The shush

DEM 2016 Debate

This depressing excuse for an election campaigns daily sinks to new depths of triviality and inconsequence. The latest kerfuffle seems to be about Sanders telling Clinton not to interrupt him. A very serious sin, apparently. According to the Washington Post this shows what a deeply-dyed sexist old Bernie is.

A friend of mine who actually had sufficient stones to watch the debate tweeted that talking to his mom like Sanders talked to Clinton used to get him grounded. This seemed like an interesting take on the matter. Sanders and Clinton, surely, are much of an age, but apparently Hillary has some claim to be our collective mom. Perhaps not without reason?

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Of course you will say, Oh, the Washington Post, and you will be right. That poor Ichabod of a former newspaper is so balls to the wall for Clinton that it’s embarrassing, and they play the gender card relentlessly.

At least the Times is less obvious about it. This is one of the many reasons why New York is a better place to live than Washington. We’re all equally unscrupulous and underhanded, but New York is more hypocritical; and hypocrisy, of course, is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Washington is shameless. Dog-faced, as Homer says somewhere.

I occasionally interrupt people. But I know it’s bad, and when I’m called on it, I apologize, shut up, and wait my turn. Not always with the best grace, but still. Isn’t this what most of us do?

Most people also hate to be interrupted, and few react well to it. So even a non-fan of Bernie’s might have felt sympathetic to him on this occasion. From a few YouTube clips viewed for ten minutes just now, it appeared me that Clinton was badgering the alter-kaker — a form of elder abuse, perhaps?

His response seemed fairly moderate, on the whole; the response of one equal combatant to another. But there is, of course, a counter-narrative, to the effect that Clinton, in spite of her immense and ill-gotten wealth, her innumerable markers corruptly obtained from people whose hands you or I would never consent to shake, her media and Hollywood clout, and of course her unquestioned blood lust and wolfish competence — that she is the underdog, compared to some poor old Jew from Brooklyn, simply by virtue of her gender.

Maybe Bernie should play the anti-Semitism card in response. I’m a Jew. This is our body language. This is how we talk. Abraham taught us this. Check your privilege, shicksah!

Alas, Bernie is too aboveboard for that. Hillary, however, is not.

16 thoughts on “The shush

  1. the volks at fair.org report that WaPo posted 16 anti-bern articles in 16 hrs. who could wade thru that crap as no doubt some large % of the criticisms is of the variety that “Sanders’ body language suggests misogyny” vel sim?

    • It’s funny, actually. The campuses now are about the only places in the US, apart from Congress and a few state legislatures, where the Zionist thought police still have any influence. Mostly this is due to the obsequious character of college administrators.

      Churches, of all places, are now hotbeds of free inquiry on this topic. Mostly because they don’t have any big Zionist donors they’re worried about.

  2. Donald Trump is going to beat the hell out of Hillary in the general election – nobody wants the establishment candidate anymore. Bernie could beat Trump I think but the poobahs who run the Democratic party won’t allow it.

    I think the good old USA is going to get a big dose of our very own Berlusconi. It’ll be interesting. In a sort of awful way I mean.

  3. Hey, I’m glad I decided to check this place after having given up on it months ago. Everyone probably already said it in an earlier thread, Michael, but welcome back.

    Here’s why I don’t care about Hillary or Bernie: an (“African American”) acquaintance of mine had to move east late last year after a Mexican street gang killed his sister, niece, and two nephews, along with several other people on his block (southern California of course). Word is the Sinaloa cartel is confident it can remove all non-Raza dealers and intermediaries in the process by burning out the entire black community, in the prison and the street.

    There’s almost nothing left to save. I know you goys are going to hate it, but there’s only one way to stop “foreign intervention” and urban ethnic cleansing, and it doesn’t involve the party of the KKK, Iraq sanctions, and World Wars.

    (Google “green light on blacks.”)

  4. Here’s how you know how much Counterpunch has sunk. One of today’s articles titled, “Kill for Trump: the Violence Has Only Begun” has this sentence:

    “I have feared for years that President Obama would be killed while in office. His sin is that he was born black. Should Hillary Clinton become our next president, my fears will only increase. Her sin is that she is female.”

    Are you fucking kidding me!

    • Yes, that’s an awfully silly piece. But Counterpunch seems to be, by design, a salmagundi that publishes all sorts of stuff. Hell, they’re publishing the dullardries of Louis Proyect these days — Louis, whom the late and much-lamented Alex Cockburn memorably characterized as an “old Trotskyist lag, dozing on the dungheap of history like Odysseus’ lice-ridden old hound Argos, woofing with alarm as the shadow of a new idea darkens the threshold.”

      One just has to winnow out the wheat from the chaff. At least there’s still wheat there.

      • Word! That Louis Proyect is a total idiot. I once read his review of that awful Québecois movie, The Dismantlement (le Démantèlement), which I had the displeasure of having to watch for an assignment in my French writing class. He was all gaga over this movie and when I commented on how awful the movie was, he condescendingly told me that I “didn’t get it”. Mind you, the predominant theme in most Québec movies and literature is one of three things: la ferme, la neige, le fleuve and this movie was no different but every once in a while, Québec delivers a great movie about their labor history and militancy. But far be it from Louis Proyect to discover a gem in this milieu.

      • I read CounterPunch a lot. About once a month they publish something downright fascist. And they often get called on it by commenters on blogs. Just last week this happened on the Moon of Alabama blog. It happens so often I usually don’t bother trying to explain what I think is happening.

        Yeah it looks like a salmagundi salad, like Rense is. But I know it’s not. They often delete the fascist stuff in a few days. Here’s what I think’s the real deal: They don’t actually, like you know, read the stuff they publish! They just go by word-of-mouth that it’s okay. No matter how awful it is. They must have some part-time dude who checks in every other day to add more stuff, based on what folks on the subway tell him.

    • Hahaha! I’m with you Merkin! As soon as Alexander Cockburn passed away, I haven’t had much use for the site. Jeffry St. Clair is a good guy, but his instincts are all wrong, in my opinion. His personality is one of amelioration rather than confrontation, and it’s apparent in the selection of writings on the site. The fact that Proyect’s writings are there just makes me want to stay away more. Proyect is the gasbaggiest know-it-all of them all. I love your anecdote Merkin, it’s the perfect demonstration of Proyect’s personality.

  5. Earth to Comrade Smith, please grace us with another one of your witty commentary on the US presidential election and this time, do a Hillary vs. the Donald comparison. As Comrade Alexander pointed out earlier, we lost that fun, witty, and contrarian perspective on politics with Alex Cockburn’s death and I dare to say that Comrade Smith is the closest we’ve got to fill this void.

    How many essays can the Left churn out with exact same analysis: Bernie good but not electable, Hillary awful and inept, Trump fascist and chaotic. Surely, one could go further and give us a fresh contrarian perspective on this horse race. One thing’s for sure as evidenced by the established trend: our next president will be worse than the current one. We already know that if Hillary becomes the next POTUS what deep shit we’ll be in but what if Trump becomes president? Would he be a Berlusconi or merely, a second coming of Ronnie? Would the Republican party get annihilated or would they simply toe the line and start sucking up to the Donald?

    The enquiring minds want to know!

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