I never thought I’d say this.
Published by Lisa Kansas July 12th, 2008 in Feminism, Obamarama, Politics, Remember November, Shame on you for being a womanBut maybe I won’t vote for Barack Obama after all.
(eeeeeeeeeeeeek!)
I did genuinely want to.
I still won’t vote for John McCain. I will never, ever of my own volition vote for John McCain. Seriously, you’d have to tie up my children and threaten them at gunpoint to get me to do it. Tying me up and threatening me at gunpoint might not be enough.
I thought I’d vote for Obama, though. I never really considered doing otherwise.
But this is enough.
I may choose to be a nonperson in our democracy. I really hate that choice, but it’s starting to look like I either voluntarily assign myself that status by withdrawal or I actively work to put into office somebody who is going from offhandedly marginalizing my gender to encouraging others to pointedly do so.
From CNN today:
Bernie Mac made a surprise appearance at a Barack Obama fundraising event Friday evening.
Introducing Obama at the high-dollar fundraising event in Chicago…
“My little nephew came to me and he said, ‘Uncle, what’s the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?”‘ Mac said toward the end of his routine. “I said, I don’t know, but I said, ‘Go upstairs and ask your mother if she’d make love to the mailman for $50,000.”‘
“Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos,” Mac said, delivering the joke’s punchline.
Some attendees of the $2,300 per-person event immediately registered their displeasure with Mac’s joke, and asked that he leave the stage.
“It’s not funny. Let’s get Barack on,” one man shouted.
Mac introduced the Democratic presidential candidate shortly after and Obama called the comedian a “great friend.” The Illinois senator also joked that Mac needs to “clean up [his] act.”
“We can’t afford to be divided by race. We can’t afford to be divided by region or by class and we can’t afford to be divided by gender, which by the way, that means, Bernie, you’ve got to clean up your act next time,” he said. “This is a family affair. By the way, I’m just messing with you, man.”
O-kay.
Good grief.
(And I don’t even get the joke.)
There are plenty of reasons not to vote for Obama. If being undable to handle a comedian who puts him on the spot at fundraiser is your deciding factor, I reallly wonder.
I’ve been following you since you started at Punkass. Some of your posts are okay and thoughtful, but I think you sacrifice consistent quality for volume.
Hasty thoughts and posting images from an online game because one doesn’t have time to write anything are a charming part of many blogs I read daily, but doesn’t quite seem to fit Punkass.
What made me a Punkass Fan was the authors didn’t just post for the sake of posting. Be it a two line trivial entry or a deep think piece, there was a sharpness and a feeling they truly had something to share. The longer work seemed to go through several drafts. And while Punkass wasn’t impersonal, it seemed determined to avoid being indulgent.
I understand Punkass added writers because they felt they weren’t updating enough for a well liked blog. But frequency is not as important as focus and since you are now the most active blogger on the site it just doesn’t seem punkass so much as hit or miss.
Me neither. Who’s the other ho? Someone fucked up somewhere.
No, I’m kidding. I get it. Women are whores. Hilarious!
Yeah really - I don’t get it either. I mean, the women are ho’s part, but why two? Crap sexist joke or not, it doesn’t even make any sense!
Also, way to go Barry. I feel even more powerless now than I did before!
Yeah, I thought I was going to vote for Obama too when HRC dropped out. But after all the sexist crap he’s letting his supporters get away with, no way in hell will I vote for him. McCain = Bush, so that’s definitely out. But I will be voting, I’ll write in my choice for President and to hell with both of the main candidates.
Well hey, Marc is a big Obama fan, so if you’re lucky, since I am officially on the brink of losing my ability to publicly pull for an Obama nation, he’ll ask me to take my quantity-at-the-expense-of-quality, dull, unfeeling, online-game-posting, unfocused ass elsewhere.
I do gotta quibble with your assessment that the volume of my posts is dictated by any feeling I have that I need to pump out some minimum amount in a specific time frame, though. I write only when I feel like it, as much or as little as I feel like, about whatever I feel like expressing myself about at any given moment. My suckiness is solely and only due to personal lack of writing talent. Really. And maybe even a lack of incisive, brilliant, original wit. I might even just happen to be thoroughly superficial and boring…I might even be ugly–wait, that doesn’t have anything to do with my writing–
Hmm… this doesn’t seem like something that should be blamed on Obama. It seems too close to the whole notion of “guilt by association”.
Lisa..I love your blogging, please don’t listen to a starry eyed Obama supporter. Sigh is probably one of those liberals that loved to rip G. Bush a new one over things like FISA and warrantless wiretapping, but when Obama says its okay, then everything is fine. Or when Obama questions a basic human right, like a woman’ right to choose, thats okay to, cause he’s “like totally perfect and all. and wonderful. and made up fairy dust and butterfly kisses…”
By the way, if McCain had a fundraiser, and someone told a completely misogynistic and insulting joke, and McCain laughed it off, I guarantee Sigh would be having a hissy fit. But since its wonderful and perfect Obama, its okay.
Lets not allow the Left to become no better than starry eyes Bushies, following your leader no matter where he takes you.
Former Obama supporter here who will be casting a vote Cynthia McKinney’s way in November.
FWIW, I heard a version of the joke that sort of makes sense. The nephew asks the mother and her daughter the question, and they both say they would sleep with the mailman for $50,000. He reports this to his uncle, who says, “Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos.”
I didn’t say it was less offensive. It just makes more sense this way. In the way that misogyny makes sense, anyway.
Nope, Sabrina, it is too late–I suck and now I know it. Goodbye cruel world!!
Ya know, the nice thing about blogs on the internets is that one can make a conscious decision whether to read them or not. If you don’t like a blog or a blogger, guess what? You can- wait for it- not read it at all! You can go peruse some other fine website more worth your valuable time.
I know that’s quite a concept for some people apparently. I always laugh whenever I read another whiny “Your blog used to be kewl but now it SUCKS!!!1!” comment in a thread. So why are you still reading it, Einstein?
On topic: Ha ha, it’s funny cause Bernie Mac is calling his wife and daughter a couple of whores. Kind of like how it was hilarious when McLame called his wife a cunt. I know my respect for these guys is just soaring through the roof right now. How classy.
When I first caught wind of this, I was REALLY confused about it, because the news article ended the quote after “Go upstairs and ask your mother if she’d make love to the mailman for $50,000.” They cut off the freaking punchline!
At least now I can see why someone might care. Previously, it was just baffling.
I’m a little bemused that this is what put you over the top, but I guess it was just a gradual piling on of various factors, with this being a proverbial last straw. At least you won’t be signing your posts “Gooooooooo Obama ‘08!” anymore– that always made me cringe a little.
Hey, don’t worry about “Sigh” and that other earlier poster (who I think was probably Sigh being a sock puppet). It’s of course fine for people to disagree with you about anything and everything, but I believe the default term for one who drops a bomb like that and then runs out of the room is “troll”. Besides, if you’re able to please all of the people all of the time, well then, there’s probably something wrong with you.
Dear everybody: Lisa has more or less been single-handedly keeping this blog alive for a few weeks now (lovely intermittent posts from others notwithstanding), and she deserves a big tip of the hat for that. Plus, sometimes she really comes up with a gem!
On the whole to-vote-or-not-to-vote thing, at the moment I’m a bit confused. I’m thinking of not voting, myself. Actually, I had made the decision to abstain from voting a few weeks ago, but I had a nice long conversation with Marc about it last week and he weakened my resolve. He’s firmly in the “lesser-of-two-evils-is-a-form-of-good” camp, and he makes a valid argument.
On the other hand, there’s a limit to how much evil I can accept in my lesser evil. The Democratic Party has just gone further and further center (=right) since Bush entered office– even since winning control of both the House and Senate! At this point, I really don’t think the Democrats will start to change for the better unless they get it through their thick skulls that we won’t vote for them until they shape up. Or in other words, sometimes choosing the lesser of two evils is what enables the evil to grow stronger.
Yes, yes, I know, Greens in 2000, and all that. Like I said, I’m still trying to sort out my thoughts on the issue.
Okay, now it’s going to look like I’m obsessing about this too much, but…
I realize now I was a little unfair to “Sigh”– I took a quick look comparing their style to the previous commenter who criticized Lisa, and it looks to me like they’re not a sock puppet. Plus, me calling people trolls only on the basis that they don’t like our writing is not a very mature way to deal with criticism. (Especially when it’s not even of my own writing!) I gotta stop throwing around inflammatory words like “sock puppet” and “troll” so easily, it’s not conducive to reasoned debate. So, seriously, apologies on that front, Sigh (if you broke your vow and you’re still reading).
That said, EVERY blog of sufficient size regularly gets disgruntled commenters who claim they’re leaving, never to return. Maybe we can think of it as a sign of growth!
I long for my own trolls. Go Lisa!
(p.s. I’m not just saying that because she’s skeptical of Obama.)
(p.p.s. Can I vote for Michelle Obama? That would be nice, I think.)
Hey, I may go back to gooooooooo-Obama-08! so don’t wave a final goodbye to your cringes.
I still haven’t made up my mind.
My opinion of Obama wasn’t altered for the worse by the above incident. However, while I can tolerate being taken for granted, being actually mocked by the person doing so is a bit much, eh?
But I’m still thinking about it. Once I get over my profound distaste, I may still decide to push for Obama and/or vote for Obama. I got time…
Note re Sigh and the earlier poster–I still don’t know what the earlier (not Sigh) poster’s problem was, tbh. I don’t think Sigh is a troll, I think he/she/it has posted before. Sigh is probably an Obamamaniac, judging from the tone, but probably also isn’t bowled over by me as the Greatest Blogger of All Time! and since he/she/it was already miffed by my political stance, thought the time was opportune to also share that. Well, since I can’t claim to be incredibly awesome at blogging, there’s not much I can say about it, other than, sorry? (maybe a little ironically, but hey. I am free, after all.)
The situation with Bernie Mac was a tricky one for Obama. Either he goes along with the joke, and offends women and people sensitive to women; or he denounces it, and he gets attacked from both sides as being too “PC” and not being “black enough”. And so as he knows that the kinds of people who would be offended is just going to vote for him anyhow, it’s no mystery which side he decide to appease. Really it’s quite similar to how he’s treating every other liberal issue in his campaign, actually.
To me personally, perhaps because I’m not a woman, this wasn’t as much of a big deal as other conservative-massaging things he’s done and said which strike me as much more likely to directly hurt people. But even if it really were “no big deal” (NOT something I’m claiming, by the way– I recognize that insults of which I am not the target are much more hurtful to the ones who are), this situation would be nicely instructive. It’s a perfect microcosm for the whole Obama dilemma:
“He HAS to say these things, or else he’ll weaken his chance of winning!” Well, he’s certainly weakened his chances of winning YOUR vote, hasn’t he.
I suck at trackback, but I just posted on this and linked you. Check out the MichelleObamaWatch post on this incident if you’ve not already.
I am pissed off with this (and a bit saddened, ooh-err, wasn’t someone on Punkass saying they were going to post about candidate affiliation and emotions and pornstars and stuff?), and am a resident rather than citizen so can’t vote anyway, but I am still in the Obama camp because Iraq is more important to me than the verbal abuse of women. (also, as with LGBT concerns, my hunch is that this may be used as a tool with which to extract more support, but that remains to be seen and isn’t the basis of my judgement call. Your judgement calls may/will differ).
…but I am still in the Obama camp because Iraq is more important to me than the verbal abuse of women.
Not sure Obama is really that much better than McCain on Iraq. At least, not if you actually go by what he says out loud. True, McCain is upfront about wanting to keep permanent bases there, but–
1. Obama says he’ll only leave once things “cool down” sufficiently– a wiggly definition that lets troops stay indefinitely;
2. He says he wants to leave 18,000 troops there anyway, which can easily be expanded;
3. He has redacted all previous statements on his website critical of the “surge”;
4. First he was hawkish on Iran, and now he’s making supportive noises about invading Pakistan.
Obama seems to buy into the righteous vision of Imperial America just as much as the neo-cons. The only difference is that he’s claiming he’d be a more competent imperial manager. I think he’s probably right about that. But it’s a fact that doesn’t inspire confidence in me. If my dad is a clumsy serial killer, I don’t want my mom to “improve” on the situation by marrying someone who can do it more efficiently and never get caught. I want her to move out in the middle of the night and keep me somewhere safe. (Plus, probably, report Dad to the police.)
Perhaps it’s just an act, and he’s just saying these things to become president, and he’s actually a peacenik. If you one of the ones who think this, I’d like some support for your thesis, please.
At least McCain is honest about his evil. As such, in many ways he’s easier to fight.
No, Quin, I’m going by what he said yesterday: that there will be no permanent SK-style military presence in Iraq, that control of Iraq should be turned over to its sovereign government, and that sucess=/=staying in Iraq. I do think you’re right about the ‘build a better imperialist thing’ - he sure talks about getting out of Iraq in order to deal with real security problems instead. I don’t consider that too problematic because I believe that there are real security problems that need dealing with.
(Reading this as meaning ‘invade Pakistan’ doesn’t make a whole lot of sense - Pakistan is a relatively free democracy, not really invasion material. Whether he’d force them to stop turning a blind eye to militants themselves, or just send the CIA, remains to be seen but a full-scale invasion is wildly unlikely).
Sorry Thene, I should make it clear that when I wrote “you” in my second-to-last paragraph, I meant the generalized “you”, not the specific “you”. I didn’t mean to attack you for being something you’ve given no indication of ever being, but that’s how it came off, I think.
That said, I’m spoiling for a good fight on the subject of Obama and I hope I have time to come back this weekend and do it properly.
By the way, I wrote 18,000 up there, but I misspoke. It’s 80,000. He can say he doesn’t want South Korea-style military bases, autonomous Iraqi govt, all the rest, but it’s all empty rhetoric unless his actual plan calls for pulling all US presence out of Iraq. Currently, it’s nothing even resembling that.
The talks of invading Pakistan regard the western edge, where the Pakistani government’s control ranges from weak to non-existent. However, it would be an extremely unpopular move that would certainly raise a wave of nationalism within Pakistan that would likely topple its already very very shaky quasi-democracy.
I think the hounds have been unleashed. The forces of Empire want us to stay in a state of war for as long as the world can take it. As well as it just being so damn profitable for them, there’s that “Great Game” for the strategic ownership/denial of ownership of energy resources going on at the same time. Signs are looking up that the warmongers won’t be able to get the momentum needed to go to war in Iran right now. So, they’re already looking for other likely candidates, Pakistan apparently being in the lead. Regarding both Iran and Pakistan, Obama has been speaking from within the hawks’ framing of the situation– that the GWOT is right and just (but poorly executed)– lending that frame credibility and even support.
In the 1950s, in the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” plan, Pakistan obtained a 125 megawatt heavy-water reactor from Canada. After India’s first atomic test in May 1974, Pakistan immediately sought to catch up by attempting to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. After France declined due to U.S. resistance, Pakistan began to assemble a uranium enrichment plant via materials from the black market and technology smuggled through A.Q. Khan. In 1976 and 1977, two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act were passed, prohibiting American aid to countries pursuing either reprocessing or enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons programs.
These two, the Symington and Glenn Amendments, were passed in response to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability; but to little avail. Washington’s cool relations with Islamabad soon improved. During the Reagan administration, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s program. In return for Pakistan’s cooperation and assistance in the mujahideen’s war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration awarded Pakistan with the third largest economic and military aid package after Israel and Egypt. Despite the Pressler Amendment, which made US aid contingent upon the Reagan administration’s annual confirmation that Pakistan was not pursuing nuclear weapons capability, Reagan’s “laissez-faire” approach to Pakistan’s nuclear program seriously aided the proliferation issues that we face today.
Not only did Pakistan continue to develop its own nuclear weapons program, but A.Q. Khan was instrumental in proliferating nuclear technology to other countries as well. Further, Pakistan’s progress toward nuclear capability led to India’s return to its own pursuit of nuclear weapons, an endeavor it had given up after its initial test in 1974. In 1998, both countries had tested nuclear weapons. A uranium-based nuclear device in Pakistan; and a plutonium-based device in India
Over the years of America’s on again off again support of Pakistan, Musharraf continues to be skeptical of his American allies. In 2002 he is reported to have told a British official that his “great concern is that one day the United States is going to desert me. They always desert their friends.” Musharraf was referring to Viet Nam, Lebanon, Somalia … etc., etc., etc.,
Taking the war to Pakistan is perhaps the most foolish thing America can do. Obama is not the first to suggest it, and we already have sufficient evidence of the potentially negative repercussions of such an action. On January 13, 2006, the United States launched a missile strike on the village of Damadola, Pakistan. Rather than kill the targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, the strike instead slaughtered 17 locals. This only served to further weaken the Musharraf government and further destabilize the entire area. In a nuclear state like Pakistan, this was not only unfortunate, it was outright stupid. Pakistan has 160 million Arabs (better than half of the population of the entire Arab world). Pakistan also has the support of China and a nuclear arsenal.
I predict that America’s military action in the Middle East will enter the canons of history alongside Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust, in kind if not in degree. The Bush administration’s war on terror marks the age in which America has again crossed a line that many argue should never be crossed. Call it preemption, preventive war, the war on terror, or whatever you like; there is a sense that we have again unleashed a force that, like a boom-a-rang, at some point has to come back to us. The Bush administration argues that American military intervention in the Middle East is purely in self-defense. Others argue that it is pure aggression. The consensus is equally as torn over its impact on international terrorism. Is America truly deterring future terrorists with its actions? Or is it, in fact, aiding the recruitment of more terrorists?
The last thing the United States should do at this point and time is to violate yet another state’s sovereignty. Beyond being wrong, it just isn’t very smart. We all agree that slavering in this country was wrong; as was the decimation of the Native American populations. We all agree that the Holocaust and several other other acts of genocide in the twentieth century were wrong. So when will we finally admit that American military intervention in the Middle East is also wrong?
Yo, John, I have the strong suspicion you’re just going around pasting the same essay in comment sections all over the place, but I DO feel that this is a subject people should be talking about more, so… Please feel free to stop by in a more personal way next time.
Plenty of us already do, baby, trust me. We’re just not the ones steering the boat. We’re not even allowed near the wheel.
By the way, it’s worth noting that none of the specific atrocities you mention– not slavery, not the decimation of Native Americans, not the atom bombs dropped on Japan, not even the Holocaust– were widely considered atrocities by their perpetrators at the actual time they were occurring. It was only after the fact that some people gained some perspective (though even now, they each have their own vocal apologists, defenders, or denialists). Historically, any given group of people seems to be incapable of recognizing their own evil as they do it. So why should we, today, expect to be any different? That’s just egoism.
Hey Lisa, sorry I’ve been steadily pushing your thread further and further OT. I gotta stop commenting so much and just write some damn posts of my own already. I guess I just feel more comfortable tossing in cheap shots from the peanut gallery.
Maybe you could vote Cynthia McKinney (Green Party.)
Quin - thanks, I didn’t realise that ‘you’ wasn’t me personally, but I was cool with it either way.
By the way, I wrote 18,000 up there, but I misspoke. It’s 80,000. He can say he doesn’t want South Korea-style military bases, autonomous Iraqi govt, all the rest, but it’s all empty rhetoric unless his actual plan calls for pulling all US presence out of Iraq. Currently, it’s nothing even resembling that.
No, but it’s markedly different from the McCain approach. You’re the first person I’ve ever seen even make the argument that there’s no difference between the two in that regard - even if we can’t know what either would really do until one of them takes office.
Quin, this comment thread is way more fascinating than the post.
Keep it goin’, man.
Anna: who knows, I might. McKinney’s merits aside, it would purely be a protest vote, though, and a pretty weak-ass form of protest at that.