Okay, all of you know I love Barack Obama. Have since I first heard him speak at the Democratic Convention in 2004. Knew, back then, that he would become something MAJOR in this society. I voted for him in the primary and I will vote for him again in the general election. I am ecstatic that he is the presidential nominee for the democratic party in 2008. As the president of PSR recently said to me: "he is the most exciting politician this country has seen in a long time." Obama is the most exciting politician I have seen in my entire life time and I'm virtually positive a majority of my generation shares this sentiment.
And.
I am saddened over and over by the way electoral politics turn competing goods (persons, view points, opinions, methods) into rival evils. The demonization of Jeremiah Wright and Hillary Clinton highlight just how simple-minded our media can be. Why denigrate in order to elevate? Cannot both/all be good? and complex? and not good sometimes without being slandered? I have posted a video here that I hope you will take a look at in order to understand just how fundamentally sexist--and hateful and humiliating and dehumanizing--media coverage of the clinton campaign has been.
I celebrate Obama. I celebrate Clinton. I wish the victory of one didn't have to come at the humiliating expense of the other.
2 comments:
Dude, that is so depressing.
This is a pretty standard phenomenon, isn't it - unfortunately. We have found on my denominational Womaen's Caucus that pretty much the only times women get elected by the Annual Conference body (with delegates from each congregation in the world), it's when there are two women running against each other. Whenever there is a choice between a man and a woman (because for each office, only two candidates are on the ballot), it is usually the man who wins. Regardless of politics.
In this, I guess I am glad that of all the Democratic contenders, the two who made it to the end were both representative of marginalized groups, but it also does not surprise me that for one member of a marginalized group to win, it must come at the expense of another such person.
(These are wide generalizations, I know, but in trying to make sense of disturbing patterns is how I orient myself and know where I stand, more than I describe the world around me fact by fact. I am a poor empiricist.)
Thanks for posting this, and for modeling a way supporters of both Obama and Clinton can come together to find "common ground" and "unity" despite the fissures sown between us.
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