That's all I have to say about the response to Anna's post yesterday about the misogyny that dogged Hillary Clinton's campaign even before there was an official campaign.
See, the thing is, I think Anna was dead-on. There's a language out there reserved for Hillary Clinton that's unmistakably gender-based, destructive and sexist, it's generally -- and wrongly so, IMHO -- accepted in society, and it's also coming from progressive corners.
Bill Moyers did a segment on this very topic, wa-a-a-a-y back in the Dark Ages of December 2007 when he interviewed Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. The stuff about Clinton starts at the 6:50 mark.
It's a fantastic interview, one that discusses the language and treatment of the presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, outside the realm of politics.
That's the key, isn't it? It's hard to distinguish hostility driven by negative imagery of Clinton as a woman, from her and President Clinton's involvement and actions, say, in the DLC. This conversation does a very good job of separating Clinton from politics, and simply examines the discourse that has grown around Clinton, and what that means for the state of discourse on the Internet in general.
(Isn't journalism done well a thing of beauty? - promoted by Jay Stevens)
Last night's interview of Jeremiah Wright by Bill Moyers was fascinating. So much so, that after watching the dvr recording of it, instead of deleting it, I decided to save it to show to my daughter, and to other people who might be interested, or to watch it again.
It wasn't what I expected. Moyers gracefully allowed Jeremiah Wright to unveil himself in front of a national audience. Gone were the gotcha moments and sound bite-seeking furies of so many other interviews we've seen through this campaign cycle. Moyers skillfully worked Wright's history, the history of black America, and current political events together with religious history to build the context, so painfully absent in today's main stream media, needed to understand Wright's remarks. And with that we begin to understand not only Barack Obama's association with Rev. Wright, but we take another step forward in the discussion on race that Obama began with his speech in Philadelphia.
For any who want to discuss the Wright affair, this show is a must watch. Anytime anybody wants to point to Wright's remarks as a reason to denigrate Obama, I will say: "have you seen Wright's interview with Moyer where he builds the context for his statements?" And if they say no, or refuse, then there is little to talk about. I don't know how I can convey the subtleties and nuances of the Moyers/Wright interview to people who have no knowledge of the black church, prophetic preaching, or liberation theology.
Now if only we could get other interviewers and reporters to follow Moyers' lead. And I'd love to see Moyers do a followup on this story with Barack Obama.
So it's almost been 48 hours since I posted a hit piece against Cindy Sheehan about trying to force the Democratic party on impeachment and the ensuing fracas with commenter Kate over the politics of the situation, and I admit I'm coming around on the impeachment issue. Thanks to last night's Bill Moyers segment on impeachment, I'm getting swayed.
To me it's a clash between the practical -- that is, getting 66 Senators to convict Bush of high crimes and misdemeanors -- and the necessary, the preservation of constitutional checks and balances and the rule of law, and to establish the precedent that the executive branch shall not take powers not granted it by the Constitution or the by the people through their elected representatives in Congress.
