Sex and the Media Elites or How long before we hear the word "uppity"?

It's been said often enough that by now it's probably sunk into the heads of the most starry-eyed Obama supporters that the positive press coverage Obama's been enjoying for the last few months has had a lot to do with the fact that he's not a Clinton.

Now that he's the clear front-runner and favorite to win the nomination the bloom isn't off the rose yet but plenty of the petals are showing signs of blight.  The Media Insiders are beginning to see him and write about him as what he is, the Democrat who would be President unless they stop him.

And the Right Wing Smear Machine, which for some reason some very smart people seemed to think would go silent as long as we didn't nominate Hillary, is already geared up and ready to roll against Obama, and if you thought it would was going to be ugly if Clinton was running, watch and listen to the race-baiting that's on the way.  No dog-whistles either.  The attacks will be overt and unashamed, except for the National Review types who will phrase their racism with their usual apparent cognitive dissonance:  "Since I know I'm not a racist, I can say whatever racist thing pops into my head, and if you think the racist thing I just said was racist that proves you are the real racist."

Actually, at the Corner they're already at it, as Roy shows here.

The Media insiders, who in 2000 assured us that George Bush's complete lack of experience didn't matter, will be busy this time out comparing John McCain's long "distinguished" resume to Obama's, which they will selectively edit and condense and redact.  They will gush over McCain's "principled" stands and no matter how many position papers Obama issues, no matter how specifically he answers questions, no matter how many programs he outlines and no matter in how great detail, they will go on and on about his "vagueness" and his refusal to get "specific."

They will rhapsodize endlessly on McCain's toughness and sing folk songs about his regular guyness while finding story after story that reveal what a priss and a pansy Obama is.  I'm sure Obama's been warned never to order Swiss on his cheese steaks or drink green tea in front of a reporter, but it won't matter.  They will find some proof that he's not a real manly man.  Mo Dowd will show them the way.

But the Media and the Smear Machine will share at least one specific target.  Michelle Obama.

The Democratic candidate's wife is always fair game and the subtext is the always the same.  Democrats marry uppity bitches they can't control while Republican wives are quiet and demure and support their husbands by keeping in the background, knowing their place, and bringing them their pipe and slippers at the end of a long day.

Michelle Obama is already being called "a loose cannon."  It won't be long before she's portrayed as being as crazy and out of control as they told us Teresa Heinz Kerry was.

And just as McCain himself will be lauded as the straight-shooting maverick sticking to his principles even as he's writhing on the floor having tied himself into a perfect clove hitch to appease whatever Right Wing kingmaker has demanded appeasement from him that day, his wife, the formerly drug-addled, admitted thief, and homewrecker, Cindy McCain, will be sold to us as a combination of Donna Reed and June Cleaver but sexy except not, not in a dangerous way, not in a sexy-in-her-own-way way, but sexy in that she's just what every middle-aged white guy wishes he could rush out and fill a prescription for Viagra for.

Sexy in the repressed American whitebread Republican-approved "I'm doing it all to please my man not myself" way.

Michelle Obama's going to drive them insane.  Attractive, independent, successful in her own right, youthful---she's ten years younger than Cindy McCain---and black.

I've always believed that one of the reasons Media types have hated Hillary Clinton is that they found her attractive back in the day.

It's the old story of Susannah and the Elders.  In their imaginations they spy on smart, successful, attractive women in their baths and then when they're caught at it, by their own consciences, they excuse and absolve themselves by blaming and demonizing the women.

Their focus on Hillary's shrillness and her cackling and her chubby ankles---it's all denial.

Hillary Clinton has always been an attractive and vivacious woman, more attractive for being what a lot of men tell themselves they don't want a woman to be, intelligent and independent-minded.  Few things are more crazy-making than being sexually drawn to someone you don't want to be drawn to or think you ought not to be drawn to.

By the way, David Shuster's "pimping her out" comment about the Clintons and Chelsea?  That was Shuster's id getting loose to tell us he thinks Chelsea's hot.

These people can't help themselves.

Sex makes them nuts.

Wait till Michelle Obama's even more in the spotlight and their old teenage fantasies about---depending on their ages---Diana Ross or Donna Summer or Janet Jackson start coming back to haunt them.

And, God save us, wait till Maureen Dowd realizes that her chief rival for fairest in the land of her own imagination is no longer Hillary Clinton but Michelle Obama!

Or has that already started?

More color-blindness from the post-racial future folk at the Corner: Mike Schilling found this beaut over there.  It's a Right Wing Paranoid's hat trick.  Race-baiting, Jew-baiting, and Red-baiting all in one post!

More on the Maverick and Commander's commitment to principle from Hilzoy:  McCain Sells Birthright For Mess of Pottage.

David Neiwert on The Clinton Rules, 2008 edition.

Bob Somerby:  By Whatever Card Necessary.

Thanks to dday, TBogg, Tom Watson, and Will Bunch.

Comments

[Bluegrass Poet]

Michelle Obama in the White House. That's really a delightful thought after eight years of the glassy-eyed librarian and the well-shod classical pianist. Almost consoles me for the loss of Hillary.

As a disclaimer, I'd like to say that some of my fondest memories involve libraries and librarians and I'm sure Michelle Obama has a wonderful fashion sense.

[Ken Houghton]

I guess I'm now officially part of the Right-Wing Smear Machine. (see here and here—and note that I cited you on the latter.)

You know: I can live with that. I'll stop calling her "Sherry Palmer from the first season of 24" when she stops acting like her in public.

[Mo MoDo]

Dowd is just warning Michelle that her off-message grousing will be picked up by Republicans and used against Barack. If the Clinton's don't beat them to it.

[Mike Schilling]

(Paul Hogan voice)That's not a smear.This is a smear.

[Linkmeister]

I agree with your arguments about Michele Obama, but I'm compelled to say that after seeing Chelsea out here last weekend (and seeing her be a good sport trying to dance a hula) I can confirm one thing; she is hot. Not smoking hot, but kinda Shelley Fabares hot.

[julia]

Dowd is just warning Michelle that her off-message grousing will be picked up by Republicans and used against Barack. If the Clinton's don't beat them to it.

Dowd isn't doing any such thing. Dowd has a long, long, long, long track record of smearing the accomplished wives of politicians because Dowd thinks the reason she's alone is that men worth having aren't interested in marrying powerful, successful, equal women (for crying out loud, she wrote a book about it).

If men on the level she aspires to are happily married to women as or more successful and intelligent, it opens up the dread possibility that the reason nobody wants to commit might not have totally to do with their flaws.

I'm betting she never lays a glove on Mrs. McCain - an emotionally-crippled husband-poaching trophy First Lady with money is exactly what she needs to confirm all her worst self-serving prejudices. Thompson's wife got a pass too.

[Tom Bozzo]

tied himself into a perfect clove hitch to appease whatever Right Wing kingmaker has demanded appeasement from him that day

Awesomest line out of many in an excellent post, Lance.

Ken, shouldn't you take alignment with the right-wing smear machine as an, er, signal?

[Bob]

"And the Right Wing Smear Machine, which for some reason some very smart people seemed to think would go silent as long as we didn't nominate Hillary, is already geared up and ready to roll against Obama,"

Here’s the catch: I am an Obama supporter (or should I say “starry-eyed Obama supporter”) who is fucking sick and tired of Clinton supporters ascribing all sorts of right-wing tropes to us. No, I’m not starry-eyed; believe it or not I consider the Senator who voted for the war in Iraq and refuses to back down from that to be the wrong choice for the “liberal” party. If you can’t get the single biggest issue of the last 7 years right, and refuse to acknowledge any problems with it, perhaps, just perhaps, you’ve earned yourself a one-way ticket back to the senate.
As for the ridiculous argument that we all think the right will leave Obama alone don’t bother pointing to some lame web-site where some young liberal posted something along those lines; anyone who has followed politics for any length of time knows how the right operates. Frankly they operate a lot like the Clintons (and in all honesty I don’t say that as a slam on the Clintons – they play hardball politics and that’s fine by me.) But here’s the catch – Obama is running against and BEATING a candidate who is using proxies to smear him every step of the way - unless you consider Mark Penn and Tom Buffenbarger to be honest, honorable men. It’s almost as if he is a capable candidate who built a tough, flexible campaign infrastructure and knows how to go about running for president.
See, maybe Obama supporters are grown-up and able to make an informed decision and maybe Obama is tough enough to stand up the right-wing smear machine.
If you prefer Clinton, fine. Just make the case for her. Please stop insulting the intelligence of Obama supporters. We too are capable of making informed decisions.

[Judith]

Lance - Shuster's id? Love it!

Cindy McCain - about to do to Michelle 0bama what Michelle Obama did to Hillary Rodham Clinton: something about "tone". Oopsie. If Michelle retaliates, will Barack tell her to put her claws away? or will he tell Cindy to put Her claws away?
ooooh!

What a way to elect a President.

[sfmike]

What Bob said, though not quite as passionately. I've got no illusions about Obama as Our Saviour, but I also think he's the perfect teflon candidate for the moment for all the worst attacks that are going to be coming his way from a very energized, crazy and desperate right-wing infrastructure. There's a jujitsu of being able to take an attack and make it boomerang on one's attacker, however, and Obama strikes me as a lot better able to pull that off than the Clintons right now.

[Lance]

I'm sorry, Bob, SFMike, too, This wasn't meant to be a pick on Obama post or even a pick on Obama supporters post. It was intended as a general warning about what's on the way from the Media and the Right. My wife is an Obama voter, so is my father, Pop Mannion, the politician. Neither one is starry-eyed. I don't think of Ted Kennedy and the Teamsters as starry-eyed people either. And there's hilzoy and Tom Bozzo and you and lots of my readers. But...

Over the last few months, in posts and in comments at many liberal blogs, in comments here, in discussions on and off the web, I've read and heard many, many people include among their reasons for not voting for Hillary the way she will stir up the Right Wing Hate Machine. Most of the people were Obama supporters and their point, implicit or explicit, was that Obama won't stir it up or won't stir it up to the same awful degree. It is in fact a feature of his own rhetoric that he will defuse or transcend or transform the Hate Machine. That's what all the talk of bi-partisanship and ending divisiveness is about. It's Obama's response to Clinton's "I'm the experienced one." He's saying, "What good is your experience if you can't get anyone to agree to anything?"

Now, maybe he will be able to rise above it or convince voters and the media to ignore it, but he's not going to be able to silence it. I think many people were somehow expecting that he would. These are the people I would call starry-eyed. Everybody gets starry-eyed sometimes, every politician attracts some starry-eyed supporters---well, maybe not Mitt Romney, but all the others---and pointing them out in order to try to bring them down to earth is not an insult to all other supporters of that politician.

As for the starry-eyed thing being a Right Wing meme---it's only becoming one because it's something about Obama's campaign that they see as a weakness---all the new voters who are so excited by him, all the screaming and fainting fans in the crowd, the Hate Machine will use them to paint Obama supporters as a bunch of hysterical teenagers. The Media's going to start making fun of them too. Digby has a good post on this. But that doesn't mean those crowds aren't there. But although we need to be careful about it we shouldn't have to shut up about anything and everything that the Right and the Media might use against him.

At any rate, I didn't mean to pick on Obama supporters, especially since it looks as though pretty soon I'm going to be one.

[LondonLee]

You might have to reach back further than Diana Ross for pundit's teenage black fantasy females. A lot of them are old enough to have gotten all hot under the tab collar for Lena Horne at least.