Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

And In This Corner... The Gennnnnder Bender!

Do we really want a pretty little girl-robot as our next President?

I swear, Salon.com is gradually shrinking down to a very manageable readable size, what with e-column space being given to cretins like Debra Dickerson, Camille Paglia, and now Michael Scherer. Soon, it will probably parallel Slate in uselessness (would anyone even go there were it not for the legal analysis of Dahlia Lithwick?) The title of Mike's latest column ("Hillary Is From Mars, Obama Is From Venus") is like the puffed-up neck-sac of an angry, territorial lizard: nature's way of saying "stay far away and don't even bother with this shit." It conjures up some failed stand-up routine from 1996 (alternate title: "Obama is manly... NOT!!"). Oh well, it's short and fact-free enough, so I might as well re-mix it.
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At first listen, the Indigo Girls don't make any sense, not for the hyper-macho world of a presidential campaign, much less a summertime rally for a superstar like Barack Obama. Where's the N.W.A.? Bad Brains? Something to frighten the shit out of people but sexually arouse them at the same time? But his sound people are piping in some caterwauling dykes for some reason. "You've got to tend the earth," the Girls sing, "if you want a rose." So goddamned queer.

Then Obama comes out, looking lithe and dashing, with his 6-year-old daughter, Sasha, in his arms. The soundtrack starts to make sense. "I'm a sucker for girls," says the man who wants to be president. Why he would spend his time pandering to this most marginal of American minority groups is totally beyond me. "There is nothing more difficult than me being on the phone hearing about their soccer game, hearing about what happened to them in school and knowing that I am not there in the evenings to share a lot of their life." My god, it's like he's fucking sprouting a vagina right in front of me.

Throughout history, American presidents have been men's men who puff their out chests against evil. Think Warren G. Harding, who fucked a White House maid in a broom closet. Or Calvin Coolidge, who once cock-slapped an uppity French diplomat. Or Ronald Reagan, who played something in a movie. If leaders show any slackening of testosterone, especially in wartime, they are quickly derided as wimps (George H.W. Bush), a Frenchmen (John Kerry) or history's greatest monster (Jimmy Carter).

When Obama travels the country, he does not appear to worry much about randomly shooting semi-automatic weapons into the crowd or dressing up like an oil pipeline construction worker. Instead, he goes all flaccid by listen to the Indigo Girls. In contrast, Hillary Clinton has run her campaign with all the muscular vision and authority of the macho candidates of yesteryear. "I've seen her stand up to bullies," announced Christine Vilsack, the former first lady of Iowa, when she introduced Clinton at a rally in Des Moines last week. Let's go ahead and forget that her campaign-selected theme song is by Celine Dion, why don't we.

So what does that make Hillary Clinton? "She is the male candidate -- in your face, authoritative, know-it-all." Academics, in fact, have long defined gender as a culturally constructed concept that exists independent of the human body, even in the face of soft eyes or fat ankles. Gendered differences have played central roles in the last two presidential elections, with Republican leaders play-acting to overcome their chickenhawk, coke-snorting pasts, and Democrats unable to convince anyone that they've actually served in combat.

[More.. but mercifully not all that much more.. in the extended entry.]

She can clearly benefit from her status among Democratic women voters, who polls show disproportionately support her candidacy. But she must also be careful to avoid gender traps, like disingenuous Salon columnists listing vaguely, unsupported historical "parallels" that only tenuously connect with reality. She must never cry. She must subtly wear a prosthetic unit under her pantsuits. She must wrestle bears to the ground and snap their necks before delivering speeches about health care.

"The first woman absolutely has to out-masculine the man, kind of like Margaret Thatcher did," says Georgia Duerst-Lahti, a professor at Beloit (!) College who has written extensively on gender in presidential politics. "Men have a lot more latitude. Just think about Ronald Reagan when he would tear up. We know now that this was senile dementia and he was probably thinking about his dog that got run over in 1922, but still... what was I saying?"

Clinton deals with this dilemma in the classic Clintonian fashion, effectively forging her own third way. Can you say... HERMAPHRODITE? "We have the chance to make history together and elect the first woman president of the United States," she said to wild cheers in Iowa City on July 3. But then Clinton immediately hedged herself, claiming to have a ticket to Stockholm for gender-reassignment surgery should the voters lean in that direction.

Obama, who currently trails Clinton in the polls, especially among working-class women, has run a campaign that is virtually free of macho symbolism, such as having a bald eagle claw at his testicles while smoking a cigar, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, and getting a tattoo. He is, instead, a self-consciously inspirational candidate, who is always talking about things like coming "together for a common purpose." WHAT the FUCK is THAT SHIT supposed to mean? Play some Danzig and cut yourself with a broken beer bottle, dumbass!

Right on cue, after Obama finishes speaking at the coffee shop here, Franklin's 1968 anthem for independent women begins blaring from the speakers. "Think about what you're trying to do to me," she sings. My god, if it's anything that conjures dressing up in a pink tutu and anal fisting, it's Aretha Franklin. And all that blackness! What's he trying to do? Scare white people with sassiness?

"I am really impressed with his ability to articulate issues and just his sheer graciousness," says Julie Hansen, a local librarian who was waiting to meet the candidate. "He'll try to put people at ease. He has a grace. He has a warmth." Nonetheless, she remains on the fence, torn between the two front-runners. My god, democracy is a sham.

In a few words, this Iowa voter had epitomized the struggle now playing out between the top two Democrats nationally. They are fighting for undecided female voters who are attracted by Obama's newfound ability to sound like a Massengill commercial, but still drawn to the macho performance (unprovoked fistfights, urinating while standing up in public, and driving a car into an embankment) of the only woman to ever have a real shot at the Oval Office.

May the best woman win.
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Holy crap, my IQ just dropped 10 points. And I can ill-afford that. What does "ill-afford" even mean? What's this magic box with words in front of me? Incidentally, if anybody needs 100 cc's of machismo, STAT!, then gaze upon the author, a new icon for this era.

Posted by Norbizness at July 12, 2007 06:35 AM