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Hillary, Stop Being Coy! Fight Sexism; It’s YOUR TIME!

Hillary, Stop Being Coy! Fight Sexism; It’s YOUR TIME!

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 12:26 am by Elizabeth Scalia

Hillary, Stop Being Coy! Fight Sexism; It’s YOUR TIME! 2015-03-13T00:26:16+00:00 Elizabeth Scalia

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While traveling yesterday I had a chance to catch up on my reading and discovered that Hillary Clinton is “thinking about” running for President.

We love her when she is coy, don’t we? I can’t wait to see her new presidential posters. Remember this one, from 2008?

2008 was a big year for Democrat candidates drawn with just a hint of totalitarian flavor. Hillary’s rising sun was reminiscent of Chairman Mao, Obama’s posters often ran more toward soviet propaganda.

That was then, and this is now; I’m thinking Hillary will ixnay images that might remind voters of how totalitarian our society is fast-becoming, or anything that can be juxtaposed with something like this:

Image is everything, and if in 2008 it seemed fun to tweek the outgoing neocon powers with artwork deliberately echoing repressive regimes, Americans are much warier of the idea of intrusive-and-oppressive-government-meant-for-our-own-good. Watch for progressive geer to move away from Che, and into a kinder, gentler, almost country-clubesque feel, and there is nothing scary about it:

And because image is everything, you can already find articles wondering if it’s sexist to remark on Hillary’s wrinkles; whether it’s sexist to remark on Hillary’s image as a powerful woman; is it sexist to subject poor Hillary to an photo of her yelling at Congress?

Apparently, the only thing it won’t be “sexist” to discuss about Hillary Clinton, when she runs for President, will be the fact that she is a woman and it is “time” for a woman to be president.

Which is pure stupidity, of course, but it is a stupidity the society has now been sufficiently trained to. Witness nonsense like this, which suggests that even if someone is ideally suited for a job, someone else should have it, in order to satisfy a need for a “type”:

“Sure [Colbert is] one of the smartest, funniest guys on TV and obviously has earned the gig, but these jobs open up so rarely and CBS poobahs moved so swiftly to name a replacement, they missed an even bigger opportunity to change the face of late night television.”

Ability and paying dues? Pshaw! Meaningless. What matters is change for change’s sake, or there must be nefarious reasons why not!

“Clearly, someone out there thinks that it’s just too risky to put a woman behind that desk, that we’re not ready yet,” wrote Ophira Eisenberg Friday in The Guardian. “I’m not sure who that someone is, because I think the audience is there, so it must be someone powerful – an old-school executive, a nervous sponsor, a lazy senior makeup artist. Or maybe that someone just doesn’t want to pay to remodel the host’s bathroom.”

Not only paranoid, but ignorant. People forget that Joan Rivers — a woman! — was the first (and very popular) “permanent guest host” of the Tonight Show, handpicked by Johnny Carson, before she left to become the first female late-night talkshow host, at Fox, where she quickly flamed out.

Hmmph. All of those people who loved her on NBC suddenly went sexist, if it meant changing the channel.

The same mindset is at work in politics. There will damn-well be a female president, coming from the Democrats, in 2016, or only evil or inertia will explain it!

Electing anyone to office because some wags have decided it’s “time for that type of person” to be there is both reckless and “istist.”

When it doesn’t matter whether an African-American man is at all qualified or suited to the presidency because “it’s time” for an African American man to be there, well, that’s racisim, straight up. The very sentiment is so race-fixated that it becomes unable to endure the very simplest of questions, such as, “what has he done to suggest he would be an excellent president? What has he accomplished?”

“Oh, please,” comes the answer, “if you have to ask that question, you must be racist!”

Similarly, to suggest that a woman should be president because “it’s time” is a wholly sexist notion. Unable to see past the character of Hillary’s chromosomes, her supporters cannot tolerate simple questions like, “what has she actually accomplished in her life? What were the powerful, helpful policies she helped write as a Senator? How successful was her loudly-touted “jobs creation” plan for upstate New York? More recently, what was her significant impact as Secretary of State, beyond her extensive traveling?

To such questions there will be only one response: “That’s sexist! Why do you hate women?”

And how dare you refer to her yelling at Congress during the Benghazi hearing as yelling at Congress! She was being a strong woman and not letting them bully her!

No, well, actually…she was playing the oldest card in the Deck O’ Feminine Stereotypes: she was yelling and crying, because when women start yelling and crying, men shut up and back off, and they do it quickly.

I have no problem with Hillary yelling and crying as she played her hand; a politician will do what he or she feels must be done. But don’t try to dress up a display of feminine wiles as a signal moment on the feminist mile.

Whether Hillary will be a Presidential candidate in ’16 is up in the air; some progressives seem to prefer the perpetually-startled-seeming Elizabeth Warren. Right now those are the only two Democrat names being tossed about. A party willing to declare that “it’s time” for a woman president won’t really care about which woman it is, as long as they can secure her election.

And part of doing that means the media-drubbing-and-branding of any-and-all-Republican women who might get national attention has seriously begun, but of course, none of it could possibly be sexist! Check this out:

That’s Mother Jones — not being sexist, mind you, just telling the truth — as it attempts to render New Mexico’s Susana Martinez as toxic to the public mind as Sarah Palin, while also suggesting, on a rather subliminal level, clowns, chaos and a world “up in smoke”. I love the sub-header:

Is New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez the Next Sarah Palin? Petty. Vindictive. Weak on policy. And yet she’s being hailed as the Republican Party’s great new hope.

Are they sure they didn’t mean the headline to read, “Is New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez the Next Hillary Clinton?” Because those are all the “strong-women” things we’ve been hearing about Hillary for what, 30 years or more? Is Martinez “petty, vindictive and weak on policy?” It doesn’t really matter, does it? If she were as smart as Aquinas, and as agreeable as a bite of angelfood cake, the narrative would remain, wouldn’t it?

Mother Jones, recall, was also not being sexist, here, a couple years ago:

Get used to the double-standard, as “sexism” becomes redefined as anything that could possibly reflect badly on women…but only on the right types of women, and those who lead them.

I actually couldn’t care less about Hillary or about Martinez — I’m pretty sure America is sufficiently dumbed-down-and-distracted to be officially “done” at this point, but I hate double-standards.

By the way, I’m hard-pressed to think of an American politician who isn’t at least petty and vindictive, if not “weak on policy”. Harry Reid is the living embodiment of petty vindictiveness. Nancy Pelosi was so weak on policy she didn’t even know what was in the Obamacare bill she worked diligently to pass on a partisan vote. Chris Christie? The bully act wears thin, quickly. Oh, and then there is this fellow, and his DOJ, and so forth.

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