by William Skink
Don’t let the snow outside fool you. The political season is heating up and social media is hopping.
Now, this may come as a shock, but not all social media activity is constructive discourse grappling objectively with the big issues we face as a nation. Luckily for us–and for Democracy–bloggers can become virtual hall monitors in order to identify and shame online abusers. One particular blogger even provided a post on how to “Feel the Bern Without Feeding the Beast”. From the link:
Fight this fight on policy, on questions over which candidate is more likely to advance the progressive agenda, and which best represents your values. I’d ask the most enthusiastic supporters of Bernie to lay off the politics of personal destruction that Senator Sanders would certainly ask you to stop.
What kind of abhorrent behavior necessitated this reasonable plea? Alas, nothing specific is provided as evidence in the post (not even a link), just the assurance from the blogger that his Twitter timeline is all misogyny toward Hillary:
I’m troubled by the misogynistic tone of their attacks on Secretary Clinton, their troubling ageism (which makes no sense incidentally), and their willingness to engage in the same kind of tactics we’d decry from Ted Cruz. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with unflattering photographs of Senator Clinton and accusations that are often not about the policy differences between the two candidates, but personal attacks that seem designed to obscure the real work Senator Clinton has done in her life on behalf of the disadvantaged.
Not wanting to just take one blogger’s word for this, I consulted another blogger, Indy columnist Dan Brooks, to see if he had anything to add and boy was I in luck. Dan had heard all about this bad behavior ascribed to a subset of Bernie Supporters known as “the Bernie Bro” so he went looking for evidence. You can read about what he discovered here.
Dan’s inquiry explores the political terrain Glenn Greenwald wrote about a week ago regarding the Bernie Bro smear campaign against Bernie Sanders. Why any self-proclaimed progressive blogger would want to waste time perpetuating this Sanders smear instead of pointing out why Hillary is NO GODDAMN PROGRESSIVE is beyond me.
Meanwhile, Madeleine Albright claims there is a special place in hell for women who don’t “help each other”:
Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary Clinton at an event in New Hampshire on Saturday, telling the crowd and voters in general: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”
Look on the bright side ladies, at least you won’t have a half million Iraqi children asking you why they had to die because I’m pretty sure the children that die from economic sanctions are the least likely to have their souls condemned to fiery perdition.
Will the self-appointed hall monitor of political decorum follow up his perpetuating of the Bernie Bro smear with a condemnation of one woman condemning other women to hell? Probably not. Let’s just hope for better theatrics, like Fonzie jumping the shark.