blatham wrote:And I think that I can trace those notions directly back to two things: first, cultural notions about females in power and second, the right wing campaign to "position" or "frame" her negatively in relation to those cultural notions...the witch, the bitch, the improperly empowered and totalitarian mother in law, the passionless ball-squasher, etc.
Yes, of course. Of course those would be the two things that have informed the perception of Hillary that people like Soz, Snood and me have. After all, just look at us: look at Soz, or at me. We're natural bait for the cultural notion that a powerful woman must be "a witch and a bitch". I'm sure that's how Soz sees it - sees herself, probably, as well. It's certainly how I saw my mother. When you dig deep enough in the psyche of her or me or Snood, what you find is indeed the underlying "unreflected cultural notion" that "the proper place for women is the kitchen and the proper place for minorities is hotel staff." Of course!
And then of course, what else could Snood or me be possibly influenced by in our perception of Hillary's character than the right wing campaign? Its not like there have ever been progressive and leftwing voices deploring and criticizing Hillary's modus operandi. No, we have just bought into the Fox News media smears!
Because there is nothing in Hillary's actual, real-life character, or in the role she has played and the way she has chosen to play out that role, that would actually warrant any semblance of the impressions we have of Hillary.
"A tad insulting"? No, it's plain arrogance, Blatham. The vanity that comes with the righteous sense that you have found The Right (and by extension, Only) Answer, and if others disagree they must just be.. well, misguided.
But in reality, the insights you offer here are hardly some silver bullet that explain it all. It's pedestrian stuff, to be honest - yes, we know, we've read it in all the magazines and blogs as well, and yes, we actually also agree that the elements you describe have played a role. But no, that's not
all there is to say about it, and no, it cant neatly serve to explain away all and any hesitation about Hillary's character.
Ironically, the trap you have fallen in is that you yourself have become a prisoner of the rightwing media smear machine. The smears they put out are obviously intellectually and morally bankrupt, and they deserve to be angry about. They deserve vigilantly rejecting. But there is a width of debate and criticism - also of Hillary's modus operandi, yes - possible
within the progressive political spectrum as well, whereas you seem to have narrowed your horizon to the merely reactive: analysing, reacting and rejecting the rightwing media stuff, and basta. If they say something, the opposite must be true. And if anyone on the left has criticism that is anywhere similar to what the rightwing has put out, it must be informed by it and rejected.
Your purely reactive mode of analysis reminds me, and not for the first time - because the more I think about this the more I'm reminded of a previous, seemingly unrelated debate of principle we had (on pages 54-57 of
this thread) - of that part of the European hard left of the Cold War era, which led its disgust of the CIA and US tactics harden into a reactive loyalty to the other camp. Like more independent leftist minds, they read and knew all about the CIA crimes and intrigues that toppled democratically elected governments, armed terrorist guerrillas to undermine any leftwing third world government, aided and abetted coups and dictators. Like them, they knew of the mass misinformation spread by the hard right in the Cold War, the lies and deceptions. But unlike them, they had become gradually unable to view any concerns or disturbing news about countries in the other camp in any other light
but that one.
They knew the CIA was out to discredit, say, Sandinist Nicaragua by any means, so when news that reflected badly on Ortega and his men came through, they felt justified in dismissing it out of hand - I'm not going to be a foil for CIA propaganda! The result, of course, was a deeply unhealthy domain in political culture - which eventually led those particular leftists to sleep through far too many crimes and oppressions on the part of any regime opposed by the US. Whether it was the Eastern Bloc in the fifties or later, when even on the left noone but hardline communists still supported those countries, the regimes in Mozambique, Angola, Cuba, Nicaragua, you knew there really was a powerful disinformation campaign by the US & CIA, so when you heard of bad things from there, what else could it be
but CIA misinformation? But that's myopia, right there.
