They never did.
Why was that?
Because the movement split on Hillary. It's shocking and let's talk about some of the reasons the movement split.
In 2006, Jane Fonda was lauding Hillary for president publicly. In 2008, she would be making disgusting 'jokes' about Hillary and, after, trying to pretend she never made them.
The feminist movement needs to get a little stricter in its definition.
CODESTINK is not a feminist organization. It is an organization that women are the public face of. It is not a feminist organization. It is one that Jane Fonda ended 2008 with a fundraising plea for.
As we noted in 2007, we held her our tongues during CODESTINK's summer of 2006 fast and even participated because far be it from us to not do our part to end the illegal war. But we regularly offered cautionary notes.
An "Iraq snapshot" repeatedly cautioned that no one should start a fast without seeking medical advice first. Only after the snapshots repeatedly noted that did CODESTINK -- fast in progress -- finally get around to making that point.
If you're not getting it, no feminist organization today would ever encourage a fast.
Young women are under enough pressure, eating disorders are crippling for many women; therefore, it is idiotic and anti-woman for any group to promote a fast in the United States.
And it is anti-feminist and anti-woman to applaud the withering away of strength in women. That wasn't a two-day fast. It was disgusting and CODESTINK proved they were not about women with that fast. (They are about self-promotion as anyone who writes about them knows. Wally and Cedric once gave them a shout-out that resulted in five e-mails from CODESTINKERS all saying that this book or that project should have been promoted. Self-promotion is the theme of CODESTINK. A sixth e-mail complained that ___'s book was mentioned but no link for it was given.)
Iran is not a friendly nation for women. Iranian feminists fight for their rights. (And they make more advances when the US isn't making war rumbles.) CODESTINK repeatedly acts as a propaganda unit for Iran. Why they act that way, they can explain. But their failure to call out the realities of women's lives in Iran and their determination to misportray the nation goes beyond "No war on Iran!" to what can only be called state propaganda.
Neither Jodie Evans nor I-Need-Attention Benjamin are known as feminists nor have they ever done anything remotely feminist. But they have attacked women non-stop.
Lakshmi got at least one thing right early on, CODESTINK's bird dog campaign was sexist. At the time, we assumed that CODESTINK would expand to include others. John Edwards could not be a bird dogged senator because he was no longer in the Senate. But, as other senators stepped forward to run for president and CODESTINK ignored them, the group's hatred of women was rather obvious.
They were not calling out the illegal war, they were attempting to humiliate Hillary Clinton with I-Need-Attention even showing up in DC for one last bit of bullying when Hillary stood no chance at the nomination.
That's all CODESTINK is, a bunch of bullies.
They started out promising more but that's what they became.
Jodie always wanted to be a power player in Democratic circles but she always made a fool of herself and, as a result, had to buy her way into any campaign that gave her a for-show title. Medea wandered over to the Democratic Party after leaving the Communist Party (she did leave, right?) for the Green Party. All of that went a long way towards making people believe that the organization would focus on ending the illegal war and not attempt to become an organ for any political party or hacks for any politician's campaign.
But that's what happened. CODESTINK existed to attack Hillary and to fawn over Barack. (Jodie is said to have tapped into principle in her efforts to have Barack elected. Not a smart move for a woman who 'made' her money via marriage.)
We have called out Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and will do so again. But Nancy offers an interesting peek into CODESTINK. Nancy is against the illegal war. No matter what smear Benjamin may offer, Nancy Pelosi wants the Iraq War ended.
Could she do more? Absolutely, she could. And she needs to be pressured and she needs to be called out. But when Nancy was signaled out for so much CODESTINK 'action' (including sit and sleep-ins outside her home), we were told it was because Nancy knew the Iraq War was wrong and was doing nothing.
So what people should grasp is that it was wrong for Nancy to do that but, in CODESTINK's mind, okay for Barack to. This is the man who spent all of 2008 trying to rewrite history as if he were an anti-war Senator. He repeatedly lied that he was in the US Senate when he spoke out against the Iraq War. (It is a lie or it's a sign of insanity when someone repeatedly and publicly makes a demonstratively false claim.) He repeatedly gave the false impression that he got into the Senate and began attempting to end the illegal war. He did no such thing. He voted to support and fund the illegal war repeatedly after he entered the Senate in 2005. And where was CODESTINK?
When did they bird dog him?
There is no excuse for not bird dogging him. When confronted on that, some CODESTINK members have told us that he entered the Senate in 2005 so there wasn't time to bird dog him. Really? In three years, there was never time to call him out.
Strange because John McCain announced Sarah Palin was his running mate August 29th and September 3rd, Jodie and roll dog Medea were at the Republican convention heckling Palin during her speech (and issuing the press release). They also 'blogged' on it ("CODEPINK ACTIVISTS INTERRUPT SARAH PALIN'S RNC SPEECH AT THE SIDE OF THE STAGE!") and deleted numerous comments they disliked but allowed this to stand for days despite immediate complaints:
Woo-hoo! WAY TO GO, CODE PINK! Show that fucking breeder bitch and her retard baby that if she doesn't drop out of this race she's in for a thumping! Back to Alaska, you small-town loser!
That crap, by Youngstown Democrat, was posted on September 4th at 3:40 a.m. Beginning the morning of the 4th at 5:47 a.m., the blog's administrator began leaving pissy little comments (under "admin). "admin" began leaving pissy little messages to those who disagreed with CODESTINK and explaining she was deleting offensive comments. Offensive comments did not include Youngstown Democrat's quoted above. Despite repeated complaints, that comment stood and stood.
Finally, two days later (Sept. 6th, 12:41 p.m.) the administrator decided to delete Youngstown Democrat's comment and offered:
We made an initial error in judgment by posting a comment that was inappropriate- we have modified our comment policy and have decided to snip this comment thread as the submitted comments are now mostly repetitive and pointless. Thanks for your understanding!
No, we do not understand. And it is not okay. CODESTINK is disgusting trash. Only disgusting trash would allow a child to be picked upon. Only disgusting trash would allow a special-needs child to be called the r-word. "Initial error in judgment"? You have no judgment and no right to present yourselves as feminist because any woman who doesn't know it's wrong to mock a child -- let alone a special-needs child -- isn't a feminist. Isn't even a damn grown up, to be honest about it.
That is CODESTINK. Do not mistake them for feminists.
And while they bird dogged Nancy Pelosi (as they did Hillary). They never called out the Christ-child.
They never called out Harry Reid either even though it didn't take Nancy Pelosi pointing out (as she did to The San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board) that the obstruction to ending the illegal war was not coming from the House but from the Senate.
That would be the anti-choice Harry Reid. Pro-war, anti-choice. Were CODESTINK a feminist group, it would have bird dogged Reid who is the Senate Majority Leader. They never bird dogged him. They wanted to scream and hiss at Nancy but, even when it was clear where the logjam came from, they never went after Harry Reid.
CODESTINK is not a feminist organization. It should not be mistaken for one. It regularly villifies women in elected office while refusing to call out their male peers (peers many elected Democrats), it provides cover for foreign governments that are hostile to women and it pushes actions that no feminist of the last thirty years would ever push (fasting is only one example).
But as a woman fronted group, they were wrongly seen as feminists. And other women (ourselves included) wrongly listened to them as such.
Criticizing Hillary or Nancy doesn't make anyone a non-feminist. We've criticized both women and will do so again. We've also criticized many men. In fact, we've criticized more men in elected office than women. There's a reason for that, more men hold elected office in the United States. CODESTINK has regularly trashed Nancy, Hillary and Dianne Feinstein. Can they show us a list of (Democratic) men they've also held accountable?
No such list exists.
And feminists need to remember that the next time Jodie or Medea shows up in the media attempting to speak 'on behalf of women.'
CODESTINK made their goal to take out Hillary. They were far from alone in that goal but they and their members were the loudest women smearing Hillary.
Their actions went a long way towards destroying Hillary's chances because they supposedly represented women.
The Barack Lie to the public was that he was always against the Iraq War (you don't vote to fund what you're against and what you know is wrong, nor do you tell The New York Times in 2004 that you and the then occupant of the White House agree on Iraq if you're against the war). The Barack Lie in private was that the man was a Socialist. A secret Socialist, mind you.
And a number of dumb idiots (male and female) bought into that lie. (It's the lie Philip Maldari, still believing it in the summer of 2008, repeated on air.) Barack was a secret Socialist and he would reveal it at some point in the future -- if not via direct statement then possibly by a secret handshake?
In fairness to the idiots, the campaign cultivated that lie. They were aware of it (as early as March 2007) and they would offer little things -- never from Barack himself -- to keep that belief alive -- the political equivalent of "Paul Is Dead." Hillary is many things but a left-leaning Democrat will never win "leftist in the land" when competing with a supposed-Socialist. When the campaign really wanted to pimp that lie, they'd make a point to note that David Axlerod has a Socialist background and Barack picked him to run the campaign so what do you think that means, wink-wink. A number of idiots fell for it.
If you examine Barack's most ardent public supporters from early in the Democratic Party primary season, you'll be hard pressed to find a single Democrat among them. (To their credit, many of them realized before the primaries ended that Barack was no Socialist.) This is why, for example, non-Democrat Barbara Ehrenreich (she's a Socialist) not only came out in support of Barack but also attacked Hillary every chance she got.
There was never any popular movement behind Barack. That was always the lie. He had a wonderful advance team who hyped him like crazy. And they knew to offer freebies (foods and bands) to make sure crowds showed up. And the Socialist and Communist argument (pay attention here, if you heard this argument on TV, radio or print, whether they admitted it or not, the person making it was most likely a Socialist or Communist) that it was what the 'kids' wanted. The kids converted them to Barack! And the kids would do that across the country. And this lie made a number of wanna-bes rush to Barack because they wanted to be 'cool' as well.
If Barack had a movement behind him, the vote would not have been so close: 45.7% voted for McCain, 52.9% voted for Barack. Forget the millions and millions Barack spent (McCain stuck with public financing), if there was a movement behind him, he should have come in at 60% or higher. There was no movement, only marketing.