seem to get it through their thick skulls that it’s no longer the party they thought it was? We’ve heard it (or said) it a hundred times: “If only those red-staters could see that they’re voting against their own best interests…” But, I think we’re somewhat guilty of the same thing ourselves. We’re holding on to what the democratic party used to stand for, rather than voting based on what we really believe in. I think the democratic party is no longer our party. If we’re willing to hold our noses and vote for Hillary just beacuse she’s the democratic candidate (if that happens), then we’re just as stupid as they are. (OK, maybe not quite… I don’t want to be misunderstood - I’m not saying that suporting Hillary would be as bad as supporting Bush…) Again, just in case it’s not clear, I’m NOT trying to say that supporting Hillary is as bad as supporting Bush. I’m just thinking that we might want to take a look at ourselves, and our support for the democratic party, and whether the democratic party, as it is today, is really worthy of our support.
Comment by mona — July 18, 2005 @ 7:12 pm
Why talk, when you can do.
Comment by Dorian — July 19, 2005 @ 1:34 am
I think your opposition to Hillary devolves down to the fact that she’s a professional politician. I don’t know what parallel universe allows any other profession to seek election with any expectation of winning.
Comment by Elliot Essman — July 19, 2005 @ 5:21 am
Elliot, I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous,and I think you didn’t read my post.
Look, go back and re read. I am against Hill because she’s unqualified, and she ’s a pandering mushy moderate who isn’t a partisan. I also talked about how inept she is at being a politician. I actually want pros running for office, but I want them to be partisans, not mushy moderates too willing to make peace with the other side.
I also had a decent sized section about how the dems DO NOT have a party building apparatus that trains the next generation, nor are they doing anything to fill the party ranks with a polity that reflects the true diversity of the party. Meanwhile, the republicans who do have such an aparatus are kicking our asses both rhetorically and electorically, and it’s ridiculous.
Sounds like supporting professional pols to me.
I have no idea how you missed that, and please forgive me for being prickly about this, but don’t put words into my mouth to make it easier for you to make your point.
Dorian - Agreed, but this is a blog, the whole purpose of which is to discuss things, to talk. If you have any suggestions about doing, please feel free to post them, but please don’t just lay in to people for, I’m assuming, some kind of apathy. Also, you have no real clue what any of us do when we’re not on the Internet. However, as I said I welcome any suggestions.
Mona - YOu’re right of course. Hopefully that’s a little of what we’re doing here.
Comment by Ross A Lincoln — July 19, 2005 @ 9:44 am
I’m sorry, when I said:
I actually meant “This is an online magazine“. Sorry about that Greg!
Comment by Ross A Lincoln — July 19, 2005 @ 10:04 am
If this is an online magazine, where are the softcore American Apparel ads?
Comment by dAnimal — July 19, 2005 @ 3:28 pm
Where they’ve always been Young dAnimal: In your heart. In Your heart!
Comment by Ross A Lincoln — July 19, 2005 @ 4:38 pm
I agree with a lot of what you wrote, Ross, but I do have one comment:
Hasn’t her whole life been “feminist” as far as standing up, taking the heat, being a controversial powerful and strong-willed woman? Very anti-traditional 50’s woman.
I agree with the rest though.
Comment by Ben — July 21, 2005 @ 7:13 am
Harry Potter and The Gang of 14
Cross-Posted over at The Talent Show. Aside from the Press that being a mushy, collaborating pansy gives you, what benefit is there in proving that you’re a “reasonable liberal”? You get your picture in the papers, but golly, who would…
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