The X Factor

By Lynette Long
www.lynettelong.com
drlynettelong@aol.com
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/a-letter-from-lynettePosted

 

Gloria Steinem, in her recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times, came out strongly against Governor Palin claiming the only thing women have in common with Palin is an X chromosome. I respectfully disagree. Governor Palin knows what it is like to be a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister – things the two men on the Democratic ticket can never fully understand. She knows what it is like to grow up invisible in an incredibly sexist society, to be stared at, groped, and sexually harassed. She knows what it is like to be smaller in stature than men and physically vulnerable. She knows what it’s like to worry that you are pregnant when you don’t want to be or that you are not pregnant when you want to be. Sarah Palin knows what it is to experience the joys and sorrows of motherhood, to nurse a baby while holding down a job, to leave for work in the morning with a toddler tugging at your pant leg, or to have your children calling you at work to diffuse squabbles or ask for help with homework. She knows that once you get to work you have to speak twice as loud and twice as often to be heard and work twice a hard to go half as far. She knows what it is to be a member of the second sex.

 

Gender is the most fundamental human characteristic. The first comment made when a child is born is either, “It’s a girl” or “It’s a boy.” From that second on, boys and girls live in parallel universes in the same culture. From the nursery room to the board room, boys and girls are given different messages about their respective roles in the world. At the hospital they are given different types of names and wrapped in different color blankets. Once home, baby girls and boys wear fundamentally different clothes and play with different toys. This differentiation extends through school where girls are given less attention, picked less frequently to answer questions and placed less often in advanced science and math classes. Once in the workforce, women are steered into lower-paying careers, paid less for the same work, and forced to juggle the responsibilities of work and home. You can’t learn what it is to be a woman, unless you are one. You can’t have a government essentially devoid of women that knows what’s best for women. You can’t legislate for women, without women.

 

After the last Democratic Primary was over and it was clear Senator Clinton was not going to get the Democratic nomination, myself, and a small group of Clinton supporters met with Senator McCain and Carly Fiorina. I personally explained to Senator McCain that women comprise well over half of the population, yet are underrepresented in every branch of government. I asked him loudly and clearly to choose a woman for the VP slot and to increase the number of women in the cabinet and on the Supreme Court. Senator McCain listened respectfully to my request. Representatives of The New Agenda also met with Carly Fiorina and as well as representatives from the Obama campaign to make similar requests.

 

After the Democratic Primary, I was also in contact with a member of Obama’s Finance Committee. He left several messages on my office phone, “urging” me to support Senator Obama. We had numerous contentious conversations and I finally told him I would be happy to vote for Senator Obama and rally other Hillary supporters to vote for Senator Obama but in return I wanted Obama to pledge gender parity in the cabinet. I foolishly thought equal representation in government was a reasonable request. “What if there aren’t qualified women you still expect us to appoint half women to the cabinet?” he replied. I was confused. “There are 300 million people in this country; you’re telling me you can’t find ten qualified women?” His responded, “You can’t have that.” We had no further conversations. There was nothing more to say.

 

Weeks later I approached a training session for DNC canvassers at a park in my neighborhood. Eager to practice their new skills, they all ran up to me, “Do you support Senator Obama? Do you want to donate money to the DNC?” After explaining that I was a Hillary supporter, I again made my request. I will support Senator Obama if he will pick a woman as his running mate and promise gender parity in the cabinet. The men in the group openly laughed at me and found my request ridiculous. I looked at the horrified faces of the newly minted female canvassers. “They’re laughing at you too,” I muttered.

Not one to give up, I contacted a daughter of a friend of mine who is a policy advisor for Obama. She assured me Obama was a good guy, so I posed my request to her. She generously responded, “I’ll ask him.” When I did not hear back from her in a few days, I shot her another email. She told me how disappointed she was in me for making such a stupid request. Obama was on the “right” side of the issues. Why did it matter whether men or women legislated those issues? I guess the answer from Obama was No. What saddened me was her mother was one of this nation’s greatest champions of title nine, educational equity and gender parity. Her mother and I counted the number of pictures of boys and girls in text books, male and female cartoon characters, and documented the underrepresentation of girls in math classes in our nation’s schools.

 

Yes, policy is important but who decides and delivers that policy is even more important. As Marshall McLuhan profoundly noted, “The medium is the message.” Children incorporate many of their perceptions about gender by five years old. Little girls won’t understand if Sarah Palin is pro-life or pro-choice, believes in gun control or is a member of the NRA, but they will know the Vice-President of the United States of America is a girl and that alone will alter their perceptions of themselves.

 

I have given my loyalty to the Democratic Party for decades. My party, which is comprised primary of women, has not put a woman on a presidential ticket for 24 years. My party refused to nominate my candidate, Hillary Clinton, for president or vice president, even though she received more votes than any other candidate in history. My party stood silently by as Hillary Clinton was eviscerated by the mainstream media. My party was mute while MSM repeatedly called Clinton a bitch and symbolically called me and every other woman in this country a bitch. My party was disturbingly silent when the MSM commented on Hillary’s body or the shrillness of her voice, reminding me and every other woman the fundamental disrespect we endure on a daily basis. My party’s candidate was mute when Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger openly mocked Senator Clinton from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ. My party’s candidate was silent when the rapper Ludicrous released a new song calling Hillary a bitch. My party and it’s candidate gave their tacit approval for the attacks on Senator Hillary Clinton and consequently women in general.

 

I have a choice. I can vote for my party and it’s candidates which have demonstrated a blatant disrespect for women and a fundamental lack of integrity or I can vote for the Republican ticket which has heard our concerns and put a woman on the ticket but with whom I fundamentally don’t agree on most issues. If Democratic women wait for the perfect woman to come along, we will never elect a woman. We have to seize opportunity where it presents itself. Besides, the Democratic Party is no longer my home. I have no home, but this election I will make my bed somewhere else.

 

I respect Gloria Steinem’s right to support the presidential ticket of her choice but she is openly trying to derail Sarah Palin’s historic candidacy. As Madeleine Albright said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” I will vote for McCain-Palin. I urge other women to do the same. I might not personally agree with Palin on every issue and I promise to be the first person knocking on her door, if Roe v. Wade, or any other legislation that goes against the rights of women is threatened. But in Governor Palin I find a woman of integrity, who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. I can work with that. I will work with that.

 

When I walk down the street, I don’t have democrat printed on my forehead, but my gender is obvious to everyone and impacts every interaction in my life. Since my country is far from gender neutral, right now for me gender trumps everything else. I urge other women to join me in this fight for equality. Sometimes opportunities occur where you least expect them.

On the intimidation of delegates and the “rigged” roll call vote

The level of disrespect for Hillary, specifically, and the Clintons, in general — not to mention their supporters — has been overt and embarrassing at this convention.  Unfortunately, this has been the style of the true Obama — the intimidating, bullying, disrespectful, power-crazed man — and his mentor, Howard Dean through his DFA, throughout the primary season.

The tactics of GWB in the 2004 election — to isolate and confine protestors and demonstrators to an area off-site and away from the MSM coverage, is another troubling tactic.  Obama and Dean have learned their Rovian tactical lessons well and have incorporated the Rove playbook in this election — a fact which concerns and troubles many loyal, life-long Democrats.  And which, amusingly, does not reflect the “new kind of politics” that Americans assume Obama is referring to in his eloquent, flowery speeches when they sit and listen to him pontificate on the corruption of Washington, scoffing at experience as “Washington trying to boil all the hope out of him.”

Well, I must admit that I had the audacity to hope for something more than an empty suit with a big, however eloquent, mouthpiece.

I am a proud PUMA Democrat and supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. I joined PUMA right after the RBC meeting, when it became evident that the “fix” was in and the party was not going to play fair. PUMAs are loyal, “real” Democrats that espouse traditional Democratic Party values and don’t agree with what is going on in their party right now. Some will vote for McCain (I won’t). Some may vote for Obama. Some will vote for Nader or another 3rd party candidate, and some will only vote for down-ticket Dems. I will definitely vote for down-ticket Dems. I am and will always be a Democrat.

This Gestapo-like intimidation of delegates and disrespect to political opponents is not where it ends. The “troll patrol” mission of search and destroy, trying to find out where DNC PartyBuilder bloggers blog on other sites and who they are reveals how deep the insecurity is in the Obama camp.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! -of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. — Winston Churchill

That’s why Obama failed the “3 a.m.” test when Putin invading Georgia — his fear of making a decision, a commitment. Ted Kennedy once told Obama he needed to run for president before he had a [voting] record to run against. He took that advice to heart, and consequently has avoided making controversial votes ever since. He fears that he might have to run with something besides a “present” vote in the IL State Senate or his complete absence for the vote on Iran in the U.S. Senate — the very kind of vote he so castigated Hillary for on Iraq. His votes on abortion in the IL State Senate have come back to haunt him, and watching him dance around the issue with his swift tongue has been amusing, in some respects, but disheartening in others. His hubris and inexperience and lack of judgment on substantial issues became very evident. And nothing his propaganda machine did or could conceivably do could create a convincing illusion that he was more than an inexperienced man with a tepid, impotent, ineffective response to a real, serious national security threat.

Obama’s solution? Choose a man who had 36 years in Washington (“a new kind of politics” and “change” the way Washington does business?) and who voted FOR the Iraq resolution, just like Hillary.

Obama’s response to critics who supported Hillary? To give Hillary the virtual finger by releasing his VP choice text message at 3 a.m. — the ultimate in immature, sophomoric insults to a lady who has done nothing but try her best to help him.

The disdain in his and his campaign’s remarks toward Hillary and the disparaging comments toward her supporters has done nothing to unify the party, it has divided it. And it is Obama that has done this (or his campaign and supporters on his behalf).

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion. — David Cronenberg

The DNC PartyBuilder (PB) blog apparently has an unpublished list of accepted sources and banned sources — no one I know can tell you where the list is, but it must exist, because the Fist-bump Gang has referred to it numerous times. Who is the Fist-bump Gang? A small group of obsessive Obamabots that are dedicated to rooting out all dissenters and those who are not enthusiastically drinking the “Yes we can!” Kool-aid.

If you publish or excerpt from one of the banned sources that shall remain nameless to all but the Fist-bump Gang, you yourself are labeled a troll, a Republican, an Operation Chaos operative or worse, and a campaign against you ensues. Eventually, you are banned from the DNC PartyBuilder site. No dissent is allowed. My IP address or e-mail address was permanently banned (I cannot get approval to blog or write comments with a different Yahoo address, etc.) for publishing an article from the LA Times about Chris Matthews misogynist behavior this election season. If you read their comments about those of us who have been banned, you would think we had been filthy-mouthed, attacking, smearing “trolls” who had nothing substantive to say. The reality is that they are describing themselves, not us.

Women’s rights was and is a very unpopular issue with Obama supporters, particularly the Fist-bump Gang, at the PB blog. Reminds them too much of the primary season and Hillary’s ability to surmount incredible odds in the mainstream media (MSM). In fact, the Obamabots were outraged and fought mightily against having women’s rights as a topic of the Friday Night Forum on PB, even after we had gay rights and civil rights. This went on for about a month. Apparently women don’t warrant the same consideration. And that’s a good part of the problem overall in the Obama/Dean/DFA-controlled DNC, actually.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. — John Morley

And what these “Yes we can!” fist-bumping Kool-aid drinkers do accomplish in trying to shout down or shut our dissenters is to create an enemy where none may have existed in the first place. That is absolutely true of me. Resorting to calling me and other Hillary supporters a “bitter” whiner or harridan because my candidate lost an unfair election is based on their inability to see the real, substantive issue here. Where is our party going? And what happened to the core values that our party used to represent? Instead of fighting disenfranchisement, we use it as an election tactic. Instead of being the voice of the people, we are substituting delegates who support the candidate of our choice instead of the candidate the people voted for.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion. — David Cronenberg

The faulty assumption is that the Obama propagandists can cover up the truth with their lies if they just repeat it loud enough and long enough – a tactic GWB and Rove have mastered. They have illusions of gradeur and the self-delusions of a false narrative. Like GWB, they are convinced that the problem is not that they are wrong — it’s not the substance of the message itself, but that they are not properly “controlling” it. It’s a PR problem, not a truth or logic problem. And that is the problem.

And an even bigger problem is that the Obama campaign and the DNC are using the MSM as their personal mouthpiece with the cooperation of the MSM. Rather than aggressively and skeptically questioning the propaganda, the MSM is broadcasting their propaganda for them, unquestioning and without any vetting or sourcing. Watching Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann anchoring at the convention site for MSNBC, I thought I was watching a DNC-sponsored infomercial piece — certainly not the days of Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley, much less Edward R. Murrow, who Olbermann has arrogantly stolen his sign-off from. This is what we get for letting corporations control our news media — the best marketing tool money can buy. News by focus groups.

Instead of Obama, his campaign and his supporters making efforts to build relationships with disaffected Dems (primarily Hillary supporters), these guys are trying to alienate them further. This has become the SOP on the DNC PB blog. And it is creating further division, not less.

I remember as a business manager, once sitting in a PR seminar where the instructor made the comment that, when your customer has a bad experience with any of your employees, they aren’t mad at that particular employee, they’re mad at the whole company. This is the impact that these “troll patroling” Fist-bump gang-bangers are having on Obama’s candidacy.

I really tried to get on board the “Yes we can!” Kool-aid train after Hillary conceded. I donated to Obama (not much). I created a profile on his website. I posted a few blogs. But I was constantly attacked by the Fist-bump Gang on the DNC site, along with other Hillary supporters (and that was before they realized I had joined PUMA). For those of you reading this comment who have participated in these type of search and destroy missions, there is a quote that is worth thinking about:

One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you. — Dennis A. Peer

And you Fist-bump Gang-bangers — you DNC troll patrolers — should ask yourselves how many votes have you LOST for Obama today or up until now. It may be more than you realize. I know of dozens of people who have been banned or attacked mercislessly by the Fist-bump Gang who would most likely have voted for Obama had it not been for the nasty, divisive tactics of his supporters. At first, we did not blame Obama, but when it continued and worsened upon Obama’s moderator taking over the blog, it became clear it was sanctioned by Obama and an accepted SOP for his campaign. The real concern is will this be the way he governs as well?

If you don’t know what I am talking about, please check out my WordPress blog site (http://lauraschneider.wordpress.com/ ) or the new political blog site that is open to all parties and all candidates’ supporters (http://www.2008election-forum.com). Suffice it to say that the caliber of the Obama supporters I have encountered on the DNC PB blog does not speak well for Obama.

Interestingly enough, these same “troll patrollers” who are so obsessed with cleansing the blog of less enthusiastic Dems are the ones who also admit to patrolling Republican sites and creating dissent and chaos there. So, they are guilty of the very thing on other sites that they accuse us of on the DNC site. It has been my experience that people who are not trusting are usually not trustworthy. Why? Because they expect you to do to them what they would do to you under the same circumstances. They see themselves in the mirror of the eyes of others.

Obama’s supporters have convinced me that he is not capable of leading this country. Why? If he intends the intimidation and censorship and obsession with “controlling the message” to the point where other ideas cannot be entertained in our party, then he is too power-crazed and corrupt to lead our country. If he is eithe runaware or too impotent to influence his supporters to embrace his message of a “new kind of politics” in reality, not just in hot air, then he is too weak to lead our country. Either way, it does not bode well for Obama, or for us as Democrats.

Either way, he fails the basic test of a leader:

The first responsibility of a leader is to DEFINE REALITY [not obscure it]. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. — Max De Pree

Obama is committed to obscuring reality, not clearly defining it. What is he hiding? His hubris and unabridged lust for power. He will compromise any principle, do anything to get where he wants to go. If that means throwing his grandmother, his minister and our 4th amendment rights under the bus, so be it. Environment? Not a problem, uncer the bus it goes if the polls indicate it will get him a vote or two.

And what has Hillary done? Everything she can to try to unify the party and sell Obama to us. But that is Obama’s job. And Hillary, I’m afraid has already realized that Dean, through his DFA, has already coronated Obama in 2007, when the plans to move the DNC to Chicago were made. She knows, but she is trying to keep the party’s shit together until she can organize a coalition to take our party back. She won’t say so publicly, but she and Bill are fully aware of the travesty that has been done to our party.

What we have to do… is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fracturing our communities. — Hillary Clinton

This is the kind of leader we need for our party. One that celebrates diversity and encourages us to use our voices, not one that does everything he can to silence us and disenfranchise us.

And finally:

Censorship reflects society’s [here, Obama's] lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. ~Potter Stewart

Is this where we want to take our party and our country? Sorry, I’m not riding this Kool-aid train….