Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Obama’s an Elitist? Who Knew?

Posted on by Ann

So Obama  stirred up a bit of a problem for himself  in the recent past with his painting of the working class as “bitter” though in truth he is about half right. People do not cling to religion or guns or bigotry out of frustration over their ejection from the American Dream race. They were already evangelical or NRA card carriers or Archie Bunkers. The loss of good jobs or the decimation of their small towns magnified traits that were already not so healthy into obsessions. Is small town America bitter? Disillusioned? Jaded? Yes. Have they all become right-wing talk radio aficionados? No. Anyone who is over the edge now was pretty close before, in my opinion as someone who grew up in a union town that lost its jobs to company union busting policies for the most part. 

What’s interesting is that Obama should show his elitist nature now with the Democratic Convention still so far in the future. Not that Clinton has a chance to derail the “juggernaut for change” that is Obama but because it gives all the people who don’t want to vote for him more reason to believe that he is as phony as any other politico who cries in the wilderness, “Vote for me. I’m different!” You can’t be different and be a politician. At least not an electable one.

Obama is just like the rest of us who escaped our middle or lower class roots. We look down back and see the people and places we have left behind and think – “Man are those people stupid.” And why not? They are. They are the ones who thought high school was the best years of life and that college was a waste of time when good jobs were to be had right out the front door of the high school at whatever the local factory was. And that was when? 1950′s? ’60′s? ’70′s? Maybe the ’80′s still, here and there. But not for long and certainly not now. Sad thing is that there are still people foolishly believing that an education is something to waste and that a person can still make a living out of the high school door. I see evidence of that here in Alberta where there are young people job hopping in hopes of finding work that isn’t work or isn’t the mind numbing/soul withering suckholes that those of us who busted our guts getting degrees already knew. When the economy is job heavy, employers tiptoe softly and throw as much money into wages as they can but booms do not last and here in Alberta the first signs of a softening are already beginning. It won’t be long til the owners have control again and the little guys who haven’t any choice but to work the minimum wage part time jobs will be under thumbs again. And that is what Obama is talking about. People who live and die at the pleasure of the economy, and they know he is right when he calls them “bitter” and points out that the guns, church and bigotry are the things they use to distract themselves from their own responsibility. People never like it when you see through them. It will cost Obama in November.

 

It’s Still a Man’s World

Posted on by Ann

 

It irks me when I read that I should be thrilled by the Democratic presidential race because the leading contenders for the nomination are black and woman. When I see that in print what I read is “women should just be happy to have had the shot but should realize that voting for Obama is best”. And why is that what I see? Because it’s still a man’s world. Here we are in the 21st century and women are still literally descended from Adam’s rib. There was a MSNBC article not long ago where Obama is quoted as saying that Clinton should stay in the race as long as she wants. It implies that even he thinks she is a token. The quote made me dislike him, and I haven’t disliked him up until I read that, because it was so condescending. Like “Look, the cute little girl is tilting at the White House windmill while the big boys watch.” I loathe that kind of crap.

 

I know that I am a minority in my belief that women are only free on a fairly superficial level and then only in westernized civilizations. Because we aren’t being forcibly circumcised en mass or imolliated by our husbands when our families can’t pay larger dowries or by relatives who feel burdened by the care of  old widows (or simply lust after their inheritances) – then we are liberated and equal. But we aren’t. Hillary and Barack are virtually indistinguishable on issues but for piddling details, so the issue should be who is more experienced not who is more charismatic (and strong women will never win this game). And is that the case? It doesn’t feel like it. 

 

Young women in France are being expected to provide sex for accommodations. They are being sold for opium in Afghanistan and here in the enlightened West, they rent their wombs and consider themselves equality pioneers for getting naked on their way to the top.

 

Women Deserve the White House as Much as Blacks Do

Posted on by Ann

 

There is an article on MSNBC discussing Hillary Clinton‘s recent resurgence in Texas and Ohio. The author talks about her main base of supporters being Boomer women with the typical being a 50 year old white woman who is jazzed about the fact that as a gender we are SO close to putting one of our own in the Oval Office. Despite the fact that my husband insists that I am pretty much within spitting distance of being this “typical” Hillarite woman (and I am so not by the way as not quite 45 is hardly 50 at all), I am equally psyched about the prospect of having a woman president. So psyched in fact that my dislike for Sen. Obama is probably at times simply driven by not much other than his “Y”-ness. Though his serious lack of anything resembling a plan for this country and his lightweight Senate rep is not helping him score any points either.  Then there is the issue of his glowing aura. Charisma, a Jesus Christ Superstar-like halo, and a fawning media are grounds for immediate suspicion, in my opinion. Nothing good ever comes of even one of those things and all three could be harbingers of the Apocalypse for all I know.  But like most other old women, I can read a hand-written wall. Messiahs are male and really cool. 

 

Having been accused of being merely a bigot for preferring a female in the White House and having been told that voting for a woman because she is a woman is merely proof that women should never have been given the vote in the first place, I must say that if Sen. Clinton was just offering me “change” and “hope” without any clear idea of how to accomplish something that might actually be “change” and provide real “hope” I would scoff and dismiss her out of hand, much as I have done with Obama. I am too old to be drawn in by style (which the media is quick to point out that Sen. Clinton doesn’t have in comparison to the Chosen One). I want substance with my president too. I want someone who knows that being the president is damn hard work and has a proven track record of being someone who works hard. Well, isn’t that a bit simplistic, you might think? How like a girl to believe that the highest office in the land is achieved by qualifications and elbow grease and not the hand of destiny plucking the worthy from the unwashed. But I don’t believe that such an important job should go to the most popular kid in the class.  Didn’t we all suffer through enough of that in high school?

 

The reason that older women like Hillary Clinton is that she is one of us. She came up through the ranks and, thanks to the shortsightedness of the early feminists, had to do it all whether she wanted to or not. Be the mom. Work the full-time job. Do it better and faster and without a net. And for all that, still be dismissed as just a woman, or wife or daughter or sister.  Somehow in the wake of the Obama tsunami, it’s been lost that a woman being elected president is just as great a victory for civil rights as an Obama win would be. It would be an equal stomping of the White Male American way of thinking and doing. More, in a way, because women are still the near daily victims of the rampant and ugly sexism that dominates not just America but the world.

 

Women in the U.S., it could be/is argued, are on equal footing with men, but we are granted only the superficial freedoms. They keep so many of us - younger women especially - blind and mollified that it might be better if American men were as open with their disregard and contempt for us as men are in other less “enlightened” places in the world.  At least then we would know for sure and be able to point it out. That’s Obama’s advantage over Clinton in this race. Racism can’t hide but sexism in the West is subtle and so easily denied that women have begun to doubt its existence. Pay no attention to that old man behind the curtain, little ladies. Just listen to what the big head is telling you the truth is.

 

And the truth is that it is no more a black man’s turn at the White House than it is a woman’s.