There were always so many clues and hints. Not just Barack's decision to touch Hillary in the midst of a debate -- something he wouldn't have done to a male opponent. (Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Merkel-ed.")
For example, in July 2008, Marie Cocco observed in "Obama's Abortion Stance When 'Feeling Blue'" (Washington Post Writers Group).
Obama says that these women should not be able to obtain a late-term abortion, because just "feeling blue" isn't the same as suffering "serious clinical mental health diseases." True enough. And totally infuriating.
During the recent Obama pander tour -- the one in which he spent about a week trying to win over conservative religious voters -- the presumptive Democratic nominee unnecessarily endorsed President Bush's faith-based initiative, a sort of patronage program that rewards religious activists for their political support with public grants. Then in a St. Louis speech, Obama declared that "I let Jesus Christ into my life." That's fine, but we already have a president who believes this was a qualification for the Oval Office, and look where that's gotten us.Obama's verbal meanderings on the issue of late-term abortion go further. He has muddied his position. Whether this is a mistake or deliberate triangulation, only Obama knows for sure.
One thing is certain: Obama has backhandedly given credibility to the right-wing narrative that women who have abortions -- even those who go through the physically and mentally wrenching experience of a late-term abortion -- are frivolous and selfish creatures who might perhaps undergo this ordeal because they are "feeling blue."
And there was the photo of Barack's male speechwriter groping a cut out of Hillary to degrade women. Dee Dee Myers pointed out in "Favreau's Sexist Photo Is No Laughing Matter" (Vanity Fair):
What's bugging me is his intention. He isn't putting his hand on her "chest," as most of the articles and conversations about the picture have euphemistically referred to it. Rather, his hand--cupped just so--is clearly intended to signal that he’s groping her breast. And why? Surely, not to signal he finds her attractive. Au contraire. It’s an act of deliberate humiliation. Of disempowerment. Of denigration.
And it disgusts me.
And the speechwriter remains with the White House to this day. There was no fallout for doing that.
Most of the time, Marie Cocco was the only journalist calling out the non-stop sexism:
But I do wonder why a candidate praised for his rhetorical gifts talks about women in the way that he does. During the primary campaign, he said Hillary Clinton launched political attacks on him "periodically, when she's feeling down." He called a Detroit reporter "sweetie" when she was trying to ask him about job creation. Now he has incorporated a myth created by the right -- that women who seek late-term abortions should not be allowed to do so if they are "feeling blue" -- into his own lexicon. And this is enough to make me see red.
Wonder no more. Ron Suskind's book conveys what all but the deluded always knew. POLITICO quotes his section of the book:"The president has a real woman problem" was the assessment of another high-ranking female official. "The idea of the boys' club being just Larry and Rahm isn’t fair. He [Obama] was just as responsible himself." … "[L]ooking back," recalled Anita Dunn, when asked about it nearly two years later, "this place would be in court for a hostile workplace … Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."
Ron Suskind's Confidence Men comes out Tuesday and, no, Barack was never the face of feminism or what feminism looked like. A lot of female leaders and 'leaders' are going to have a lot of explaining to do.