of hearing people talk about all these “angry white women” who are defecting to mccain. i’m not one to harp about “the media,” but the mass exodus of women from the democratic party to c-word-loving, women’s-rights-hating mccain is unlikely. and to keep talking about it is just insulting. from salon:

But in his excellent Sunday column, Frank Rich challenges the narrative, pointing out that Barack Obama actually has a huge lead among female voters. The whole column is worth a read, but here’s the clincher:

“The notion that all female Clinton supporters became ‘angry white women’ once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype. That’s why some of the same talking heads and Republican operatives who gleefully insulted Mrs. Clinton are now peddling this fable on such flimsy anecdotal evidence.”

I’ve heard reports of Clinton followers who refuse to support Obama — and we will hear more from them, and about them, as the campaign wears on — but the vast majority of female Clinton supporters do. As Matthew Yglesias wrote over at the Atlantic.com, “The idea that Democratic women would defect en masse to the GOP in a fit of pique is a preposterous notion that seems to be founded on the underlying assumption that women can’t respond to their political choices as rationally as men can.”

i might be pissed, but i’m not stupid.
now leave me alone.

rare in skunkblog, is what i mean.

sigh. how well i know those banners. not surprisingly, troy didn’t win many of them. we were all too busy taking a half dozen APs. the sole exceptions: soccer, the ultimate white yuppie sport, and tennis, where asians are forced thrive.

barack obama will be holding a town hall at TROY HIGH SCHOOL — where i spent four glorious years overachieving, driven by blind ambition. this is probably the coolest thing that’s happened in troy since the north side of somerset mall opened.

some fun facts about troy that i just learned from wikipedia:
1. aileen wuornos lived in troy, where her path to serial killerdom was apparently honed.
1a. it’s the 12th most populous city in michigan, which for some reason is surprising to me. (why “1a?” i skipped this point, then someone commented, then i realized i didn’t know how to count, and then i fixed. bah)
2. “Based on property value, Troy is the second largest city in Michigan, second only to Detroit.” i’m not sure what this means, exactly, but it sounds impressive.
3. median family income = $98,752
4. troy high and athens have a shocking 99% graduation rate, although i’m sure it helps that we ship all our miscreants to niles.
5. they are going to demolish the old kmart headquarters and build “a landscaped square with boulevards lined with upscale shops, restaurants, offices, a theater, and condominiums.” just what a declining economy needs. more stores!

i’m not really interested in debating the implications of obama calling a detroit (woot woot) television reporter “sweetie” (i think it’s a political nonstarter, except for maybe this), but dismissing the whole thing as media hysteria isn’t fair either. since i figured someone else has probably already better articulated my general feeling of “this ain’t right,” i scoured the interwebs for the best defense of “why the sweetie thing is sort of a big deal.”

susan ager from the detroit free press likens his sweetie “bad habit” (his words) to his now-defeated smoking addiction.

This guy can give up nicotine but not silly nicknames for women he doesn’t know? …
You’ve got to wonder where a 46-year-old Harvard-educated attorney picked up such a bad habit and why he has not yet set it aside.

rebecca traister from salon argues it best though. i basically copy/pasted the entire thing, but you should read it yourself anyway.

Surely many women have enjoyed being called sweetie by someone they care about, just as many women have enjoyed being called “honey” or “babe.”

But that does not mean that those same women would enjoy being called any of those things by a presidential candidate, especially one they’d not met before, especially in response to a question about the economic future of the autoworkers, and especially when the word is a fundamental part of a larger professional brushoff.

Yes, there are places in the country where “sweetie” is used to address strangers of both sexes; a waitress, for instance, might call both male and female customers “sweetie,” as a conversational address, rather than an indication of personal familiarity. But that’s pretty clearly not what was happening at the Chrysler plant, in part because the waitress doesn’t often have a power dynamic with her customers that resembles the relationship between a male presidential candidate and a female reporter.

Is it the be all end all? No. Is it the most sexist thing a man could say to a woman? Certainly not.

But one of the odd qualities about the questions applied to this story has been the focus on whether Obama’s intentions were premeditated, or stranger still, malevolent. Surely they were neither. As Goldberg said, the senator likely “meant … no disrespect.” Obama is an excellent candidate on women’s issues, and has won the often controversial support of feminists who might otherwise have fallen in behind Hillary Clinton. But having good intentions, and good policies, does not mean that anyone is incapable of offense, disrespect or condescension.

So it is troubling that ABC’s report was headlined “Obama’s Sweetie: Spontaneous or Sexist?” and “Good Morning America’s” “workplace contributor” Tory Johnson averred that anyone offended by someone’s use of “sweetie” should speak up but “not assume that their intentions are bad.” Johnson went on to warm of the dangers of “policing spontaneity … we should let people be themselves.”

These kinds of arguments suggest that words cannot be both spontaneous and sexist, as they often are. … Also troubling is the perception that “sexist” must equal “ill-willed” if it is to be deemed offensive. … But just because a word is not meant as an offense, does not mean that it isn’t diminishing, paternalistic and disrespectful.

traister also takes issue with the dismissive response that some people (and more frustratingly, women) have had to the whole thing.

As tempting as it is to project the cool-girl post-feminist attitude of not caring at all, it’s also important to note that just because a small exchange doesn’t mean everything, we don’t have to pretend that it doesn’t mean anything.

The point is not that Obama should have, or could have, known Agar’s name. It’s that had her name been Alan, Tom or John, he would not have called her “sweetie.” That is true. It may not be evil or intentional or even that big of a deal. But it is fundamental and true. And what it tells us, in a small way, is that even in the year in which Obama’s most serious competition has come from a woman running for what has historically been a man’s job, gender still matters.

the ending to traister’s argument was a little anticlimactic (nothing new), but it’s worth repeating because it’s one of those things that really gets me going.
and, if by some act of god, you haven’t seen the video yet …

the only thing relating these two topics is that i have two stories about both from public radio.

1. a “management guru” from london talks about the U.S. presidency.

But, dare I say it, you have a small problem. The founding fathers have required you to elect a President who has to be both head of state and prime minister, the chairman and the chief executive. They are very different roles.

i think it’s clear that obama and clinton’s strengths are very different, and each seem to fill one of these roles better than the other. i guess the question is, what do you think the role of the president is? a chairman? or a CEO?

2. NPR says to listen to hard-to-find classical music on youtube. I’VE BEEN DOING THAT FOR MONTHS. for once, i’m ahead of the curve.

she’s like, a super hottie, and she loves obama. but she was too busy going to the super bowl to vote for him.

and herein lies the problem for obama—your constituency is way too attractive to vote.