Blog: Bill Clinton

Nothing arouses conservative ire like former President Bill Clinton, and a lot of people in politics crave the glamour of proximity to famous people. Combine these in an event where some people participate in a lunch with Clinton, and where the only information available at first is a photograph of the bloggers involved, and we have a recipe for bad behavior.

When women first started advocating for the right to vote, or equal treatment in the workplace, or protection against violence, many people not only resisted these changes but ridiculed the individuals involved. That continues to this day - the terrific blog Feministing gets enormous numbers of nasty comments, far more than more general-interest political blogs. The authors get attacked in the most objectifying ways, like commenters commenting on their "fuckability" no matter what serious topic they are trying to cover.

Most recently, a conservative blogger named Ann Althouse attacked Feministing founder Jessica Valenti for her participation in the aforementioned Clinton lunch. It seems she happened to be standing in the front row and was turned at an angle to the camera (as were the others near her), making the shaper of her breasts visible. Since in the worldview of those who attacked the liks of Susan B. Anthony back in the day, women should only succeed in the world based on their looks, and those who look good must be doing so only to get ahead, Jessica was savagely attacked by Althouse and her commenters for "flaunting" her body.

Well, Jessica Valenti has my eternal respect for being a real trailblazer. She puts up with a lot of abuse on her blog in order to expose young people to feminism. And now she is once again setting an example by not letting critics use her looks to silence her words while also not letting enemies make her ashamed of being attractive. Here's Jessica's take-no-prisoners strike back and another great response from another terrific blogger, Feministe.

On the other end of bad behavior we have another little hoopla about the same picture which happened to only include white bloggers. Peter Daou, who organized the event, invited black and Latino bloggers, who unfortunately couldn't attend. It's reasonable to point out the issue, but it opened the door for some people, envious they weren't invited, to harp on race to the detriment of everyone. Unfortunately, we have trouble separating real racial conversation from the tendency of a few people to bring up race every time they aren't personally given the attention they feel they deserve, as Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher says explains in reaction to one such critique.

I'm sad when a prominent figure tries to step into the netroots world and gets savaged from all sides for trivialities. It happened when Mark Warner threw his party at Yearly Kos that would raise no eyebrows in any corporate industry conference but had bloggers self-flagellating over whether they were being "bought". And now, under attack from the right with valiant people like Jessica Valenti defending themselves for being too pretty, we're "shooting ourselves in the foot," as Oliver Willis put it, not just by criticizing the "first black President" for not being concerned enough with racial diversity, but also by jumping on yet another influential public figure trying to reach out.

I'm sure 10 million bloggers and journalists are about to write this same thing, but I'm listening to Bill Clinton speak at the Democratic Convention and I'm just continually struck by how good a speaker he is. He makes me care. Whereas I was listening to John Kerry earlier, and I couldn't help but thinking, he makes me bored. (Bush, on the other hand, makes me sick.)

It's stupid that this matters. Kerry is very smart. I am sure he would do a great job as President - it's just that he's not nearly as engaging as a speaker. We should pick a President based on his policies, not based on his speaking skill, but we still live in the age of TV. And on TV, Bill Clinton is the undisputed master.

The Democrats should develop programs to help budding politicians improve their speaking skills. The moment someone decides to run for state rep, if they want to be President one day they need to start working on sounding like Bill Clinton. Create a thousand Clintons and we'd hardly ever lose. Or, let's work to fix the structure of our civic discourse so it ceases to be all about who sounds best on television.