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Catherine Fenton: What Happened in New Hampshire? A Roar

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

A roar went up in New Hampshire yesterday, did you hear it?

I'm not a Hillary or an Obama backer. As an actual liberal, I'm supporting John Edwards. And yet ... something was stirring inside of me this week. Every time I turned on a cable news station, I was greeted with a smirking, overweight man. He had many different names, but he was always wearing the same smirk. And he was mocking Hillary Clinton. Laughing at her. Demeaning her.

"It was her voice. It reminds men of their wives' voices."

How many women knew that a man being reminded of his wife's voice qualified as a traumatic experience for him?

"Oh, she's playing the victim, using tears. Men hate when women do that."

Do they? Do they also hate when George Bush cries? He has you know. What are we being told here? Women's tears are manipulative, men's are real? Well, we've come a long way baby. After all, I remember when real men didn't cry and women's tears were ... well, still manipulative. But you know, there's some change there, let's not be nitpickers.

Two nights ago I was in another room, and heard someone on the television, a female news reader, begin a story with, "Hillary Clinton did something tonight she's never done before; showed human emotion." I had to run into the tv room, because I didn't believe I could have heard correctly ... I stood there, my mouth agape.

Hillary Clinton is running for president and she's not even human.

I felt myself growing more and more angry. I support John Edwards because I believe he is the least corporate-owned out of the realistic candidates. I have this funny little idea that he could be our most progressive president since FDR. I have this other funny little idea that he might be six months too early. After the imminent economic collapse, his message will resonate more. But it'll be too late. So all of my anger and worry and outrage is focused there; the growing gap between the rich and all the rest of us, and people struggling so badly that as we learned yesterday, A T & T is in trouble because people can't pay their phone bills. It's bad. It will get worse.

And still ... I found myself wondering if I shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton anyway. I didn't like this. It reminded me of every time my brothers had mocked me growing up, made me feel like just a stupid girl. It reminded me of every man who had made me feel unfeminine when I got angry or impassioned over something important. Of every man who didn't take me seriously.

So I watched first with interest, then with a growing sense of pride and solidarity, and finally with, yes, tears in my eyes, as women came out in force yesterday in New Hampshire and roared. No poll predicted this. The pundits are flummoxed; could it be racism? Did whites pull their old trick of "yeah, I'm going to vote for the black candidate, I'm not a racist," and then pull the white lever in the privacy of their booth? Well. yes, I'll bet there was some of that going on. Racism is pervasive in our society no matter what anybody tells you, but what it is not, is permissible. Unlike sexists, racists have to hide. They won't show up in polls.

But rarely is there one answer. There are almost always several factors at play. Exit polls show that women forty and over went for Hillary by double digits. I believe a good number of them weren't going to vote at all and that's why they didn't show up in polling. I think they were running in from other rooms all over this country, mouths agape, unsure they had heard what they knew they had heard. They were the wave yesterday, the momentum, and then, the tsunami. It was women who commanded this outcome.

These women, forty and over, have started successful businesses. They've become executives. They've married and later raised children. They've gotten pregnant and decided to marry. They've gotten pregnant and had abortions. They've never been pregnant. They've been happily married for twenty years. They've stayed single. They've divorced. They've made their own way in this world, taking different paths, many seemingly having little in common, but under the surface, all have one thing in common; they know. They know what the smirk means. And they're not going to take it this time around.

Yesterday they showed up at the polls in New Hampshire. They roared. Did you hear them Chris Matthews? Did you hear them Tim Russert? Did you hear them Christopher Hitchens? Did you hear them Rush Limbaugh? And yes, you, Maureen Dowd, don't think we haven't noticed you over on the op-ed pages of The New York Times, wasting one of the few powerful perches women have in print media with your sly anti-feminism ... did you hear them MoDo?

Catherine Fenton
New York, NY

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION


Here you go sows

TexasRanger1848 the anti feminist, anti multiculturalist.

Feminism, from thriving societies building space programs to third world ghettos in three generations or less.

Dani: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVoWxUfC9Lo

15-year-old Dani Countryman was trying to fight off Alejandro Rivera Gamboa and his cousin, 23-year-old cousin Gilberto Javier Rivera Gamboa when they strangled her at a Milwaukie apartment in late July.

When boys that age grow up without a father in the home, they are 300 times more likely to get into trouble with the law than are boys whose fathers are in the home. Not having a father in the home is the single most important variable when it comes to a boy getting into trouble with the law. Father absence is a more significant predictor of outcome than ethnicity, poverty, religion, or socio-economic group.

Since 1970 the marriage rate has declined by about 25 percent and the divorce rate has increased by nearly 80 percent. Half of all marriages have ended in divorce since the early '80s. This means that more than 35 million children are left bereft with the majority of them living with a single mother and living in poverty

FEMINIST OUTCOMES ON THE FAMILY

collateral damage from a promiscuous lifestyle of so-called "free" love. Currently, less than 52 percent of U.S. households include a married couple.More than 50 million women lived alone at the end of the twentieth century.

Duke University just finished a longitudinal study on fathers and daughters. They found that girls who lose their fathers from the home before their 6th birthday are 5 times more likely to become promiscuous before their 16th birthday than if the father is there until they are at least age 6. And, if a girl loses her father from the home after age 6, she is twice as likely to become promiscuous.

And what is the future for these "liberated daughters?"

Booty shaking like filthy sows:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=booty+shake&search=Search

You've come a long way, baby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ydgMO1PDE

and you have so much more to look forward to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x5fsHQtz48

Have fun.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=gang+violence&gbv=2

extinction of white women

TexasRanger1848 the anti feminist, anti multiculturalist.

When are you loser cows going realize you're being bred out of existence by your more fertile sisters of other races who stand by their men and children? I laugh in your faces. You are destroying your own race and society with all you man hate. Penis envy, lol. Sickos. Generations of your ancestors (better women to be sure as you do not fit the term) must be rolling over in their graves as you destroy your families, ruin your men and collapse your society with all your out of control nonsense. Immigrants are gang raping your femiazi cousin in Sweden as a new national sport, crime in America has skyrocketed from your matriarchal not-a-culture and still you filthy cunt rage on. Aghh hahaha. Silly cows.

thanks for setting women back

Do you not see the degrading portrait of women that you have just presented? If you had left out the word "women" in the above article, I would have thought you were writing about little children. Feminism has always opposed such a characterization of women as resentful beings that allow reason to be overwhelmed by emotions of vengeance with regard to an event so important as a political primary (i.e., the classic Rush Limbaugh line on women). Take care next time, before setting women back 50 years.

You must be very young or very naive . . .

I hope you never have the kind of experience that only an abusive relationship with a man in power can provide. Stay strong little sister.

Abusive relationship

TexasRanger1848 the anti feminist, anti multiculturalist.

oh give me a break with that old saw. Whaaaah. American women have had the easiest most pampered lives in the history of the human race and should a man voice his opinion you scream abuse-you doom your grandaughters to real abuse when they are gang raped by foreign conquerers-shit its happening now. Google "Dani Countryman" and see the poor 15 year old who died with one illegal immigrant raping her while the other stepped on her throat. Spit in your face theres some abuse for you animal. YOUR FAULT PIGS. YOU BREAK THE HOMES OF AMERICA WITH YOUR ABSURD ANTI MALE IDEOLOGY, OUR YOUTH ARE IN A FILTHY ORGY OF TATOOS, FATHERLESSNESS, AND DRUGS-AND FEMINISM IS WHY.

No matter. You will cling to you silly cunt preconceptions while a hundred million children are lost in ghettos and a filthy culture from hell-anything so you can strut your silly cunts around.

Cathy Does it Again

I am a great Cathy Fenton fan! I admire her activism, her principles, her insights, and her ability to see through the "smoke screen" of the sexism/racism of political pundits, etc. Let me begin by saying I hope my genitalia (I am male) doesn't disqualify me from commenting on this insightful article or render my comments as sexist and the further ramblings of another member of the boy's club. At this crucial and devastating time in American history, however, what interests me primarily about Senator Clinton is not her gender, but that she voted for the war in Iraq, refuses to call it a mistake, voted to declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization, and intimated that American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. These are the issues that I find crucial to whether I will support or not support a candidate for president. Gender, ethnicity, etc., is irrelevant. To be honest, I agree with Cathy's initial assessment of the candidates, and don't believe that a Clinton presidency would be good for the country nor for its citizens who happen to be female. (I am reminded how misguided it would have been to support Clarence Thomas as a means of making a statement about racism in America). In conclusion, the reason I do not support Senator Clinton and will continue to speak critically about her policies and competency is not because she is female, or because she reminds me of my wife (that would probably encourage me to vote for her -- not all males find their wives annoying), but because, in the words of a mutual friend of ours, Clinton is "Bush with healthcare."

Smirking White Men

I couldn't agree with you more, Catherine. About John Edwards, and about why Hillary came out ahead in New Hampshire. I live in California, but if I'd been there, she would have had my vote, too. I wanted to reach out and smack the snear right off of Chris Matthew's snarky face as he happily conducted his premature postmortum on Hillary Clinton. She has been the focus of so much male hatred -- it's incomprehensible to me. I just don't understand it. Except that I do. She's every middle aged man's first wife. The smart one, the one that put him through school, had the babies, and then when he became successful, she had the temerity to demand her share of the credit, and the financial gain. She's every man's mother, the one that expected him to do his best. She makes them feel small and judged.

I heard the roar, too. And as for Chris Matthew's, et. al., all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the spectacle of them as they stuttered through weak explanations, trying to make sense of a new unexpected world order. They say it was race, or her fake tears, but they're completely missing the point. And the point is very important. There are a lot of angry women out there who are sick of being abused by men in power. So many in fact, it could get her elected.

California

TexasRanger1848 the anti feminist, anti multiculturalist.

mysticalCalisister...haaaagh haaaagh haaagh. You seriously need to read some Ayn Rand. Now THAT was a woman. "Mysitical sister", OMG, I'm going to throw up. Your State has gone from being a virtual paradise ranking with the best educational system in the nation to 5 families in a house and another in the garage and damn near the bottom of the nation scholastically in...less than a generation (your ha!) and the only thing you can do get get your smelly painties in a huff about white male journalists smirking at an abviously unprofessional (read: contrived) display of emotion by a supposed iron willed Statesman....errr, Statesperson (puke). Margaret Thatcher, Queen Isabella, Queen Elizabeth, Cleopatra-now THOSE were women of substance and not this IDIOT forever pandering to the lowest common denominator and her stupid genitals as her reason for being.

You clowns. The white male you hate so much (with their loving brave wives, real women, not shitbirds like you) fought for this land, built it, and gave you the greatest society on Earth-and what did you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajkAP_M4ZAM

....threw it away.

kiss California goodby mystical cow.

http://texasranger1848.blogspot.com/

Got that right!!

Right on, Catherine! Thanks for this brisk slap in the face of the pudgy smirkers. I think you got it just right.

I, too, am an Edwards supporter, and I have the same (not so funny) little feeling that you have that he's a few months early, and that he's just the man we need for the coming economic crisis. So I've never been a Clinton supporter, but if I were living in New Hampshire, I just might have voted for her for precisely the reasons you've named.

KKKlinton

TexasRanger1848 the anti feminist, anti multiculturalist.

As if, the news casters were smirking because she has the audacity to claim to lead the free world and an arsenal of weapons that could destroy the whole world but she cries over a campaign. I had to attend the funeral of one of my second grade students who died from AIDS because her mother gave it to her at birth because she was a filthy crack whore. Stare into the casket of a little 2nd grade girl you just spent 2 years teaching then cry me some tears fuckhead spoiled cunt bitches. Useless selfish rotten sperm urinals is all you are, and when our civilization collapses in a bloody burning riot of chaotic discord look in the mirror YOU selfish cows are why.Then step into the burning streets and meet the gangbangers who will kill you in a celebration of hatred that your endless ethnic and gender identity politics has fostered.