Bob's Blog

Ann Althouse is always saving us from having to read the New York Times or watch the Sunday "news" shows. Today it it the latter:

Flowers in the sewer — the misogyny of the disgust for Bill Clinton's lover.
On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd was interviewing Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta:
CHUCK TODD: Is your goal of this debate is to get under his skin? Is that why you gave Mark Cuban a ticket right in the front row?

JOHN PODESTA: No, I think Mark Cuban is one of the business leaders who was never involved in partisan politics who's endorsed Hillary because he thinks she'll do better for the-- for the economy. I think that, you know, you saw his reaction, which is to do his favorite sport, which is to dive in the sewer and go for a swim.

Trump's reaction, you remember, was "Perhaps I will put Gennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" Now, I have a feminist problem with Trump's remark, one that I haven't seen anyone else notice, and that is the idea that he can "put" the woman where he likes. Flowers is a person, not an object — like a vase of flowers — but Flowers has already responded positively to the notion of getting placed in front of Hillary.*

So let me move on to the feminist problem I have with what Podesta said. He says the name, Mark Cuban, and vaunts him as a business leader who is above politics, but he won't say the name of the woman and he speaks of her as a creature of the sewer.

Todd pushes him: "You said-- you referred to diving into the sewer, so you believe that inviting Gennifer Flowers is diving into the sewer?" And Podesta has the smarts to resist further disrespecting the woman. But later, there's a panel, and one of the participants is Stephanie Cutter (who was Obama's deputy campaign manager in 2012 and who helped John Kerry prepare for debates in 2004). Todd asks her about "the idea of gamesmanship, which is the Clinton Campaign deciding to put Mark Cuban in the front row," and the response had me shouting at the TV:
STEPHANIE CUTTER: ... What Clinton and Trump are doing are trying to throw each other off their game. The difference is Hillary Clinton is doing it with a legitimate businessman, also, a celebrity. And as John Podesta put it earlier on your show, Trump is just jumping right down in the sewer and swimming in it by inviting Gennifer Flowers.
The man is "legitimate," and the woman is a "sewer."

Chuck Todd turned to another panelist, Steve Schmidt (a senior adviser to John McCain in 2008).
STEVE SCHMIDT: [The tactic of inviting Cuban] was clearly designed to provoke Donald Trump and it provoked Donald Trump, it provoked Donald Trump into going down the Gennifer Flowers rabbit hole....
The Gennifer Flowers rabbit hole?! Don't call a woman a "hole." Don't speak of a human being as a lower animal, a rodent. Whatever these people want to say about Trump, they should say it about Trump, but they instinctively jumped to express disgust toward the woman — who's really just a bystander to the pre-debate mind-games. Is this misogyny? The argument that it is not depends on the idea that the disgust is with sexuality — what happens when the man and the woman — Bill and Gennifer — get together and not with the woman herself. But the instinct — in both Podesta and Cutter — was to take the man out of the picture. Bill, like Mark Cuban, is legitimate. That horrible woman over there should be treated as a nonentity — down in a hole, there in the excrement, a rodent, a filthy pest. Anyone who would name her or treat her with equal dignity has himself fallen down into the sewer with her — "swimming in it," swimming in shit.

Being on the side of the female candidate does not absolve you of misogyny. It blinds you to it.

Roger L. Simon doesn't want to follow Trump's lead on dealing with Muslims, because that would "violate the principles of our nation." So what ideas does Simon put forth at PJ Media?

Most of all, we must outlaw Sharia. Sharia law, with its institutionalized doctrinal misogyny and homophobia as well as its primacy of mosque over state (not to mention cruel and unusual punishments for adultery, etc.), is completely inconsistent with our Constitution and the values of our country and Western civilization. Further, adherence to Sharia encourages the lack of assimilation, the self-ghettoization, endemic to much of our Muslim population. This resistance to assimilation creates insular communities that form the equivalent of petri dishes for jihadist terror. This must be ended if Muslims are to stay here as participating members of our society.

When immigrants arrive, they must be made aware of all this explicitly and at length and pledge in writing not to observe Sharia, if they wish to remain in America. This should be accompanied by a warning that those who continue to follow Sharia will be summarily expelled from the U.S. Yes, a number will lie, but once a few have been sent home, the message will get across.

Further, any mosques that preach the primacy of Sharia should be closed down as in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

As a precedent, the Communist Party was made illegal in the United States because it advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Sharia-based Islam is at least as bad and arguably worse in its calls for world domination through jihad.

Those Muslims who follow the laws of our country should be free to stay here and welcomed into our communities, not into Islamic ghettoes like Hamtramck. Unfortunately, only a small number of Muslims so far have shown themselves to be true "moderates" able to stand up overtly to the jihadists. Perhaps some stringent legislation could encourage more to come out. At the very least, if we are truly strict with our vetting process, we can all feel more comfortable with those that are here -- and they with us.

Sounds like Trump to me!

Do you believe all cultures are equal? Abraham Miller writes at American Spectator,

Large numbers of Muslims have not acculturated into Western society. Our secular values, our historical concerns for individual liberty, and individual freedom stand at variance with a culture based on submission, misogyny, and triumphalism.

...Can German democracy survive when a segment of its citizenry believes that women are inferior beings, that gays are sinners whose fate should be determined by the Sharia, that insulting the Prophet of Islam justifies murder, and that given a choice between the values of German constitutional democracy and Islam, they must choose Islam?

...The Middle East refugee problem is not Europe's problem, as a New York Times headline tells us. It is Islam’s problem. It is a manifest failure of Islam to evolve beyond its desert roots that has produced strife from Africa to the Maghreb to the Tigris/Euphrates. It is as if Islam were now experiencing the Christian wars of the early Reformation and expecting the Christian West to rescue it from itself.

This is not an argument for failing to exercise compassion, but to recognize that compassion and permanent resettlement are not one and the same. The Middle East refugee problem should not be the reason for the West's commission of political and cultural suicide. In too many parts of Europe, there is a discussion of one country, two different worlds, to describe the parallel and separate society Muslims have created in Western culture in order to further their own culture.

Cultural equality is a myth fostered by a multicultural vision that exists mostly in college classrooms. A culture of repression is not equal to a culture of tolerance, unless one is willing not to see tolerance as a virtue.

In speaking of the refugee problem, President Obama has appealed to our historic roots as a nation of immigrants. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, and between 1880 and 1920 we received, almost without restriction, all those that Europe sent to us, whether Sicilian Catholics, Scandinavian Protestants, or the Christian Orthodox of Eastern Europe. Despite their differences, they had one thing in common. They did not just yearn to come to America; they yearned to be Americans.

No nation can afford to open its doors to those who choose to be a people apart, absorbing the largess of a society, including its welfare, medical care, and education, while seeking to establish a parallel world. That’s not an immigration policy that advances a culture. It is one that causes its disintegration.

Read more here.