Cry of the Ellen Jamesians
Posted on June 5th, 2008 in Uncategorized |
On the Huffington Post, Erica Jong writes of her reaction to Hillary’s defeat:
I didn’t know it would feel this bad. I didn’t know it would feel this personal. I’m all for a united Democratic party. But losing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit. And the gloating by the press is even worse. It sounds like “I told you so.” It feels like watching Joan of Arc burned at the stake. You can smell the burning flesh.
Then, like Hillary herself, Jong raises the specter of assassination.
I can’t watch [Obama’s] triumph without a fearful foreboding. He is not the first charismatic leader we’ve produced and he won’t be the last. But our country is very good at taking down the best and the brightest. Those of us who lived through the unspeakable violence of the sixties can attest to that.
I want to be wrong about violence….
Does she?
4 Responses
It is possible to wonder if any male candidate would inspire the gloating the Hillary’s has inspired with her loss (and, in fact, to support her, although I did not) and also to hope that no violence comes to Obama. It’s odd that you attribute simple thinking and simple moral reasoning to anyone who supports Hillary.
Seriously. I worry about Obama getting assassinated; don’t you? Will I be suspected of *wishing* for it to happen just because I am willing to say it out loud? Or is it only Hillary supporters (which I am not) who are automatically suspect? Your us-and-them approach, Richard, is as polarizing and poisonous as anything you accuse Hillary of. The fact that you are less powerful and visible than she is does not excuse it.
It took me awhile, but then I got the World According to Garp reference. Nicely done.
Salina, if any male candidate could have been as hopelessly out of touch about his predicament as she has been, and had he been given second, third, fourth, fifth chances by the press during the longest primary season of all time, yet still insisted that the press had been trying to push him out of the race since Iowa…then, yes, there would be great gloating in that event as well.
Or just leave all of that aside and say: if the only reason the theoretical male was first a senate candidate and shortly thereafter a presidential candidate was because he was married to a president, then, yes, there would be gloating then too…as there should be.
She never had the cred to be a United States Senator, and she never belonged in the presidential game whatsoever. She got a lot of votes because millions of women would have voted for any female candidate, and millions more like to vote for names sound familiar. And Bill and her advisors knew that might well be enough to win the nomination. Thank God it wasn’t.