Ellen Willis wrote the above in 1969 ("Up from Radicalism: A Feminist Journal") and, sadly, it's still true today. If you ever doubted it, you only had to follow the 2008 primary coverage from Panhandle Media.
Whatever they thought it would pass for, what the men contributed was anything but journalism.
Matthew Rothschild writes for, edits and is CEO of a publication called "The Progressive." But it's not all that progressive and neither is he. While writing about losing his mother, he chose to 'honor' women by linking to the conservative Weekly Standard because he was just so tickled by an article there about an anti-Hillary group whose initials spelled the c-word. 'My mother has died,' Rothschild seemed to say, 'and that's sad, so let's laugh at all women and enjoy.'
Throughout the campaign season, Rothschild would watch the debates and, in his eyes, Hillary never won. He wouldn't call it sexism. Who knows what he would call it? Immediately after the New Hampshire debate, he would write in praise of Barack's debating 'powers' (powers not a lot of other people saw). When, days later, Barack lost New Hampshire to Hillary (and polling showed those late breaking voters based their decision on the debate), Rothschild would suddenly declare the performance he had praised "lackluster." How could it be both? Possibly, when you'll go to any lengths to avoid giving Hillary even one iota of praise, you'll worry less about whether or not your contradicting yourself.
Considering his small output online (when contrasted with The Nation -- which does have more writers producing online content), one theme sticks out in Matthew Rothschild's coverage: Hillary is not nice. She's not nice and the example he loved to cite was that she didn't mention Barack in this or that concession speech or wasn't glowing enough to Barack in that speech or blah, blah, blah.
C.I. caught the sexism at work here when others of us missed it. Why was it Hillary's job to be gracious? Like us, you may be saying, "Well everyone should be gracious." You might want to, as we did, check out Howard Dean's speech after losing New Hampshire (his second loss in a row). There was no praise for John Kerry. And press reports (such as by the then Jodi Wilogoren for The New York Times) noted that he didn't even mention John Kerry in the speech. It wasn't an issue for Panhandle Media to wring their hands over in 2004. They sounded no alarms. They didn't puzzle over the meaning or slam Dean for it.
The reason is it's not really an issue. Nor is it uncommon. But for Hillary it was made an issue. And the reason for that most likely to goes the sexist notions that men like Matthew Rothschild have which decree that women, whether winning or losing, must always take into account the opponent's ego and praise him.
Someone should ask Rothschild why Dean's refusal to be 'gracious' was never a topic that had him exploding in text form but it was one of the driving themes of his 2008 coverage when it came to Hillary?
David Corn was just outright nasty. He didn't like Hillary, he hated her and he made that perfectly clear every time he participated in conference call with the campaign. (His attitude was fostered at Mother Jones where everyone from the receptionist -- a woman -- on up feels they can be as rude and nasty as they want to be to anyone who calls to point out a factual error in their non-stop Hillary hatred. Few callers even got up the chain, so determined was the magazine to avoid correcting errors. "They're working on copy, they don't have time for your Hillary fan club!" the receptionist snapped on one phone call that was accidentally tape recorded.) Corn at one time prided himself on being a journalist. We don't know how much pride there is in writing of Camilio Mejia when his name is Camilo Mejia, but whatever.
When Hillary Hatred infected Corn, spelling was the least of his problems. The only writer at The Nation magazine that the mainstream press took seriously, moved over to Mother Jones and had everyone scratching their heads as he repeatedly bent facts and out and out misrepresented.
Following the April ABC debate the holler monkeys were out in full force and no monkey hollered louder than David Corn. In that debate, Barack Obama was asked about his relationship with Bill Ayers who was a member of the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground detonated bombs on US soil, were on the FBI's most wanted list and Ayers and his partner (and then wife) Bernardine Dorhn (the leader of Weather) had to go underground for over a decade due to being wanted by federal authorities for their actions.
Barack lied about the relationship (implying they were only neighbors when his campaign had previously admitted they were close but tried to lie and say their children went to school together) in the debate, then offered he was eight-years-old when Weather Underground was active (Weather was active through his teenage years) and besides, as president, Bill Clinton either pardoned or commuted the sentences of Linda S. Evans and Susan Rosenberg. He all but said "So there!" and stuck his tongue out.
Did Barack deliberately confuse the issue? It's likely he did but he's also a legal idiot.
But the press was presented, in the debate with two alternatives. The Obama campaign, as they always do, spun it privately to the press as "pardoned."
What real reporters do is check it out for themselves. That never happened.
So the next morning, David Corn could be found throwing a screaming fit during the middle of the Clinton campaign's media conference call. Bill Clinton pardoned the two women, he insisted at loud volume, and everyone knew that. Everyone, David?
It would be hard for "everyone" to know something took place when it never did.
That same morning, Ava and C.I. had explained Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg were not pardoned. Obviously, Ava and C.I. didn't "know" what had never taken place had. By Thursday night, the press still wasn't doing their job so C.I. addressed the topic again and made it real simple providing links to the list of people whose sentences Bill Clinton commuted and to the people whom Bill Clinton pardoned. It was good enough for ABC and Jake Tapper who corrected their story to read that Clinton commuted the women's sentences but did not pardon them. (Pardon takes away guilt. Commuted sentences means you get out earlier. Not that you are innocent.) But that wasn't good enough for David Corn who, four days later, was still writing at Mother Jones (having already gotten it wrong four days prior) that Bill Clinton pardoned the women so what did it matter if another member (Ayers isn't just a member, if Bernardine was the president -- she was the leader -- than Ayers would have been First Spouse which put him near the top of the food chain) was someone Barack sort of knew?
For those not familiar with David Corn, he was one of the press hit man who destroyed Gary Webb's career. Webb wrote about the drug smuggling aspect of Iran-Contra. He got most of the details correct and nailed the big picture. But some CIA-friendly members of the press did the CIA's dirty work and smeared Webb. They picked apart tiny details and printed outright untruths. They ruined Webb's journalism career. Corn was one of those. (Though he wrote an angry blog post after Webb's suicide denying that he was in any way responsible.) Corn would justify his actions publicly with the claim that facts were facts.
That was his motto, facts were facts. Except when they weren't. Has anyone high-horsed it as much as David Corn? Has anyone self-patted so? (It was cute the way he claimed all the credit for the outing of Valerie Plame story. He doesn't mention her or her husband today because they endorsed Hillary Clinton.)
But there was Mr. Facts Matter David Corn screaming in a press call a "fact" that wasn't a fact and going on to write not one but two pieces calling out the 'lies' and 'distortions.' When forced to correct one of his pieces of writing, he would offer a self-serving comment that it was easy to confuse the two: "Clinton did not issue pardons to Rosenberg and Evans; he commuted their prison sentences. Media accounts often conflate the two different actions. These two commutations were announced by the White House on January 20, 2001, as part of a long list of almost 140 pardons and commutations, which included the infamous pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich--which was a pardon." Where in that correction is the obvious: "I was mistaken. I was wrong." Apparently, he might not have had the room for it, including it might have required taking out his snide little remark about Marc Rich.
Corn worked overtime to paint every move Hillary made as devious and calculating. She was Mata Hari and Tokyo Rose to read Corn's purple prose. How proud he must be to have let his sexism run wild and allow him to make a perfect fool out of himself to all his peers on the conference call. (David, they still laugh about it.)
Robert Parry, someone not usually to be found in same gang as David Corn, did his best to be noticed as well. He took to Democracy Now! to explain what Hillary Clinton would do as president. Based on what she'd stated or done herself? No, based on what Bill Clinton did. Apparently a woman doesn't have her own thoughts or actions, she's just a reflecting pool for her husband. It was so bad, even Hillary Hater and non-feminist Amy Goodman had to call it out ("Now, of course, this is not a comment about what his wife, the New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would do if she were president.").
Like Robert Scheer (a pig of too many years, we'll gladly attend that funeral), Robert Parry went after Gloria Steinem. Repeatedly.
Steinem's 'crime' was a column based on the premise that women mattered -- all women. Parry, Scheer and Liar Melissa Harris-Lacewell (a part of the Obama campaign -- a fact she rarely disclosed in her on air appearances) went into overdrive trying to smear Gloria. (Who was the professor actively recruited female students to write letters, blog posts and 'columns' slamming Gloria? That's one of the details not well known but many of the women regret doing that and are now talking. And, professor, get nervous, they're talking to the press.)
And it was important the she be smeared for two reasons: 1) keep people from listening and 2) try to scare other women into silence; so the chief talking point to falsely smear Gloria Steinem as a racist by saying she'd argued African-American men got the right to vote before women (they did) and that this was just beyond the pale because what about Jim Crow laws!
Steinem's sentence was: "Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any woman (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter)." To scream racism and gin up the faux outrage it was really important to play dumb on the second part. It wasn't just the vote in that sentence or in Gloria's argument. She was rightly noting that the progression in this society always goes first to males. And that's only news if you're a pig or a liar -- or, in some cases, both. The argument Steinem makes in that sentence is sound so they had to reduce to half a sentence and ignore the latter half. They also had to ignore the "before women of any race" was included. Can't note that and lie that Gloria's a racist.
Gloria Steinem is the face of feminism. It's not a role she sought. Many times throughout the years, she's spoken of wanting to get away from the road, of wanting to just work on her writing. But women mattered to Gloria. She had this 'kooky' idea that in a modern world women mattered just as much as men.
Gloria doesn't have a racist bone in her body. She was and is an inspiration to countless women. When she spoke out for all women, and that is what she was doing, it scared a lot of Barack supporters. So the pigs came out in full force. If they could LIE and get away with calling or inferring that Gloria Steinem was a racist, they might be able to scare all Hillary supporters into silence.
We include Amy Goodman on the pig list because when you've praised and fawned over Larry F**nt on air, when you've disgraced all women by choosing to publish in his magazine, you really don't deserve to be included with women. You've made a point throughout your life to be one of the boys, so you get lumped in with the boys.
Goody broke every guideline and ethic of journalism to push Barack's campaign. That included ignoring Hillary endorsements while regularly leading her headlines with Barack endorsements. If there wasn't an endorsement that day? Hell, the day before you had included that Chris Dodd had endorsed Barack in the headlines so just repeat it the next day but make it the lead headline. [For more on Goody's 'antics' this campaign season, see Ava and C.I.'s "TV: Democracy Sometimes?," "TV: Goodman and Rose 'honoring' bad TV past," "TV: The Christ-child fumbles,"
"TV: Basic cable rejects," "TV: The return of I Dream of Jeannie" and "TV: Nothing-ness."]
It included doing long, solo interviews with Barack supporters. That sometimes meant allowing those who had financially contributed to his campaign come on your lousy program and play like they were undecided but offer up praise for Obama. And, lucky them, they weren't telling the truth and you weren't even. It's deceiving the audience when you know and Goody knew.
It reached its most extreme with Harris-Lacewell whom Goody knew before she brought on her on the show in January -- knew and knew she was part of the Obama campaign.
But Goody didn't need to tell the audience that. Supposed supporter of a free media didn't feel the need to free her audience by telling them who Melissa was campaigning for. And Melissa knows to lie real good so she didn't reveal it either. But she did praise a speech she caught of Barack's. She never mentioned Hillary. When she drooled over Barack's speech, Goody was required to tell her audience, "Melissa Harris-Lacewell is campaigning for Barack." But Goody didn't do that.
The next week, the cat was out of the bag to the audience when Goody and Harris-Lacewell schemed to trash Gloria. Throughout her career, Gloria Steinem has refused all efforts to appear in what the media could call a "cat fight." She knows it's bad for feminism and she avoids it. It's also not her style. She was sold on the Democracy Now! interview with Goody telling her that she wanted her to take part in a conversation on race and gender. Gloria was up to it but had she know that at the same time Melissa and Amy were planning a public takedown, she would have passed.
The friendly conversation quickly became Melissa lying, distorting and attacking. And Amy loving every minute of it. The same Goody that knocked Sally Jesse for doing far less on her own trash TV program. It wasn't 'news' programming, it wasn't public affairs, it was Geraldo.
Throughout, Gloria is visibly confused. She repeatedly accepts whatever charge Melissa's hurling as something that Melissa obviously feels is true and attempts to have a discussion about that thinking that the conversation will come in there. But Melissa (and Amy) were never interested in conversation. They were bound and determined to see Barack elected and Gloria had to be taken down, bruised if not bloodied, or who knew what other women might step foward and point out, yeah, the US is sexist?
Gloria wasn't the only woman viciously attacked in 2008 to prop up the slender resume of Barack. Many women were and that's why it's not just about Hillary.
Pig Mark Karlin took to his laughable BuzzFlash (aka Lotta Links) after the New Hampshire primary, after Hillary won. He felt the need to lecture the 'ladies.' The point of his 'editorial' was that women shouldn't vote for Hillary just because she was a woman. Sexist pig that he is, the only reason he could see for Hillary getting support was because of blind devotion to gender. Strangely, not then or ever, did he feel the need to rush out an editorial telling African-Americans of any gender that they shouldn't vote for Barack for racial reasons.
And that was at the heart of the pigs argument and their hatred of women. You saw it over and over. Women were 'emotional,' 'stupid,' 'unenlightend' and so much more if they supported another woman. But if any African-Americans supported bi-racial Barack, there was never any urge for the same men to lecture them about how politics is about policies.
With the exceptions of liars, we've never called out any African-American for supporting Barack. We didn't find it all that surprising that some would support the candidate the media sold as "Black." We also didn't find it all that surprising that some women (not all) would support Hillary just because she was a woman. We assumed that the bulk of both groups had numerous reasons.
But isn't it funny how many White men felt the need to lecture women this campaign cycle? How many men felt they were entitled to lecture women? It's not like Robert Parry, Robert Scheer or Mark Karlin has ever done a damn thing to help women. They don't cover issues that effect women. They don't make a point to feature women in large numbers. (Parry and Scheer have no women who write for their sites regularly. That may confuse some people because Scheer reposts articles written for newspapers and some people may think, for instance, that Marie Cocco works for TruthDig when all that's taking place is Scheer's reposting her columns syndicated by The Washington Post.) But here were these men who do nothing to advance women or to get them real exposure suddenly deciding they had some ground to stand on, some pull with women, that allowed their insulting and demeaning remarks to go over well?
New Hampshire was the key moment in the Barack campaign because that's when "hope" went out the window. In the lead up to the primary, Gloria Steinem was savaged by supposed 'friends' with false charges and deliberate distortions.
The day before the election, speaking about the troubling path the country was on, Hillary teared up (she did not cry, no tear ran down her cheek). That was an important moment. It didn't turn out votes for her as exit polls demonstrated. That's the lie the pigs invented after the fact. What they went with when she teared up was that she had just lost.
They were gleeful and mocking her. They were trashing her and doing their victory dance. The woman cried! (Only she didn't.) She proved she wasn't tough enough. (When your candidate is wimpy Barack, "tough enough" is a serious issue.) They were thrilled by that tearing up.
But then New Hampshire voted.
It was a travesty! How did it happen! It was so unfair! It was because she cried! It was because New Hampshire was full of racists! (The so-called Bradly effect was endlessly pimped.)
No, late breaking voters (predominately women, but not just) went with Hillary, as they stated in the exit polling, because she won the debate.
In the aftermath of New Hampshire, you saw everything that the Obama campaign would repeatedly hit on. Jesse Jackson Jr., a pig, was dispatched to MSNBC where he lied and said Hillary cried and then, calling to mind Hurricane Katrina, suggested she was racist. That charge really mattered because Barack hadn't shored up the African-American vote in South Carolina. That was the next primary and if he lost to Hillary there, it would have been him dropping out and not John Edwards.
The usual pigs joined in quickly. Bill Moyers called it "crying" and 'confessed' he didn't know whether it was genuine nor not. The same Moyers who never questioned a word or action from Barack stated he couldn't believe anything Hillary did when he made that confession.
Hillary was running for president and she noted, correctly, that if LBJ hadn't signed (and strong armed Congress into passing) the Civil Rights legislation, the dream MLK championed wouldn't have come to pass. Even Moyers, a former LBJ aide, had to back her up on that. But others were far less concerned with the historical record and with Barack's campaign telling reporters and sending out faxes that Hillary's remarks were demeaning to MLK (they weren't), suddenly the racism charges that Jesse Jackson Jr. had attempted to ignite were out in full force.
Bill Clinton rightly notes Barack's shifting position on the Iraq War and dubs Barack's claims that he was always against it a "fairy tale" and that's called racism as well. Because, of course, we all remember during the 1800s when White slave owners used to call out, "Get to work, you fairy tale!" Don't remember it? Because it never happened. "Fairy tale" is not a racist remark.
But that's how it played. Any criticism or comment of bi-racial Barack was a racist remark. Barack could use his past experience with drugs as fodder for books and as jokes on Jay Leno's Tonight Show but if anyone else mentioned Barack's drug use, it was racism!
When people mentioned Bill Clinton's pot use in 1992, no one ever cried racism. Barack admitted to not only pot but "blow." A presidential candidate admitting to cocaine use was not to be noted? Mentioning it was racism? In what world.
When Bob Johnson, an African-American, mentioned it and made some jokes, they had to try a different tactic because they couldn't call Johnson a racist. But they could still smear him, and, goodness, didn't they.
By this point, Panhandle Media had created a psuedo movement where was there was none. (A real movement behind Barack would have meant winning New Hampshire.) Screaming racism, falsely tarring Bill and Hillary as racists, meant you had finally had the match to throw on the gasoline. And for February, you had the fire.
But then people started finding out just a little about Barack.
There was crackpot Jeremiah Wright and his crackpot theories that AIDS was a government plot to do away with African-Americans. Just being non-scientific should have been enough for the same Panhandle Media that has regularly decried the attacks on science by the current admistration. But it wasn't. They didn't call it out. The fact that Wrights' remarks could be viewed as an attack on government, the sort the GOP regularly engaged during the Gingrich 'revolution,' didn't lead to them calling him out. The fact that he was stimulating the sex act from the pulpit didn't lead them to call him out.
Panhandle Media, for all the coziness with Jim Wallis, is not a religious friendly medium. It's a rare month when one of their members doesn't explode at religion in all its forms. It might be Katha Pollitt, it might be Matthew Rothschild, you never know when it's going to flare up.
But they bit their tongues this go round. Wright was railing against Hillary from the pulpit in one of the clips Good Morning America aired and those with longer memories might remember Panhandle Media calling out churches being used for political campaign purposes in violation of the church and state wall. But that calling out took place when it was the GOP benefiting. On Wright, they fell silent.
In his role as pastor of the church, Wright stood in front of the congregation and called down the Lord's damnation on the United States. And that was no biggie to Panhandle Media either. Apparently, who knew, we have a long line of presidents who belonged to churches that damned the country.
There were no ethics in Panhandle Media and they made no effort to hold Wright accountable for anything. They ignored it or tried to justify it. There is no justification for anyone wanting to be president to belong to a church where the pastor damns the country. It doesn't fit into any definition of patriotism.
Wright was a crackpot and a loose canon. But no one in Panhandle Media wanted to tell you that. A real shame because Barack could have used that foundation when Wright publicly turned on him weeks later.
The biggest of all pigs were the ones who were pigs in the period Ellen Willis was writing about. As a second wave feminist during Vietnam, Willis saw the ridicule heaped upon women for 'daring' to think they were capable of accomplishments or actual thought.
She saw the 'sensitive' White Male 'Left' embrace and decry all injustices from the slaughter in Vietnam, to the Native Americans, from the Civil Rights Movement to the Student Movement, any and every injustice led them to grab the bullhorn, stand before the crowd and call it out.
Except one.
Sexism.
Pigs back then couldn't call it out and they still can't today. Robert Scheer was a pig then, he's one today. Tom Hayden was the chief pig then and remains so today.
A woman who actively took part in expelling Hayden from a commune over his blatant sexism pointed out to us that Hayden snarled and hissed at any woman who raised the issue of sexism but grew silent and wide-eyed when an African-American (male) spoke of racism. She said she was reminded of that when Hayden continued to play cheerleader for Barack even after Barack had insulted him with the phrase "Tom Hayden Democrats." She remembers an African-American male denouncing racism, noticing how cowed and silent Tom Hayden was and doing a real number on Hayden (one that he laughed about later with others -- White and African-American).
In one of Hayden's worst moments of attacking Hillary, he tried to hide behind his current wife. It was as pathetic as 'tough guy' Bully Boy hiding behind the skirts of Karen Hughes and Katherine Harris during the Florida recounts.
These pigs are still around today because ugly dies hard.
Ellen Willis was right to call it out in 1969 and the reason it has to be called out today is because feminism got a little too comfortable. It broke bread with enemies and pretended that because we were all left, we were all friends.
When the government was raising the postal rates for magazines, Katrina vanden Heuvel was grabbing any forum she could. And she was noting the 'coalition' protesting the increases. Was no one supposed to notice that while she could list various left magazines, while she could even list the right-wing National Review, she never gave lip service to Ms. magazine? Was no one supposed to care?
Was no one supposed to notice that CounterSpin not only had a lousy record of interviewing women, they also had only one host who was a woman and only one host who was African-American? That might seem like an okay figure until you grasp that the program has three hosts and two are White men. Janine Jackson is the African-American and, of course, the woman. Because they rotate the hosts and pair up two each week, you chances of hearing two men was very likely. But you never, ever heard two women hosting the radio program.
Were we never supposed to notice?
Were we not supposed to notice the lousy rate of publishing women in Panhandle Media? Or that the rate was lousy whether the person in charge was a man or a woman?
Were we not supposed to notice that, following the 2004 election, 'left' men began actively saying that abortion needed to be ditched from the Democratic Party? It was, they informed us repeatedly, a drag on the party. Interesting when the majority of the American people support abortion rights.
In the eighties, Molly Yard, then president of NOW, was attacked by the press for floating the idea (which came up from membership and was not Molly saying, "Here's what I want") that it was time for women to break with the Democratic Party and start their own party.
The bulk of Democratic Party voters are women.
But somehow women were not to be excited that a woman was running and had a chance at the party's nomination this year. If they were excited, they were lectured to by White males. And that was supposed to be okay.
Just like it was supposed to be okay that so determined was the DNC to "cowboy up" in 2004 (apparently to make John Kerry come off as "macho") that they refused to invite any women to speak in the prime time hours of the convention? Only through intense pressure did they finally relent and give Hillary Clinton a few moments. A few.
Hillary was not only a former First Lady, she was a sitting senator and a huge fund raiser for the party. But just to get one woman on during prime time, we had to fight. In the meantime, the keynote address was being delivered by someone most Americans had never heard of, an Illinois state legislator running for the US Senate.
Strangely, men want to argue that Barack paid his dues. Really? Was that before or after he had everything handed to him?
What the pigs don't grasp is that women have been paying attention. Click. Yes, those moments of realization are going off again. Women are making connections. This isn't about Hillary anymore. We stated that two weeks ago. This is now about women, the attacks on women, the disrespect towards women.
You've battered women with a two-by-four and now, because you can't win any election without them, you want to show up with a lecture? You want to talk 'unity' after you've launched a months long campaign to destroy Hillary and other women? You want women to hop on board with a candidate who regularly and repeatedly disrespect women? Who thinks it's okay to call a female reporter "sweetie" as he brushes her off?
Here's some reality for you. We don't think Barack's a Muslim and we don't think he's a Christian. We think, like the bulk of Panhandle Media, he's a non-believer. But we do think that both religions have had an impact on him and go to his disrespect for women. It's not for nothing that he wrote a book praising the father who abandoned him while he ignored the woman who made all of his dreams possible. We don't think it's "cute" that he refused to let Michelle Obama go to an interview on her own, that he said he had to vet the interviewer. We don't think that is offering to kiss a woman to get her vote is "charming." We think he's a disrespectful pig.
And we think that pigs recognize their own. They don't see a duck and think, "Oh, I need to go and stand by that duck." That's why Panhandle Media supported him, they recognized their kindred.
You can offer your sop of "unity" till your blue in the face. We're not buying it. He has disrespected all women, he has refused to call out the sexism used against Hillary, he has insulted her ("You're likeable enough") and behaved like a spoiled brat (flipping the bird while mentioning her and basking in the cheering of his supporters for that gesture).
You can't show up now and talk unity to us. Especially since all you unity talkers are the same ones who stayed silent while sexism was being used. While you continue to refuse to call out Keith Olbermann, don't expect any woman to take you seriously.
Want some more reality? Barack's not selling a food product. He grins too much. That translates as lightweight and all you have to do is flip through any year book and look at the studied serious look on many males. It predates the scowl that's become 'street' for some. Grinning idiot conveys that he's a lightweight and awfully pretty but not a leader.
All you would be 'macho' boys couldn't see the biggest defect in your candidate when it was staring you in the face. It's the greatest weapon John McCain will have in any debate. And, unlike John Edwards, he won't think he's on stage to lead the pep squad in a cheer for Barack. If Ralph Nader and Bob Barr get on the stage as well, you'll have three seasoned policiticans only underscoring how flappable and inexperienced Barack is with every remark. And none of those men is a cheerleader. There will be no free pass from those men the way Barack got it from his Democratic peers like Dennis Kucinich (always sure that if he laughs at himself, he's not the joke -- wrong, you're the embarrassment), Chris Dodd (always apparently confused as to where he was); John Edwards (making like prom queen to Barack's prom king), Joe Biden (the first attacked for praising Barack in 'racist' ways) and the rest.
It's going to be a blood bath. You want women on board, you better start telling the truth and issuing your apologies. Apologies, pay attention FAIR and Norman Solomon, are insincere when they go after the easy targets and ignore the biggies like Keith Olbermann. Yeah, you might have to toss Keithie on the bonfire. How badly do you want the women vote?
You dragged Hillary through the gutter. You want to talk 'unity,' crawl on your belly and beg for forgiveness first.