Political Links...regarding the villification of Hillary Clinton during this election

[shadowkat]

1. Some Questions for Bernies Sanders Supporters

2. IF you are a Liberal and Think Hillary is Corrupt You are Rewarding 25 Years of GOP Smears

3. The Puzzling Vilification of Hillary Clinton - A Psychoanalysis

4. Bill Maher Explains Hillary Hatred Perfectly

5. The Best Way to Vilify Hillary Clinton - The GOP Spends Heavily to Test it

It's an interesting discourse on our deeply ingrained sexism. For many, completely unacknowledged and unselfaware. Reminds me a little of the Buffy hate in the Spike/Angel wars in fandom, and the Hermoine hate in the Harry Potter fandom, not to mention the Doctor Who, Supernatural, GoT fandoms. Mainly, and interestingly enough, from female fans.

6. Edited to add this article on Facebook, which links to a 1996 New Yorker Article on the topic:

1996 article Hating Hillary by Henry Gates

Like horse-racing, Hillary-hating has become one of those national pastimes which unite the élite and the lumpen. Serious accusations have, of course, been levelled against the President’s wife, but it’s usually what people think of her that determines the credence and the weight they give to the accusations, rather than the reverse. At times, she herself sounds at a loss to explain the level of animosity toward her. “I apparently remind some people of their mother-in-law or their boss, or something,” she says. She laughs, but she isn’t joking, exactly.

The remark chimes with something I’ve been told by the redoubtable Sally Quinn, who—in part because she’s a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, in part because she’s the wife of the Post’s legendary editor Ben Bradlee—must herself count as a figure in the so-called Washington establishment. “There’s this old joke about the farmer whose crops fail,” she says. “One year, he’s wiped out by a blizzard, and the next year there’s a rainstorm, and the next year there’s a drought, and so on every year. Finally, he’s completely bankrupt—he’s lost everything. He says, ‘Why, Lord? Why, why me?’ And the Lord says, ‘I don’t know. There’s just something about you that pisses me off.’ “ She pauses, then says, “That’s the problem—there’s just something about her that pisses people off. This is the reaction that she elicits from people.”

Well, from many people, anyway. “A lot of Americans are uncomfortable with her self-righteousness,” Arianna Huffington says. “I think gratitude is great if you can communicate it, but if you have to keep telling people how grateful you are . . .” William Kristol, a Republican strategist and, since September, the editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard, puts it this way: “She strikes me as a sort of moralistic liberal who has a blind spot for actions that are in her own interest. These are exempt from that cold gaze that she casts over everyone else’s less than perfect actions.” On the whole, though, he’s one of the more dispassionate voices you’re likely to hear on the subject. Peggy Noonan, who came to prominence as a speechwriter for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, speaks of “an air of apple-cheeked certitude” that is “political in its nature and grating in its effects,” of “an implicit insistence throughout her career that hers were the politics of moral decency and therefore those who opposed her politics were obviously of a lower moral order.” She adds, “Now, with Whitewater going on, nonliberals are taking a certain satisfaction in thinking, Uh-huh, you were not my moral superior, Madam.”

Some of this glee relates to a discomfort with Hillary’s political identity. In the 1992 campaign, her husband presented himself as a different kind of Democrat. Many people who wanted a different kind of Democrat to be President fear that the President’s wife is not a different kind of Democrat. (In Ben J. Wattenberg’s “Values Matter Most”—the book that prompted Bill Clinton’s infamous midnight-of-the-soul telephone call to the author—Hillary is identified as “a lady of the left” and compared with Mikhail Suslov, who was for years the Kremlin’s chief ideologist.) Of course, if you ask why they fear she is not a different kind of Democrat, the answers are less than entirely satisfying. It’s true that she served on the board of a liberal advocacy group, the Children’s Defense Fund, but then many C.D.F. members regard the First Lady with heartfelt disappointment. It’s also true that the Clinton health plan, which she spearheaded, involved significant government oversight, but then congressional conservatives routinely pass complicated bills in which government has a complicated role. (Consider, even, the tort-reform movement, which Vice-President Dan Quayle spearheaded, and which sought to vest the federal government with new powers to regulate product liability and other civil litigation.) But if you want to understand how conservatives perceive Mrs. Clinton these matters are ultimately a distraction. For they recognize her, almost on a gut level; in a phrase I’ve heard countless times, they “know the type.” In a word, they look at Hillary Clinton and they see Mrs. Jellyby.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1078093752256030&set=a.102236856508396.3404.100001662458374&type=3&theater

"In the course of a single conversation, I have been assured that Hillary is cunning and manipulative but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic; that she is a hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that she is a base opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on her side. What emerges is a cultural inventory of villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an actual person."
—Henry Louis Gates

The quote above comes from a fascinating article called “Hating Hillary”, written by Gates for the New Yorker in 1996. Even now, 20 years after it was first published, it’s a fascinating and impressive piece, and if you have a few spare moments I strongly recommend it to you. (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/02/26/hating-hillary)

And I’m reading pieces like this because now that Hillary has (essentially if not officially) won the Democratic Primary, I have become increasingly fascinated by the way so many people react to her. In truth, I sometimes think that I find that as interesting as Hillary herself. And I can’t help but notice that many of the reactions she receives seem to reflect what Gates referred to as “a cultural inventory of villainy” rather than any realistic assessment of who she really is and what she has really done.

To conservatives she is a radical left-wing insurgent who has on multiple occasions been compared to Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Kremlin’s long-time Chief of Ideology. To many progressives (you know who you are), she is a Republican fox in Democratic sheep’s clothing, a shill for Wall Street who doesn’t give a damn about the working class. The fact that these views could not possibly apply to the same person does not seem to give either side pause. Hillary haters on the right and the left seem perfectly happy to maintain their mutually incompatible delusions about why she is awful. The only thing both teams seem to share is the insistence that Hillary is a Machiavellian conspirator and implacable liar, unworthy of society’s trust.

And this claim of unabated mendacity is particularly interesting, because while it is not the oldest defamation aimed at Hillary, it is the one that most effortlessly glides across partisan lines. Indeed, for a surprisingly large percentage of the electorate, the claim that Hillary is innately dishonest is simply accepted as a given. It is an accusation and conviction so ingrained in the conversation about her that any attempt to even question it is often met with shock. And yet here’s the thing: it’s not actually true. Politifact, the Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking project, determined for example that Hillary was actually the most truthful candidate (of either Party) in the 2016 election season. And in general Politifact has determined that Hillary is more honest than most (but not all) politicians they have tracked over the years.

Comments

[spikesjojo.livejournal.com]

So a few Sanders supporters said things you dislike, and you are all out for their blood. That's exactly the attitude that Clinton supporters need to have to lose her any support. Demonize and vilify - for party unity. Seeing plenty of that in the Republican candidate.

Candidly, right now, you are doing a great job of convincing me that Clinton supporters look down on me because of what some assholes I never met did - and that's more likely to get me voting Green than anything else. You tell me you don't see bashing, and then help me to understand why when you engage in wholesale bashing. Maybe it really is a Clinton thing.

More than 12 million people voted for Bernie - the more this attitude is seen from Clintonites, the fewer of those 12 million will vote for her.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

.Please go read THIS ENTRY (http://shadowkat67.livejournal.com/368925.html) that I wrote in 2008. If nothing else it should make you laugh. Apparently I attacked the Hillary Supporters in 2008 for threatening not to vote for Obama.

It's hilarious.

Both are from a place of fear and ego. Fear that McCain and Palin would win like Bush did in that fatal Gore vs. Bush contest in 2000, just one year before my world turned upside down and I entered years of unemployment and illness.
Back then I supported Obama not because he was the better candidate but because I knew he had the best chance of beating McCain, I knew it in my gut. And I was so afraid McCain and Palin would win. Also I liked Obama a great deal. Back then, I was on the fence, not sure which to pick.

2008 was when I went on Facebook for the first time -- to get news on the election. I was obsessed with it. So terrified that McCain and Palin would win. Palin scared me. And when Hillary lost the nod to Obama, I cheered. But he beat her by a narrow margin and her supporters just like Bernies are now, were clamoring for blood.

I see a pattern in how human beings handle contests or competitions, regardless of what they are, politics, religion, sports...

I lost a couple of online friends with that 2008 Clinton post, which was looking back more of a rant than a post. Three friends in fact, all staunch Hillary supporters, who said more or less the same things you are stating above. I think they may have commented on that post, if not that one, another one. They were, granted online friends, who seldom posted in their own journals and only on occasion in mine, so it was hard to be that upset about it. I mean you don't miss people that you don't really know. I'm more careful with political rantings on facebook, because I know the people and they are in my life not just online.

What have I learned from this? Not to get obsessed with politics. Or to worry too much about the uncontrollables. To stay away from the news as much as possible. In 2008, I watched all the debates, I listened to all the speeches, read Obama's Audacity of Hope, and it drove me a bit crazy.

Today when I read your response, my blood pressure went up, just like it did then. Heck, I shook and could barely write a response to your last comment and had to edit the hell out of it. That should have been a hint not to respond and to let your comment ride. To not engage in political debates and to not rant about politics any longer. This most likely will be the last post I'll make about Sanders in any way shape or form. I don't promise not to rant about Trump from time to time or to defend Hillary. But I think I'll try not to. It's not good for me. It's not living in the now, it's worrying about the future, which has yet to be defined. Because that's where it comes from, I think, a visceral fear that Trump could become our next President. And I don't have enough money to move to Canada or elsewhere. I'm stuck as is my family.

But worrying about that...is pointless. It hasn't happened. And worrying about what people may or may not do six months from now? Silly as well. But, it must be the Irish in me, because I fall into these old patterns. I worry.

Today, I pulled myself out of it. Almost didn't respond to your comment. But then out of curiousity I hunted for posts I made about Hillary's supporters in 2008. Found one and laughed aloud at myself. And I thought, well, we've come a long way, baby. I am now on the opposite side of the argument, yet at the same time on the same side I was before...the only difference is now I see it clearly and I can back away from it. At the end of the day, as history tells, it doesn't matter who wins or who loses, the world will keep turning...and I'm not Pavlvo's dog and I don't need to keep ringing pavlov's bell. I can sit back and watch the story unfold...in all its shades and colors. I have choices. I think, that's all any of us have at the end of the day -- our own choices.

So, I've decided to no longer think about politics. Let it run its course...a choice I wish I'd made in 2008, but didn't.

[spikesjojo.livejournal.com]

I do love the irony! For what it's worth am voting for Hillary - I have no problem supporting her so it's not just a matter of 'keep the crazy out'. Her last few speeches have been kick-ass, and I am hopeful that she will be the person this country has needed. Right there, she earns my support because she has indicated that the time of the chicken-shit Democratic party is over.

It's just important that the Bernie supporters be welcomed - and the energy they bring be appreciated. I want something new - a political party that actually pays more than lip service to the people. These are the future of the party, and they need to be heard, they need to have an influence on what we stand for. The Democrats have to prove that both parties are not the same, and this is how to start the process. Bernie has said that he will run in this last primary out of respect for his followers and to fulfill the pledge he made. But he will not contest the process and results of the convention - he brings only his platform. I'm really glad of that because it's time for him to move on - to fight the real enemy.

The process is slow - but the Bernie supporters are going through the stages of grief for their dream. I'm not as passion as some and I accepted a while ago that Hillary was the candidate. But I am sensitive to the idea that Bernie and his supporters were bad for the party. We have new ideas and new life simply because the primaries were contested. Hillary is a better candidate because of that, and the party is stronger as well.

Yeah, I was pretty prickly - I'm really glad that it gave you an opportunity to reflect. If I may say so, you done will. I was debating writing something more conciliatory today your letter kinda pushed all my buttons so I kicked back, and I am better than that. So are you obviously. I appreciate that a lot - thanks!