Grab the popcorn!
The New York state chapter of NOW has attacked Teddy Kennedy for his endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton: BETRAYAL!
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.
And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women's money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.
This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who “know what’s best for us.”
She didn't just flame Teddy and the Democratic establishment, she used napalm. But wait! It gets better! In a later press release, Marcia Pappas, the President of NY NOW, accuses Teddy of engaging in a psychological gang-bang of Hillary:
We've all witnessed scenarios where, on the playground little girls are being taunted by little boys while both girls and boys stand idle, afraid to speak up or even cheering. Or, in the workplace males tease young and older female co-workers; make obscene gestures, inappropriate comments, laughing and expecting (often correctly) that everyone will join in. Then there was that movie where Jodie Foster portrayed the true story of woman who was ganged raped in a bar while others looked on and encouraged the realization. Still others pretended the rape didn't happen. In short, gang raping of women is commonplace in our culture both physically and metaphorically.
This past week, we witnessed just such a phenomenon involving men who are afraid of a powerful woman. Hillary Clinton, in her quest for her Presidential nomination, has in fact endured infantile taunting and wildly inappropriate commentary. Indeed we have witnessed almost comical attacks by John Edwards who in turn sided with Barak Obama as both snickered at Clinton's "breakdown," which consisted of a very short dewy-eyed moment. Now John Kerry, who should certainly know better after his own "swiftboating," has joined the playground gang.
(Emphasis added.)
Read the whole thing.
Oh, this is going to be good. First the Clintons play the race card, trying to pit Whites and Latinos against Blacks. Now another Clintonista throws down the "you hate women" card. (Pappas only realized now that Teddy is a pig?) And she invoked the image of a Black man raping a White woman. Don't tell me the Clinton campaign had nothing to do with this. When Teddy and his niece Caroline endorsed Obama, the Clinton "dynasty" was stabbed in the back by an even older, more aristocratic dynasty -- the Kennedys. (Next thing you know, the Roosevelts, the Harrisons, and the Adams will rise from the grave to curse them all.) This carpet-bombing by the NOW chapter in Hillary's home state is nothing less than retaliation. I'm surprised nobody mentioned Chappaquiddick.
This is only going to get uglier as we come up to Mega-Tuesday on February 5th. And, if neither side decisively defeats the other that day, if these battles go on until and into the convention, it could tear the Democratic Party apart.
I call dibs on the aisle seat.
LINKS: More at Politico, Hot Air, Sister Toldjah, Captain's Quarters, Bob Krumm.
UPDATE: Politico has more on the brewing civil war between the Clintons and the Democratic establishment, including the surprising (to me) revelation that senior Democrats in 1998 were close to asking President Clinton to resign. (hat tip: Blue Crab Boulevard.)
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