Sheehan, Sexism, and the DailyKos

I usually try to ignore the DailyKos, realizing that claims in the corporate media that it is a liberal or left blog are laughable. It is a forum for highly partisan, conservative and centrist Democrats. It really isn't much of a place for liberals like me or for people like myself who are not blindly partisan.

However, I had read about how many people there had trashed Cindy Sheehan when she tried to hold pro-war Democrats to the same standards as pro-war Republicans. Now, she is considering an independent run against Nancy Pelosi, if Pelosi does not live up to her responsibility to uphold and defend the constitution by starting impeachment hearings against Bush and Cheney.

I wanted to check out the responses. When someone challenges a pro-war Democrat, the Kos community tends to be hostile. Some have been admirable, most have been hostile, but others have been disturbing.

Rico had an excellent diary supporting Sheehan, but one of the comments who disagreed with him showed a typical bit of male-supremacist ideology when it dismisses female political views and activities as being all emotional.

And it's insulting to most of us to hold supporting Cindy's run for congress as a litmus test of the sincerity and intensity of our desire to end the war or even a remte clue to what any of us has laid on the line. In fact, I ssuspect most of us here don't think of Cindy as a traitor or anything remotely like that -- there are always a few extremists -- but rather an invaluable contributor who simply is letting her emotions rather than her brain lead her this time and won't accomplish anything useful in getting us closer to ending the war by this run.

Another commenter went directly to attacking her as a woman.

The more attention we give her the more she thrives in her lunacy. She's nothing more than an attention whore now, and that's sad. People should just ignore her, and she just might eventually go away and retire like she said she would.

Another DailyKos diarist posed a question as to whether Sheehan would be banned. A commenter went to the old “women just want attention” tactic.

I think 'sideshow' is an accurate description of Cindy's diary. As much as I admire her actions in standing up against the war and speaking her very powerful truth, I find her recent actions to be very passive-aggressive and attention-seeking.

Another Diarist posted on whether or not Sheehan can address local San Francisco issues. This diary posting was amusing, since most of the issues that were listed are dealt with by local government, not by Congress. Some of the commenters' statements were not so amusing.

A woman who does not follow the party line must be stupid or overly “emotional.”

Ms Sheehan never impressed me as being terribly bright. I may be wrong, it's probably elitist - but there it is.

We're where we are now because we weren't "elitist" enough to elect an intelligent President (among his many other faults).

Sheehan may or may not be a smart woman, but what bothers me is her 200-proof emotional response to every issue, every problem, every situation. She shoots off her mouth with all the accuracy of Dick Cheney in a quail field.

When men get involved in political actions, you don't read as much psuedo-psychoanalysis.

Of course, the majority of the people on the DailyKos site did not spew misogynist rhetoric. Most of them were just partisan hacks who will blindly follow any Democrat, no matter how awful. Pelosi's support of devastating corporate-controlled trade deals, her de facto and uncompromising pro-war stance, and Pelosi's fanatical opposition to impeachment mean nothing to them. For most DailyKos commenters, politics is like spectator sports. You cheer for the home team. The consequences for the country get drowned out by the cheering.

However, the misogynistic tone of some of the commenters on DailyKos reflect a tendency of a vocal minority of bloggers to use gender, sexual orientation, or race as a convenient weapon to silence those who disagree with them. If DailyKos actually were the liberal blog community the corporate media says it is, that weapon would be more likely to backfire.

The comments about Sheehan making decisions based exclusively on emotion are as absurd as they are sexist. It has been obvious for months now that independent, third party, and primary challenges are essential if progressives want to counter the right-wing agendas of Phonycrats like Nancy Pelosi. Without electoral challenges from the left, most Democrats will continue to take our votes, our time, and our money for granted, while pursuing a conservative political agenda.