Democratic Presidential Candidates Sound like Kids Squabbling in the Backseat of the Car

“Mom, he hit me.”
“She called me a name first.”
“He’s lying. I didn’t say that.”
“I didn’t do nothing. Leave me alone.”

First, there was Hillary Clinton accusing the press of ganging up on her in the Ohio debate. Her reference to a Saturday Night Live skit fell flat.

Then, a member of Barack Obama’s campaign was fired for calling Clinton a “monster.”

Next, feminist party venerable Geraldine Ferrara, the first woman to run for vice president of the United States as a major party candidate on the Mondale ticket in 1984, claims that Obama has only received recognition because he’s black, not in spite of it.

In the wake of this media tempest, Ferrara resigns from Clinton’s fundraising committee, amidst charges that she was racist. Meanwhile, black males accuse Clinton’s “Is your family safe at 3 a.m.?” ad of playing on ancient racist fears of black men threatening the safety and security of sleeping white women and their children, shades of the Ku Klux Klan.

As the cherry on top, the media unearth videotapes of Obama’s pastor and, in the senator’s own words spiritual mentor, giving a black separatist sermon accusing the U.S. of having provoked the 911 attack by its foreign policies. This is interpreted as blaming the victims by the press. The minister’s words damning America are as unseemly for a potential future president, so a new cycle of renunciation-denunciation is in effect.

Meanwhile, John McCain is busy solidifying his image with the Republican Party and abroad.

The Democratic Party, famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, is well on its way. Chris Matthews, on last night’s Crossfire, said the back-and-forth over whose surrogate campaign spokesperson said what was starting to sound like the Inquisition. “Do you recant fully and completely?” sounds too much like a page out of old playbooks that required public denunciation for crimes real and imagined.

If Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don’t stop that fighting, the country is liable to turn this car around and let your father – John McCain – give you a good licking. I’ve already got the inside word from a scion of a famous political family telling me that John McCain “will be hard to beat.”

Barack Disses and Dismisses Hillary with Male Disdain

Barack Obama resorted to male dismissal last night in the debate. He would never tell John McCain or John Edwards or a male candidate that a point they raised was "just silly. It’s silly season in politics."

But it’s still all right to dismiss an accomplished woman’s legitimate concern in this way in a public forum. Not a single political pundit noticed it. In fact, Hillary is being berated for bringing up the legitimate charge of plagiarism for having made a misstep.

The double standard has been in effect throughout the campaign. Obama, the flavor of the month, was hailed for being greeted by “rock star crowds,” fixing his celebrity status as a rock star. Hillary, on the other hand, never has a moment of peace from characterizations of her as cold, divisive, and the “b” word.

John Edwards was almost completely ignored by the media. The media have made the front-runners in the Democratic primary.

I know one conspiracy-theorist who thinks the media seeded a women and an African-American as the Democratic front-runners so that a weak Republican prospect, John McCain, would steal the white, male, under-$50K-a-year vote and maintain the Republican presidency. They will not vote for a woman or a black man and will cross party lines to vote white male.

Even though I teach media and know all about interlocking directorates and the heavily conservative bias of corporate news organizations, I discounted this theory.

It’s too bad females are not able to so clearly identify their own best interests with having a female in the White House and breaking the final glass ceiling. Clinton will work hard, but Obama will be fluff. He is likely to make the same naïve mistakes as Jack Kennedy, who had Nikita Krushchev tap-dancing at our Miami doorstep with his missile sites in Cuba. Let’s not forget, either, than it was Lyndon Johnson who got important civil rights legislation passed, drawing on his decades of experience as a congressional deal-maker.

But young women are out, dancing to mindless slogans, suckered by yet another charismatic male who promises hope and change – whatever that means – while offering the same old dismissal of an accomplished woman’s argument as silly. And that’s why a woman supporting Obama is as silly as hen buying stock in Kentucky Fried Chicken.

A black male can fit through the eye of the public more easily than a woman can break the ultimate glass ceiling.