Borat* made me do it.A friend of mine is trying to find examples of sexism re: Hillary Clinton in the left blogosphere, a la Josh Marshall's gelded at TPM or Stephen Kaus' misogynist tirade at HuffPo. What other examples have you seen on lefty blogs, of either overt sexism (slurs, doctored images) or oblique sexism (criticisms of Clinton wrapped in misogynist frames, e.g. "Billary" or "cackling" or "too ambitious")?
Also welcome: Any comments threads that were completely out of control with misogynist swill and left unmoderated.
Here is what I've found...
- Clinton aims to clean house
- Clinton: Women Know How to 'Clean House'
- Clinton says 'clean sweep' needed at White House
I mean, I'm sure there are threads out there--if your looking. But it seems to me, over and over again, that the use of sexist frame throughout this campaign has been used most by... you guessed it.
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*Everything these days must be pre-qualified and pre-bebutted if it doesn't want a good round of "renounce and reject." The Borat Backlash:
If anyone's wondering why the left is losing the culture war -- not the abortion, gay marriage kind, but the one that finds most Americans under 40 opting for South Park over, say, Cornel West or The Onion over The Nation -- it's precisely because of this hyper PC sensibility that might as well write off fun and pleasure as nothing more than bourgeois fetishes.
But what of Jon Stewart, Colbert, Bill Maher, and the rest? Yes, yes. These guys lean left and they're indeed funny. However, they also routinely shit where they eat in the best sense of the term.
Maher has ripped on both milquetoast Dems and the academic left, among others, in recent years and that's part of what makes him credible on so many other issues: the Bush administration, Iraq, the environment. Both Stewart and Colbert mock liberal pieties all the time. Sure, they spend most of their energy, as the political moment dictates, ripping on those in power, but they're not puppets or parrots pushing a political line. Again, that's what makes them so credible. Well, that and the buckets of funny.
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