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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Blood-and-guts politics Old-guard feminists caterwaul for Hillary, while the "weird old coot" rattles right-wing radio. Plus: Balancing the climate debate, real "Teeth," and Suzanne Pleshette, RIP. Feb. 13, 2008 | Disemboweling is evidently the theme du jour. As the political wars rage in this amazingly acrimonious primary season, the skin has been ripped off the establishment in both parties, and their guts have been exposed. We're seeing the pulsing inner workings of partisan ideology as never before. On the Republican side, conservatives marshaled by leading radio hosts have hotly rebelled against the onrushing nomination of Sen. John McCain, who has been vilified for years for his slippery positions and his schmoozing with liberals. On the Democratic side, rank-and-file party members have been shocked to discover that there is a ruling elite of 800 superdelegates, who have the power to crown the presidential nominee and who can be easily swayed or corrupted by lobbying. The old-guard feminist establishment has also rushed out of cold storage to embrace Hillary Clinton via tremulous manifestoes of gal power that have startlingly exposed the sentimental slackness of thought that made Gloria Steinem and company wear out their welcome in the first place. Hillary's gonads must be sending out sci-fi rays that paralyze the paleo-feminist mind -- because her career, attached to her husband's flapping coattails, has sure been heavy on striking pious attitudes but ultra-light on concrete achievements. The angst and fury boiling on talk radio, from both hosts and callers, have been truly operatic in drama and intensity. It's been a riveting spectator sport. But this eruption would come as no surprise to longtime listeners. What the mainstream press has failed to realize is that nationally syndicated hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, have always drawn a very firm distinction between their views and those of the party establishment in Washington. They have consistently maintained, and supported it in detail, that they are conservatives first and Republicans second. They have fiercely denounced the party when it has strayed from conservative principles. McCain, who has co-sponsored liberal legislation and courted and flattered Beltway journalists, has been a longtime target. This disarray among Republicans, which may depress voter turnout or even spawn a protest splinter party, offers a fantastic opening to Democrats, if the party can only seize it. The galvanizing energy aroused by Barack Obama's thrilling coast-to-coast victories gives Democrats a clear shot at regaining the White House. However, the three-faced Hillary, that queen of triangulation, would be a nice big gift to Republicans, who are itching to romp all over the Clintons' 20-volume encyclopedia of tawdry scandals. John McCain's courage under torture during the Vietnam War deserves everyone's gratitude and respect. But as a national candidate, the stumpy, uptight McCain is a lemon. Oy, that weaselly voice and those dated locutions and stilted intonations. Who needs a weird old coot with a short fuse in the White House? This isn't a smart game plan for the war on terror. Meanwhile, when will someone turn a punishing spotlight on the rampant abuse of absentee ballots in this and prior elections? The press was reporting before the California primary last week that there were up to 2 million absentee ballots. They presumably added to Hillary's margin in that state, because they were completed and mailed before Obama's late surge. But there needs to be far more stringent control of this questionable practice, which can be manipulated by aggressive party operatives trolling through working-class or immigrant neighborhoods. On the climate-change front, Denis Dutton, founder of the superb Arts & Letters Daily Web site, has created a new site, Climate Debate Daily, as a forum for both sides in the ferocious controversy over global warming. The site's lucid dual format is exactly what has been needed to shed scholarly light on this heavily politicized battle, which has been very difficult to follow for everyone but fanatical true believers. Climate change, whether man-made or (as I think) natural, will remain a vital issue for decades simply because it is shaping or coercing government policy worldwide. I was shocked to read of the recent death of Suzanne Pleshette, one of the most intelligent and underutilized actresses in Hollywood. Like the equally fierce and articulate Jessica Walters, Pleshette never quite found her niche in an industry geared to conventional female personae. Because Pleshette died over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, the first bulletins on major online news sites, clearly being manned by 25-year-old greenhorns in the absence of senior staff, made reference only to the death of an unnamed actress who had played a "TV wife." I didn't even bother looking at first. A day later, however, as the impact hit (and vacationing cognoscenti clearly squawked), Pleshette's name was blazoned in every headline. Pleshette loomed large in my book for the British Film Institute on Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," where she plays a darkly lovelorn schoolteacher, Annie Hayworth, who gets cut down by a flock of crows in chaotic Bodega Bay, Calif. Pleshette's deft parry and thrust, punctuated by cigarettes, with the coolly composed Tippi Hedren, is a model of virtuoso screen acting. For the book, I used a full-page on-set candid photo of Pleshette with the caption, "Annie Hayworth may be dead, but Suzanne Pleshette lives!" She'll certainly live forever for me. Here's a fan Web site ("More than Emily Hartley") devoted to wonderfully elegant Pleshette pix, including European magazine covers.
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
I've loved "Hurricane Camille" for many years because of the abuse she heaped on the "grass hut feminists". She's one of the most intelligent, articulate and politically savvy women of the modern age. A lesbian that respects men! No wonder Steinem and Smiel despise her! But, here is where she and I part company: "What the mainstream press has failed to realize is that nationally syndicated hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, have always drawn a very firm distinction between their views and those of the party establishment in Washington. They have consistently maintained, and supported it in detail, that they are conservatives first and Republicans second. They have fiercely denounced the party when it has strayed from conservative principles." She has failed to make the distinction between the warmongering, neocon-Trotskyist agenda and true conservatism. And, surely she must be aware of Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski USAF (ret) and her super keen and courageous revelations about those chickenhawks. And, the aforementioned "syndicated hosts" get their marching orders from The Lobby and they are damned careful to never cross it, no matter what conservative principle is abandoned in the process. They play make believe every time they call Ron Paul a "Democrat" for opposing imperialism abroad (as if any DEMS oppose the endless wars. Who and when after Sen. Paul Wellstone died?) and it's "Let's Pretend" every time these "conservatives" say that a tril a year is money well spent on occupations of people we cannot control and wars of attrition we cannot win. Of course she is a professor at nearby Philadelphia University of the Arts. And, there are definite lines that are seldom crossed in academia, and never in Philadelphia. But, Camille underscored my point with this: "The galvanizing energy aroused by Barack Obama's thrilling coast-to-coast victories gives Democrats a clear shot at regaining the White House. However, the three-faced Hillary, that queen of triangulation, would be a nice big gift to Republicans, who are itching to romp all over the Clintons' 20-volume encyclopedia of tawdry scandals." The Pubs are salivating at the chance of dribbling Hillary (and Bill) like a basketball! Imagine if you will after nearly 8 years of BushCo's immoral, greedy, bloody, diabolical secretive deals with The Devil still being able to take the moral high ground in campaign ads! That would only be possible with Hill & Bill vying for the thrones once again. No one else is so dirty that Bush can be juxtaposed and Republicans can feel honest by comparison.
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