Opposing Hillary’s Corporate Campaign: A Response to Joe Conason

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Opposing Hillary’s Corporate Campaign: A Response to Joe Conason

Posted on Jul 6, 2015
By Scott Tucker


Editor’s note: The following is a response by Truthdig contributor Scott Tucker to a recent column by Joe Conason published in Truthdig.

Joe Conason’s article is not just a partisan puff piece, it is specifically a piece of Clintonista campaigning.

Conason charges The New York Times with a “longstanding animus against the Clintons,” and on this premise Conason questions the “liberal” reputation of the paper. Extraordinary!

Does Conason really believe the Clintons inherit the legacy of FDR and the New Deal? Or is he simply an apparatchik trying to sell Hillary as the next candidate of hope and change? Besides, the presence of a neo-Keynesian on the op-ed pages, namely Krugman, does not prevent the Clintonistas from getting some well-placed puff pieces in The New York Times.

Conason would do better to say in the first sentence, “Hillary Clinton deserves a chance to make history in 2016, and I’m here to give you the reasons why.”

.....(snip).....

I don’t give a damn if Hillary thinks Podesta should wear socks to bed to keep his feet warm. I do care that Hillary will be sold as a “feminist” candidate of war and empire. And “liberals” such as Conason will thereby prove they have learned nothing from Obama’s career in the White House. ...................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/opposing_corporate_campaigns_a_response_to_joe_conason_20150706

[peacebird]

1. Kick

[99Forever]

2. K&R

[Cerridwen]

3. Feminist in quotes? Interesting.

I guess the dittoheads and other r/wers getting all lathered up about Hillary's "rabid feminism" was just a ploy? Wow. All these years of them attacking her as a feminist and now I learn that, uh, she's not. Were they lying then or are they lying now?

Which begs the question, if she's not really a feminist, does that also mean she's not really a "candidate of war and empire?" Or a "corporate candidate?" I mean really, if after all these years they've been lying about her feminism then surely that means they were/are lying about other things. Naw.

Nevermind. The media doesn't lie...much...or often...except when it does.

[onehandle]

4. Dunno who 'Scott Tucker' is, but Joe Conason is a longtime liberal giant of journalism. nt

[starroute]

6. He's also a longtime Clinton supporter

That relationship goes back to his "The Hunting of the President," but he's tight enough with the Clintons to have written a piece titled "Bill Clinton Explains Why He Became a Vegan" for AARP in 2013. I respect Conason's exposes of right-wing dirty tricksters, but the author of this puff piece is hardly an objective journalist.

http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-08-2013/bill-clinton-vegan.html

When Bill Clinton invited me to lunch in May, I knew better than to expect fried catfish or barbecued ribs. The former president is now a devoted vegan, meaning no meat, fish or dairy products, and he has pursued a healthier way of life for more than three years. While I figured our lunch menu might be bland, that would be a small price to pay for private time with a world leader who is anything but.

As it happens, the fit, trim and sharply attired Clinton, whom I've come to know well during more than two decades covering his career, is his usual gregarious, charismatic self. But a bland menu? Not even close.

As we enter a private room overlooking Manhattan's busy Rockefeller Center, I'm struck with a dazzling kaleidoscope of a dozen delicious dishes: including roasted cauliflower and cherry tomatoes, spiced and herbed quinoa with green onions, shredded red beets in vinaigrette, garlicky hummus with raw vegetable batons, Asian-inspired snow pea salad, an assortment of fresh roasted nuts, plates of sliced melon and strawberries, and rich, toothsome gigante beans tossed with onions in extra-virgin olive oil.

The luncheon banquet gives a whole new meaning to the dreaded cliché "Eat your vegetables." And this is exactly what Clinton, who is taking on America's obesity epidemic with the same passionate commitment he brought to the presidency, wants.

[LWolf]

5. That last line, unfortunately, nails it.

I do care that Hillary will be sold as a “feminist” candidate of war and empire. And “liberals” such as Conason will thereby prove they have learned nothing from Obama’s career in the White House.

[Nitram]

7. Sigh.

"Corporate Campaign" "...will be sold as a 'feminist' candidate of war and empire" "partisan puff piece" "apparatchik"

[MisterP]

8. it's the terminus of personality politics: how liberal you are is measured by how much you support

the standing candidate of the party that's labeled liberal regardless of policy

candidate X is the liberal heir to FDR because of their party, not any stance; candidate X is good because they're not their opponent Y even if they agree with Y on almost everything; Hillary stands for peace because she has a uterus and thus is a creator of life, and her role in Honduras/Iraq/Libya/Syria is therefore invalid; our invasion is going to change a brutish and alien culture, and therefore can't hurt gays/women short- or long-run

it goes well with heated emotions that are carefully kept independent of any cause