I have a need to talk here, KerryCrats

[benny05]

I hope you don't mind if I post my first thoughts about the disparaging comments by the NY NOW about Teddy Kennedy today. It's a good thing Senator Kerry was not criticized by them as the Liberal Lion was.

I will speak to you as a feminist first, John Edwards supporter second, and as someone whose mother benefited from Teddy's actions throughout her life.

From my blog, Benny's World:

I am not a supporter of Clinton nor Obama. I was disappointed that Teddy didn't come out and support JRE considering they worked for years together on minimum wage issues and patients' bill of rights, but I was not totally surprised either that he endorsed Obama. Personally, I think the endorsement is a help to Obama, but it could be negative too in the long run, depending on who the nominee is on the other side. I'll address that issue in another post.

As an aside: Forgive me for not posting direct links at the moment to validate each point what I am writing as the html commands here are different from most.

This incendiary news release by NY NOW in its outburst about the Liberal Lion's endorsement is an embarrassment to feminists everywhere. The press release begins with this comment:

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act to name a few.

WTF? This organization doesn't acknowledge that John Edwards is in the race. Never mind that Kate Michelman, past President of NARAL, is a senior advisor to the Edwards campaign, but perhaps they gave her a pass. Maybe it because they know Elizabeth Edwards is also a feminist.

Feminists have done some good for us, but also have given feminism a bad taste in many citizens' mouths over the years (thus ERA didn't pass), this group believes Teddy has repaid them for their "good" name--debt he owes them-- in this way:

And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow).

Since Teddy endorsed a man instead of a woman, they wrongly jump to this conclusion:

This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation- to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who “know what’s best for us.

Read the response by Feministe, a well-regarded feminist blog:

In case you didn’t get that, women have been betrayed by voting on the issues instead of according to what’s in their pants. It’s like the Lifetime Movie version of a shitty-to-begin-with press release.

Thank goodness for Feministe, the voice of reason. They are spot on in pointing out that NY NOW is protesting Kennedy as though he is tarnishing its cause. Feministing and Culture Kitchen Culture Kitchen blogs are on record as that NY NOW doesn't speak for them either.

Geez, no telling what they thought of Kate Michelman, former President of NARAL, when she was hired as a senior advisor to the Edwards campaign. Did Kate betray us too? I don't think so. Kate channeled Liza at Culture Kitchen when she penned this observation at Open Left:

As women take a second look at the candidates, now that attention is focusing more on the issues and how each of the candidates would lead, how they would make decisions; now that making a choice is becoming real, less about celebrity, more about being president, legitimate questions are being raised about Senator Clinton.

snip, still Open Left...and where Kate speaks for me, as I have been a feminist since I was 17, Pro-ERA, etc:

Any serious candidate for president should make their views clear and let the American people know where they stand on issues.

And any serious candidate for president should be held to the same standard - whether man or woman.

Have we have come a long way? Well, far enough to know better than to use our gender as a shield when the questions get too hot.

Maria Pappas should heed Kate's advice. Moreover, the Clintons need to get a grip and so do their staunch supporters. Granted, Obama had too many "present" votes about women's reproductive issues when he was in the IL senate, but it's my opinion that one militant group does not attack the Liberal Lion on feminist issues when he has been fighting for women and children a lot longer than the Clintons have. We have to remember Mrs. Clinton was a Goldwater girl when she entered college, after all, and Teddy was already fighting his brothers' causes for economic justice. Granted, Teddy has had his infamous share of problems with women, but most of it was his own personal problems, not political ones as far as I know.

This kind of attack does not serve them or those who have supported the civil rights--including feminists and gays--movement since we were young.

Keep marching Teddy. I don't support your candidate, but I don't think you've suddenly become being against feminism either.

Thank you for listening, KerryCrats. As you know, I lived in MA for 8 years, and have close friends there. Teddy doesn't deserve this kind of treatment.

[ray of light]

1. Naral supported LIEberman against Lamont.

Even though Lieberman was willing to send a rape victim to a hospital a half hour away.

I don't discuss my views on abortion. But what I do know is that Lieberman's stance was the opposite of NARAL's stated goals.

Edited to add...I don't know if NOW or NARAL are connected or the same.

[benny05]

2. and Planned Parenthood still stood by Obama

Despite his many "present" votes in the IL senate.

JRE and Clinton are the most progressive in their votes for health privacy, but Obama is the newcomer here.

[beachmom]

4. Just calmly pointing out that Planned Parenthood IL asked Obama

to cast those present votes as an overall strategy.

[beachmom]

3. Thanks, Benny. Well said. I was frankly shocked by that NOW press release.

The equivalent would have been if upon Rep. Lewis of Georgia endorsing Hillary, a civil rights group wrote a screed on how Lewis had BETRAYED African Americans. In fact, there was a bizarre robo call that occurred here in Atlanta doing exactly that: trashing Lewis for endorsing Hillary. But it was just some weirdo phonebanking guy, not a REAL civil rights group.

Did you also read McJoan's piece on Kos? That's worth a read, too:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/29/122529/612/318/445146

I think that press release said nothing about Teddy, and everything about a very narrow minded insulated feminist group that is past its prime.

[ralbertson]

5. Agreed, benny05. And thank you for your post.

Thank you for making a point of coming by here and posting your support for the Senators from Massachusetts, benny05, even if they didn't endorse the candidate you have chosen yourself. (If only more people on DU were as rational and even-handed as you these days, sigh.)


What NY NOW's news release had to say about Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama was, quite simply, shameful. One one think that he was some Neanderthug type who had bashed dear, sweet Hillary over the head with a club and then dragged her back to his cave by the hair. GMAFB. there is simply no possible justification for that kind of abusive rant-rage being dumped to the media by someone who is supposed to be the leader of one the largest chapters of a sane, rational, effective organization.

JK's come in for his own share of crap from women who feel as though he had somehow sold them all into medieval slavery by deliberate dissing the only female candidate in the race, too. (Trust me -- I answer the phones, I read the emails, and let me tell you -- some of the angry anti-male invective being directed at JK on a daily basis since the endorsement is astoundingly nasty stuff.)

JK's failure to endorse Hillary Clinton has nothing whatsoever to do with her gender. He made the decision he made because, having worked with and gotten to know all the major players in this year's presidential game and after thinking it over at length and in great detail, he honestly believes that Barack Obama is the best person to bring this country back together and inspire a rebirth of America's trust in its own principles again.

Women like the NY NOW leader who angrily cry that not supporting a woman just because she's a woman automatically demeans all women because it displays retro-XY bias against women are simply cutting their own argument off at the knees. Hillary being a woman is not a factor for either Kerry or Kennedy (or the other Kennedy, who last time I checked was a woman too.)

So fostering over-the-top outrage based on the fact that HRC is a woman doesn't say anything at all about JK's or TK's supposed gender bias -- but it certainly does speak volumes about the obvious gender bias of those making such spurious, scurrilous charges.


(That's just my own personal opinion, by the way, I am not speaking on behalf of my employer or my co-workers in any way.)

[karynnj]

6. This is beautiful and well done Benny05

I was shocked at that idiotic statement, especially the nonsense that they hushed up when he didn't completely do everything they wanted.

The idea that anyone caring about women's issues has to vote for Hillary in crazy. Is Condi next?

[ginnyinWI]

7. great post, benny

At the risk of stating the obvious, Teddy and JK could very well be better feminists than Hill or Bill.

[benny05]

8. Or JRE too, Ginny

But this attack on Teddy was appalling to me, as a progressive.

[MBS]

9. I was very disappointed by NOW-NY statement

One-dimensional, knee-jerk, and a big mistake. I'm really, really, really , really tired of single-issue politics on all sides of the political fence, especially when it has to do with gender or "moral" (though, all too often, not really about that) issues.Thumbs down to NOW-NY

[whometense]

10. Me too!

MY daughter actually emailed me about it - horrified - and she's been trying to stay out of the fray.

And now we have the Boston version: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/01/30/murray_blasts_anti_clinton_stands_by_men/

Murray blasts anti-Clinton stands by men

January 30, 2008

Senate President Therese Murray yesterday ripped into what she called a pattern of prominent male Democrats abandoning Hillary Clinton, pointedly mentioning the state's two US senators among those who have disappointed her. Murray, a Plymouth Democrat, told the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus during a breakfast appearance that Clinton is "certainly in my lifetime, probably the only woman that's going to get that far, so I have to support my candidate, and that's what I'm going to be concentrating all my efforts on." US Senators John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy are both backing Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. (Statehouse News Service)

My take on feminism has always been that women should not be prevented by their gender from achieving anything they are qualified to achieve. Doesn't mean everyone else is required to step aside if a woman says she wants something.

My biggest personal objection to the Clintons has been the dynastic one. The past few weeks have only reinforced that objection. Gender has nothing to do with it.