Senator: When I express concern about Obama because I’m worried someone will take a shot at him, it doesn’t mean much of anything because I’m just some guy with a blog.
When YOU, on the other hand, say that anything can happen in June, and cite Bobby Kennedy’s assassination…not the same thing. That becomes problematic. That becomes a monumental case of foot-in-mouth.
Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. And yes, I know you immediately said that you regretted it, but…jeez. Think, then speak, okay?
PAD
• 
Wow. Just…wow.
I’m thinking this probably put the total kibbosh on any chance of her being VP. I mean, if you were Obama, do you want someone who A-has a lot of fanatical followers who think she should be president and B-talks about how she’s ready willing and able to take over if, you know, some serious misfortune were to befall you. (said in my best Fat Tony voice)
At least she had the good sense to do it on the Friday before a three-day weekend.
Frankly, though, I’d rather see her apologize for comparing the Florida/Michigan delegate situation to an oppressive regime suppressing votes. Unlike the assassination comment, that one was actually calculated.
Yeah, I’ve been listening to it on the news channels all day. That wasn’t a case of foot-in-mouth. That was both feet and one leg in mouth followed by her momentarially choking on her belt buckle.
Jeez…
In trying to find the video where she said that (I did eventually find it) I accidentally watched a lot of the Q&A that she was giving when she said the bad thing.
It was really good. She talked about Ethanol, wind farms, water shortages, and other stuff that was important to the South Dakota people she was talking to. It was intelligent and well thought out.
That’s the shame of it. This was calm, rationale, intelligent stuff. I liked her better in that Q&A than at any point in this process. But she said one dumb thing and it is all overshadowed. To make it worse, I wasn’t paying enough attention that I even would have known about it if the one dumb comment hadn’t drawn my attention to it.
As for the comment itself, I just think she’s sleep deprived.
My understanding of her “apology” was that she was apologizing more to the Kennedy family rather than to Obama– you know, the guy she suggested might be killed in order for her to get the nomination.
I’m afraid that, after these past couple of weeks, I’m pretty convinced that nothing Senator Clinton says is accidental. There have been way too many of these ugly “misstatements” lately.
If anyone hasn’t seen either the comment or the apology yet, here’s both.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24797619#24797095
Personally, I think she looked tired when she made the comment. She was trying to find a way of saying that she should stay in the race because anything could happen, but she did a bad job.
I also think her apology is fine. The Kennedy family is currently dealing with Ted Kennedy’s health problems, so referencing his brother’s death seems more like the main offense to me. I don’t think she was actually hinting that anything was going to happen to Obama, so it’s not that insulting to him.
@Jason Bryant: “Personally, I think she looked tired when she made the comment. She was trying to find a way of saying that she should stay in the race because anything could happen, but she did a bad job.”
Her remark wasn’t due to fatigue. Clinton said the exact same thing, almost word for word, during an interview with Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine back in March.
@Jason Bryant: “I also think her apology is fine.”
I don’t. To make such a tasteless, insensitive and stupid comment *twice* reveals a lot about her character… or lack thereof.
Oh, god dámņ it. I copied the html coding from the msnbc link and forgot to change it so it points to the proper url.
Let’s see if this one works instead.
Bill, did you mean to put that link in your post? It’s the same link as the one I gave.
Okay, that link works.
The repetition of the statement is very odd. I wonder why it didn’t cause a stir back then. Perhaps because it was an interview with a magazine, there was no video. These days if there’s video, it gets circulated around the web until half the country is foaming at the mouth. If there isn’t, then odds are there isn’t much of a fuss.
Kind of gives new spin to the video up on her site:
And when you vote, I hope you’ll ask one question: Who is ready to be president on day one?
“Think, then speak,” reminds me of Michael Ansara as Quarlo talking with Lloyd Nolan in the Outer Limits episode, “Soldier” 🙂
Good lord, has everyone lost their mind? She was referencing the TIME OF YEAR, not the assassination specifically. Whatever happened to reading (or listening) comprehension?
She was referencing the TIME OF YEAR, not the assassination specifically.
So, why the hëll did she bring up the assassination at all!?
It wasn’t relevant to *anything*. She just brought it up because she could, so how did she think it was going to be interpreted?
Well, there’s a problem with that, Elayne. She didn’t have to mention the assassination at all to bring up the time of year. All she had to say was that Robert Kennedy’s campaign wasn’t settled until June.
There have been about half a dozen primaries that stayed competitive until June in the last few decades. It is a little odd that she felt the need to point out someone being assassinated to make her point. It’s a little tasteless to do so, especially when the guy’s brother is currently in a pretty bad situation.
Evil, manipulative, and conniving? No, not at all. But a little tasteless, yeah.
Either one of two things happened: 1) She made a deliberate comment, in the form of an accidental utterance, suggesting that he’s a bad candidate because he’s more likely to be killed; or 2) She misspoke but in a “this is how wars get started” way. As Tom Petty sang, I can’t decide which is worse.
At this point in the campaign, *everything* the candidate says is under very careful scrutiny, and likely to be recorded and played online. (Past statements are also popping up: McCain rejected the endorsement of Haelgel (sic) after his Hitler comment started getting lots of online airplay.) Considering Hillary’s political experience, she should know that this sort of comment will not be ignored and could have massive ramifications for her.
Can you say “desperation”? I knew you could.
As democratic candidates go, who are her options to compare herself with? Bill, Al, Michael, Walter, Jimmy, George, Hubert, Lyndon, and RFK. (Comparing yourself to JFK only sets you up to be told you’re no Jack Kennedy). The implication that RFK would have kicked Nixon’s ášš is at least as plausible as that she should stick around because someone might kill Obama. She may even be conscious of this, but going into what-ifs may do more to keep this alive than simply saying she was sorry. Also, after holding out against admitting she was wrong to vote for the war, she may have committed herself to do so at the next opportunity, which she seemed to do quickly enough this time.
As much as I dislike Hilary, and agree that she’s a desperate opportunist who so places her desire for the office above what’s best for the party, the election and the country that she’s lost perspective, I do not perceive her reference to the assassination as anything other than incidental, as she was just referencing the time of year. She was making a point about candidates who stayed in all the way to California in June, and Kennedy was only the second example, the first having been her husband. It’s reasonable to mention or allude to the fact that Kennedy would’ve gone farther if his life had not ended. I never got the impression that it was any kind of threat or fear tactic. That’s just me.
@Elayne Riggs: “She was referencing the TIME OF YEAR, not the assassination specifically.”
That’s false. During her March 6 interview with Time Magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel, Clinton said, “We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.”
When she repeated the remark on Friday in front of the Argus Leader editorial board, she said, “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”
She explicitly mentioned the assassination — twice. That fits any reasonable definition of “referencing” something “specifically.”
@Luigi Novi: “I never got the impression that it was any kind of threat or fear tactic.”
I don’t think anyone’s said or implied it was a “threat” or “fear tactic.” Beyond the mere fact that she explicitly mentioned RFK assassination on two occassions (and I’m surprised people keep saying she didn’t when the quotes are out there for all to read), she was clearly implying that she should stay in the race because anything could happen. The problem is, when you pick “death by assassination” to illustrate the concept, most people find that to be in poor taste — and with good reason.
By the way, her assertion about her husband’s 1992 primary fight lasting through June is false. It wrapped up in March of that year.
Upon further thought, I suppose one could reasonably interpret Hillary’s comments in a kinder light. She may well have been observing that RFK might’ve won his primary fight if he hadn’t been assassinated, as some have opined. Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter. She explicitly dredged up the tragedy twice in a self-serving manner, and it was in poor taste no matter how you slice it.
Olbermann strikes gold once again with a Special Comment on Clinton and her comments:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24798368#24798368
I’m not going to go into the realm of calling this a threat. I just thought that it was a massively stupid thing to say. You can say she was tired, you can say that she was just referencing the time of year and you can say that she was making a historical reference, but you cannot say that what she said wasn’t about one of the most boneheaded things she could say right now.
She’s been in the game for a long, long time and should know better. She’s either losing mind completely at this point or she’s accidentally having Freudian slips about what she thinks may be her only way into the presidency right now. Either way, it doesn’t come off that great to the voters watching at home.
@Jerry Chandler: “You can say she was tired, you can say that she was just referencing the time of year…”
I realize you’re just trying to play devil’s advocate, but those are pretty tough arguments to make. As I cited above, she said the same thing twice, which makes the “she was tired” defense pretty weak on its face. And given that she explicitly mentioned the assassination twice, it’s an abuse of language to say she was “just referencing the time of year.” Whatever her intent, she explicitly referenced the assassination on two occasions.
I wasn’t putting those ideas forward as my own or as representing my thoughts on why she said what she said. I was addressing the things said by others here and elsewhere. Basically, I was pointing out that no matter how innocent you want to make it, it was mind bogglingly stupid of her to allow those words to pass her lips and it might say more than we really want to know about where her mental state is right now.
My POV? I personally don’t think it was a deliberately worded threat, but I’m dámņëd certain that it says something about her current state of mind and how much she’s slipping/losing it here.
So, PAD, I don’t recall reading but were you as offended when Keith Olberman (who has a great “mancrush” on Barack Obama) suggested that some (male) superdelegate take Hillary into a room and only “he” should come out?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the incredibly ridiculous level of “passes” given to Obama–it does seem to be de rigueur on the internet–but I’m tired of it.
Obama is a Chicago politician. He’s slimy and just as awful as his fans declare Hillary to be. The man has NEVER faced a REAL political challenge until this year but his enthralled fans don’t seem to grasp that. (His opponent in 2004 for the US Senate seat was Alan Keyes of all people, a man RECRUITED by the Illinois GOP because they didn’t have anyone else. Amazingly, Keyes still got more than 20% of the vote.)
I have no intention of voting for Barack Obama this year. If he’s the Democratic nominee, I’ll be looking into a third party candidate. African-American firebrand, Cynthia McKinney, is running for the Green Party’s nomination, and while she may be considered a left-wing extremist, at least I KNOW where she stands; like Hillary, there’s not much we don’t already know about her. She’s been through TOUGH races in Georgia, facing REAL racists (not just the “we don’t think Obama’s a good candidate” whites who’ve been tagged as racists by the Obama camp), and she’s survived when she’s had to. She has lost campaigns but when she has, she never called people “racists” simply for voting for her opponents. (I know that in one campaign she lost, it was largely due to her father’s unfortunate words which carried more than a strong touch of anti-Semitism. Of course, McKinney couldn’t very well disown her own father.)
Joseph: The day someone takes a Presidential candidate into a room and binds and gags them and locks them in there, thus sending that country into a (let’s be generous and say) 12-year nightmare of cynicism and despair and self-involvement, prolonging an immoral war and rupturing the candidate’s party for 25 years, call me about Olbermann’s clearly hyperbolic comments. They’ll compare to this.
I do not for one minute believe Clinton was implying Obama might take a walk through the wrong hotel kitchen. I do not for one nanosecond believe Clinton would ever, even subconsciously, wish the horror of 1968 – a horror to which she was personally a witness and which she remembers vividly – upon this country again, no matter how much personal gain it brings her.
But whatever she meant, however she said it, to use the “A” word? This close to the 40th anniversary? So shortly after the 40th anniversary of MLK’s death? Days after the martyr’s brother has been diagnosed with brain cancer? The year that his other brother’s assassination’s 45th anniversary will be marked? After having been warned against it (and having had to warn a supporter against it in January – Google “Francine Torge”)? A week after a player on “the other team” torpedoed whatever chance he might once have had at a Vice Presidential nomination with a joke in a similar vein – a joke for which he at least didn’t use the “A” word, and for which he immediately apologized to the offended candidate and stated that his remarks were unconditionally wrong? Weeks after she won a primary in a state whose voters were shown on TV and YouTube saying in no uncertain terms, not the media’s euphemisms of “race played a factor in their decision” or they were “low-income White voters without college degrees,” but that they would not vote for Obama because they were racists who could not vote for a Black man?
To drop the “A-bomb” publicly in a year of civil unrest, a dissatisfied and divided electorate, economic recession, deep-seated divisions between and within both parties, an unwinnable and immoral foreign war, an major American city destroyed and still not rebuilt, racial tensions, class tensions, and two historic candidacies which would be opposed by people still mired in racism and/or misogyny, one of which is headed by a charismatic, handsome young candidate who inspires hope and optimism amongst young and minority voters?!
I do not believe at all that was what Clinton meant, but I nonetheless, upon hearing the comments, borrowed a line from Tony Soprano: “OOOOOOOO-oh!”
Whichever candidate you support, this was a gaffe beyond Michelle Obama’s gaffe (also taken out of context) which suggested she wasn’t proud of America at any point since the 1980s. This was a gaffe beyond Barack Obama’s gaffe which suggested (if taken out of context) that gun-toting, Jesus-freak rednecks are gun-toting, Jesus-freak rednecks because they’re unemployed and angry about it. This was a gaffe far beyond patronizing a female reporter.
This was a gaffe that could be just one more stick with which to stir up a hornet’s nest in the mind of a troubled young man somewhere in America. A hornet’s nest that troubled young man can stir up plenty well on his own, thank you. A hornet’s nest whose stinging swarm would have disastrous consequences for the entire nation and everyone in it – and their children, and their children’s children. A hornet’s nest that would plunge us all, on both sides of the aisle, into a nightmare from which we might never wake up. A hornet’s nest that literally could finally and completely destroy this nation and the dream its Founding Fathers set out to realize.
How is that defensible? How is that rational? How is that advisable? How is that excusable?
How is that not – at best giving Sen. Clinton the fullest benefit of the doubt – the single stupidest and most potentially dangerous comment ever uttered by a Presidential candidate in any primary in any election ever in the history of this country?
Dear God, at least George W. Bush’s botched definition of a “sovereign nation” didn’t remind people – however inadvertently – he could be President if only someone would kill John McCain. At least it didn’t do that. And if it had, at least it didn’t do it in troubled times such as these.
What was she thinking?
Good lord, has everyone lost their mind? She was referencing the TIME OF YEAR, not the assassination specifically. Whatever happened to reading (or listening) comprehension?
here’s the thing–even though very few people in the media say it openly, there is a very common fear among the electorate that Obama is a likely target for assassination. It’s not an entirely crazy thought, given what has happened in the past. In fact it’s only been recently that most of my Black students have talked about Obama without adding something to the effect that if it looks like he’ll win he will be shot.
I can’t believe that Hillary hasn’t been exposed to this. And as Tony mentioned, Hukabee just caught justified holy hëll for a joke that implied a fear on Obama’s part of being assassinated.
At best, best, she’s incredibly tone deaf. If this were McCain saying it (after bragging about his appeal to “heard working white voters”) every editorial cartoonist in the country would draw him wearing Robert Byrd’s old sheets.
I ca well understand the disappointment that Hillary fans are feeling over how this race turned out but honestly, most of her wounds were self inflicted, of which this is merely the latest example.
Olbermann strikes gold once again with a Special Comment on Clinton and her comments:
Oh, I dunno. Four minutes in I was thinking, “Okay, I get it, I get it.” Moral outrage is compelling, but eight minutes basically saying the same thing repeatedly becomes overkill. Plus his entire litany of offenses for which Clinton has ostensibly been “forgiven” is ludicrous. It’s not as if the assorted gaffes and blunders have gone away; they’re repeatedly cited by various pundits and politicos as reasons she should step aside.
So, PAD, I don’t recall reading but were you as offended when Keith Olberman (who has a great “mancrush” on Barack Obama) suggested that some (male) superdelegate take Hillary into a room and only “he” should come out?
I think that’s a stupid thing for him to have said. But I think it comes down to a matter of “consider the source.” I didn’t comment on it at the time for the same reason as that I wouldn’t have commented if someone on “Air America” had made the assassination reference: It’s a media person, not the candidate.
PAD
That’s the shame of it. This was calm, rationale, intelligent stuff. I liked her better in that Q&A than at any point in this process. But she said one dumb thing and it is all overshadowed. To make it worse, I wasn’t paying enough attention that I even would have known about it if the one dumb comment hadn’t drawn my attention to it.
Well, that’s the nature of the news beast. It’s the reversal of the song: You accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive. Clinton saying things that make sense and are reasonable aren’t news; saying things that are stupid is.
PAD
I’m not going to go into the realm of calling this a threat. I just thought that it was a massively stupid thing to say. You can say she was tired, you can say that she was just referencing the time of year and you can say that she was making a historical reference, but you cannot say that what she said wasn’t about one of the most boneheaded things she could say right now.
That’s about the best summing-up I’ve seen on this thread. I don’t doubt that she meant something far more benign, but as she actually said it? “Ick” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
TWL
@Jerry Chandler: “I wasn’t putting those ideas forward as my own or as representing my thoughts on why she said what she said.”
Jerry, I said I realized you were only playing devil’s advocate. So, yes, I understand that those weren’t your ideas or thoughts. 🙂
I don’t suppose anyone’s considered that the reason the assassination of RFK weighs on her mind is that she’s one of three potential targets?
Robert Kennedy wanted to end a war, but he didn’t get the chance to.
Now we have two Democratic candidates who want to bring a war to an end. And just to make things interesting, we get to have issues of race and gender thrown into the mix.
I’ve been asking myself if America had grown to the point where it could acutally vote into office a woman or a man of color. The negative side of this is that there’s some faction out there that can’t stand the thought of one or the other or maybe both.
Has anyone brought up Chris Rock’s comments/monologue about having a black president?
You say that like real racists aren’t saying Obama is unsuitable by arbitrarily insisting Obama is a Muslim, like simply winning the primary isn’t challenging them and isn’t challenging real racism.
I once told my girlfriend — who has been a “Hillary hater” from the get-go — that if Ms. Clinton was divisive it was because of people’s tendency to project their own worst fears and biases onto her, and not a reflect of the woman herself. I even went so far as to say that people wouldn’t react quite so negatively to a man that acted like her.
Boy oh boy have I had to change my tune. I was beyond wrong about her.
Clinton has been pandering to racists by playing up the Rev. Wright “connection” and exacerbating class divisions by latching onto “bittergate.” She’s been gleefully suggesting to voters in Michigan and Florida that the Democratic party doesn’t care about their votes if she doesn’t get what she wants. And she’s explicitly mentioned RFK’s assassination *twice* in a tacky, tasteless, and self-serving manner. This is a woman who will exacerbate any conflict, dredge up any wound, and who will do or say just about *anything* in her wildly desperate attempts to win a nomination she’s all but lost.
I believe Ms. Clinton’s behavior belies her assertion that she is the best general election candidate. She’s all but fractured the Democratic Party, and hurt Obama’s chances in the general election.
Mr. Mulligan — reasonable individual that he is — recently tried to convince me during a phone conversation to consider this from Ms. Clinton’s point-of-view. She is, after all, watching what was likely a lifelong dream of hers die. I guess I find it harder to be sympathetic because unlike some, I had held a good opinion of her and have been disappointed by her behavior.
I think Senator Clinton expressed herself very badly, but the strangest thing about her apology was that it was to the Kennedy family. I would assume that almost everybody in the family already knew that RFK had been assassinated, so it can’t have come as much of a shock that Senator Clinton knew it too. What seemed much more offensive than mentioning why RFK is no longer with us was the relish with which she approached the possibility of replacing Senator Obama should he be assassinated. She owed the public an apology/explanation or Senator Obama an apology. Addressing the Kennedy family was nothing but irrelevant pandering.
Just to be clear:
In early March, on a prominent Facebook group, a high school student too young to vote used the “A-word” in reference to Hillary Clinton’s campaign should she get the nomination. He said, “If Hillary gets the nomination, she will be __________ed.”
As an Obama supporter, I called him out then and there and told him that word should not even be uttered this year. I said if he continued to use it, he had no business being on Obama’s nor any other Democrat’s nor frankly any other Republican’s side.
That was an excitable high schooler who made an over-the-top remark in the heat of passion. This remark yesterday was made by a possible frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
How does anybody not see the problem?
In 2008, if this talk has any place in any party’s nomination process (and it doesn’t), it certainly needs to be far removed from the candidates’ discussions, and absolutely in times like these, no Democratic candidate should touch them. To mention them, even in passing, is beyond tasteless. It is dangerous.
As a final remark, Peter, I still have on my hard drive an e-mail you wrote me in 1998 in response to an e-mail of mine calling you one of the greatest comic book and sci-fi writers of all time and applauding your stance against an Internet troll. I stand by my comments in the e-mail. You rock. You’ve always rocked. You will rock as long as you keep writing.
I’m pitching a screenplay based on three stories by one of the great writers of the 20th century right now, and I wouldn’t’ve gotten here without you as an inspiration. Thanks so much, man. Keep doing that voodoo that you do so well.
In my mind this is the latest in a trend with her. A trend we should not cover for any longer!
If this is what happens when she gets this tired or her back is put against the wall and she loses control over her actions or words; how can we let her be President?
In the past when she misstated the Bosnian incident she saID: 00″I was tired!” If this is what she doens whenshe’s tired, then she loses her own 3AM argument.
At the Ohio debate she nearly threw a tantrum about being asked the first question everytime and referecing the SNL sketch. There has also been her remarks about not knowing if Obama were a muslim or not, her remarks about experts who disagree with her being elitists, the people she’s surrounded herself with people like Mark Penn, courting Bush Sr, Mellon-Scaff, Limbaugh,; and praising McCain and Rove at Obama’s expense.
This is also not the first time she has invoked the RFK reference when asked about why she was staying in the race.
I don’t think Senetor Clinton wants to see Senetor Obama harmed or his family harmed in anyway. But continuing to invoked the murder of Senetor Kennedy shows bad judgement on her part.
This goes back to Peter original aurgument: Think before you speck or act. In one of Peter’s New Fronter novels (Peter, I’m sorry, I don’t remember the title right now. I’m going to further damage my Treki-ness with an upcoming misspelling) Peter describes Mac’s Koyboshi Maru test and how Mac’s judgement in destroying the KM saved his ship and crew. True, Mac had better judgement based on his own experence as a war lord on his world, but he also showed the ability to slow down in a crisis and think abotu his next move.
(Yes, Peter, I caught on to the idea that the real no-win senerio was for Mac: Beat the test, lose Shelby/ lose the test, keep Shelby)
If this is the poor judgement Senetor Clinton shows as a candidate, even with all of her years of experence, than how can we trust her to show better judgement as President of the United States?
Bill, I was unaware of her earlier reference to the assassination. Thanks.
I guess I find it harder to be sympathetic because unlike some, I had held a good opinion of her and have been disappointed by her behavior.
well I have long since given up expecting decency form either Clinton so my disappointment has been in how purely incompetant so much of their campaign has been. Some have suggested that Bill may have suffered something akin to a stroke as a result of his heart operation and while I never thought he was the brilliant politician his accolytes thought, there’s no question that he mojo ain’t working any more. Whether this is due to the media not buying the bûllšhìŧ or him actually being off is another question.
I thought Hillary would be a lot more disciplined than what we got. It was hers to lose. She lost. Given the power of the presidency it’s hard to imagine what would be the best way to pick them. At the very least they should be able to accomplish winning the primary before we entrust them with the world’s largest nuclear stockpile.
Has anyone brought up Chris Rock’s comments/monologue about having a black president?
well, I remember his great one on a Black Vice President:
Thank you, Dennis. Now as you know, there’s been alot of talk about a black vice president. And I just wanna tell the world that it’ll never happen. As long as you live you will never see a black vice president, you know why? Because some black guy would just kill the president. I’d do it. If Colin Powell was vice president, I’d kill the president and tell his mother about it. What would happen to me? What would they do? Put me in jail with a bunch of black guys that would treat me like a king for the rest of my life? I would be the biggest star in jail, alright, people would be coming up to me and I’d be signing autographs: “97-KY, here you go.” Guys would be going: “You’re the brother that shot Bush. And you told his mother about it huh? I hope my children turn out to be just like you, Man, you know I was getting ready to rape you until I realized who you were. And even if they had a death penalty, what would happen? I’d just be pardoned by the black president. So you see, Dennis, it would not be in George Bush’s best intrests to place Colin Powell on the ticket.
Josh, I kind of doubt you’re a huge Peggy Noonan fan but you might enjoy her column in the WSJ:
So, to address the charge that sexism did her in:
It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.
It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.
It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they’d give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they’d call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they’d realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.
It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.
It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”
And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is, ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.
I need a point clarified, if someone would.
Somewhere above, it was suggested that Hillary Clinton witnessed the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Did she actually witness it, or was that just a phrase saying that she had lived through it and seen footage of it?
It’s probably not her fault at all, it’s just another example of the vast right wing conspiracy allied against her.
Honestly saw nothing wrong with Hillary’s comments, and have to agree with Elayne Riggs that it was more of a reference to the time of the year than anything else.
That being said, Hillary’s argument makes very little sense, as anything can happen to anyone at anytime. If thats the basis of her argument, she should continue to stick around and mount her case after the DNC, “just in case.”
It comes off to me as her needing possibly irrational reasons to stick around, more so than any attempt to get at Obama.
Olbermann strikes gold once again with a Special Comment on Clinton and her comments:
Just caught this…man, I don’t know that I’d even call this striking iron pyrite (Earth Science Teacher Geek talk). Is Olberman ALWAYS this much of a blowhard? And what was that sound at around 1:37–sounded almost like a capgun effect. What Hillary said was dumb but if this is the kind of reaction Obama supporters make there could be some blowback.
Actually, the official Obama response was tempered and reasoned–more proof that it’s the Obama followers who may be his biggest liability.
Bill, don’t judge the Obama followers by the internet. Everyone has some idiot followers on the internet. I’ve seen just as many people being complete idiots in favor of Clinton and McCain. The idiots all pretty much cancel each other out as long as you ignore them and just let them argue with each other.
Yes, Olberman is always like that. Even when he’s talking about Bush and I totally agree with him, it still feels like he’s lecturing me. I consider his opinion to be worth more than Bill O’Reilly’s and Rush Limbaugh’s, but not by a whole lot.
Clarification: Bill, I didn’t mean to imply that you were talking about internet people in your statement. That’s where I see most of the idiocy, so I mushed the two things together in my head.
Bill Mulligan: “Is Olberman ALWAYS this much of a blowhard?”
No. He’s actually much worse than that sometimes. Moreso of late than before. He’s fast become the Left’s Bill’o in that his success is making his ego and his rants balloon in size and grow more and more ugly and foolish.
“Good lord, has everyone lost their mind? She was referencing the TIME OF YEAR, not the assassination specifically. Whatever happened to reading (or listening) comprehension?”
And there were roughly a million better ways she could have put it. I agree that she wasn’t implying anything sinister, but between the stupidity of the comment and her non-apology apology, she deserves all the scorn she’s getting. And after the mileage she got out of Obama’s “bitter” comment, the idea that she should get a free pass on a speaking gaffe is pretty laughable.
Besides, her point doesn’t even make any sense. If something did happen to Obama in June (or at any time between now and the convention), as the candidate with the second highest number of delegates, she’d almost certainly become the nominee whether she was still in the race or not.
Oh I know that Mccain and Clinton have crazy followers. No doubt about it. And Ron Paul’s…! But I think Obama’s have the greater potential to hurt him, for a few reasons. he’s got the misfortune of having kooks of many contrasting persuasions. The religious ones who treat him like a cult leader scare off more secular progressives. The secular radicals frighten off the conservative religious voters. The red meat netroots are going after Hillary to a degree that pìššëš øff feminists. Wright and his defenders act like stereotypical race hustlers.
Obama has done a good job of staying above the fray but you can only have so many anchors beofre they start to drag you down.