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On Sundays, Gothamist runs opinion pieces on issues relevant to life in New York. The views expressed below are solely those of the author.
I had never thought that I would find myself coming to the defense of the junior Senator from New York. I am a Hillary hater and I don’t understand why more people on the left aren’t Clinton haters as well. There are literally dozens of politically shrewd people in the Democratic party who would make excellent Commanders-in-Chief.
That Hillary Clinton is a fascist sounds like name-calling but is fairly straightforward observation. I don’t use fascist in the sense that most dimwits use that word, meaning "someone who I don’t like who I disagree with." I mean the parallels between her and Mussolini are many and varied: the early flirtation with far-left socialism; the cult of personality; the us v. them "conspiracy" mentality; the use of cultural conservatism to further one’s personal career; the marketing of oneself as political savior; the virulent humorlessness; the acute partisanship.
Senator Clinton would make a terrible President because she’s a terrible human being. The last two horrible people to be President, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, left records that embarrassed their respective political parties for decades. She would no doubt do the same, and worse. For if Bill Clinton had a need to be liked, psychologically, Hillary Clinton only has a need to be liked politically. And once she’s ensconced in the (no doubt cigar-free) Oval Office, one can be sure that the horrors will begun. Am I the only one who can remember Clinton’s Attorney General claiming "full responsibility" for innocent women and children being burned alive, and then going on—not to prison—but to run for Governor of Florida?
But it pains me to say that there is a woman in America who is worse than Senator Clinton, and that woman is Cindy Sheehan. In the media’s ongoing attempts to assault anyone in power, they are giving air time to this terribly ugly malcontent. Earlier this week, not content to slam the President, Sheehan said, "I think [Clinton] is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys." I will not touch on the blatant sexism of that statement. But I wonder why anyone on earth should care what Cindy Sheehan has to say.
The woman’s claim to fame is that she lost a son in Iraq. This is not an accomplishment of any kind; even if it were, it is one sadly shared by thousands of other mothers. A mother’s role, in a biological sense, is to raise one’s children and keep them safe. She has not done so. A soldier’s role, in an organizational sense, is to follow orders and keep your mouth shut. She is speaking, implicitly, on his behalf. She is therefore a disgrace to motherhood and has made her son a disgrace to the armed forces.
Politics is often choosing between two evils. Hillary Clinton has raised a good deal of money, gotten herself elected to the Senate, and has written the best-selling novel Living History. Cindy Sheehan has failed in her natural role as a mother, an accomplishment not out of the reach of many stray cats. One doesn’t get much lesser than that.
"Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story" will be published by Ballantine in March. He edits Overheard in New York.
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"failed in her natural role as mother"
And you're accusing her of being sexist?
Dear Gothamist,
This new editorial feature every Sunday sucks.
Please stick to your old formula.
This Malice guy has the reasoning powers of a potted plant.
This retarded editorial sure made me like Overheardinnewyork.com a heck of a lot less. :-\
This is a BAD op-ed piece, i at first was all for some gothamist op-ed, but the logic in this piece is just downright non-existent and the arguments amount to little more than flame bait.
ew.
this is really bad, you guys.
This is worse than some pretty bad blogs on both the left and right wing ends of the political spectrum. Gothamist isn't exactly a place to go for solid writing or thoughtful content, but this is definitely a low.
I think it's supposed to be a joke, a sort of satire of sunday op/ed's in general,though the humor is very dry.
sexist, ill-informed, repulsive garbage. i think maybe you guys should re-think this whole op-ed thing.
i expected exactly this reaction! so i have two responses:
1. if you really think you can write something better, you are welcome to give it a shot.
2. the NYTimes editorials probably took at least a few weeks to get their groove on-- so let's all take a deep breath and give michael and the other opinionistas some time to catch their stride.
uh, no. how about we ban this writer from posting again. yes. let's give someone else a try.
i feel like i'm reading my alma mater's student newspaper oped page.
Anything that started off by outlining it's purpose would be better than this piece. Malice compares Clinton and Sheehan as if there is a choice to be made between them and even says "Politics is often choosing between two evils." Is this simply because Sheehan won't back Clinton unless she supports pulling out of Iraq? It's not as if Sheehan will be running for president. Why is there a choice to be made between the two? Especially for those of us (obviously including Malice) that don't like or support either of them. I don't get it.
1. That's really great logic: We publish a hopelessly juvenile, horribly written op-ed. We think it will make better writers want to write for us. C'mon guys!
2. The NY Times editorials probably didn't start off this badly.
This piece has all the logic of a homeless paranoid's cardboard sign.
I was in the mood for some Hillary bashing, and all I got was some right wing crazy talk.
Are you at Gothamist hoping to draw attention via the smoke coming off of these crazy flame-posts?
I agree..This is a piece of crap!
Lame, Jake! You can't excuse a bad piece of writing by telling us that we couldn't do better. (Most of us probably could in this case, but that's not a prerequisite for finding fault.)
It's one thing to run a strongly worded polemic, but quite another to run a piece so incoherent in its rage and hatred that it can't even come up with any supporting evidence. Disgraceful.
Well, Jake, your earlier correction that you guys are trolling for comments, not ad hits, certainly turned out to be accurate. It does leave me wondering, however: why, precisely, do you think that turning Gothamist into a cut-rate Slashdot (or really, in this case, usenet politics newsgroup) is a worthwhile goal?
People already know where to go if they want to hear complete idiots spew nonsense dressed up as political analysis. Gothamist stays in people's daily bookmark list because it provides something else. You fuck with that formula at your own risk: bullshit like this leaves me wondering why I'm not just paging through my print copy of Time Out NY, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that I'm not the only one.
If y'all are so desperate for a hit of 'online controversy' and 'debate' (ie: yet another forum for jackasses to yell at each other), why not just go all the way and create a dedicated site for it?
>There are literally dozens of politically shrewd people in the Democratic party who would make excellent Commanders-in-Chief.
My friends and I were having a similar discussion the other night. Whom do you consider to be good potential candidates?
(Pardon the bad link, above: that was supposed to be "complete idiots.")
A high quality op-ed piece has a well thought-out argument backed up by evidence. This piece has neither.
i'm going to have to go with rocco on this one. i'm all for bashing people. but how did it go from that to a right-wing shout out? unbelievable. though i can't blame you because you were right to put a disclaimer on it.
ptooie on the author.
I have to toss in my vote with Doctor Memory. Gothamist is in my bookmark for the "something else" (cool things happening in NYC, etc) quality that I can't get from the other blogs and news websites I read. I know where to go for political grenades in the form of polemics lobbed between the Right and Left. If I have to read through more diatribes, er "op-eds" to get to Jen's stories about penguins and such, I'm going to find myself reading Gothamist less and less.
I like pete's suggestion that this was an ill-fated attempt at satire. Let's collectively agree that this piece was meant to be sardonic--just another example of irony gone awry. This way, we can all move on and pretend like it never happened...
Just dump the whole editorial idea. I mean, come on, guys. Gothamist really can't be that hard up for content on the weekends. If there were a compelling reason for editorials here, then I'd be all for it. As it is, there is no reason, and I'd rather see fewer posts on the weekend than garbage like this. Heck, even idiotic tripe like Paris Hilton sightings in midtown would be better than this half-baked scheme.
Would somebody who links to an institute named after eminent conservative Barry Goldwater on his personal homepage really be posting an "ironic" commentary in this case? I can't dismiss this as a satire of badly thought-out op-eds. It just seems earnestly bad.
c'mon gothamist get your shit together. we don't read the content on this site for dim witted nonsense like this. this kind of crap may play on sites whose readers favor vico-rush and others of that ilk, but doesn't seem like its going over too well here.
c'mon gothamist get your act together. we don't read the content on this site for dim witted nonsense like this. this kind of crap may play on sites whose readers favor vico-rush and others of that ilk, but doesn't seem like its going over too well here.
c'mon gothamist get your act together. we don't read the content on this site for dim witted nonsense like this. this kind of crap may play on sites whose readers favor vico-rush and others of that ilk, but doesn't seem like its going over too well here.
I applaud Jake for his efforts to try to spice up Gothamist -- I think editorials would definately make an interesting read. I think everyone just needs to calm down...this contributor is just a total dipshit and wrote a truly stupid entry. Thanks a lot Malice!
Michael Malice should stick to what he's good at, namely, coming up with clever post titles on Overheard.
Like other posters in this thread, I come to Gothamist mainly to read about stuff that's happening in NYC, written in Jen's trademark light-hearted style. Even Garth Johnston's weekend posts were a bit too unGothamist-y for my tastes, but they were fine compared to this tripe. Who exactly was clamoring for weekend editorials anyway?
I say drop the "Opinionist" idea and just pad out the Saturday/Sunday content with "cool things to do this weekend" posts. They'll be appreciated a lot more.
Ugh.
Usually opinion pieces, even though one sided, tend to back up their rants with relevant facts and try not to be as hateful in tone as the crap 'Michael Malice' just posted.
How do you expect us to take what these posters say seriously if it’s just going to be one sided bashing?
What a bad start for the opinion section. I hope Gothamist just wanted to rattle some nerves to get people interested.
Oh, come now. This cat could come up with a more coherent argument.
only 6 days until next sunday-- if you have an opinionist piece that you want to write, please do get in touch with me so i can have it ready for sunday.
Malice, get your political history straight. Hillary is a liberal, shouldn't you be comparing her to Stalin, not Mussolini?
All the same, may Godwin smite you down...
let's give credit where credit is due, guys. malice is a fool, but the editors printed it.
Right on, Michael. I am as anti-war as one can reasonably be, but Sheehan's actions are motivated by either (reckless) emotion (which is in turn exploited by those of the radical left) or political conviction that existed well before her son died, not respect to her son's memory. Keep up the good work.