Obama/McCain guys: Voting the Man-Crush

[pnwmom]

This article contains a little something for everybody – fuel for those who think we should vote for Obama, but also for the suspicion many of us harbor that Hillary’s candidacy has exposed the deep misogyny that still pervades our culture. . . and is even evidenced, sometimes, on DU.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/26/obama_mccain_guys/

So, eight years after who-would-you-rather-have-a-beer-with gave us W., some guys are again putting the beer goggles on. They're voting their man-crushes, ideology be damned.

SNIP

Farahvar has the same take as Campbell. "I don't believe that gender played any role in my decision," he says. "I have voted for and worked for Senator Carol Moseley Braun and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and would vote for the right woman for president. Just not Hillary."

SNIP

Kurt Andersen, the 53-year-old novelist ("Turn of the Century," "Heyday") and media raconteur, is another all-out Obama backer. Andersen has never voted Republican for president, but in a Feb. 4 New York magazine column, he entertained the possibility that he might go for McCain. When I asked him to elaborate, he e-mailed, "I'd be very surprised if I voted for McCain over Clinton; I'd bet against it happening. But I've always admired McCain's relative candor and consistency and non-party-line eclecticism." Hillary Clinton, wrote Andersen, "seems too calculating (her flag-burning vote stuck in my craw) and a bit Nurse Ratchedish."

I think you can ignore every one of Andersen's words except the last two. (The italics are mine.) If you've read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (which was much more explicit in its gender politics than the movie), you'll recall that Nurse Ratched emasculates an entire ward full of mental patients. "She's a nut-cutter," Randle P. McMurphy insists to his milksop companion, Harding. Harding protests, citing "the rich array of charities" the nurse prepares for the poor -- very Hillaryesque. Then he breaks down. "Oh, she is a nut-cutter!" he wails. The patients, he moans, are "victims of a matriarchy.”

SNIP

Obama-McCain Guys, I've been where you are. Having a war-hero president sounded romantic, but then I reminded myself that I lost my job in August and I'm shelling out $100 a month for a threadbare healthcare plan. Maybe Obama's $75,000-a-year-earning voters can afford a McCain presidency, but I can't. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. If you're a Democrat who voted for Obama in the primary and you're thinking of switching to McCain in November, here's some manly advice. I'm a runner, and it's the same advice I give myself when the wind chill is zero, the snow is six inches deep, and I don't feel like running outdoors: Put on your shoes, walk out the door, and suck it up.

[Colobo]

1. I love these "Hillary is not winning because of mysogyny" threads.

She is losing because her campaign was poorly managed and because Obama is a better candidate.

[pnwmom]

2. That's not what this thread is about. It isn't about why she is behind.

It's about the misogyny that her campaign has happened to lay bare -- that would have been exposed even if she were still the front-runner.

I'm in neither candidate's camp, and I'll support whichever wins the primary. I don't object to valid, logic-based attacks on either of them. It's the sexist form of many of the attacks on HRC that I object to. When, on DU, have you ever heard Obama ridiculed for the color of his skin or texture of his hair? Or called the N-word? Never, I hope. But we've seen countless posts mocking Hillary in comparable sexist terms.

Hillary wasn't the only one affected by sexism, by the way. Dennis Kucinich's chances were diminished in part because he violated the "rule" that manly men are supposed to be tall -- or at least, of average height.