Deg

It's okay not to like either of them. Is your problem with McCain that he is a man? No...it is that he has credibility issues for you. Nobody's first conclusion, if you don't like McCain, is that you are a misandrist.

It is perfectly reasonable to not support or vote for HRC on merit.

General comment to anyone who thinks they're reading my posts: Assume I will regard attempts to repeat my positions, assertions, etc as illiterate.

Disambiguating merit from prejudice is non-trivial. Consider the difference between McCain and Obama on religion.

McCain sought and happily and publicly accepted the open support of a pastor who has a history of controversial sermons and speeches on par with Jeremiah Wright. BUT Hagee is white and railed against minority blacks. Wright is black and inveighed against majority whites.

To claim that there isn't a racial component in the differentiated perceptions of the two pastors is to deny reality.

So too with HRC. You theoretically can oppose HRC "on merit" but its increadibly hard to assess that "merit" absent your existing gender based prejudices.

Deg:

As an atheist, I'm embarrassed by the extent to which religion plays a part in our national politics.

With regard to your specific point, I think the biggest difference is that Obama actually ATTENDED Wright's church for years, while McCain only received an endorsement from Hagee. Neither is great, but the difference in attention can, again, easily be explained by this difference. It is, as you say, non-trivial. Prejudice is the easy and sexy explanation, but it isn't necessarily the true answer.

Your last paragraph is just plain obnoxious. Many people, men and women alike, fault her enough for simply voting for the war that they would not vote for her. This mystical underpinning of all thought by entrenched sexism you write about is just Voodoo manipulation. "Vote for Hillary or you are a misogynist, even if you don't know it". It's ridiculous.

Are there people in America that wouldn't vote for Obama because of his color, or for Hillary because of her gender? Yes, but they are a tiny minority. A much smaller percentage, in fact, than of women who will vote for Hillary simply because she is a woman, regardless of politics. The same is true of blacks and Obama.

I'm still even grinding my teeth about this one. In a world without dual citizenship, you'd hope people would see the difference between the statements:

1) Differing nationalities does not divide a nation.

2) Differing nationalities does not divide nations.

So by your reasoning:

• If you are a member of a community, and one of its leaders says something you disagree with, you are MORE liable for that speech

than

• if you explictly seek the support of someone who is saying things you disagree with?

Sorry that's kind of like saying that all Iraqis are more guilty of attrocities in the desecration of the Blackwater employees in Faluja than those who joined the crowd explicitly to cheer.

That sort of illogic requires what engineers call "an out of band" explanation. And mysogyny and racism fit the symptoms we are seeing in the race.

Given the pervasiveness of both in our culture, the idea that they don't influence almost ALL that is perceived about these two candidates is at best naive. I would suggest that it is more insidious than that.

Don't listen 2 virtual people. We are basically dumbasses