Disapointment All Around

Nothing is quite as face-palmingly irritating as two bloggers I respect making asses of themselves in some sort of clumsy battle of wills against each other.

Wil Wheaton started it with his "hillary clinton: the psycho ex-girlfriend of the democratic party" blog post. Wil's a good guy, he has admirable politics, and I really respect that he, pretty much all by himself, acts as the American celebrity advocate for voluntary nerdiness. This blog post wasn't nearly as awful as it's been made out to be, but it isn't in particularly good taste either. Wil could have, and should have, done better.

Zuzu, the newest addition to team Shakesville, responded with a ham-fisted overreaction. While Wil was a bit harsher on Clinton personally than I can comfortably condone, his post wasn't misogynist or sexist in nature. It was a poorly-titled screed about the fact that Clinton staying in the race is bad for the Democratic Party. It didn't really have anything to do with her gender outside of the title. But Zuzu turned it into some sort of diatribe about how women aren't allowed to be ambitious, which it clearly wasn't. She also used that ridiculous, condescending pretending-to-be-sweet thing that drives me up a fucking wall, calling Wil "pumpkin" while implying he's a dick. Wil's a pretty easy target, as far as celebrities go. I'm not impressed that Zuzu decided to take him on at all, but even less so that she obviously takes advantage of his status as an outsider to condescend to him.

So Wil updated his post, and didn't help matters by doing so. Somebody should point out to him that you can't tell people what they can and can't be offended over. It never goes over well. His point is valid... the original post did not reflect misogyny, but calling people humorless is never a convincing form of self defense. It did come off as flailing... kind of.

Zuzu, as one might expect, reacted with mocking derision to Wil's piss-poor attempt to explain himself, managing to come off as twice the dick Wil did in the first place. She goes back to feigned sweetness, which, again, is way, way worse for your argument than flailing is. Seriously, don't call someone "hon" while arguing with them. It's a cowardly tactic, it's condescending, and it makes you look like an idiot. Stop. She also loses by completely misrepresenting what Wil said, out of quotes but meant to look like a quote, when she says, "Wil then tries to say that, sure, he called Clinton a bitch, but that's because she acts like one, so it's all okay!" Wil never called Clinton a bitch, Wil never admitted to calling Clinton a bitch, and it's a totally unfair, Republicanesque tactic to make it sound otherwise.

So Zuzu wins the "Who's The Biggest Asshole In A Room Full Of Assholes" competition, for employing the absolute worst form of condescending infantilization and gross misrepresentation. Congratulations.

The real point is, these two people should be allies. I guarantee that they both hate John McCain more than they love Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, respectively. So why are they at each other's throats? Because Democrats, liberals, and progressives have lost all sense of perspective. We seem to have forgotten who the enemy really is. So keeping splitting us up by engaging in these stupid arguments. We'll see how well that works for us in November.

The Bigot Vote

I'm not entirely interested in an argument over whether sexism or racism is the bigger problem, or whether racism has hurt Obama more than sexism has hurt Clinton. But it bothers me that it is casually recognized that Clinton is winning and, in fact, depending on the bigot vote. The results in Pennsylvania made this very clear, and it has raised questions about Obama's electability in a national election. 20% of Democratic voters said that race was an issue in their vote, and 49% of Clinton voters said they would stay home or vote for McCain if Obama won the party's nomination. Those are some crazy numbers, especially for the Democratic party. The media's codeword for these people is "lunch-bucket Democrats", because apparently "racist assholes" won't make it past the censors.

Nobody with any sense wants to see McCain win the national election. But there are some people I don't care to have in the big tent, and self-righteous bigots are certainly high on that list. Can we stop pretending that this is a legitimate interest group the candidates need to be courting? If we need their vote to win, we're doing it wrong.