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BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG Mark Karlin Editor and Publisher February 24, 2008 People who have written BuzzFlash to rip into me for being critical of negative and slimy Clinton campaign tactics rarely deal with the substance of what I have detailed. Instead, I am told that, basically, that if you attack Senator Clinton on her record or strategy, you are in the league of the misogynist Chris Matthews. The problem this line of thinking holds for many women over 40 who identify with Hillary’s gender and moxie is that Senator Clinton’s record on women, children and war doesn’t always match her rhetoric for the most part. How many of the Clinton “cannot be criticized” readers (or ex-readers) who have written us would vote in favor of allowing the military to use cluster bombs in civilian areas? Very few, but Hillary Clinton did; Barack Obama voted against it. How many of our readers would support a welfare bill that would cut women and their needy children off of government support money if they didn’t find work in an economy that is increasingly bereft of decent paying jobs? Few of our readers would, but Hillary did.
How many of our readers would have voted for the Iraq War authorization, when we all knew it was the enabling legislation Bush needed to go to War with Iraq? We would have voted against it; but Hillary Clinton voted for it, and then claims that she was, essentially, “duped.” Okay, we weren’t duped; you weren’t duped. But the person who touts her “experience” claims she was.
There’s a point when a support of a political candidate because the candidate is a symbol – in this case of a woman triumphing to become president – compromises so much to reach that goal that the victory would be hollow. Is it advancing feminist principles of peace, care for women and children, and decent jobs for women when the candidate one supports has severely compromised herself on all these issues? We’ll let you answer that.
Some of our readers respond not in support of Hillary Clinton’s record, which is highly checkered on basic feminist principles. (The former female leader of the Catholic pro-choice movement details how Senator Clinton has repeatedly compromised on the pro-choice issue in subtle but important ways.)
But what got me riled up again about Senator Clinton’s most recent campaign tactics was not so much the over-the-top and sadly ironic news conference regarding two mailers by the Obama campaign in Ohio. (Clinton’s campaign had sent out a mailer in New Hampshire that said that Obama couldn’t be trusted on Choice, when he had a 100% Planned Parenthood rating during his senate years in Illinois, and is continuing that voting record in the U.S. Senate.)
No, what got us in a lather were little noticed e-mails by a Clinton staffer goading the press to follow-up on an allegation that Obama had ties to “radical groups.”
The Clinton spokesperson, Phil Singer, was in gutter mode when he pushed a story -- which was either placed in the New York Sun and Politico by the Clinton or McCain campaigns – that tried to connect Obama to the radical “Weather Underground” that was in its heyday when Obama wasn’t even a teenager.
What was the connection? Well, Obama, many years ago, had an Illinois Senate fundraiser and accepted a small donation from William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Were they both in the violent “Weather Underground” when Obama was in elementary school? Yes. But trying to connect a ten-year-old Obama, living in Indonesia and Hawaii, with a radical, long-ago defunct movement is inexcusable.
It is another sleazy attack that Senator Clinton supporters will have to compromise their souls to support.
Why? Because William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in their adult lives have devoted themselves to improving the lives and prospects for children. Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and Dohrn – who became a lawyer – heads a highly regarded program at Northwestern University that is dedicated to the rights and welfare of children. Obama served on the Board of Directors of a prestigious foundation in Chicago with Ayers -- and they all live in the Hyde Park (University of Chicago) neighborhood.
So, here are two people, now virtually senior citizens, who have devoted their adult lives to children (they have two of their own and raised another), and the Clinton campaign, which claims that their candidate is a champion of youth, trashes both Ayers/Dohrn and Obama by bringing up a radical movement from the ‘60s.
This is not only hypocritical beyond belief, it is ludicrous. Moreover, it lacks the most fundamental decency.
If these are the values that the self-described feminists who write us support, then by all means go ahead and continue dwelling in a world of hypocrisy.
Read about the program at Northwestern University School of Law that Dohrn has put her adult life into creating and overseeing:
“Bernardine Dohrn, Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Director and founder of the Children and Family Justice Center, is a child advocate who teaches, lectures and writes about children’s law, juvenile justice, the needs and rights of youth, and international human rights. The Center is a holistic children's law center and a national policy center for the comprehensive needs of adolescents and their families, providing critical analysis and knowledge about youth law and practice, matters associated with the administration of justice, and the preparation of professionals who advocate for children. The CFJC is a clinical center of the Bluhm Legal Clinic, preparing law and social work students by representing adolescents in three strategic areas of children’s law: juvenile and criminal justice; school discipline and education law; and immigration and asylum law involving children and women."
If you can support dragging down Bernardine Dohrn and Wiliam Ayers, through the gutter just so Senator Clinton’s staff can try to drag down Obama with slurs, then we invite you not to read BuzzFlash again. We don’t want you in our community.
It is not about whether or not Obama is a “saint”; it is about Clinton taking responsibility for her campaign and her proclaimed key issues.
No one is under any illusion that a President Obama will not disappoint us at times; but Hillary Clinton has betrayed the most fundamental core values that she espouses by allowing her staff and her husband to first “play the race card” and now to feebly play “the radical card.”
This is beyond shameful; it is a betrayal.
BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/053 |
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