The Myth That Only Clinton Can Heal the (Mythical) Rift Within the Party

[McCamy Taylor]

I. Old News



One of the topics which I have been exploring this election season are the mythic narratives that drive the Democratic Primary. Back in December, I recognized Obama as the hero from Otto Rank’s classic The Myth of the Birth of the Hero so I wrote Obama as Messiah: The Myth of the Birth of the President . This was before the corporate media was writing their silliness about cults and before he was the front runner. Mine was a study of the parallels between Obama’s life story and that of transformative heroes of the past. Since he is a writer, he may have chosen to frame his autobiography this way, or he may have done it unconsciously.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/118

Then, I wrote about John Edwards in John Edwards Body: An American Saint around the time of his upset second place finish in Iowa. From the title, you can tell that I had a feeling that his future in this campaign would not be what he might want it to be.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/119

And I finally I wrote about Hillary Clinton. Though she was still the front runner at the time, the writing was already on the wall, so I described her as a Mother Jones type figure, the eternal Female, half hated and half loved in her two guises as temptress/root of all evil and mother/protector of all life in Mother Hillary

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2663582&mesg_id=2663582

In early April, I thought I would catch up with our three mythic Democratic candidates to see what had become of them. So, I wrote Democratic Idols: The Mother and Child Reunion . As I had predicted, John Edwards had been media martyred which made him St. John Edwards. Obama was proclaimed the winner the moment his delegate count passed Clintons , because the hero foretold is always recognized as the winner the first time he challenges the seated ruler. Clinton had been burned at the stake (in a virtual sense) so thoroughly that she was now hated by many but absolutely adored by a few ---especially those who love the Virgin Mary including Catholics and Latinos, sealing her fate as the Mother Jones/Virgin of Guadalupe of the race.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/186

Now, imagine asking a bunch of Democrats to choose between the Once and Future King and Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. It is enough to make their heads explode. No wonder DU has been such a mess.



II. Good News

The good news is that this week St. John Edwards fulfilled his function as the St. John the Baptist of this year’s Democratic Primary and identified Obama as the one who will ”succeed” him. That means that Sen. Obama’s problem with poor folks is no longer a problem, since John would never endorse a candidate who was not willing to get behind America’s economically oppressed.

The effect was stunning. If Rev. Wright stripped Barack Obama of grace by proclaiming him just a politician, John Edwards baptized him as America’s political hope . The press took a moment from its Clinton bashing to focus on Obama, the political leader as he confronted the twin threats of Bush and McCain. Instead of parsing every word that passed through the lips of Clinton surrogates in order to paint her as the Great Whore and divide and conquer the Democratic Party along race, gender and socioeconomic grounds, the corporate media allowed Obama’s unity speech to become a reality. It was a real water into wine miracle moment.



http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-campaign15-2008may15,0,2998660.story

Obama, too, offered kind words for Clinton as he ripped into President Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican White House nominee. Both Republicans, Obama said, champion tax cuts for "those with the most, and tell everyone else to fend for themselves."

"John Edwards and I believe in a different America," Obama said, borrowing an Edwards campaign theme. "Hillary Clinton believes in a different America. The Democratic Party believes in a different America -- one America, where we rise and fall together as one people, and that's why we are going to take Washington by storm this November."

"Yes, we can!" the crowd shouted.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90452074

Barack Obama has gotten one of the most sought-after endorsements of the Democratic primary race. John Edwards will join Obama at a rally Wednesday night and announce his support. Edwards' endorsement has been the object of intense wooing — by both the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/14/politics/main4097243.shtml

Note the subtitle “’Brothers and Sisters We Must Come Together as Democrats’”.

Edwards, who received a thunderous ovation when Obama introduced him to a crowd of several thousand, said, "brothers and sisters, we must come together as Democrats" to defeat McCain. "We are here tonight because the Democratic voters have made their choice, and so have I."

III. Myth “Abolishes the Complexity of Human Acts” .

From A Primitive Like an Orb
Here, then, is an abstraction given head,
A giant on the horizon, given arms,
A massive body and long legs, stretched out,
A definition with an illustration, not
Too exactly labeled, a large among the smalls
Of it, a close, parental magnitude,
At the center of the horizon, concentrum, grave
And prodigious person, patron of origins.
Wallace Stevens

“In fact, what allows the reader to consume myth innocently is that he does not see it as a semiologogical system but as an inductive one. Where there is only an equivalence, he sees a kind of causal process ; the signifier and the signified have, in his eyes, a natural relationship. This confusion can be expressed otherwise: any semiological system is a system of values; now the myth-consumer takes the signification for a system of facts ; myth is read as a factual system, whereas it is but a semiological one.

Snip

In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically; it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity: things appear to mean something by themselves”
Roland Barthes “Myth Today” from Mythologies

Myth allows people to do things that keep our poor moderators at DU overworked. We see threads about some mythical creature called “Piece of Shit in a Pantsuit” (is that a relation of Medusa?) . We read about smear videos of the candidates that probably only exist in the imaginations of Homer or maybe of the people writing the OPs . We spot threads about how dumb white folks are and how racist Black folks are (funny, in the old days, the stories always had it the other way around). It isn’t the posting of this stuff that is the problem, mind you. A year ago, there were Freeper agitators posting similar stuff. When that happened, people at DU would either ignore the flamebait so that it could drift away, like those stray thoughts that try to intrude upon meditation. Or else they responded with a polite fuck off.

The trouble is that DU now has two armies of mindless drones who rate up such garbage based upon whom they believe that it bashes. Sometimes they get it wrong, and then they rate up a thread that does not bash anyone (how embarrassing for them and the thread authors).

Myth abolishes the complexity of human acts. In the simplistic world of myth, there can be only one motive for anything. So, that makes Clinton the Wicked Witch-Eve running wild across the country tossing out poisoned apples as fast as she and her consort the Phallic Serpent God Bill can grow them.



IV. When Will the Democratic Party Decide to Start Getting Along Together?

There is no reason that we can not do it now. The outrages that I have seen cited today----Clinton said that Obama would not debate her in a telephone conference call to her supporters, she said that Florida and Michigan must be resolved by the end of May---pale in comparison to the insults that Bush offered to Obama this week. Clinton has been on good behavior. Obama has been on good behavior. As best I can tell, the primary is now just a sham being used to register voters in preparation for the fall general election.

However, given the way that Democrats---voters, Super Delegates, party leaders---and members of the press have allowed themselves to become suckered by the mythic overtones of this election, I know that the individuals who are participating in this primary have no will to change anything. They are like bit players waiting for a principle to recite her lines.

That means that a whole bunch of people think that we can not get along until Hillary Clinton pulls on her Isis/Mary/Florence Nightingale costume and fixes the fractured Democratic Party the way that Isis gathered up the bits and pieces of her lover Osiris and super glued them together again.

In her conference call today, Clinton said something very sensible. People at DU have quoted it as if it was something outrageous, and yet

People in the past went all the way to the convention to make a point on the platform or at the convention and I don’t remember the press making a big deal about it.

Does not sound unreasonable to me. On the Republican side, Ron Paul is doing it. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm went to the Democratic Convention. Did anyone demand that she give her 151 delegates to one of the men? Why shouldn't the first major female candidate since Chisholm plan on going to the convention, too, unless her opponent secures enough delegates to wrap up the nomination?

Clinton’s strength is not Obama’s weakness. Just because some voters like her a little bit better does not mean that they will not select him instead if she is not on the ticket. Those who think that being beaten by Clinton in a few demographics will harm or shame Obama are probably falling prey to the sexist stereotype Being beaten by a girl is the worst thing that could happen to a boy . Also in Clinton’s much maligned conference call:

If you have voted for Barack or me you have more in common than with McCain.

Says it all. A vote for one Democrat is a vote for either Democrat, and it is a vote against four more years of war and lies and civil rights violations and recession.

This extended but congenial primary gets voters interested in the election and gets them registered to vote. This will help Democrats win this fall. Unfortunately, those who see the world only in mythic terms will have no room for such subtly. For them everything is black and white. A primary can only be a contest a battle of wills between two gladiators. Until Clinton bows down before Obama and acknowledges him as the conqueror, their world order can never be right.



How can we achieve personal liberty if we allow ourselves to be ruled by myths about what is correct behavior for men and for women and for men and women in their interactions with each other? How can people take control of their own destinies and bring about change if we always look outside of ourselves for a transformative figure who is supposed to lead the way?

There is therefore one language that is not mythical, it is the language of man as a producer; wherever man speaks in order to transform reality and no longer to preserve it as an image...This is why revolutionary language proper can not be mythical.
Barthe

[anigbrowl]

1. If I might suggest something to add to your reading list

It's an interesting thesis, but as a sometime screenwriter I'm inclined to this that the construction of narrative, with or without underlying mythological structure, is not nearly so one-dimensional as you suggest. I also feel that Clinton's campaign has been considerably more manichean and narrative-driven than Obama's has. While Obama's has been centered very much on participation and volunteers are encouraged to share their own personal narratives with potential supporters, I found the Clinton campaign's communication style has been much more of an exegesis in tone...though obviously that's a very personal opinion.

Meantime, I think you might be getting a little carried away with your semantic analysis, although it does present an interesting perspective on the overall sweep of the campaign. I think, too, you might want to reflect on some of your own recent output with regard to your mythical perspective. Recent essays of yours have read like modern analogues of the Siege of Troy, the Old Testament, and Joan of Arc. Personally I've been more reminded of the Empress Livia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair

[McCamy Taylor]

3. The Sokal paper sounds interesting. Most literay critics are FOS. Barthes was a genius.

His is the only literary criticism that I have ever found of any school that makes sense and is also elegant to read. I can not recommend him too highly. He elaborated upon the ideas that modernists like Wallace Stevens and the others explored and showed that you do not have to be a realist to be a good Marxist artist, since realism is bullshit anyway.

Barthes does not write about science, only literature and, to a lesser extent, other symbolic forms of communication, although he is not as fluent with them than he is with the written word. Since you are a writer, I am sure that you would get a lot out of his work.

His central premise----the reader actively creates the work through the act of reading, creating a multifaceted text---has never been more true than it is now in the age of the internet where many people can read, analyze and write about a text. Their texts about the text are then available through Google and form an expanded text, much like a literary circle in the Age of Enlightenment. We have reached the point where a critique of a work of art--say Barthe's own "S/Z" can be more influential than the work about which it is written. This is something that used to be true only about the Bible.

Since I write science fiction, my mind elaborates this through the melding of new biologic and computer technology to a complex wetwear-net in which all of the texts about texts about texts are recorded and linked....

And it is not the Tower of Babel. Or it is the Tower of Babel. That is the author's first choice in the decision tree. Being who I am, it is almost always not the Tower of Babel. I think that is at least partly why a famous fantasy writer told me that even when I was writing fantasy, I was really writing science fiction.

The only problem with Sokal's experiment, even if he intended it as a joke and even if he, the author, intended the paper to have no meaning, since it is the reader who assigns meaning and since the "death of the author", Sokal can not complain if some people found meaning in what he wrote. For instance, William Burroughs' cut ups in which he would put randomly selected word together on a page would sometimes form fragments that had "meaning" even though he intended none. Sokal, through his own ignorance could have accidentally stumbled across meanings that he did not intend.

This last possibility would make an interesting short story.

[JoFerret]

5. Without doubt - Mythologies is a key text.

.

[anigbrowl]

32. Hm, we have a lot of literary influences in common

One thing to bear in mind with Sokal's paper (which is hilarious - http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html) is that while it may very well be possible to impute useful meaning to his deliberate nonsense, on a mathematical level you've sacrificed consistency and thus nullified your predictive power.

Of course, you could still end up with unexpected useful discoveries, like Riemannian geometry. There's a sci-fi novel by Greg Egan called Diaspora that addresses this. He's not very popular in the US (he's from Australia) but you could find his stuff on Amazon, I think it would be right up your street.

[JoFerret]

4. The Sokal affair

is irrelevant to this analysis.

[skepticscott]

7. Except to the extent

that it shows how easily even supposedly intelligent people can be fooled by highbrow language when they think it's telling them what they want to hear.

[JoFerret]

8. As I said....irrelevant

to this post and this issue at this time.

[skepticscott]

9. You miss the irony,

which was probably unintended by the person who mentioned Sokal first, that the OP is yet another attempt to bamboozle people with flowery and needlessly elaborate writing, hoping that they will find meaning because they've been made to believe they're supposed to.

[JoFerret]

11. I understood the point of the comment and reference perfectly

And that is why I know it is irrelevant. Not an effort to engage the op in any substantial way.

Just a cheap shot coated with a thin film of erudition. One that enables the op to be dismissed without being understood.

[skepticscott]

15. You're assuming

that there's anything here to be understood, other than the fact that this is just another attempt by the OP to appear scholarly and erudite while saying nothing underneath it all except "The Democrats are in big trouble if they don't make Hillary VP". Just because a propaganda piece is lengthy and convoluted doesn't mean it deserves a lengthy and convoluted response. Sometimes saying that the emperor has no clothes is all that's warranted.

[Jakes Progress]

18. If you find McCamy's writing to be

flowery and overly elaborate, you may have spent too much time with a blackberry keyboard. I'm aware that most of the posts here are short and have only a single layer. That is because most are replies to single issues. The modern media has worked for years to develop the short attention span of the public. It serves their purpose of sticking six 30-second commercials in each program break. A beneficial side effect for them is that they get to use the short attention creation for their propaganda also. Gotta have video and gotta have a sound bite and gotta repeat it endlessly.

Shouldn't be the same here. McCamy is merely taking the time and space needed to develop and support her argument. We have way too many posters who just want to say the emperor has no clothes, but then don't have any argument to support their proclamation of nudity. In other words, one of our problems is that too many see only one side to any issue and see no reason to think that someone might disagree. So when disagreement occurs, each side sees the other as an idiot. I spent many years working with kids from 12 to 22 who couldn't understand why they had to explain their position. "Dude, White Snake just rules, man. They are awesome. They are the greatest ever, dude. Whoa."

After a couple of dozen years of that kind of writing I find McCamy's style to be a breath of fresh air and several steps ahead of the "Boo Yah. In your face" form of cyber prose. I find the her writing to be not only properly clad but elegantly attired.

[JoFerret]

23. Agreed

And most of the detractors jump in to declaim, denounce, renounce etc without taking the time to attempt to read.

The knee jerk brigade - more on the bandwagon than in the know.

[skepticscott]

30. As a matter of fact

I don't even own a Blackberry, and probably most of the other things you presume you know about me are also wrong. But I do believe that brevity is the soul of wit, and that volume is not the most important measure for the worth of someone's writing. Obfuscation requires a lot of ink to be spilled, but the truth doesn't need to be spun. And that's what we're talking about here..the same arguments being advanced time and time again, from as many angles as possible, but with nothing really new added. I give her full marks for creativity and stamina, but ultimately not for persuasiveness.

The OP apparently has time to re-craft her "Put Hillary on the ticket or else" plea on virtually a daily basis, and she's certainly entitled if that's what floats her boat, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to answer what are, at bottom, the same points endlessly. If I've been there and done that once or twice, that's enough. Sue me for having better things to do.

[Jakes Progress]

40. If you like brevity

I can help you craft yours into terseness. Just say "Screw America; I hate Hillary".

The OP's "put Hillary on the ticket or else" plea is a plea to help rid us of Bush and his legacy. I know that a lot of DU'ers like to say how dare you threaten to not vote Democratic. I have said from last Fall that I would vote for the Democratic nominee. Always have for over forty years now. The OP has never said she wouldn't vote for BO. All good Democrats will.

The fact that the Hillary Haters like to ignore is that there are a lot of voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats. Obama needs those votes. His campaign has bragged of the number of non-Democrat voters that they are attracting. McCamy's carefully worded explanations about what the MSM has done to Hillary and what they are going to do to Barack should tell you that huge numbers of those situational-Democrats will drift McCainwards once the election is underway and they turn their twists, bogus issues, and flat out lies on Obama.

They convinced many perfectly good Democrats that Hillary was a witch, so they will have an easy time fooling those who don't have a history of loyalty to the party that Obama is a scary man. They will find thousands of ways to scare and anger the electorate. Fear and hatred are the best tools of the republican party. Hillary on the ticket blunts those tactics. Politics ain't pretty, but it is what elects presidents.

i guess it boils down to whether you want to put a Democrat in the White House more than you hate Hillary. How's that sentence for brevity?

[skepticscott]

46. As I said,

most of the things you presume you know about me are wrong. I don't hate Hillary and never have, and if she is the nominee in November, I'll vote for her and never even consider staying home or voting for another party. If you can point to a single one of my over 800 posts where I attack her personally, or express hatred for her as a candidate or a human being, then do so. Otherwise, just admit that my "hatred" is just a wishful projection of yours, with no basis in reality.

They convinced many perfectly good Democrats that Hillary was a witch, so they will have an easy time fooling those who don't have a history of loyalty to the party that Obama is a scary man. They will find thousands of ways to scare and anger the electorate. Fear and hatred are the best tools of the republican party. Hillary on the ticket blunts those tactics.

So if all these perfectly good Democrats have been absolutely convinced by the MSM that Hillary is a witch, how in the world does having her on the ticket blunt the exact same tactics in the GE?

i guess it boils down to whether you want to put a Democrat in the White House more than you hate Hillary. How's that sentence for brevity?

Actually, it boils down to whether Hillary and all of the other Democratic candidates will support a ticket that they aren't part of as energetically as one they are. Will Hillary, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and the rest say to their supporters the day after the convention "If you support what I've fought for and stood for, you'll support Barack Obama for president"? If they will, and if everyone who supported any Democrat in the primaries does the same in November, McCain won't stand a chance, the machinations of the MSM notwithstanding. If there are people who voted for a Democrat in the primaries but who won't in the GE because their favorite or "ideal" candidate isn't in there, or because a supporter of Barack Obama hurt their feelings back in February, those are the ones you should be directing your ire towards.

[Jakes Progress]

48. No ire.

Just a little skepticism. Hillary is scum. But you will vote for her. Hillary is scum. But you don't hate her. The language you chose is the way your motivations are shown.

Whether the other candidates will support the eventual nominee is not what it boils down to. All have said they would. You have turned the conversation to avoid where you began. You denied that Hillary should be the VP (because she is scum is the reason I believe you gave). Perfectly good Democrats, like yourself, will vote for Hillary on the ticket - you said you would. The people I'm talking about are the situational Democrats. The blue collar workers and middle class that the Obama supporters (not him) keep calling names. Those who keep telling WV voters that they are all inbred hillbillies are either just stupid and don't understand that we need that state in November or they are shills for the other side. Remember Donald Segretti? Remember the "secret" letter from Muskie? Know who was a protege of little Donald - a young up and comer named Karl Rove. Segretti's work was to infiltrate the Democratic campaign and create ill will for the candidate. We've got that here.

So I'm glad you will support the Democratic ticket in November. I will too. Now getting as many others to do so is the goal. If 47% of the people who voted in the primaries voted for Hillary, shouldn't that make her a valuable asset. You say you don't hate her, but this site is chock o block with HH. Their misguided anger shouldn't be allowed to hamper our success in the election. My conviction is that they are deluded and confused or that they are practitioners of the the Segretti arts.

[skepticscott]

52. Since you obviously

can't make your arguments work without attributing things to me that we both know I never said ("because she is scum is the reason I believe you gave"), we're done here.

[Jakes Progress]

53. My error.

I posted a reply composed off line to the wrong thread.

My apologies.

[anigbrowl]

36. I did intend that, actually

I felt the OP was advancing an elaborate straw man argument and was ultimately a beautifully packaged tautology. Which is not to say that I didn't find it entertaining and thought-provoking, but ultimately I felt it lacked a clear thesis.

[aquart]

16. Livia was a murderess who killed many people she personally knew.

That is a disgusting and untruthful analogy. But not surprising in the monstrous overkill used to destroy Senator Clinton here on DU and elsewhere in the media.

Now let's hear how that's just the way it is, not sexism at all.

[anigbrowl]

37. Well, it's a metaphor you know.

McCamy set up of a context of considering current events and the individuals therein in terms of their mythical qualities, and questioned the usefulness of myths as a basis for understanding the complexities of the real world. Obviously Livia is not mythological, but then most human myths are elaborate and simplified characterizations of archetypal behavior.

We often refer to historical figures in this way - nobody would bat an eyelid at a column comparing the Democratic primary to the Napoleonic wars or suchlike. we might question the validity of the author's analogy depending on how well they make their argument, but the idea of drawing analogies between current events and mythical or historical ones is nothing unusual.

So if I make comparisons between Hillary Clinton and the historical Livia, that doesn't mean I'm suggesting she has literally murdered anyone. I don't think that James Carville was trying to assert that Bill Richardson had literally identified Clinton to the local military authorities when he referred to him as 'Judas' either.

The point of my analogy was to draw a comparison between Clinton and Livia, who was the wife of a celebrated Roman emperor and was willing to jettison contemporary ethical standards in pursuit of her own political ambitions.

[papau]

19. Empress Livia of rumor (aka Clinton's DU image via Obama fans) or the one leading Rome?

[anigbrowl]

38. The latter.

[BlooInBloo]

27. The Sokal Hoax was AWESOME. I went to one of the early talks between him and Abramowitz...

It's hilarious when people get PWNED and are too stupid to even realize it.

Damn litcridiots.

[saracat]

2. Beautifully said. It may be too late for many, including me, to want to unify but this

is beautifully written and explored. I do not necessarily agree with all the analogies but they were interesting.The St. John analogy especially was interesting in view of your previous writing. But I have to say for myself and many others, the beatification of St. John did not so much take place as his "fall from grace".It seems for some of us , though we will always respect and value what Sen.Edwards tried to do, the single act of this endorsement, at a time when a statesman who have remained neutral, diminished him to the level of "ordinary politician".

I respect Sen. Edwards and trust he had his reasons, but the general effect for many was a crack in our belief system.

[JoFerret]

6. It could be interpretted as political expediency

He has been out of a real job for years. And looks like he wants one. I have heard AG bruited about. A nice pick and should keep him occupied.

I just hope Elizabeth keeps on his case and keeps him honest. Especially on the issue of health care. Obama needs a deal of work in that area.

[aquart]

17. Go here. Take comfort.

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=6015449&mesg_id=6016798>

It is always dangerous to ascribe too much nobility to politicians.

[DWilliamsamh]

10. I would have not lost my respect for Hillary had she...

run "an extended and congenial" campaign. If this pivotal phrase had been a part of her actual campaign after Feb. 5th then she night actually have made it to be the nominee. But she hasn't. Instead she has pulled out the inexcusable in a Democratic party process; the "soft on racism" card.

Why am I commenting about this? Because I am sick and tired of you and people like you defending the indefensible. And yes your insistence on portraying Hillary as a victim of Media/democratic voter, "hillary bashing" is a de facto defense of her tactics. She is scum.

[aquart]

14. You mean, LADYLIKE, dontcha?

You would have liked her if she'd remembered her place. Sure, kid, I believe ya.

Lotta scum goin' around.

[DWilliamsamh]

25. No I meant exactly what I wrote.

When I used "congenial" I was quoting the OP, by way of noting that she was WRONG about the kind off campaign that HRC has run. So if anyone was bringing "lady like" into the mix, talk to the OP.


And the charge of sexism, when one has noted HRC's actual words and actions is more tired than a 14 year old german shepard. That particular charge is just as rickety as well. At least TRY to be original.

[Jakes Progress]

20. Having your hero as an avatar

is not always a good idea, given your choice.

Are you new to politics? Please give me an example of the kind of light and polite and ladylike campaign you have seen. Please don't be naive and say that any of the politicians running for office above president of the local weaving guild have conducted one. (Although the last Weaver's Guild campaign here was quite nasty.) Your arguments about why you lost your respect for Hillary are strawmen. Of you would read several of McCamy's articles about the MSM manipulation of the mass image of Hillary (and Edwards and Obama) you might be able to find the real source of your new found hatred.

There is a nasty election coming up. Those who don't recognize they have been manipulated about Hillary are going to be very susceptible to the coming machinations of the media about Obama.

[DWilliamsamh]

24. Not familiar with Ironic symbolism are you. No Scalia isn't my hero. He's an ass.

Look the photo (and the story behind it) up. He's not my hero, I chose that avatar to forever remind folks of what he thinks of the rest of us....

When I used "congenial" I was quoting the OP, by way of noting that she was WRONG about the kind off campaign that HRC has run. So if anyone was bringing "lady like" into the mix, talk to the OP.

I don't need sources to explain to me what I have heard from HRC's own mouth. I make my own judgments about what she has said. After Feb 5 she has run a campaign based on the Republican playbook that includes appealing to the baser natures of the voter's, a tacit acceptance of racism if it means she gains the racist vote, and an anti-thought "awe shucks, the common man with less than a college education should be the one's we look to to guide us in all matters great and small." SHE has said the things that lead me to think these things about her. I don't give a DAMN what the MSM say. My best sources for the last few years have been Rachel Maddow, Sam Seder, Brave New Films, Michael Moore, Tom Hartman, Mike Malloy and Randi Rhodes - but I don't accept what any of them say at face value when I can hear the words as spoken, or read the words as written, by the original source.

Nothing I have said has anything to do with HRC's gender. It wasn't her gender that made her vote yes on the IWR, and it wasn't her gender that lead her to vote for Kyle/Lieberman. It wasn't her gender that made her harp on how she has the votes of "white American's." It wasn't her race that made her say she has the support of "...working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." It wasn't her gender that made her say she wasn't going to listen to economists, regarding the fiscal effects of her/McCain's "gas tax holiday" pandering plan. It wasn't her gender that made her say she and McCain had experience while her opponent only had a speech from 2002. The reason I have lost my respect for Hillary is because of her actions, not her genitalia. And if her name was John, and she had a set of twigs and berries I would feel no different about HIM.

These are the things I object to. These are the things that make me say she is running a Republican campaign. These are the things that make me say she is scum.

[graywarrior]

12. I don't agree with a lot of what your wrote, but I find it very intriquing

It's always good to step outside the normal way of thinking and look at what you think you know from a different perspective, so I thank you for your work.

[aquart]

13. Funny you should mention it.

Myth, I believe, is the current (and/or past) politically correct explanation for what we're doing anyway. (But people should be real careful of that Isis healing Osiris story, after all, there was that little piece left out.)

However, before myth came to explain it, there was magic. I was reading Frazer's The Golden Bough last night on my wee iPaq, and he said something, in his very 19th-century British way, that I may choose to cling to:

" But in savage society there is commonly to be found ... what we may call public magic, that is, sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community. Wherever ceremonies of this sort are observed for the common good, it is obvious that the magician ceases to be merely a private practitioner and becomes to some extent a public functionary. The development of such a class of functionaries is of great importance for for the political as well as the religious evolution of society. For when the welfare of the tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician rises into a position of much influence and repute, and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly draws into its ranks ...the ablest and most ambitious men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe their weaker brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage. Not that the sorcerer is always a knave or an imposter; he is often sincerely convinced that he possesses those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits. Thus the abler members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability will generally come to the top and win for themselves positions of the highest dignity and the most commanding authority. The pitfalls which beset the path of the professional sorcerer are many, and as a rule only the man of coolest head and sharpest wit will be able to steer his way through them safely. For it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his own extravagant pretensions is in far greater peril ...than the deliberate impostor. ...

The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous charcter. If we could balance the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they confer by their superior sagacity, it might well be found that the good greatly outweighed the evil. For more mischief has...been wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by intelligent rascals. Once your shrewd rogue has attained the height of his ambition, and has no longer any selfish end to further, he may, and often does, turn his talents, his experience, his resources, to the service of the public. Many men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of power have been the most beneficent in the use of it...In the field of politics the wily intriguer, the ruthless victor, may end by being a wise and magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime, lamented at his death, admired and applauded by posterity."

Yah, I'm gonna need to cling to this.

[McCamy Taylor]

26. Fraser is biased against ritual magic. What about Voodoo? How can

Fraser claim "For it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician as such is false" if he has not had a mambo look into his eyes and tell him his profession as a New Orleans mambo (a stranger to me) once looked into my eyes and told me my profession (physician) on a busy St. John's Night in the near dark in the middle of a crowd when I was not wearing a white coat and stethoscope?

Anthropologists, more than anyone else, need to keep an open mind. Since the three dimensional world that we perceive is a creation of our senses and the "real" world has many more dimensions which can be demonstrated in physics labs through particle experiments, that means that phenomenon such as precognition are not only perfectly reasonable but to be expected---since a little bleed through of precognition would give individual humans an extra advantage in some situations and nature selects for traits that are advantageous.

Through meditation we can also train the mind to notice so much more than we notice now that the effects appear miraculous. Which leads to the question, what is mundane and what is magic? Magic would cease to amaze if we became familiar with it, but things we take for granted might seem miraculous to us the first time we encounter them---if they were accompanied by the signs of magic.

Political candidates are accompanied by the signs of leadership. Unfortunately for Clinton, the signs of leadership when associated with a woman are also the signs of the smothering, oppressive mother. Her problem is not that she got where she was because of Bill. Had she chosen to run as Bill's Little Lady, the country would have eaten that up. There is a long history in the U.S. of electing women who reluctantly run for office because their men are barred from doing it again. The problem for Clinton is that some people did not like seeing ambition in a woman. Who out there has questioned the male candidates' ambition? Who has accused them of wanting to be president, as if that was a character defect?

[skepticscott]

34. You should read more Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes and his real-life inspiration Joseph Bell did that sort of thing all the time, without the need to cloak it in mystical woo-woo. In virtually all, if not all cases, when a person ascribes something to "magic" it simply reflects incomplete understanding on their part.

And what, pray tell, are the dimensions of the real world beyond four that "can be demonstrated in physics labs through particle experiments". A greater number of dimensions has been postulated, but never demonstrated. Sounds like you've been reading too much from Deepak Chopra or Frank Tipler and their ilk and not enough from serious theoretical physicists. Attempts to justify a mechanism for so-called "psychic phenomena" with quantum mechanics and particle cosmology simply fall flat.

[McCamy Taylor]

43. This is from my electrical engineer husband. The simplest experiment

and the one that best describes what I am getting at is one in which they take a particle, split it, separate the two halves in space. An operation is performed on one half. They measure the other half and discover that there is an effect on the other second which is no longer physically connected to the first half.

What does this experiment tell us? Einstein was correct. There are other dimensions besides the ones which our senses show us. Even though the particle halves are separated in space, there is still a connection that allows information to pass between the halves. We could call that connection "time". In the near past, the two halves are still connected. So, time is just another dimension, along which information can travel.

Since I, my son, my mother all have similar, reproducible precognitive events, this experiment makes perfectly good sense to me as does Einstein's theory of the universe. It explains the occasional "blips" I get in which I know things which will happen a few minutes in the future with accuracy that is not statistically possible (and I am excellent at math and calculating probabilities). The fact that my son and mother experience the same thing suggests that this is hard wired. Examples of when I have noticed this effect---cake walks. That is when I first noticed it. My family cleaned up at the first cake walk we attended, because we can sense when the music will stop and if we are close to a number that will be "it" much more often than other people so we load up on cakes. It is also useful in picking Magic, Pokemon or Yugioh sealed packs that will have the valuable or desirable cards inside.

Keep in mind that our senses are artificial. Why do we "see" a certain spectrum of light and not another? Why do we "hear" certain sound waves and not others? Why do we perceive vibration and temperature and pain with our skin and bones? Some children are born without the ability to feel pain. They end up getting many injuries to skin, bones and joints. Our senses were developed because they were useful. Look at the octopus, the highest evolutionary adaptation of phylum mollusca. Except for its radial symmetry (we have bilateral symmetry), the octopus developed almost the same way that we did. It grew an exaggerated head to house its big brain. It has eyes which form one of its important ways of sensing the world. It has the equivalent of hands in its tentacles. Instead of on outer shell like most molluscs, it internalized its shell into an inner bone, the way that we have. These adaptations have made it one of the most adaptable and intelligent aquatic creatures.

Just because human beings sense three dimensions and linear time, that does not mean that all living things sense the universe this way. For instance, who knows how plants are hard wired to sense the world around them. Or how other animals sense the world. If it was advantageous to be aware of only a narrow segment of time, then the nervous system could adapt itself to create that sensation, the same way that the eye filters out most UV radiation and shows us only a few "colors" and light and dark so that we can detect food and predators.

[skepticscott]

47. Sorry, but

the entanglement of sub-atomic particles does not prove the existence of additional dimensions, it is simply a consequence of quantum mechanics. They may exist, but that existence has not been demonstrated. And Einstein was still wrong. The EPR paradox does not destroy the internal consistency of quantum mechanics, and it does not violate special relativity.

[McCamy Taylor]

54. So much of scientific theory is based upon mythology. Origins of the universe theories are devised

to suit our Judeo-Christian myths and given the Papal stamp of approval----and therefore we are taught that there was a single Big Bang and that all is moving towards extinction a la the Biblical Armageddon. And scientists then scramble to make the data fit this theory that the Church tells us is correct.

But where does dark matter fit? Where does precognition fit? Why do two particles connected only through time fit?

The actual universe is more likely to be like multiple passenger trains going backwards and forwards passing each other as some expand and some contract, with every time still present though not here at "this time" just as every place is present though not at "this place". We do not perceive the other trains because we are riding one of the trains. If we do occasionally get a glimpse of the other trains, that is precognition.

[skepticscott]

58. Here's a tip

Stick with writing political propaganda. Your grasp of science is truly laughable (thanks for the laugh, btw). If this weren't GD:P and if I had nothing better to do, I might take a few pages to educate you, but as it is, you'll have to be satisfied with your own cluelessness.

[anigbrowl]

39. *lots* of people have questioned Obama's ambition this primary season.

As for Clinton, I have no issues whatsoever with her wanting to be President. The issues I have are with the strategies she has employed in pursuit of that ambition, both in terms of ethics and execution.

[McCamy Taylor]

55. If you will see my "Press v. Hillary Clinton" journals, there is a difference.

Clinton has been denounced for possessing an unfeminine ambitiousness ever since 1992. Even before she announced her presidential bid in 2007, the right wing press and people like Tweety were condemning her presidential run in the kind of language that is usually reserved for conquering fascist dictators like Mussolini.

The criticism of Obama is much gentler. He is chided if he is not 100% altruistic, as in "Oh, he is a little bit ambitious, isn't he?" Or, "Obama acted like a pragmatic politician there."

There is no comparison between what Wright said about Obama and what the press has been saying about Clinton---comparing her to people like the Borgias or Nixon or Medea in her ruthless ambition. Anyone who thinks that there is parity there is delusional.

[anigbrowl]

57. I guess you missed all those thread suggesting he was leading a cult etc.

I fail to see why you are bringing Wright into it. There are more than enough objections to Obama from complete third parties, both in the media and outside it. Your argument is extremely disingenuous. I'd like you to find me one example - just one - from the mainstream press or the Obama campaign suggesting that women are unfit to hold leading office. Taking a comment aimed at Hillary in particular and generalizing it to include all women will be labelld a fail.

[aquart]

41. So true. But...

We're gonna be stuck with Barry and Michele, two really sharp opportunists. So I'm trying to believe that Frazer is right: that once they get the brass ring, they'll settle down, do good works, and stop sending out runners to threaten a race war every five minutes.

Question: Who's Obama's kids' nanny?

[TahitiNut]

21. Obama will become the Son of Abel ... the "new wave" coming to wash away the old.

The Cain vs. Abel myth is often thought to portray the advent of totalitarian agriculture (Abel) supplanting the hunter-gatherer culture (Cain). The latter regarded the former has heretical and blasphemous ... presuming to be OVER the earth rather than OF the earth. Thus, Cain the hunter-gatherer and herdsman slew Abel the totalitarian agriculturalist, the farmer the presumed 'ownership' of land and ther right to kill any living thing feeding upon his crops.

We have the Son of Cain (lit. McCain) entrenched in the Old Ways about to confront the Son of Abel (Hussein ... newly risen from the land).

[McCamy Taylor]

29. I see Cain-Abel as a political statement of the Jewish people against Egyptian oppression.

Recall that the Egyptians were a sedentary people living on the Nile. Their mythology included Set, an animal god who killed his brother Osiris, god of agriculture because their sister Isis favored Osiris. Isis put the bits and pieces of Osiris back together, conceived Horus who killed Set, Osiris became god of the underworld and Horus became god of this world. The Osiris myth was a typical fertility myth of the type associated with communities that farmed---death of an old god, rebirth through a son. The central feature here was the miracle Isis performed in bringing new life from death.

The Hebrews, who were a nomadic, herding people and who also were at war with this Egyptian masters turned the Set-Osiris story on its head. The god of herding became the good one. Instead of competing for the affection of a goddess, they were now competing for the affection of a god (although who knows what they were competing for way back then, there was still goddess worship at the time, maybe the god of the Hebrews was different all those years ago and has been rewritten by history). God chose the representative of the Hebrew way of life this time, the animal herder Abel with his offering of meat and rejected Cain the agriculturalist with his offering of produce. Cain was pissed and killed Abel. God rejected the agriculturalist lifestyle Cain (and the Egyptian overlords) represented. The Hebrews, who saw themselves in a state of war with the Egyptians were not interested in the rebirth part of the Osiris myth. They seized upon the battle between brothers part when they rewrote the story.

[Leo 9]

22. "Grendel's mother and Grendel are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain"

The poem Beowulf is contained in the Nowell Codex. As noted in lines 106-114 and lines 1260-1267 of Beowulf, Grendel's mother and Grendel are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain. Beowulf leaves Geatland in order to find and destroy Grendel, who has been attacking Heorot. Barring his lineage, all motives for his attacks are left up to the reader. One cryptic scene, in which Grendel sits in the abandoned hall unable to approach the throne, hints that his motives may be greed or revenge. After a long battle, Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel by ripping his arm off. Grendel dies in his cave under the swamp. Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother, over whom he triumphs. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes the head, keeping it as a trophy. Beowulf then returns to the surface and to his men at the "ninth hour" (l. 1600, "nōn", about 3pm).<1> He returns to Heorot, where he is given many gifts by an even more grateful Hroðgar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grendel

[BlooInBloo]

28. Holy Useless Overthinking For The Sake Of Uttering Pretty Words, Batman!

:rofl:

[skepticscott]

35. You've put it in a nutshell, Boy Wonder

:applause:

[BlooInBloo]

45. No virtue on my part. Everything litcrit people say is worthless and sterile. It's their job.

[McCamy Taylor]

56. Read Roland Barthes. He is the exception. Marxist literary criticism empowers the reader.

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm

Roland Barthes is a key figure in international intellectual life. He is one of the most important intellectual figures to have emerged in postwar France and his writings continue to have an influence on critical debates today. When he died in 1981, he left a body of major work but, as many of his friends and his admirers claimed, with still more important work to come. I can't possible hope to do justice to the diversity of his various writings here - I can only point you in the direction of Culler (1983), Moriarty (1991) and Rylance (1994) where you will find good accounts of his career - so I will plunge straightaway into a discussion of Mythologies, which is one of his earliest and most widely-read works. Mythologies is one of Barthes's most popular works because in it we see the intellectual as humourist, satirist, master stylist and debunker of the myths that surround us all in our daily lives.

And from the same link a quote from "The Death of the Author" by Barthes

Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is ‘explained’—victory to the critic. Hence there is no surprise in the fact that, historically, the reign of the Author has also been that of the Critic, nor again in the fact that criticism (be it new) is today undermined, along with the Author. In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered; the structure can be followed, ‘run’ (like the thread of a stocking) at every point and at every level, but there is nothing beneath: the space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced; writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to evaporate it, carrying out a systematic exemption of meaning. In precisely this way literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law.

Roland Barthes (along with William Blake and Leonard Boff) has been of the writers who has had the most profound influence on my thinking. I read S/Z in college. Up until then, all the literary critics I read while getting my English Lit. major had failed to impress me. He was the only one who did not talk crap---because he was the only one who debunked the craft of the literary critic and called for a new kind of writing in which the reader created the meaning. From a Marxist perspective, this is how the worker will eventually rise up and assume control---by rejecting the myths that are used to paralyze us and by redefining the world in terms that are relevant to us.

[RTBerry]

42. Robin is succinct, and fond of alliteration.

If you're trying to make an in-character joke, try and stay true to the character. OK? For example, Robin might say, "Holy hyperbole, Batman!" That would be in character, for Robin.

[BlooInBloo]

44. Irony can be funny, too.

[skepticscott]

49. Then how do you explain

"Holy Uncanny Photographic Mental Processes!" and "Holy Priceless Collection of Etruscan Snoods!"?

[RTBerry]

51. Mind altering drugs, silly.

Slipped to him by some dastardly criminal mastermind, no doubt.

[hendo]

31. interesting read K&R n/t

[DU GrovelBot]

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[woolldog]

50. Fascinating. k&r