Saturday, April 05, 2008

A campaign of hate

Oh, I get it and what I get is a reality check. Let's spell it out... liberals can hate, too, and do. They hate women. Enabling misogyny is not presidential nowhere near Change We Can Believe In. Susie Madrak:

I don’t understand why Obama supporters are so driven to publicly savage, insult and demean Clinton. What is it in themselves that makes them act… well, like Republicans?

It turns out that Randi Rhodes event for which she was suspended was sponsored by local Obama supporters and advertised on his offical [sic] campaign website.

As she called Clinton “a big fucking whore,” the Obama fans apparently cheered her on.

Obama doesn't have the good sense to shut this misogyny down. Doesn't he passively enable it? M'Yeah, by his lack of leadership.

Tennessee Guerilla Women posted a screen shot [look for the Update for "a full size screen cap"] of the Obama campaign website promoting the "fucking whore event" and offered some choice words:

As Hillary supporters everywhere will attest, spewing hatred at Hillary Clinton and her brave supporters (and probably everyone else they disagree with) is a favorite pastime of large numbers of Obama supporters. The hate is a problem that is frequently discussed on this blog and on other Hillary friendly blogs. As Tom Watson famously noted: "To be a Clinton blogger in the progressive blogosphere is to be hated."

The hate is why Hillary supporters left Daily Kos. The hate is a problem that Hillary's caucus-goers have experienced, and some of them are our elderly parents and grandparents! I have never seen anything like the hate directed at Hillary Clinton and all those of us who dare to admit that we support her. The contempt for women in this country scares the hell out of me.

God help us if the haters should lose the primary.

God helps us if Obama wins. Don't fool yourself into thinking the misogyny will suddenly stop. What's to keep it from getting worse? Bullies don't stop bullying because their "guy" won.

Wherever Obama goes, hate follows, and he plays stupid like, hate? What hate? Hate that he has enabled and indirectly inflicted.

Obama's poor judgment allowed a homophobe to get up and rant on his behalf against a marginalized minority. Joyce Rogers:

Last October, Barack Obama attempted to defuse the Donnie McClurkin debacle by issuing a statement (actually, burying it deep within his campaign Web site) that affirmed his "belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens."

I blogged the statement under the title "Barack Obama Attempts Damage Control, Comes Up Short. Way Short."

While Obama supporters screamed, "What else do you want him to do?!" I explained that Obama could say whatever he wanted, but if he didn't back up his words with actions, his words were meaningless.

As it turned out, his words were meaningless. Obama refused to dump McClurkin (or any of the rest of the anti-gay bigots) from his "Embrace the Homophobia Change" Gospel Tour, despite the widespread outcry from gay and lesbian Americans pleading with Obama not to allow a homophobic, "ex-gay" bigot to speak on his behalf, and especially not to exploit the deeply-ingrained homophobia endemic to conservative Southern black churches as a means of gaining a few political points.

But Obama didn't listen to us, and "after the tour when asked why the campaign would seemingly reject gay voters for far-right leaning blacks a campaign insider replied, 'We got what we needed to get out of it.'"

It's not as if Obama wasn't aware of McClurkin's virulently anti-gay views and vile rhetoric before the concert tour; even if Obama could feign ignorance prior to the announcement of the concert, he couldn't once the news hit the blogosphere, and certainly not after Human Rights Campaign head Joe Solmonese spoke directly with Obama to express (albeit with the HRC's usual cloying spinelessness) "our community's disappointment for his decision to continue to remain associated with Rev. McClurkin, an anti-gay preacher who states the need to 'break the curse of homosexuality.'"

What kind of hate speech did the misguided McClurkin articulate?

McClurkin has said that homosexuality is a choice and that he overcame homosexual desires through prayer, comments that drew fire from gay and lesbian activists and caught the Obama campaign, which has been using faith to reach out to African-American voters, off guard.

The Grammy-winning singer said Sunday his words had been “twisted.”

Anyone who thinks that being gay or lesbian is a choice and needs divine intervention, i.e., social acceptance of his or her community to overcome internalized homophobia is twisted. It's the triumph of superstition over science, the kind of dynamic one would expect from a right-wing authoritarian follower.

Donnie McClurkin, the rants of Rev. Wright, and now the hate-spewing Randi Rhodes.

Imagine what an Obama presidency would be like. He's not presidential. He's a fraud as a leader.

No Quarter has more with the video of Randi Rhodes' disgustingly hateful tirade.

UPDATE: From SusanUnPC at No Quarter, "I demand that Barack Obama remove all funds, if any, received from the Randi Rhodes event from his campaign treasury, and give those funds to charity. If the money collected at the door went into Barack Obama’s campaign fund — the money that came from the pro-Obama supporters who applauded, roared, and cheered while Ms. Rhodes uttered those vile, filthy, and profane words about Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro."

Amen, sister!