Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Good Ol' Fashioned Clinton and Obama Hate



Can people be a little bit more creative with the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bashing? Above is a segment of Real Time with Bill Maher about Hillary Clinton's response to her biggest crisis as she describes in her book (about 5 minutes in):

Bill Maher: Now I don't want to bash Hillary too much, but I just want to add this because we went back and looked at her book. She wrote a book called "Living History," which is her biog- sounds like my sixth grade social studies book, by the way. "Living History," I think was the book I had to study. But we wanted to find out, because she raised this topic of crisis -- what was her biggest crisis? And in her own words she said, "My biggest crisis was Monica Lewinsky," and here's the audio version. This is what she said was her reaction at the moment of her biggest crisis.

Hillary Clinton's audiobook: I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him.

Before Bill Maher could even get another sexist word in, Joe Scarborough of all people came to the defense. Seriously, though, this isn't an uncommon "Gotcha!" moment in the media. Maher's talking about the Republican Scarborough sticking up for Hillary, Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes (who always accuses Jon Stewart of stealing her jokes, even though her show airs and The Daily Show is taped at the same time) tried making the same point yesterday: If this is how Hillary Clinton reacts to her biggest crisis, she's obviously not fit to be president. Give me a break. That's how Clinton reacted to that crisis. More importantly, she reacted appropriately to that crisis. George W. Bush reacted to his biggest crisis (and I don't mean the tap going dry at the local tavern) by continuing to read My Pet Goat. Who's unfit to run the country now?


Now on to the Obama hate. Via the Huffington Post, Republican representative Steve King (IA) believes the following will happen if Obama becomes the next president:

The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida ... would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror . . . His middle name does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that.


"Hillary Clinton's weak. Barack HUSSEIN! Obama is a Muslim!" Please. It's getting old. Really old.


2 comments:

Sebatinsky said...

So, I 100% agree with you about Hillary's response to the situation. I think it was entirely appropriate, and I don't fault her for it, not one bit.
However, I think you're reading a bit much into it when you call it sexist. I have no doubt that if a male politician wrote:
"I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at her," that he too would be criticized for being weak and unable to deal with a crisis situation.

FEMily! said...

With the way Hillary Clinton's "crying" (more like tearing up) was taken by the media in comparison to the way some male politicians' crying/tearing up has been taken, I'm not sure a male politician would be criticized for saying that or reacting that way. Before the New Hampshire primaries, I would have said you're absolutely right. Now, I'm not so sure.