the sawpit

A Global Protection Racket

Notes from Blighty – by Chris Cobb

The bully boys (aka the U.S. State Department) have just left town and while they were here many businesses were told that if they were trading with Cuba, they might want to reconsider. The bully boys didn't visit multinational corporations who all know better, they reached down to the level of the mom and pop stores. Now don't imagine these little people were visited by big guys with sharkskin suits and dark glasses ('Nice little store you got here, Mrs Brown. Shame to see something happen to it,' he said, tipping over a barrel of kippers), it doesn't work that way. They let the banks do the strong-arm stuff. Any British bank with ties to U.S. financial institutions (read all of them) were told if they wanted to keep their cozy relationship they had better lean on their customers who were defying the U.S. trade embargo. So a tobacconist who sold Cuban cigars or a commodities trader who was doing brisk business in organic Cuban sugar was informed by his bank that if he didn't want to see his loan threatened or his currency exchange mechanism turned off, he might want 'to make other arrangements'.

Needless to say, these small businesses, like the rest of the world, are hoping to celebrate an Obama election.

Tempest or Teapot?

Much has been said about the contentious primary battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the past few months. I know we are all happy it's now history. As an early Edwards supporter, I was neutral when it came to the other candidates. But I was very disturbed when their supporters started demonizing each other. On the Obama side of the blog community, you had the sort of Clinton bashing you'd expect from dittoheads. And on the Hillary Clinton side, there was the sort of divisive politics Karl Rove has spent his life perfecting. In the end, I believe that Clinton's early support of the Iraq invasion,  and her campaign strategy of praising John McCain's qualifications for the presidency while belittling Obama's, turned many undecided Democrats against her. You see, as much as I don't care for the current GOP mindset of party unity at all cost, sometimes it's just the right thing to do. One's desire and desperation to become the party nominee should never trump the real goal of winning back the White House. And Hillary Clinton would have expected that same restraint from Barack Obama had he been trying to catch up to a Clinton lead.

Now I am not here to scold my fellow Democrats like an angry parent. But I think we can learn from this experience and grow from it. We should be focusing on the policy differences, not identity politics. To bash fellow Democrats during the primary season is self-defeating. The party must come first especially when so much is at stake. For months angry Clinton supporters railed against the "obvious" media bias for Barack Obama. They bristled at the idea that anyone could dislike Hillary Clinton for reasons other than simply being a woman. And, yes many of those sexist attacks were ugly. Blake Fleetwood at Huffington Post had no trouble convincing me that "sexism is alive and well in America." In fact, I've been bugged by it for years. And his May 18th post was rather evenhanded:

To be sure there have been many racist incidents in this heated campaign as seen by Kevin Merida article in the Washington Post earlier this week which drew 2100 comments and much media attention.

However, the embedded eight minute video not only show cases vulgar and tasteless invective aimed at  Hillary Clinton, it also condemns Barack Obama for not speaking out against the attacks. At the start of the video, a quote from veteran journalist Tom Watson is cited:

[U]nless Barack Obama speaks out, his campaign's chilling acceptance of the gender bias stirred by our national media will remind many of Ronald Reagan's race-baiting southern strategy--because if Obama accepts the presidency, at least in part, because of abject sexism, a brutal gender attack on a female rival -- the most famous female Democrat in history--he will set feminism in our country back a generation.

The assumption that Obama is obligated to attack every talking head, columnist and blogger who happens to stir sexism into their arguments seems a bit of a stretch. In fact, the vast majority of commentators did not resort to such cynical and backward attacks. Most Democrats are liberal, open-minded, and certainly not sexist. (I would love to see a list of sources for the worst offenders showcased on this documentary. My guess is that most represent the dregs of the right-wing Neanderthal movement.) And the very idea of his non-action setting feminism back a generation is laughable. Because if we really want to end the acceptance of sexism in the media, we must start a letter writing campaign against the offending pundits, authors and their publishers. We must all fight back together and demand a change in attitude.

Claiming that somehow Obama would owe his win to the sexist invective of small minded people like is mind-boggling. It just smacks of political desperation--especially when you consider that Clinton took full advantage of the conservative white males who would not vote for Obama because he's an African American. And as far as "The most famous female Democrat in history" is concerned, it's hard to call. So what is the current status of Eleanor Roosevelt as an inspiration for women in America? I will assume he meant the most famous elected female Democrat in history, because that is certainly true.

I know Tom Watson is a loyal Democrat and has called on his readers to support Barack Obama for president. But I just want to make sure we never go down this destructive road again. We can support our candidate and still keep our eyes on the prize at the same time. The consequences of failure are far too great--especially if you care about advancing women's rights.