Salt City Sinner

posted on 4/15/15 by the Salt City Sinner Due to the total lack of media coverage, you probably haven't heard that, over the weekend, former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally announced that she is running for the presidency. To celebrate this completely shocking and unforeseen development, I'd like to take the opportunity to address two points regarding Hillary Clinton: first, the question of Clinton and sexism (in the media and elsewhere), and second, the phenomenon of “Clinton nostalgia.” Never think for one second that sexism isn't a factor in opposition to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The Christian Right has been especially egregious in this department. The examples are so numerous they deserve their own post at this point, but as a representative sample enjoy this, via the Huffington Post : A female CEO in Texas has come under fire this week for saying a woman “shouldn’t be president” because of “different hormones” and “biblical sou...

In my previous post on this topic, I explained that a Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry had penned a column for the Nation magazine called " Black President, Double Standards: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama " in which she claimed that white progressives who had given Clinton a pass on his centrist tendencies were unwilling to extend the same courtesy to Obama due to racism. I found this pretty preposterous, and pointed out many variables other than race that could account for Obama's dwindling support (Obama has continued our endless, mindless "war on terror" on two fronts and expanded our military commitments to include the NATO action in Libya as well, Obama has failed on most of his major campaign promises to progressives including closing GITMO and the CIA's black sites, Clinton ran as a moderate while Obama ran as a liberal, &c. &c.). Gene Lyons, an old hand when it comes to anything Clinton, also expressed his outrage over Dr. Harris-Perr...

Quite a hubbub has been sweeping the liberal/progressive media outlets lately regarding a column by Melisa Harris-Perry entitled “ BlackPresident, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama .” Harris-Perry attempts to measure the electoral “roll-off” that can be ascribed to racism in the 2004 Senate race between then-State Senator Barack Obama and perennial wingnut candidate Alan Keyes, the 2008 general election, and the 1994 re-election of President Clinton. Her thesis, which is a bit murky, seems to be that by comparing the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, we can conclusively establish that the variable at play is racism on the part of white liberals (which is a political category that fits me pretty well, so I might as well kick someone).  Astonishingly, my first and most major objection to Harris-Perry's column ("wait, Clinton wasn't a liberal") is contained within the column itself, written by the author as though it suppor...