Sit Down and Shut Up
July 16, 2009
by The New Agenda
|This piece by Amy Siskind is posted at The Daily Beast.
With the silencing of Hillary Clinton and Kirsten Gillibrand, is it any surprise that a brave woman from Alaska might decide to take a road less traveled?
Women should be seen and not heard. Or perhaps neither seen nor heard. That would be the message that our political leaders are sending us. Time and time again, our few rising stars are seeing their words dissipate as they ascend.
Is it any surprise then that the only way for women to be heard is to do things differently? On their own terms. To take it to the streets. To move forward in a non-traditional way. So as not to be silenced, discredited or simply disappear.
When President Obama picked Hillary Clinton for secretary of State, there were cheers throughout our country and abroad. What excitement for our new international spokesperson. And true to form, right away, Hillary exceeded even her biggest admirers’ expectations. And of course, shortly thereafter, came the quiet mea culpa’s of “you were right” whispered by those who weren’t believers in 2008 to those who were.
But as Hillary’s poll numbers continued to rise, something rather strange started to unfold: Hillary went missing. She gradually became less and less of the spokesperson that our country so surely needed on international issues. There was barely an utterance of her name in the media as President Obama and Vice President Biden trekked around the globe working on international affairs. Until finally last week the blogosphere started to ask: Where’s Hillary?
You can read the rest of the piece at The Daily Beast.
President Obama’s staff had scheduled an event in the Rose
Garden, at, you guessed it, the same time.
That pathetic, womanhating shitstain.
Great article Amy! I’m glad to see you put it up on Daily Beast. I wonder if Tina Brown will now come back with another comparison between Lady Di and Sarah Palin.
Great job Amy.
Great article, Amy! Sadly enough the actions of various politicians that silence female politicians isn’t surprising to me and, unfortunately, it doesn’t only happen in the political arena. I have seen the same thing happen in academia all the way from female students being silenced to university presidents being forced from office because they were too outspoken.
Excellent piece!
Amy, check this out. NOW President Terry O’Neill said sexist and racist attacks on Clinton, Palin, Obama and Sotomayor are sexual harrassment.
Feminists vow to wipe sexual harassment from the airwaves
There has been no silencing of Hillary.
You are on target, amy.
The silencing of competent women has been deafening: Clinton, Gillibrand, Palin…. and who next? Who else?
If the Dems or any other male-based organization needs to marginalize you, they will. And it’s not necessarily gender-based. They managed to marginalize Ralph Nader as well. True progressives will continue to be marginalized until this country breaks down the 2 party bloc. TNA is part of the cure, I’m certain.
Romney and Huckabee lead Republican polls for 2012 a couple weeks ago and there was NO LEFTIST PUSHBACK against them. Romney are more religious and backwards for women and GLBT. Why the Moveon campaign and leftist terror about Palin? They even said Romney raised twice as much money. Then why do they fear her?
That should read Romney AND HUCKABEE are more religious and backwards for women and GLBT.
Funny that no one here is discussing Hillary’s response to that piece.
Obama has nominated a woman to the supreme court, the position of surgeon general and the position of solicitor general in the last few months.
These aren’t the actions of someone who “hates women”.
Lets face it, our president like many of our financial institutions are Shar-iah compliant.
Obama most certainly does hate women and is the greatest enabler of the nations misogyny epidemic.
agree juliette, at least he does not like majority women. all the new female candidates so far seem very competent, but isn’t it surprising that he does not find any talents in women missing minority blood.
enabling misogyny you can say that. did any of the hate spewing guys in the fraternity house like the speech writer or the rapers got any trouble. not that I had heard.
and on another note, Hillary does not get her chosen speech writer, nor anybody of her choice into the diplomatic core.
Nice article, Amy! Wish the entire piece were posted here. I agree with nearly everything (readers have to go to Daily B to read the rest…) except this:
But Sarah Palin, perhaps unwittingly, found a way…
“unwittingly”????
Palin said herself that she deliberated for a long time before making her decision. Her decision has purpose and makes sense. As Gov she was pretty much incapacitated and would have been facing lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit. Like she said: A waste of time and resources.
“unwitting” plays into the stereotype that she is stupid or erratic or “doesn’t have her wits about her”.
Actually, now that I think about it, using the word “unwitting” in that article may have been unwitting!
Which can happen to the best of us – we’ve all internalized way too much crap.
Exactly, women are supposed to be ornamental. Or trick mirrors in a carnival sideshow ehancing the appearance of some man. I could not believe the indignation of pundits when Clinton perserved so she could have a roll call vote. The talking heads were acting as if she lost her mind because she wanted to be treated like any other credible presidential candiate; they. seemingly forgot that the late great Shirley Chisolm got a roll call vote. And as for Sarah, I do not agree with her stands on most issue, but the nonsense that this woman has been subjected to is unspeakable. I think this is her way of giving the media the finger, and her timing is pretty good because the traditional media is going the way of the dinosaur with blogs, etc.
ABG, don’t you dare try to start you’re goddamned horseshit here little man.
HIllary will prevail behind the scenes, and Obama’s endless visibility is tiring and ineffective.
By the way, I noticed a giant slam against Hilary on the entertainment site TMZ, which gets a lot of traffic:
http://www.tmz.com/2009/07/18/.....rday-post/
What has Hillary (or Palin, for that matter) done to deserve the rabid revulsion that comes their way?
Been born with girl parts and been too stupid to realize that it was a mandate from Gawd to STFU and keep the beer cold.
ABG, Obama might be chauvanistic but he is still a politician. With women being 54% of the voting population and our voices becoming louder and perhaps the realization that all women aren’t permanently mesmerized by his charm, he is doing what he needs to to keep us quiet and keep our votes. And I am fine with the fact that he is merely responding to our voices. That’s the beauty of America, politicians can’t ignore the needs of 50% of the population and expect to continue to get our votes. He is STILL just a little better than even with Bush’s appointments of women.
[...] I read Amy Siskind’s excellent piece Sit Down and Shut Up on the marginalization of American women in politics, I couldn’t help thinking about all that the [...]
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