There are legitimate criticisms of Hillary Clinton's campaign for president, policy reasons around certain specific issues -- valid differences on meaningful policy matters. However, none of those criticisms are answered by supporting Joe Biden for president, which the media is so anxious to have occur.

Supporting Bernie Sanders? Yes. Supporting Biden? No.

And to Bernie Sanders' credit, he knows sexism when he sees it.

"I don't know that a man would be treated the same way that Hillary is," Sanders said. "So all that I can say is I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I admire her. I respect her. I like her. She and I have very different points of view on a number of issues."

That is valid criticism.

So let's discuss that other ism (actually the most ubiquitous ism), sexism, through the lens of one we white liberals see more clearly, racism.

Remember the infamous Lee Atwater interview about how initially racism was easy and clear to spot: "You start out....by saying "n*gger, n*gger," and you over time go from that to less obvious and deeply unconscious, abstract and personalized."

Same with sexism ... you go along on a submerging continuum: "Not all women, just this type of woman or just this woman."

White liberals, women and men, if we are honest, admit that we harbor unconscious racist tendencies. We try to see it, expunge it, and try to do better.

Atwater's full quote:

You start out in 1954 by saying “n*gger, n*gger, n*gger.” By 1968 you can't say “n*gger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously, sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “n*gger, n*gger.”

So men, white, black and others, need to acknowledge that they all have unconscious sexist tendencies. But far too many just don't even begin to see it, unlike their approach to racism.

And that those sexist attitudes, at least among liberals, no longer manifest themselves as "Hey, bitch, iron my shirt." But they do manifest themselves when they see her as "calculating" and a man as just "strategic." Or she is "manipulative" and a man is "persuasive." Or she is "cold and distant" when a man is simply firm.

Or she is "secretive" when, for example, Barack Obama was "discreet" and kept stuff "close to the vest."

She is "too defensive." She "needs to make this email scandal go away."

She "needs to apologize."

Really, the media needs to stop being so joyfully obsessive

The media needs to acknowledge they have blown this into another trivial, meaningless "gate": Hairgate, Travelgate, Vince Fostergate.

The mainstream media is both gleefully and self-righteously trying to find one "gate" after another to push open. They seem to think that is their job, being Hillary Clinton's personal opposition -- since Bernie Sanders won't stoop to do it the way they think it should be done.

The media is like an abusive boyfriend. If the coffee is too hot, it's bad, and if it's cold, even worse, and dinner should be on the table by 5 or, "Whoa, why are you rushing me to eat?"

It's all just an excuse.

If you don 't think that 45 years after the last great feminist movement, and women are still less than 19% of elected officials and less than 5% in top corporate jobs, if you think sexism has nothing to do with attacks on her because she is not only a woman, but the wrong
kind of woman, then you aren't really being honest with yourself.

P.S.
Well, you know, there actually is a great right wing conspiracy. And she is correct in viewing the press with jaundiced eye, because they are a pack of ravening hounds. You are not paranoid when you are being persecuted.

The emails are a scandal in the same way a unicorn is a horse.