Hillary Should Denounce Steinem

During a speech this weekend described in a shocking article in The Observer, Gloria Steinem said some terrible things on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign:

"Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], 'What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?'" . . . "I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don't think so."

Steinem got even more anti-military from there:

"I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn't been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn't even play war games as a kid. It's a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting."

Steinem wonders why military service should be seen as a qualification for taking office. She diminishes, absurdly, the power of military service to both strengthen character and to make one more qualified to send troops into battle as commander-in-chief. She reduces military service to "being trained to kill."

She also says, in a lame, competitive remark minimizing the obstacles facing people of color and the poor: "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." (This was a retread of her condescending, alienating elect-Hillary-'cause-you-OWE-us!" New York Times op-ed.)

Essentially, she dismissed the civil rights movement and mocked the military, and in particular, John McCain, one of our great American heroes.

So, how did Hillary react to this appalling speech?

An update to the Observer article reads: "The Clinton campaign sends over the following statement from Howard Wolfson: "Senator Clinton has repeatedly praised Senator McCain's courage and service to our country. These comments certainly do not represent her thinking in any way. Senator Clinton intends to have a respectful debate with Senator McCain on the issues."

Not good enough.

We're no Elisabeth Hasslebeck fan, but her comments on this morning's View (video on Jezebel) about how Steinem was way out of line were satisfying, as was this Democratic Underground blog post, headline: "I love Gloria Steinem, but this was bad."

Clinton pressured Obama to both reject and denounce the unsolicited support of the anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. Why isn't Clinton speaking out against Steinem's polarizing rant?