DAMN STRAIGHT!

Hell of a post.

By the way, I'm the father of a Marine and the husband of a woman who spent a year patrolling the East side of Houston. Neither of them talks tough. But both of them believe in calling bullshit when they hear it.

So had not last night's debate happened you would vote for her?

I DON'T THINK SO.

I really despise this "women as manly men" crap. Out here in the real world women don't have to be "tough old broads." First of all, not all of them really care what opinion men have of them. They don't need the approval of men who are intolerant of anyone different from themselves. They don't have to prove that they are as macho as some men are - they just don't have the need to pretend to be something they're not - men. In fact, some of us see men and women as human beings with all the faults and virtues inherent in humanity.

It's a shame that in Texas you had to act like a man to get respect from others. That's actually the point of feminism - that you don't have to be a man for others to accept the fact you are entitled to the same rights as they are. Pardon me if I don't really care for your methods in Texas - the unacceptably lowest rate of children in poverty and without insurance, your abysmal school financing, your 50% drop out rate of high school attendees, your criminal environmental record, your record of most legal killings by governors in the nation. Maybe if "your women" would do a little less masculine posturing and a little more "whining" you wouldn't be tied with Mississippi as the worst of the worst. Of course, not all of us consider that "whining" some of us call that standing up for ourselves. We tend to call what you're advocating - pretending to be something you're not in order to gain something - manipulation. Some of us think that this isn't "a man's world" we think it's a people's world.

Congratulations on being a man - if you can't change the system, reinforce it, I suppose.

p.s. I've seen doctors, nurses, cops and attorneys pass out at autopsies - it's called the empathy thing.

Quit your whining.

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

What a great diary!

And oh, how we miss Molly Ivins.

Molly Ivins didn't whine. She could both dish it out and take it in. And she could drink anyone under the table. Solid dame.

She also had no time for Hillary Clinton.

From January of 2006:

"Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges."

Why do you keep asking this?

I wasn't able to watch the debate, but I read through the transcript and, from what I could find, the only person that said anything about re-invading Iraq was Tim Russert.

Even Sen. Clinton called him on that question being total BS.

Why do you keep pushing it?

Deanie: You. Are. My. Hero. Heroine. Whatever. A truly tough broad like you won't care. I'm a nice (maybe no to nice) jewish girl from Connecticut, just so you know that Texas has no monopoly on uppity women.

I just posted a much more inarticulate attempt at your message elsewhere, but from now on I'll link back to yours when anyone complains about double standards base on either race OR sex. It's not fair, it's not right, but everyone views Hillary through the lens of sex and Barack through the lens of race. The only way to break bigotry down is to get your foot in the door by at least pretending to fit in. I don't know about anyone else, but I've never had anyone open the door of opportunity because I thought I deserved to get inside.

Wait a minute. How dare some woman talk back!

Let's see if I can paraphrase the "subtle" message from the OP:

"So, quit your complaining, your whining, your bitching, and back talking. Quit your nagging, your two-faced talking, back-stabbing, whoring ways. Nobody can trust a woman who talks all the God-damn time. Quit your crying. You whine just like a little girl. Just shut the hell up, all ready. This is a man's world and if you intend to live in it, you'd better cut off your tits and grow some balls...."

I think I've got the tone down....

...BevD and Oregon Activist, and also Billy, hit it square when voicing concern over the hate-filled, anti-Hillary voters out there backing Obama. Obama isn't bad just because he may inadvertently feed these people a bone from time to time. But, hell's bells! The exit polls showing half of Obama's voters won't vote for Clinton if she became the nominee. 1 out of 2? OPs and comment threads come off 2/3s against Clinton -sometimes just angry and hostile. Maybe it's true what people say about bashers, but I know they don't represent the majority of the US -and I don't think they represent Obama, let alone the virtues of the Democratic party.

Then again, I've always been told I'm just a crybaby.

Funny thing though, isn't it? Before Clinton was attacked for whining, she was attacked for being militaristic and too aggressive. I think the catch phrase was, "Bush in a dress"

too rich. too telling....

Let's see. So far today, after I posted this, I read numerous newspapers and blogposts and liveblogs concerning last night's debate. At least half a dozen times, in op-eds and in blogposts, I read that Hillary was at the point of whining, and that she seemed "petty."

But after posting my blog, rather than getting into a discussion on what constitutes toughness, which I defined as "grace and strength when under assault," or why a woman is still held to a harder standard and why it is so important, even now, that if a woman is trailblazing a path where no woman has gone before, then she must at least show grace and strength under pressure to avoid appearing to be whining, which is perceived by many as a defensive, weakened position.

Ahhh, but no.

The only other time in three years of blogging that I recall being attacked personally was in the beginning, when any kind of genuine and well-documented criticism of Bush or his administration that I made brought out all kinds of hateful, snide comments from right-wingers directed at me for being a "Bush-hater."

No matter what I said about any of his policies, they accused me of bashing their hero and of hating him.

I find it ironic that, no matter how many times I state that I have supported Hillary for many years but that I have good reasons for not supporting her candidacy at this time, I STILL get accused of being a "Hillary-hater" or, better yet, an "Obamamaniac"--gee, did I get enough "amamas" in there? I don't use that word enough to be sure of the spelling.

I was accused, for instance, of not feeling empathy for a dead child because I did not faint when I saw him on the medical examiner's table, that there was something about my "tone" about the "dead kid story."

Anyone who would accuse me of that has not, themselves, ever faced such a horror. I can tell you that for many months I was unable to sleep because of that child's face; I cried for him and prayed for his family and wondered for years what had happened to him. He haunts me to this day; every feature of his little face etched in my brain.

But if you know anything about law enforcement officers, you know that, even though they FEEL those same anguishes, they cannot SHOW it because if they do, they will be unable to do their jobs. They have to steel themselves at the time in order to function, and then they deal with it later.

Those cops had to know that I could take the things they were willing to show me when they took me behind the blue line. I had to show them that I could take it. How else could I possibly understand?

Showing strength at such a time does not mean you feel nothing, nor does it mean you are "talking tough."

If you truly think that my definition of being tough is to feel nothing, then you have sadly mis-read what I was saying.

Send a child off to war, to fight in the biggest and toughest battle in Marine Corps history since Khe Sahn, live with daily horrific newscasts of the dead and dying in his combat unit, see battle pictures on the evening news and on the covers of Time and Newsweek, write letters to the mothers of his dead friends, put your arms around the mothers of sons who live but whose brains are dead, go about your days in an ongoing haze of agony for months on end, then welcome your child back in your arms thin and angry, and help him deal with his demons and get back to some semblance of a normal life.

Then have the unmitigated gall to suggest to me that I do not know empathy.

Furthermore, I think the present discussion had absolutely nothing to do with the education problems or whatever in the state of Texas. Attacking my home state as some kind of macho ignorant backwater makes no sense to me.

Show me any state in the union that does not have its share of problems either in the field of education or of manufacturing or agriculture or of urban blight or poverty or pollution or any other problem.

And then explain to me, again, what on earth that has to do with this discussion, other than a veiled insult about how all the men out here must be knuckle-dragging neanderthals and all us po little wimmenfolk have to pretend to be macho men in order to get by.

I never said anything about pretending to be something I wasn't in order to prove myself, not in a "macho" world, but in a world that is unbelievably demanding on the professionals who inhabit it. Law enforcement officers deal with the very worst that human nature has to show, day in and day out, and NO ONE can do the job who can not handle that fact.

You either cannot handle it, and you get out of it, or, you draw on your best inner strengths, and you go on. To me, most of the men and women who do this impossible job day in and day out are unsung heroes. If I wanted to write about them, I had to enter their world, and to do that, I had to show them that I was tough enough to handle that.

But never mind. I don't expect you to understand.

Nor did I say anything about pretending to be a man or acting like one. I know many sexy, vital, beautiful women who are tough as nails and well respected by male and female colleagues.

We've got a lot of those in Texas.

All the hell I said was that Hillary WHINED last night and most of last week, and she did, and it reflected badly on her. She is a tough broad herself, which I said, but she did not LOOK tough this time, and in politics, perception is everything.

By the way, why is Obama whining about being called a Moslem? Real leaders and Texans don't whine.

I also seem to remember something akin to imminent threat and danger to America and American interests before taking any action. No one in their right mind expects a president to never use the military.

You think Hillary is going to pull out of Iraq and promise never, ever to send another troup in, no matter what?

What we need is a president who will use force as a last resort, who will deeply consider the lives he puts at risk, and will wrestle deeply with whether that decision is in the best interests of America and the world. Hillary had no problem sending those troops into the gates of hell in Iraq. She became interested in pulling them out when it was politically advantageous to say so.

And don't throw Obama's war funding votes in my face -- how to best protect those soldiers once they're there is an enormously difficult issue.

Bruce/bslev,

I don't think my posting was removed, just didn't get enough recommendations to keep it afloat. The injustice of it all.

You can go to my blog at
Desidero
and see the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Thanks for asking.

But is it whining if it is true? Have you read the TNR article? Is Obama whining? Or just pointing something out?

I submit that the Clinton rules apply to virtually any and every action by her campaign and those around it. This has become Clinton hate central. I am really disappointed in my fellow Democrats, especially those who say they wont vote for her if she wins the nomination. Maybe they should vote for Nader (again).

So much whining...

Here's the deal: Whoever it is, the Dem is going to have to rise above the crap Republicans and their minions will pile on over the next eight months. It will stink, it will be slimy, some will stick. It's going to be horrific.

But our guy/gal can't whine like a victim. People don't what a whiner president. The strength can't be pretend, either. See Bush. He pretends that phony machismo is strength, but he's so sensitive when someone challenges him.

It's why I'm an Obamamaniac. He tends to hit back, do some rhetorical judo, and knock the attacker on their ass.

Fellow Obamaniacs, if they accuse you of latte-drinking, proudly state that you drink coffee, brewed at home, (or you drink tea, or Mountain Dew, or Red Bull, whatever), and ask the accusers what flavor of Kool-Aid they're partial to. Don't whine, don't say Stop it! I'm tellin'! Unfair! Because that's one of the many reasons Hillary Clinton is losing. It's not a masculine/feminine thing. It's a bully/victim/fighter thing. You can't be a victim. You have to be a fighter. Whining isn't fighting.

Really? He hits back? I am sorry, but he has spent 2 days complaining about people calling him by his legal name.

YES, the GOP uses his name to scare people, but it's his name. and it's down right silly to say "don't call me by my name" or cry about photos that you were taken in.

That's pandering to the xenophobes. That's admitting that there's something bad about being named Hussein. He needs to do a speech that says, Hell Yes, my middle name is Hussein and that has shit all to do with nothing. Get over it, America, you are bigger and better than this. The America I come from is not afraid of a name."

but instead, he whines.