Maureen Dowd's Internet Porn Candidate
Whaddaya know? This morning, as a thought experiment, Maureen Dowd contemplated a woman making a successful run for President. She’d like that, she says. She even hopes the “male reporters” in the media would behave if it ever happened. Presumably she includes herself in that group.
Dowd’s candidate would have an easier time than the real female candidate running, because Dowd’s candidate is not a real person, but one of those women on the internet pornography sites. Maureen’s candidate has no brain, no record, no history, no family, no past statements, no existence except in her overheated imagination.
The internet porn candidate would be perfect, because, having no brain she couldn’t be too smart, no record, so she could not have once voted in a way that some critic disagrees with, having no history, people would not simply be able to push a button on their computer to come up with witch lines about her, having no family, she would not remind them of their own sexual “unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies” having no past statements, she would not have talked too much, and having no existence except as a hypothetical, she would never actually win. Anything.
But we could spend forever waiting for her, because we’re not sexist bigots. It’s just that no flesh and blood woman could ever satisfy our need for the perfect female. Meanwhile, for women? Good thing we have the internet.
Comments (15)
Maureen,
Time to do a column on something sensible.
February 13, 2008 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Linda, this post is a little nutty. After reading Dowd's column, I can't see where you're getting any of this. As Dowd states, Hillary is intimately tied to her husband's success and ultimately his failure. Dowd isn't asking for a some blank slate but rather someone who isn't Hillary Clinton.
And I happen to agree with her.
I guess we can spend some time waiting for blank female candidates if you want, but I wouldn't expect Nancy Pelosi to wait with us.
February 13, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Didja agrre with her about Al Gore, too?
February 13, 2008 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have to agree Hirshman sounds more than a little screechy and kinda kooky. Some feminists argue a woman can never be tarred with the acts of her husband or family, which seems a rather absurd dual standard, especially when she's running largely on her "experience" derived from Bill's time in office.
In a hypothetical future, when an ex-president's husband runs for office, I'm sure the past actions of his wife's presidency will also be an issue. As it absolutely should be. In fact, people would be nuts to ignore it.
I also reject the notion that becasue Hillary is a woman running for President she's suddenly elevated to the feminist ideal. Looking at her early years, career, and political record, she's a lot more Margret Thatcher than Susan B. Anthony. For that matter, so are all the New Democrats and DLC types associated with the Clintons.
Their whole legislative record, aside from some social issue tokenism on abortion, was pretty much the same thing as one would get from a moderate Wall Street Republican.
* Bungled "Hillary Care" that set back healthcare insurance and pharma reform for 16 years; and by it's failure profited drug and insurance companies trillions, who then gave enormously to her.
* NAFTA, which the Clintons and Paul Krugman sold to the public on a lot of voodoo economic free market ideology, ignorign all the critics who rightly pointed out it wouldn't work that way in reality becasue it failed to set fair and enforceable labor standards and would result in a rush to the bottom. Which corporate interests knew, the critics knew, and the Clintons and Krugman should have known. It has further eroded the middle class.
* Deregulation of energy and financial markets which directly contributed to the creation of ENRON and all the other financial scandals, as well as the dot-bomb and the housing bubble. Which have all been fueled by the deregulation and laissez faire model which began to emerge under Carter, was championed by Reagan, and continued by Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43. Again, the critics the Clintons ignored rightfully predicted the outcomes: huge corporate profits at the expense of a declining middle class.
* The Clintons (and Gore for that matter) failed to stand up for the environment while in office. Didn't raise CAFE or close the SUV loopholes, nor make any serious effort to protect the environment or even raise issue awareness while in office.
* Clinton was for DCMA, deregulated media ownership, and failed to regulate the airwaves and digital standards to promote a thriving and open technology marketplace. Which has produced greater media consolidation, and set back our media infrastructure and creative industries by allowing duopolist anti competitive practices to run rampant. Our internet and wireless infrastructure is now more than a generation behind other developed nations (who are typically 10x faster and more fully deployed in equivalent markets) which has contributed to a thriving technology industry in Europe and Asia which we lag behind. DCMA and deregulation also strengthened the media and telecoms lobby, now threatening Net Neutrality.
* Clinton was not shy about launching bombing campaigns and aggressively using military intervention. He maintained counterproductive policies on Iraq such as the sanctions which killed literally tens of thousands of Iraqi children in the 90's, and accomplished nothing but kicking the problem down the road. And he passed the Iraq Liberation Act, while doing nothing else, which paved the way for a Republican administration to wage an Iraq war, whihc was the Bush plan even before 9/11, and which Hillary ultimately voted for.
* Extraordinary Rendition, which was a precursor to Guantanamo and using foreign government to torture our detainees, began under Clinton.
* Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask Don't tell were betrayals of fluffy and unrealistic campaign promises the Clintons made to the LGBT community and never intended to keep.
* Clinton expanded the death penalty.
* Clinton supported some elements of the "Unitary Executive" such as his Line Item Veto Act which was ultimately defeated as unConstitutional, but which GW Bush has continued to support through his signing statements.
****
Hillary Clinton hasn't been some ideal of a strong independent woman all her life, nor is she a progressive or even liberal. She, Bill, and the whole DLC + New Democrat movement are triangulators who combines the economics of Corporate Republicans with token Liberalism on social wedge issues.
The fact is she's married to Bill who was the most powerful politician in the world for eight years, who was formerly the most powerful pol in Arkansas, and prior to that the most powerful attorney in Arkansas. Hillary's career, if one cares to check the dates, always gets a huge boost right after Bill attains a new office. Furthermore, her career has consistently gone towards the corporate establishment, from Rose Law Firm, to their client Walmart, and so on.
It's also fair to say the Clintons have always been big on promises and progressive sounding talk, but their actual progressive legislative accomplishments are incredibly thin. They've made plenty of reckless blunders that actually benefited Republicans. Meanwhile while their major policy planks which they've executed deftly for success, such as NAFTA and deregulation, are Republican policies and anything but progressive.
***
The idea that people can simply ignore all that, or that to mention that is somehow sexist, is absurd.
The Clintons have never been progressives.
In fact, aside from a minuscule amount of social liberal tokenism and glad handing some liberal leaders while not actually giving them anything, their successful legislative effort are straight out of the Corporate Republican platform. Which is why they share many of the same donors and tactics.
February 13, 2008 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Linda.
From all the not zealot inclined females.
February 13, 2008 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose as an exercise in imagination I can consider Hillary absent Bill. But tell me how the reality does not include him? Consider that the reality to which I refer includes not only Hillary but those of us observing her.
We remember Bill, and have been reminded of him at length in the campaign. We assume that someone as experienced and intelligent as Bill will not gladly saty out of the way in the White House. Tell me this is not a reasonable assumption.
I've always liked her, but wish she had left others to continue. She had her chance, if she was involved in presidential activity (which experience she claims). And the family is wealthy (justifiably). And the daughter has a way better job than my children (Chelsea is smart and talented). They are doing fine.
But there is no deserve. There is no fair. There is winning, first. The other guy is winning, and will win.
February 13, 2008 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is a little bit of an overreaction. Dowd was pointing out that Hillary was intimately involved in the biggest sexual scandal in American history (she was the biggest victim, just to be clear). She also owes quite a lot of her success to her husband (even though she might have made it without him, in the real world, she didn't). It is fair to say that Hillary "is not the best test case for women," as a result of this. How about Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, Jennifer Granholm, Christine Gregoire, Condi Rice, etc. None of them would have any of the problems (regarding gender) Hillary is running into.
February 13, 2008 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Get real - Today, Maureen Dowd used the valuable editorial space in the world to repeat a filthy joke about Hillary Clinton being a White Bitch. This column was Dowd's seventh straight anti-Hillary column.
Dowd has mental problems that become more apparent as time goes by. Men in the Democratic Party are all feminine and the women are all bitches.
I really, really don't want to blame Dowd's mental problems on the fact that she personally can't sustain a long time romantic relationship. Maybe someone else has a better explanation.
My moment of Dowd enlightenment came when she went alll the way to Saudi Arabia after 9/11 and wrote about women's lingerie.
Maureen Dowd - a waste of talent and time.
February 13, 2008 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maureen Dowd is not exactly one of America's most serious and high-minded social commentators, so I'm not about to defend her latest piece of pop culture chirping and dishing. On the other hand, this post by Linda Hirschman seems like a large red herring, and a last desperate effort at bamboozlement.
I believe I have mentioned before that since 1990, in races in my state of New Hampshire for Governor, US Senator and US Representative I have voted for women nine times. In fact, every time a Democratic woman was on the ballot for one of those positions, I voted for her. I suspect many other male Democrats here could make similar statements.
All of those women I voted for had brains, histories, records and families - and yet that doesn't seem to have stopped me. They were also all accomplished and powerful women, and yet that doesn't seem to have thrown me into paroxysms of castration anxiety, or any of the other charming syndromes that male critics of Clinton are accused of exhibiting. None of the women I voted for were perfect people; but they were all good people whose politics I by and large shared. So I'm afraid I have to reject the implicit argument here that opposition to Clinton is largely based on an unrealistic demand for the "perfect woman", unsullied by connections to real life and the real world. I also have to say that the association of Clinton opposition with a desire for the sort of submissiveness seen in internet porn is a sexist insult.
Many of Clinton's supporters continue to avoid addressing what it is about Clinton specifically that generates opposition. For example, Ann-Marie Slaughter also wrote a column the other day trying to convince us that Clinton's electoral problems were largely due to the fact that a lot of men just aren't ready for a woman president. I guess these are some last desperate attempts to shame Democratic men into voting for Clinton by skirting the issues and tapping into their liberal guilt.
It's been striking to me how ready some of Clinton's supporters have been to skate over Clinton's actual record, as though all opposition to her that purports to be rooted in her record is just so much fussy overreaction based on the mere fact that Clinton "once voted in a way that some critic disagrees with." Now Dean Slaughter is a fairly middle of the road national security professional, so it's probably the case that she doesn't have any very profound opposition to Clinton's foreign policy record. And maybe Linda Hirschman is in the same camp. Fair enough. But it can't have escaped their notice that there are a whole bunch of Democrats who have been intensely opposed to the direction of of US foreign policy over the past six years, and who have viewed Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Steny Hoyer, the late Tom Lantos and a number of other Democrats as Bush enablers, and a big part of the problem. We viewed them as such long before this election season began. And contrary to popular myth, that is not just because of a single vote on a single authorization bill - although that vote was bad enough - but because of a broad, comprehensive pattern of wrong-headed foreign policy positions.
One also encounters the argument that says roughly that Bill Clinton is to Hillary Clinton as Billy Carter was to Jimmy Carter, and that penalizing HRC for the deficiencies of WJC is both grossly unfair, and a sexist refusal to take Hillary Clinton on her own as an independent perosn. But that makes no sense. Bill and Hillary Clinton are a political partnership, and Hillary Clinton's career as a politician is completely bound up with her husband's. They have both been leading lights of the DLC, for example. According to most journalistic accounts, Hillary Clinton was an extremely important member of Bill Clinton's administration, and perhaps his most trusted and influential political adviser. Once upon a time, in fact, the Clintons used to brag about the closeness of this political partnership. If someone has big problems with Bill Clinton's presidency, then saying one will not count those problems against Hillary Clinton makes about as much sense as saying they will not count George Bush's predsidency against Karl Rove.
Rather than explain why men don't like Hillary Clinton, I think it would be more interesting to figure out why so many first generation feminist women do like Hillary Clinton. How did Hillary Clinton come to be their hero? A lot of these women took, I suspect, fairly vigorous antiwar stances. Have some perhaps betrayed their antiwar beliefs for the sake of gender identification? Are they really doing everything they should to hold Democratic enablers of Bush policy accountable for their actions? And why do we get so many articles from these supporters on gender politics, but so few that actually attempt to defend Clinton's record?
As long as we opponents are being asked to examine our consciences about what lies at the bottom of our opposition, perhaps the supporters could return the favor and examine their consciences about what lies at the bottom of their support.
February 14, 2008 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
This post is something I might've expected to see at TalkLeft, but instead, what I found there was a contrary take on the Dowd column y'all are talking about:
A Good MoDo Column, Really
Good? Bad? I dunno. Not sure there's a there, here or there. And now that I've reminded myself of that Gertrude Stein quip, it's reminded me of this other thing she said ...
"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense".
Your candidate has convinced me that she knows the ins and outs of every policy, that she's got the information down pat, but my common sense tells me that knowing a bunch of policy detail is no substitute for voting the right way.
I got the feeling when she ran in NY that she was really appreciative of the opportunity to run and have our support. This time around, I must admit, the whole presumptive nominee vibe from her campaign really turned me off very early in the process. I like feeling like the folks I'm electing owe me something, not the other way around. I never felt Obama's rise was inevitable and I probably wouldn't have been interested in his candidacy if I had. Honestly, I didn't see him coming, and apparently, neither did Hillary. That doesn't make her stupid and it doesn't make me a misogynist for getting onboard with her opponent.
February 14, 2008 5:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Linda, your posts are what keep me still coming back to TPM as I try to fathom the attraction of emptyness. Like lots of things, it must have to do with sex or religion.
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/
February 14, 2008 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Or insanity.
That site's clinical. Get a grip.
February 14, 2008 9:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
The concept of that post is a bit overblown, however, I could also add that female politicians are all too journalist like Dowd object to the way female politicians dress (Pelosi got quite a bit of flak on that account, if I recall). So, perhaps there is a way to circumvent this problem, at least when you are not making an official visit to a Muslim country.
February 14, 2008 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whoah!
I can't stand Maureen Dowd's catty attacks on Hillary. Come to think of it, I pretty much can't stand Maureen Dowd's 13 year old style of being catty about Democrats in general. She's an over-rated simpleton who, more often than not, trivializes the important and tries to make the trivial seem important. In short, she's an intellectual lightweight and a jerk that doesn't deserve either her position or any real respect as a thoughtful observer of politics.
Having said that, this post exhibits a level of bitterness about Hillary's current campaign circumstances that seems to represent a significant chunk of her supporter's view of the world which concerns me and more importantly turns many off to Hillary in general. This sort of very narrow take on what the lack of support for Hillary as a candidate means in the larger context of supporting any woman who might run for President. It's simply not an appropriate or realistic perspective and there's plenty of evidence out there in the world that this read of the situation is inaccurate---not the least of which is the many other highly successful women in public office. With a woman Speaker, governors, Senators and othert members of Congress it's simply implausible to assert that there's some different set of rules when it comes to the office of President.
Some voters may have a problem with a woman being President, but I think the vast majority have left that kind of view behind them. I really do believe that the issue here is Hillary herself as a candidate, not that she is a woman. It has always been the issue for her candidacy and the challenge she faced as a candidate.
And the porn thing... just weird.
February 14, 2008 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess it does get frustrating for those of us who actually look at the policy proposals instead of divine them telepathically that so many Obama supporters accuse Clinton of being more conservative than Obama when except for Iraq (a BIG exception) she is more liberal than he is. Her proposals are more progressive and more likely to succeed - and OBama gives away the store as his opening position, the sign of a bad negotiator.
I have heard the argument that he is merely tacking right to win the general and will move left after the election -- and please, tell me when that has ever happened.
If his initial positions are to the right of Clinton - then so will his final positions. This makes me nervous.
February 14, 2008 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink