…looking at the pre-Clinton “suspension” speech coverage.
By the way, it’s nice of her to say “I’m out…kind of”, “suspending” her campaign rather than ending it (presumably holding out for a dead girl or a live boy in Obama’s bed), instead of doing the honorable, decent thing and saying “I’m ending it”. The choice of language is just sort of curious, in that typically Clintonian way. Women of America, is this really who you want speaking for and leading you? Maybe “But it’s a woman!” is significant on some level, but it shouldn’t be the whole story, I’m sorry. Imelda Marcos, Eva Braun and Britney Spears are or were women, too, so’s Ann Coulter, despite rumors to the contrary. Let’s get down to brass tacks, folks. Getting rid of a glass ceiling doesn’t mean shit if you replace it with a ceiling that has spikes on it. We need the most capable, honorable person to lead this country, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a man, a woman, a black guy, a white guy, a gay guy, a lesbian, a dwarf, a quadriplegic, or a cyclops with AIDS and a speech impediment.
OK, she’s talking now, let’s see what she has to say.
She’s done, and I suppose that’s about as gracious as it’s going to get. She’s still talking like she won something, though, and maybe she has won something we don’t know about yet (we’ll have word on that whenever Obama chooses a running mate). Maybe I’m not as enthusiastic about the “big picture” victory she kept alluding to, that we should be doing cartwheels because it’s even possible for a woman to run against an African-American man for the Democratic Presidential nomination, because I’ve become outraged in my old age that any of that ever mattered in the first place or may still matter now in this country. That any of this information is still important to anyone in the world at this stage of the game, not just Americans, makes me embarrassed for and ashamed of humanity.
Some may say that I’m the last person on Earth who should get uppity about these things, and that my sense of humor (from the name of my web site on down) is at cross purposes with my attitude toward discrimination, bias and prejudice, but the goals of any joke I make along those lines are to point out the absurdity of that line of thinking to begin with (”My God, do people really think like that?”), and to do that whole “laughing instead of crying” thing that tends to bring out the best humor, in my view. That said, “let’s not make this about me”.
To get back to Hillary Clinton, my major gripe with her is and always has been that, no matter how compelling a public speaker she’s capable of being, there’s a serious integrity deficit there, just like there was and is with her husband. I don’t need to detail it here (Google her if you’re curious), and if I did, someone would probably just come along and claim that Hillary, like Roger Clemens before her, “misremembered” when she said and all those things. I’m not going to claim outright that Barack Obama won’t turn out to be the same kind of person; he is, after all, a politician, even if he’s a very good one. The difference between the two is that we don’t KNOW he’s a total fraud like we do with the Clintons, who are more suited to reality television than politics. There’s a chance he could turn out to be decent, unlike his opponent in the primaries or his opponent in the general election (who appeared to be the closest thing the Republican Party had to a man of conscience two elections ago, but has led a scorched Earth policy against reason and decency ever since, fuelled by his desire to get the religious right to like him so he’d be “electable”). I’m totally willing to take my chances with Barack Obama, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll admit that the country failed, but also take pride in the fact that we were willing to try something new.
The Clintons are still patting themselves on the back for all “they” did for the economy when it was my friends in the tech industry and academia who did all the heavy lifting that the Clinton administration took credit for. No World Wide Web (and no, Al Gore didn’t “create” it either, despite the fact that he was always a proponent of its development), no Clinton-era economy, and anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish. Bill and Hillary would take credit for creating pussy if you let them, just because they both eat a lot of it (Allegedly, lawyers, allegedly!). I can’t blame them for doing that, as I love pussy, but I’m not the kind of guy who’d go around taking credit for it, either. Besides, I’d get in a whole mess of trouble for that whole “menstruation” thing I left in by accident if I did cop to it.
All silliness aside (and I’m sure there’ll be a few of you who read this and think that my silliness demeans some of the more serious points I’ve made here, but that’s nothing new), today’s Clinton sorta-concession speech should’ve happened a week ago, was well-spoken but had about as much sincerity to it as anything else the Clintons do, and will do little to dissuade the unfortunately very vocal lunatic fringe who are going to continue to yammer about how they’ve been disenfranchised just because most news web sites have open commenting now. Folks, let me give you a hint, if you’re still on the “I’m not voting for Obama because Hillary lost” train: if you’re going to play the role of disenfranchised victim spoiler nutjob, don’t vote for McCain or write in Hillary Clinton’s name like you say you’re going to. The line to Ron Paul’s campaign headquarters forms here instead, and your votes will at least make my friend Frank Edward Nora happy, even if they don’t do a hell of a lot otherwise.
As for me, to somewhat ironically (given my whole attitude about race and gender in the first place, which I stated above) quote something I read somewhere earlier this week: I’m “VOTING FOR THE BLACK DUDE!” (Sorry, Ev, but the crassness of that sentence was too hilarious for me not to share.) I will be voting for Barack Obama come November, unless the aforementioned proverbial “dead girl or live boy” show up, in which case I will be voting for Cookie Puss. Actually, if Clinton does get reason to “unsuspend” her campaign, I will grudgingly vote for her, but I’m really going to feel like the person who has sex with someone undesirable so their friend can get laid too.
Regardless of who you choose to vote for, though, it is essential and vital that you register to vote and and show up to do it on election days big and small. I got very informed about my town’s mayoral race this past year, for instance. I still need to read up on school elections more than I do. This stuff is all important, no matter how Diebold tries to fix it. If you’re not there to vote in the first place, you can’t claim that they rigged your vote, case closed.
