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There Will Be Maternalism
by Molly Lambert
We have our own personal Deep Throat here at This Recording who goes by the code name Hot Pocket. H.P. sent us this wiretapped IM dispatch about the race for the presidential nomination. The names have been changed to protect the identities of the participants and prevent them from being burned at the stake.
cristalconnors: Hillary cried supposedly
nomimalone: i know
cristalconnors: ugh
nomimalone: i think she was just hoarse
cristalconnors: god. it’s all making me so angry.
nomimalone: i saw it on countdown, i seriously think she just had no voice at all from campaigning
cristalconnors: Gloria Steinem wrote a great op-ed piece about why people are so fucking mean to Hillary
nomimalone: I don’t think she’d cry
cristalconnors: dude even if she did! It should be okay. Shit is fraught.
nomimalone: i love her SO much like she were my mom
cristalconnors: she is totally everyone’s mom! thank god she won New Hampshire
nomimalone: Can i tell you a secret? I don’t like Obama. I don’t think he has enough experience. I think it will be disastrous
cristalconnors: can I tell you a secret too? I fucking HATE John Edwards. And I hate talking about it because nobody lets me be entitled to my own opinion. If you disagree with them they’re like “you’re just uninformed” which is why I never want to talk about it!
nomimalone: I wanted to like Obama so bad!!! He blinks too much and seems shifty
cristalconnors: His charms don’t work on you. Definitely all I get from Edwards is entitled scuzzbag, and I’m not just saying that because he’s southern. Also I’m just not having a white guy win this one.
nomimalone: I’m scared if i reveal i don’t like Obama I will be crucified and i will have to be honest
cristalconnors: nah you are saying what a lot of other people are afraid to say. I honestly feel like liberals are so happy they can use the fact that he’s black as a way to justify backing him over Hillary. You can be not racist and still be sexist. Feminism and civil rights shouldn’t be pitted against each other. Obama should be VP and Hill should be the P
nomimalone: YES i know she should
cristalconnors: but people just HATE her, and it is not a coincidence that there’s this whole backlash against women in power and all the creepy fetishizing about celebrity babies and marriages and movies about men being men in the old west. men men men.
nomimalone: ugh or PSH and marisa tomei in before the devil knows your dead, which was AWFUL btw
Along the river of men, of men, of men, of men
cristalconnors: at Christmas I got in a dinner table argument bc my brother said The Feminine Mystique was boring. I said “I bet you didn’t even really read it!” and he was like “yeah, because it’s boring.”
nomimalone: no one likes feminists. People are so gauche.
cristalconnors: I think Obama is fidgety because he quit smoking.
nomimalone: I don’t trust either one of those men. I think Obama means well but is not ready and will end up not knowing what to do with the fallout from Bush and just being like pathetically optimistic.
cristalconnors: I just thought that said paternalistically optimistic which might be more accurate actually
nomimalone: i wish i had said paternalistically optimistic
cristalconnors: America generally wants a Father who will reassure them and not freak out or cry when things are horrific. But how many deadbeat dads are there who skip out when shit gets too tough? And unprepared single moms who RAISE THE DAMN KIDS ANYWAY. Women are so much more patient and better at sticking it out bc they have to be.
nomimalone: SO TRU. plus naturally higher aptitude for pain.
cristalconnors: Also lest we forget, black men got to vote in America fifty years before women’s suffrage. Womyn are the silent majority.
nomimalone: Obama’s just the obvious choice for a hero but I don’t think it will go like that
cristalconnors: I just hate how people are using the fact that he’s black to conceal the fact that they HATE HILLARY SO MUCH
nomimalone: I know; I feel so mystified by why they do
cristalconnors: Something about her particular brand of Womynhood makes people super angry. She is Lisa Simpson and even if you think she is shrill and self-righteous you have to admit she’ll make an amazing POTUS.
nomimalone: definitely
cristalconnors: Men don’t care about feminism. They feel it doesn’t pertain to them. Same reason white people don’t care about minorities
nomimalone: It threatens them.
cristalconnors: Everybody else gets to be in a club and be proud about it and they’re not allowed to be proud of being white or men. They resent it because somehow they really don’t believe women get an unfair deal.
nomimalone: i wouldn’t vote for a woman if it didn’t happen to be a woman i really respect. I’d love to have a black president, but i don’t think it’s even good to have the first black president be someone who doesn’t have the track record
cristalconnors: it’s a joke. A black guy from the midwest, a white guy from the south, and a white woman from new england walk into a bar. The thing that people who are anti Hillary and pro Obama or Edwards harp on is that Hillary is conservative and won’t talk about withdrawing troops to which I say, she’s a fucking politician!
nomimalone: exactly, I think she’s just a smart politician
cristalconnors: I don’t believe that she wouldn’t deal with it once in office any more than I do believe Edwards would magically end the war right away. Did you read that scare piece “more than half of men surveyed believe the world is dominated by females and that they have lost their traditional role in society.”
nomimalone: depressing!!!
cristalconnors: makes you want to crawl under a rock a bit. or send them literature about widows in India. I don’t know why those men can’t just catalyze all that anger about being displaced in society into something POSITIVE and progressive instead of just whining and moping like little weenuses.
cristalconnors: there are plenty of cool guys too who respect women and want to be good dads and all that
nomimalone: yeah like ours
cristalconnors: Zctly. I think there’s an ongoing generational shift from Jack Nicholson to Matt Damon. But a lot of lame dudes just aren’t secure enough in themselves not to be threatened by women having positions of power over them
nomimalone: yup
cristalconnors: because they’re still weirded out and in denial that they ever SUCKLED AT THEIR MOTHER’S TEAT.
obama and his mama
THE GREATEST JAPANESE ROCK ALBUM OF ALL TIME
Happy End were a Japanese folk rock band from the seventies. Haruomi Hosono went on to form Yellow Magic Orchestra. You may remember the Happy End song “Kaze Wo Atsumete” from the Lost In Translation soundtrack. Rolling Stone Japan voted their 1971 album Kazemachi Roman best rock album ever. It’s a really solid seventies country rock record. I highly recommend.
Dakishimetai – Happy End: mp3
Sorairo no Creyon – Happy End: mp3
Kaze wo Atsumete – Happy End: mp3
Ashita Tenki ni Naare – Happy End: mp3
Taifu – Happy End: mp3
Molly Lambert is senior editor of This Recording. She believes that there’s no such thing as soft paternalism.
So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what. – Gloria Steinem
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING
Alex had a good hard cry and still managed to ogle some babez.
Tess helped you crash diet back down to your birth weight.
I really blogged it out of the park on this one. And I just now coined that phrase. Zap!
12 Comments so far
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Michell Obama should run for president.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
Comment by Tyler January 9, 2008 @ 4:51 pmMan, at least Obama escaped this post without being called an “uncle tom” unlike poor Condi in your last hating-on-successful-black-politicians post. If you got your news from sources other than Jezebel and Wonkette maybe you’d understand why people oppose a corrupt political dynasty for reasons other than gender.
Comment by daziz January 9, 2008 @ 6:59 pmHonestly, sometimes I wish Hilary and Obama were both just white dudes because then people would simply be able to see them for their politics and wouldn’t be able to talk in circles about feminism and racial issues, both of which play into the decision making process FAR LESS than any of the media would like to believe. And I think it’s complete bullshit (and disappointing, yet not out of character) that you guys just perpetuated that lame process of thought. Of course, I’m super glad the next president will either be black or female. Fucking whit dudes are THE WORST! Amen.
Comment by Chuck January 9, 2008 @ 8:09 pmGreat post. Puhleez, Daziz, do not underestimate how much gender issues play into this. The misogynist bias against HC is extraordinary – check this out: http://mediamatters.org/items/200712180005
Comment by Totally Everyone's Mom January 10, 2008 @ 2:39 amIt would be seen as completely outrageous to treat a minority candidate this way, but a woman seems to be fair game. Defense of Hillary is not an attack on Obama. Give her the next 8 years, and by then Obama will be ready for the following 8.
Yeah real nice, there’s Hillary’s constituency for you right there in this post. People who talk about how nice it would be to have this or that kind of person as president as if it were some ceremonial role to show how far the American middle class has come in overcoming its prejudices. Great discussion of the issues there, I think you might have even almost mentioned the war once, noting that she’s probably not worse than the other candidates. Give me a fucking break. If the last 7 years have shown anything it’s that policy does matter, and that you shouldn’t pick your president just for being the right kind of person.
Clinton is a panderer, a politico, that’s all she ever has been and all she will ever be. This is the person who stood on the Senate floor to denounce pixelated humping in video games. Won’t someone please just think of the children!
Obama might be a totally unsure and untested thing but with Hillary at least we can for sure expect more of the same grandstanding spinelessness we’ve seen from the Democrats since 2006. And yes, why not throw in some dynastic nepotism while we’re at it, and the baggage of obligations toward corporate and special interest campaign donors all throughout her campaign, not to mention Bill’s. Good luck fixing this fucked up excuse for a country’s infrastructure and foreign policy without pissing off any corporations or unions. Or better yet she and her whole class of obsolete fake populist democrats can fuck off and leave our country alone.
Comment by anon January 10, 2008 @ 10:11 am“The misogynist bias against HC is extraordinary – check this out: http://mediamatters.org/items/200712180005”
All that shows is bias against Hillary, not bias against Hillary because she’s a woman. People not wanting 20 straight years of governance by the same two families is not misogynistic. People not wanting political leadership based on focus groups is not misogyny. I would happily vote for Michelle Obama or Sara Palin or a number of other intelligent, strong women. If you think that having the first woman president get there on the coattails of her husband’s accomplishments is somehow good for womenkind then god bless you.
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