Man, I feel like a woman - and not in a good way

The word is on the street. There's a whisper in the wind. Despite denials by her campaign staff, I feel confident that Senator Clinton's much ballyhooed speech today will not only be an acknowledgment that Senator Obama has clinched the nomination, but also a de facto concession speech. In the wake of Obama's stated willingness to meet with Clinton "at a time and place of her choosing" once the primary contest is officially over, I'm also willing to go out on a limb and say that the two campaigns may be preparing to announce Clinton as VP. I put her chances at 60%, and good for her. Choosing her as a running mate may the most important step Obama takes to securing his own win come November.

But the apparent end to Clinton's campaign inspires a bit of reflection - and generally what we have as a nation to look back on over this campaign season is not pretty. A recent Washington Post article by Marie Cocco sums up just a fraction of the misogyny that has plagued Clinton's run for the White House; I've reprinted it below in its entirety.

I've heard some raise the question of whether or not the dirty jokes and tasteless comments, the tacky souvenirs and the ribald asides aren't just part and parcel of another Clinton running for office. Maybe, the theory goes, another woman wouldn't face such pervasive discrimination. Maybe it's just her.

But that's not how it works. You can't shamelessly and repeatedly pander to the lowest common denominator when talking about one woman while simultaneously declaring your respect for women in general. Gender degradation is indiscriminate. Point it at one woman and you can't help but hit us all. If you think it's just her, chances are it's actually you.

Looking back on her 1972 bid for the Democratic nomination for president, Shirley Chisholm was clear in her views of what had been the biggest obstacle to her nomination:

"I suffered from two obstacles," said Chisholm. "I was a black person and I was a woman...I met far more discrimination as a woman in the field of politics. That was a revelation to me. Black men got together to talk about stopping me. They said I was an intellectual person, that I had the ability, but that this was no place for a woman. If a black person were to run, it should be a man."

Thirty-five years later, it seems, Chisholm's impression still holds. And there's little hope that the next female candidate for president will fare any better.

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Misogyny I Won't Miss
By Marie Cocco
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A15

As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the
political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Marie Cocco is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is
mariecocco@washpost.com.