A crowd cheers as they watch election returns for Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton at the campaign headquarters, January 8 in Manchester, New Hampshire.

It was probably to be expected that the first presidential race in which a woman emerged as a serious contender would raise issues of misogyny in politics. Such a debate has raged for months around Senator Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and Democratic front-runner--intensifying recently when Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC program “Hardball,“ came under fire for an allegedly offensive remark about Clinton.
Matthews’s offense was to state that Clinton ultimately owed her political career to the sympathy she got in the late 1990s as the wronged wife of an adulterous husband: “Let’s not forget, and I’ll be brutal, the reason she’s a US senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner, is that her husband messed around.“
The reaction was “brutal,“ indeed. The heads of several feminist groups, including the National Organization for Women, sent a joint letter of protest to Steve Capus, president of NBC News. Members of the National Women’s Political Caucus picketed the Washington offices of NBC (which owns MSNBC). Matthews initially defended his remarks; a week later, reportedly under pressure from his bosses, he apologized.
Matthews’s words were undoubtedly harsh. Yet there is little doubt that Clinton’s election to the Senate in 2000 was propelled at least partly by sympathy, as well as admiration for the grace under fire she had shown during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In June 2007, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd even compared Clinton to television mob wife Carmela Soprano, who “was rewarded with jewels, watches, and building permits for her husband’s infidelities“--a parallel that does, arguably, have a whiff of sexism about it.
To Clinton’s supporters, Matthews’s remark is only one example of rampant sexism directed at the former first lady--by Matthews himself (he has referred to Clinton as “witchy“ and “cold“), by other pundits, and by voters. In November, a woman at a campaign meeting in South Carolina asked Senator John McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?“
In the eyes of many feminists, the lack of outrage at this incident--caught on camera and widely viewed on YouTube--reveals a deplorable acceptance of misogyny.
Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, has been quoted as saying that the reaction to the “n-word“ being used about a black candidate would have been quite different.
But such analogies are flawed because race and gender are not the same. Should the “b-word“ be likened to racial slurs, or to gender-specific insults that could be directed at a male candidate, such as “bastard“ or worse?
Hillary Clinton has always been a polarizing figure: “Saint Hillary“ to some, the Wicked Witch of the West Wing to others; an altruistic crusader for social justice or a power-hungry Mussolini in skirts. There is no question that gender was a large factor both in Hillary-hatred and in Hillary-worship.
But Clinton is hardly the only polarizing figure in contemporary American politics, or the only target of visceral, irrational hate out of all proportion to the politician’s actual faults. Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, and George W. Bush have all been in that boat.
To some extent, the language of hate is inevitably colored by gender, since our perceptions of individuals are, too. But this is more of a two-way street than most feminists are willing to admit. Since we habitually equate sexism with anti-female attitudes, gender-specific negativity directed at men tends to fly under the anti-sexist radar.
Take the accusations of Vietnam-era draft-dodging, which have dogged both Bush and Bill Clinton. Not only is this an issue for male politicians only, it is also closely related to notions of military valor as a masculine virtue.
Moreover, for a female candidate, gender can be an advantage as well as an obstacle. A male candidate seen as too aggressive toward a female opponent can be easily made to look like a bully.
Clinton herself played this card in her 2000 Senate race against Representative Rick Lazio after he walked up to her during a debate and urged her to sign a pledge to stop raising and spending soft money--a move that would not have raised any eyebrows if another man had been on the receiving end.
There is no question that sexism exists; outright woman-hating thrives as well in some dark corners of the Internet (and man-hating in others).
But women are not helped by exaggerated claims of rampant misogyny permeating the cultural mainstream. Perhaps a more productive pursuit would be to examine and challenge the culture of hate that cuts across gender lines, and truly permeates our political culture.
BOSTON.COM

The file photo dated May 11, 2005 shows former Indonesian president Suharto waving to journalists as he leaves a hospital in Jakarta.

Responsible for shaping modern Indonesia, Haji Muhammad Suharto was known as the “smiling general,“ but his legacy as one of the great Cold War era strongmen was built on corruption and a reign of violence that left hundreds of thousands dead.
He died on January 27 in hospital at the age of 86 after being treated for liver, heart and lung disease. He had been admitted to hospital on January 4 suffering from anemia.
He had already been weakened by strokes in recent years that gave him brain damage and impaired speech but prevented him from being put on trial.
Suharto rose to power by crushing an alleged communist uprising in 1965 after his political rivals were mysteriously eliminated.
His iron-fist rule went unchallenged until widespread protests in 1998, when his downfall ushered democracy into the world’s fourth largest nation.
Born into a poor rice-farming family on Java island in 1921, Suharto received military training first in the Dutch colonial army and then in a collaborationist unit set up by Japanese occupiers in World War II.
He later joined the Indonesian army that resisted Dutch efforts to regain control over its former colony.
After Indonesia became independent in 1949, Suharto climbed the ranks as a favorite of founding President Sukarno, eventually becoming a five-star general.
A murky military rebellion in 1965 saw his fellow senior officers killed, allowing Suharto to assert his control of the armed forces before easing Sukarno from power.
It was during that period that Suharto embarked on a nationwide purge of alleged communists overseen by his powerful military. Human rights groups estimate anywhere between 500,000 to a million people were killed.
Although Indonesia is still struggling to come to terms with the bloodletting and graft of the Suharto era, many ordinary people also remember the drastic improvements in quality of life experienced under their “father of development.“
Before financial meltdown put the brakes on the country’s booming economy, Western-educated financial experts helped transform Indonesia from a Southeast Asian backwater into a key regional player, replete with gleaming skyscrapers and soaring toll roads. But the price of success was high.
In 1975, his troops invaded the territory of East Timor--with the tacit support of Western allies keen to prop up an anti-communist leader.
The ensuing occupation lasted more than two decades and killed more than 100,000 people, according to human rights groups. His aim was to keep the sprawling Indonesian archipelago together.
Separatist rebellions were quickly crushed, while democratic elections were rigged to re-elect Suharto year after year. Political opponents were routinely kidnapped and tortured.
As billions of dollars of foreign investment poured in to oil-rich Indonesia’s transformed economy, huge sums were siphoned off by Suharto’s cronies and family, who became lavish spenders in a poor country--oblivious to growing resentment among its 210 million people.
In his final years, Suharto lived to witness the dismantling of his regime. Far-flung regions once subdued by force, erupted into violence. East Timor gained independence in 2002 and two years later Indonesians appointed their first democratically elected president.
Many hoped Suharto’s wrongs would be exposed in court. Instead, his children were prosecuted. Tommy Suharto, the youngest and the most flamboyant, was jailed for corruption.
CNN.COM

After strong-arm tactics backfire, Moscow finds smarter ways to extend its influence abroad.
Russians can be forgiven for a little nostalgia. Not long ago, their country commanded a worldwide empire.
Yet in the past 15 years, their homeland has lost much of its geopolitical clout. No surprise, then, that the newly rich Russia should hanker to restore its muscle, and not just in its old Soviet backyard.
As Tatyana Parkhalina, director of the Moscow-based Center for European Security, describes the government’s current attitude, “Russia wants to send the world a message: ’We are a superpower--we are still here!’ “
Many of Russia’s neighbors have already borne the brunt of Moscow’s efforts to reassert itself. Last year, after a spy row with Georgia, Russia cut off all rail and air links and embargoed Georgian products.
Estonia’s embassy in Moscow was raided by Kremlin-backed thugs after a spat over the removal of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn.
And both Ukraine and Belarus found their oil and gas supplies suspended when they refused Russian price hikes. But all these attempts to enforce Russia’s will backfired: both Georgians and Ukrainians recently re-elected their anti-Kremlin leaders. Even Belarus, once Russia’s closest ally, responded to Moscow’s squeeze by making overtures to Europe.
Now, it seems, the Kremlin has learned its lesson. Vladimir Putin’s latest power plays demonstrate greater subtlety, and his new tactics--trading gas supplies and international diplomatic backing for loyalty--are proving more effective.
Last week, for example, he traveled to Sofia to clinch a deal that will see a major new gas pipeline built through Bulgaria and ultimately on to the Balkans and Italy.
Bulgaria will get stable energy supplies--but will become dependent on a Russian pipeline. Serbia quickly signed up too, in no small part because Belgrade needs Moscow’s backing on Kosovo.
Indeed, Kosovo is set to become the latest showdown between Russia and the West when the breakaway Serbian republic declares its independence in the next few weeks.
Washington and Berlin have promised to support it, but Putin has insisted Belgrade must approve the deal--something Serbia’s current president has vowed never to do.
Behind Moscow’s position is an implicit threat: should the West hold firm, Russia could return the favor by ratcheting up separatist pressure in several pro-Western former Soviet states.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, denied last week that Moscow has any plans to recognize the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Yet both areas are already effectively Russian protectorates, policed by Russian troops.
While Moscow says it opposes the recognition of breakaway nations, it has been more than ready to use the threat of separatism as a strategic tool in the past.
Even if Moscow wins the showdown over Kosovo, it is likely to continue challenging what Putin has called the U.S.-dominated “unipolar world“.
To balance the West, Moscow, using its “two superpower assets, nuclear weapons and energy,“ has already established friendly relations with a growing coalition of disgruntled states like Venezuela, Iran and Syria. What’s next on the agenda?
One option would be to foment unrest among the sizable Russian populations in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine to help bring these states back into Moscow’s orbit.
Another would be to build the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, a loose alliance of Central Asian dictatorships plus Russia and China, into a powerful union.
NEWSWEEK.COM