Bob Fertik, over at Democrats.com, has a different view and I have to agree he makes an excellent point. He says:
Here's a thought experiment: imagine if John McCain had been asked by a South
Carolina supporter, "How do we beat the nigger"?
How do you think he would have reacted? Would he have fought off laughter, then cracked up, then said "it's an excellent question"?
Not on your life.
McCain would have looked at the woman straight in the eye and said "Madam, that is an appalling question." And if he hadn't, the media - and the American people - would have been all over him.
It's interesting that while racial slurs are no longer acceptable in political discourse, gender slurs apparently are still okay. Even though many still hold strong racist sentiments, they (everyone except George Allen) know enough not to use them. But some politicians apparently still think it's okay to laugh at a gender slur.
What is the word "bitch," after all, but an assault on a woman's femininity and an attempt to shame her into returning to a submissive feminine role?
It should be noted that John McCain did not use the word himself. He knows better than that. But his laugh and his comment indicate that deep inside he still holds the traditional view that women like Hillary Clinton are too uppity and should not be taken seriously.
Hillary Clinton may not want to play the "gender card, "pretending instead that she is being treated exactly the same as her male counterparts, but in fact she is being treated differently. The story a few weeks ago about her laugh is but one example. It has been described by numerous pundits as a "cackle," and by smarmy political consultant Dick Morris as "loud, inappropriate, and mirthless... a scary sound that was somewhere between a cackle and a screech." Of course, we all know what image the mind conjures up when he hear the word "cackle." More importantly, can anyone think of a male politician whose laugh was ever criticized? (Howard Dean comes the closest, but it wasn't his laugh that was demeaned but his "scream," which wasn't characterized as witchlike so much as proof he was unhinged.) No, Hillary Clinton's laugh was targeted because she is a woman, and only women can be characterized as witches, those mythical distortions of femininity who cast spells and eat children.
Hillary Clinton is also criticized for being calculating, for crafting careful responses, for raising huge amounts of money from corporate America, for using clever tactics that make her seem too polished, too ambitious. How is this strategy any different from that of most male politicians, and most particularly that of George W. Bush? Is she more calculating than he was when he put secret religious language in his speeches? Is she being more ambitious than he was with his rangers and pioneers? Is her responding to planted questions any more devious than his refusing to allow anyone into his campaign events unless they sign a loyalty pledge? Of course not. No one can match George W. Bush and Karl Rove in devious, dishonest, and calculating campaign tactics.
The difference with Hillary is that she is female, and somewhow female politicians are not supposed to compete the way men do, if they're even allowed to compete at all. As a woman, she's apparently supposed to charm men into voting for her, and assure women that she is not a threat to them.
Hillary Clinton, however, is a powerful woman in her own right, unlike most First Ladies who defer to their husbands. She was a respected lawyer who kept her own surname even though she was the First Lady of Arkansas for many years. She was a different kind of First Lady of the nation – one who dared become involved in something other than beautifying the nation or glamorizing the White House. Now she is a Senator with much influence and even more power. She is the strongest woman ever to achieve public office in this country and a force to be reckoned with – and many people, both men and women, cannot handle that very well. So they resort to demeaning her, cutting her down to the size they want her to be, using the tactics they always use to keep an "inferior" in his or her place.
The media's attempt to play "gotcha" with McCain's inappropriate response to a female questioner is not the real story here. I doubt McCain is the only Republican candidate who would have reacted this way. The question caught him off guard, and he did not have a canned response, so his natural prejudice came out unintentionally.
The real story is that prejudice against strong women still exists in this country, especially in the Republican Party, and in voters as well as candidates. There has been, and continues to be, a backlash against the feminist movement and against strong women, among conservatives and especially among certain religious conservatives who believe women must be subservient to men. (If you doubt that, just listen to Rush Limbaugh for one day.) McCain did what many in this group would do when he recognized a belief that he agreed with but dared not express himself. He laughed.
Above all, what the story tells us is that true equality does not exist in this country where large groups of people do not believe blacks are equal to whites or women are equal to men. Look at the Republican candidates – all white men - not a woman, not a Hispanic, not an African American among them. White supremacy and male supremacy still dominate large segments of this society and the candidacy of Hillary Clinton is the most serious threat ever to those ideologies. The candidacy of Barack Obama would likewise challenge them. These are ideologies based on fear, phenomena that I will explain in a future post. For now, I simply want to make this point:
Should either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama be the Democratic nominee, I predict we will face something of a moral crisis in this country. The once disguised biases of one segment of the population will become even more obvious, and we will have to decide as a country if we really believe in equality for all, as we say we do, or if we are simply fearful, lying hypocrites.
