All Hat, No Cattle, and Kid Gloves [Updated]

Here’s a video created by one of our readers:

Another longtime friend e-mailed me and asked if anyone’s used the phrase, “The Audacity of Hype.” I cranked up Google Web search. The results? “Personalized Results 1 – 10 of about 339,000 for The Audacity of Hype.” (No one summed it up better than Gloria Steinem in her NYT op-ed, “Women Are Never Front Runners,” when she asserted that a woman with Obama’s lack of experience would never be taken seriously as a presidential candidate.)

Among the results is “The audacity of hype: Just what else has Obama wrought?” by Charles Krauthammer, a neo-con. But, whatever you think of Krauthammer, you can’t read it without howling in laughter, and some pain. (See my story, “If the Shoe Fits … [UPDATED].”)

But Obama gets away with it. And so do the largely besotted media. (If he had run the “3 a.m.” ad, they’d say he was displaying his readiness to tackle national security issues. When she ran it, they said she was using the politics of fear. Forgive me for saying that Clinton was pointing out that she’s ready for national emergency calls at 3 a.m., and he’s not.) UPDATE from Kevin Drum via Big Tent Democrat’s “More on the 3am Ad” at TalkLeft:

Why is it somehow OK for John McCain to run on the basis of being the guy who can protect America while Hillary shouldn’t? Why are we often so eager to practically concede to Republicans exactly the stereotypes they want voters to believe about us?

And the standards by which the media operate? As Bridget Nacos, a professor and regular reader of NoQuarter, wrote, “Although certainly not revealing gender biases, the mainstream media continue to cover male and female politicians quite differently.” Dr. Nacos points out what Hillary’s 2006 GOP opponent did:

In New York’s senatorial race between the incumbent Hillary Clinton and challenger John Spencer, attacked his opponent’s ugliness, accused her of having spent a fortune to improve her looks, and mocked her husband for not having married a pretty girl. One could not possibly imagine such a punch under the belt against a male candidate for whatever political office.

From “If the Shoe Fits” on February 15 that illustrates the inherent sexism that Obama exploits at times, and the pervasive sexism of the largely white-male media:

Barack Obama today [February 15]:

“I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal,” he said. “But I think this kind of gamesmanship is not what the American people are looking for.”

UPDATE: The video is from Taylor Marsh, who also adds this quote in her excellent article, “Barack Obama’s Thinking is So Last Century,” I hadn’t seen before which is so sexist (a la cat fights) that I have no question he’s a misogynist:

“You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out.” – Senator Barack Obama

Taylor also has the exchange with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and Norah O’Donnell, who get it about Obama’s remark today (re the text at the top and in the video):

Nora O’Donnell: “He said, ‘I understand when she’s down (emphasis hers), that she makes these kinds of attacks. It’s getting a little personal.”

Andrea Mitchell: “It’s getting a little personal and, very frankly, you know how deeply we interpreted every comment to look for some sort of racial motivation before South Carolina. A lot of people said it was there. But, you know, when you start describing a female (emphasis hers) candidate as being “down” and “striking back.” I don’t know, that’s a little edgy, don’t you think?”

Nora O’Donnell: “Yeah. And I think there’s gonna be a lot more comments about that.”

I hope so, Norah. I do. But since most of the TV MSM is male, probably not. Thank you to you and Andrea Mitchell for getting it. Don’t always agree with your reporting, but I must acknowledge, as another woman, that I recognize that god only knows what you two have had to put up with professional and privately in your lives. It never gets easy for a woman, especially in a male-dominated profession.

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THEN there was David Fiderer’s guest column here on January 5, “Maureen Dowd, and The Women of Washington Who Project on to Hillary.” Ms. Dowd’s “issues” regarding Hillary Clinton are well-known. But Fiderer’s analysis is revelatory and devastating and, once again, points out the irrational biases by supposed journalists like Ms. Dowd — along with other media observers’ obsession with psychoanalyzing the Clintons:

Now I suspect we’re getting into some touchy territory here – you never know where a faith healer may lead you – but hear me out. Did you ever consider that your intimacy chakra might become unblocked if you dropped your obsession with the Clintons’ marital life? You should schedule a follow-up session with your faith healer to confirm the diagnosis, but a quick review of your columns over the past four months shows repeated and unmistakable signs of psychological projection.

Projection is where you attribute to others your own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts and emotions. In this case, you neurotically attribute to Hillary Clinton your own inability to connect emotionally with men, and therefore feel a need to portray the Clintons, whose marriage has endured, like Lord and Lady Macbeth.

Before anyone reduces this thesis to “Maureen’s-jealous-because-Hillary-has-a-husband,” let me assure you that some men appear similarly afflicted in the psychological projection department. A few conspicuous examples: … Read all.

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In a supposed “news” article, “For Obama, a Taste of What a Long Battle Would Hold,” the New York Times’s Adam Nagourney fretted about what Obama would face in a general election contest:

[S]hould Mr. Obama win the nomination, he will be playing on a more treacherous political battleground as his opponents — scouring through his record of votes and statements and his experiences before he entered public life — look for ways to portray him as out of step with the nation’s values, challenge his appeal to independent voters and emphasize his lack of experience in foreign policy and national security.

Some of this will almost certainly take the shape of the Internet rumors and whispering campaigns that have popped up against Mr. Obama since he got into the race, like the false reports that he is Muslim. Others will no doubt come from the types of shadowy independent committees that have played a big role in campaigns in recent years. …

No doubt Nagourney will be there to faithfully report every instance, real or not, in which Obama is attacked. Thankfully, a few “truthtellers” like Sean Wilentz of The New Republic see it a bit differently:

Race Man
by Sean Wilentz
How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton.
Post Date Wednesday, February 27, 2008

After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama’s promises of a pure, soul-cleansing “new” politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp–over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress–will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is.

Most of the recent correctives have concerned outrageously deceptive advertisements approved and released by Obama’s campaign. First, in Iowa, the Obama camp aired radio ads patterned on the notorious “Harry and Louise” Republican propaganda from 1993, charging falsely that Senator Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal would “force those who cannot afford health insurance to buy it, punishing those who won’t fall in line.” In subsequent primary and caucus campaigns, the Obama campaign sent out millions of mailers, also featuring the “Harry and Louise” motif, falsely claiming that Clinton favored “punishing families who can’t afford health care in the first place.” A few bloggers and columnists, notably Paul Krugman in The New York Times, described the ads as distorting, but the national press corps mainly ignored them–until Clinton herself, seeing the fraudulent mailers reappear in Ohio over the past weekend, publicly denounced them.

The Obama mass mailings also attempt to appeal to Ohio’s labor vote by claiming that Clinton believed that the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, was a “‘boon’ to our economy.” More falsehood: In fact, Clinton had not said that; Newsday originally applied the word “boon” and has now noted the Obama campaign’s distortion. In this campaign, Clinton has called for a moratorium on all trade agreements until they are made consistent with labor and environmental standards–and account for the effect on jobs in the United States. Obama makes a big deal about how Bill Clinton signed NAFTA. But he fails to mention that, within the councils of her husband’s administration, Hillary Clinton was a skeptic of free trade agreements, and as a senator and candidate she has said that NAFTA contained flaws that need to be rectified. Ignoring all that, the Obama flyer features an alarming photograph of closed plant gates, having no connection to any action of Senator Clinton’s, as well as the dubious quotation about her from Newsday in 2006. Newsday has criticized “Obama’s use of the quotation” as “misleading … an example of the kind of slim reeds campaigns use to try and win an office.” Obama, without retracting the mailing (and while playing to protectionist sentiment in the party) said only that he would have his staff look into the matter–long after the ad has done its dirty work.

Misleading propaganda is hardly new in American politics –although the adoption of techniques reminiscent of past Republican and special-interest hit jobs, right down to a retread of the fictional couple, seems strangely at odds with a campaign that proclaims it will redeem the country from precisely these sorts of divisive and manipulative tactics. As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign’s most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads. To a large degree, the campaign’s strategists turned the primary and caucus race to their advantage when they deliberately, falsely, and successfully portrayed Clinton and her campaign as unscrupulous race-baiters–a campaign-within-the-campaign in which the worked-up flap over the Somali costume photograph is but the latest episode. While promoting Obama as a “post-racial” figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics.

More than any other maneuver, this one has brought Clinton into disrepute with important portions of the Democratic Party. A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the “race card” were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students. The Clinton campaign, in fact, has not racialized the campaign, and never had any reason to do so. Rather the Obama campaign and its supporters, well-prepared to play the “race-baiter card” before the primaries began, launched it with a vengeance when Obama ran into dire straits after his losses in New Hampshire and Nevada–and thereby created a campaign myth that has turned into an incontrovertible truth among political pundits, reporters, and various Obama supporters. This development is the latest sad commentary on the malign power of the press, hyping its own favorites and tearing down those it dislikes, to create pseudo-scandals of the sort that hounded Al Gore during the 2000 campaign. It is also a commentary on how race can make American politics go haywire. Above all, it is a commentary on the cutthroat, fraudulent politics that lie at the foundation of Obama’s supposedly uplifting campaign. … Read all.

David Fiderer has some priceless Dowd quotes. Among them:

Just when I thought I was out, the Clintons pull me back into their conjugal psychodrama. 12/23/07

As any former regular viewer of MSNBC (like me) knows, the “conjugal psychodrama” consumes all of the pundits and hosts of Hardball, Tucker, and the other shows that specialize in psychoanalyzing Bill and Hillary — and that specialize in looking for any instance that they can pounce on. Like Bill Clinton’s remarks in South Carolina, which are these days reported “factually” as evidence that the Clinton campaign used race to advance Hillary’s campaign. Wilentz again (and there’s much more preceding this that explains it all in more devastating detail):

By the time the Obama campaign backed off from agitating the King-Johnson pseudo-scandal, it had already trained its sights on Bill Clinton–by far the most popular U.S. president among African Americans over the past quarter-century. Not only were Bill and Hillary supposedly ganging up on Obama in South Carolina–”I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes,” Obama complained during the South Carolina debate–the former president was supposedly off on a race-baiting tear of his own. Yet, once again, the charges were either distortions or outright inventions.

The Obama campaign’s “fairy tale” gambit was particularly transparent. Commenting on Obama’s explanation of why he is more against the war in Iraq than Hillary Clinton, and disturbed by the news media’s failure to report Obama’s actual voting record on Iraq in the Senate, the former president referred to what had become the conventional wisdom as a “fairy tale” concocted by Obama and his supporters. Time to play the race-baiter card! One of Obama’s most prominent backers, the mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, stretched Clinton’s remarks and implied that he had called Obama’s entire candidacy a fairy tale. (The mayor later coyly told a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she had not intended to criticize Clinton: “Surely you don’t mean he’s the only one who can use the phrase ‘fairy tale,’” Franklin said, in a tone that the reporter described as “mock indignation.”) Appearing on CNN, one of its pundits, Donna Brazile, hurled the wild charge that Clinton had likened Obama to a child. “And I will tell you,” she concluded, “as an African American I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.” With those kinds of remarks–”as an African American”–the race card and the race-baiter card both came back into play. Although Brazile is formally not part of Obama’s campaign, her comments made their way to the South Carolina memo, offered as evidence that Clinton’s comment was racially insensitive.

On January 26, Obama won a major victory in South Carolina by gaining the overwhelming majority of the black vote and a much smaller percentage of the white vote, for a grand total of 55 percent. Although the turnout, of course, was much larger for the 2008 primaries than for any previous primary or caucus, Obama had assembled a victorious coalition analogous to that built by Jesse Jackson in the 1984 and 1988 South Carolina caucuses. (Bill Clinton won the 1992 state primary with 69 percent of the vote, far outstripping either Jackson’s or Obama’s percentages.)

When asked by a reporter on primary day why it would take two Clintons to beat Obama, the former president, in good humor, laughed and said that he would not take the bait:

“Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice in ‘84 and ‘88 and he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama’s run a good campaign. He’s run a good campaign everywhere. He’s a good candidate with a good organization.”

According to Obama and his supporters, here was yet another example of subtle race-baiting. Clinton had made no mention of race. But by likening Jackson’s victories and Obama’s impending victory and by praising Obama as a good candidate not simply in South Carolina but everywhere, Clinton was trying to turn Obama into the “black” candidate and racialize the campaign. Or so the pro-Obama camp charged. …

But what do I know. I’m just a woman. Like Alegre, who guest-posts here often. She and I were attacked yesterday in a Daily Kos diary. Forgive me for thinking it was sexist, but I can’t help myself. The title of the diary?

“SHOCKER:SusanHu/Alegre to mudwrestle over Blue Dress”

I’m sure that Maureen Dowd will be writing a column any day now on the rampant sexism at Daily Kos.

Or, most probably, she’ll laugh at the title, and minimize it by accusing Alegre and me of not focusing on the Clintons’ psychodrama and Bill’s race-baiting.