Michael Chabon of the Washington Post wrote an interesting article about why he's voting for Obama, and the many self-imposed problems of Americans (and how Obama can help solve them). In "Obama vs. the Phobocracy," Chabon explains why America has become a "phobocracy." I liked this one paragraph in particular:
"The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy."
To be "fair and balanced" (perhaps in response to this season of The Wire), the WAPO editors decided to include an article from a woman who is voting for Clinton. I must say that her lede is great.
"Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women," said Bill Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday, one of the many "news" outlets to expose Kristol's reliable sexism. "The Democratic establishment would be crazy to follow an establishment that led it to defeat year after year," Kristol continued in his woolly, repetitive style. "White women are a problem, you know. We all live with that."
Nevertheless, I found this article to be annoying for several reasons. For starters, the writer sounds like she's whining. It's bleeding feminism (whatever), and in one of those annoying, condescending "come join our campus organization if you care about women's issues, and if you don't, you're a pig" manners. I did find some humor in Erica Jong's article (Hillary vs. the Patriarchy), however. Jong is obviously self-medicating in this article, and her defense of Clinton has little to do with her actual political agenda.
Like this line:
"Besides, what does anyone know about anyone else's marriage? As a novelist I understand that I can't even invent the complexities most people live with, the compromises made, the deals negotiated and renegotiated. If it works, let's say hallelujah, rather than pick and quibble. It took me three marriages to find my soul mate. Maybe Hillary was luckier."
She makes it seem as though Hillary Clinton has had such a tough life. Give me a break. "Don't pick on her." "Her husband sucks." "She's really a good person." Blah, blah, blah.
"I'm hardly the only woman who sees my life mirrored in hers. She's always worked twice as hard to get half as far as the men around her. She endured a demanding Republican father she could seldom please and a brilliant, straying husband who played around with bimbos. She was clearly his intellectual soul mate, but the women he chased were dumb and dumber."
"She's had to endure nutcrackers made in her image, insults about the shape of her ankles and nasty cracks from mediocrities in the media like Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews and Kristol."
"In the 1990s, when they became "Billary" as president, she gave her all. When the White House beckoned, she was true blue. When he took the hardest job in the world, she helped. And when he rewarded her by letting some tootsie do whatever it was they did in the Oval Office, she got really mad."
"Little by little, she loosened up. She learned how to dress and speak and smile and relax on the podium. I've watched this whole process with immense admiration."
Possibly the most annoying line in the entire article is this:
"Obama is also a token -- of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension."
If being a black man holding a political office is "tokenism and condescension," do we tell all young black males that they can never become president without being considered a sellout?
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