Fascinoma

Rebecca Traister, writing in Salon, decries the ugliness of Hillary Hatred among the Obamaphiles, and find especially reprehensible, and perhaps self-defeating the sexist terms that get tossed at the candidate. But I can't exactly understand why Hillary is a feminist icon, save for the fact that she is a woman. She has prescisely the sort of Bushian prominence that is, let's face it, mostly name recognition -- that is recogition of her husband's name. It's not like she did any great service to the country that made her famous. No, she was First Lady -- and as such set back the cause of national health care by several decades, at least. Then her distaff fame got her a Senate seat -- which she has distinguished by supporting the Iraq War and also apparently a the war the Neo-Con's want to wage against Iran (as even Traister points out). I can't say she's been out here in the lead on anything. So, doormat wife, stink-bomb First Lady, second-rate Senator -- it's not exactly a great profile on the face of it.

But at the risk of being mean, here's something nobody on the Left seems to point out. Hillary's whole manner is obnoxious, her whole Energizer Bunny Grin, her platitudinous blather, her phony folksiness -- it's not charming. Quite the opposite. She has the charisma of a Gilbert Gottfried, a Paulie Shore, a Joe Lieberman. Why haven't the geniuses at the DNC figured this out?

To find Hillary personally obnoxious doesn't make one a sexist, no more than finding Condi toxic makes one racist, or disparaging Israeli policies makes on a Nazi. She's a narcissist asshole, period.