Playing the Gender Card

Another day, another dull, dumb act of desperation from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Old People Say the Darnedest Things: Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Cory Booker yuck it up.

This time, it centers on the presumptuous presumptive nominee pushing Clinton Administration Secretary of State Madeline Albright in front of a microphone and a crowd of 200 or so (and the obligatory television cameras) to play the gender card on Mrs. Clinton’s behalf, so that Hill could act surprised and delighted that she didn’t have to play it for herself.

She must think it looks more presidential that way. I think it looks more pathetic, and here’s why:

If the only thing separating Hillary Clinton’s always egocentric — and, now, gendercentric — campaign from Bernie Sanders’ authentic grassroots movement was her status as a woman, I’d switch sides in a heartbeat.

The fact that I haven’t done that — or believe I ever will — speaks to my hard-earned distaste for Hillary Clinton as a deeply-flawed, superficial, slash-and-burn pol of the old school and a bought-and-paid-for tool of Wall Street and corporate special interests. But it’s certainly not her gender.

In fact, if Hillary Clinton weren’t a woman, I’d express my contempt for her in far plainer terms than I have thus far, rather than having to confess that I find her status as a woman to be the least objectionable thing about her.

In fact, I’d use the same words that I’d use to describe a male candidate of equal egotism, artifice, and power-lust — Donald Trump, for example, or Ted Cruz:

I can’t stand _______ because he’s a fucking asshole.

That’s why I’ll end on a high note by simply saying this about Mrs. Clinton: What do I think of her as a presidential candidate? Not much.

But I thank God for Bernie Sanders.

The Biggest Big Lie

The biggest Big Lie in this campaign is that Bernie Sanders supporters, male, female, LGBT and Q (and, presumably, all others who don’t back the former First Lady) are somehow anti-feminist.

I was about to say “I don’t know how self-serving political lies like this get started...” but as soon as I felt myself actually begin to wrap thoughts around those words, I realized they were intended for rhetorical purposes only, since they weren’t even true, because I certainly do know how they get started. And so, probably, do you.

Big Lies aren't that much different than little lies, and both kinds get started because somebody makes them up. 

Then some semi-skilled pressroom hack (or intern) copies-and-pastes them into daily talking point memos for candidates and surrogates, who amplify the lie and spin it to suit their particular audiences or constituencies.

Then it morphs into something even less real, until somebody — me, maybe, or you — finally stands up and says something like: 

Who made up this bullshit? It’s not even true!

That’s the conclusion I come to when I consider the anti-feminist lie, anyway. 

The 2016 Democratic Dream Team: List them on the ballot in any order, at all. They'll get my vote, either way.

Full disclosure: I’m a 65-year-old white male and I truly believe that my antipathy towards Hillary Clinton has nothing whatever to do with vestigial chauvinism in a capricious character or a battered, tattered soul.

Because I’d follow Elizabeth Warren into hell itself, if she led a charge there to free our “rigged economy” from its diabolical gatekeepers.

Conversely, though, to me, Hillary Clinton is hell — an inept, inauthentic political hack, using her own gender to distract from the insincerity, desperation, and duplicity at the core of her campaign and, seemingly, the depths of her political being.

How long can she go? Pretty fucking low, as I recall from the 2008 campaign. 

HRC and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland doing the same number on Obama then that she's doing on Bernie now.

I mean, I still hear echoes of her “Shame on you, Barack Obama” tirade come rolling through my head whenever she starts ragging on Bernie for actually believing what he's saying, all in that rushed, shrill, angry-mom tone, and I swear to God: I wish I'd never heard those words or that tone, and I can't wait until I never have to hear that woman's voice ever again.

I just don't like you, Hillary. I'm sorry. Maybe if you had a goal in life to do something, anything, other than to proclaim yourself the only qualified candidate in the country to be president, it would be different.

But if that were different, you’d be different, Hill. And that’s the problem: You just never are. 

America got tired of the same-old same-old because, among other things, it created the biggest levels of income inequality in 85 years. 

And the same-old same-old is all Hillary Clinton has ever been. She’s Hubert Humphrey in a pantsuit. And Bernie Sanders is the Bobby Kennedy a bullet didn't kill.