Hillary Clinton's Al Gore problem

Even aside from propping up the oligarchy, purely as a campaigner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have two of the same problems as then Vice-President Al Gore did in 2000.

The first is that she, and her supporters, give the impression that she thinks she is owed victory, simply because it's her turn. When the fate of people who work for a living is center stage, coming across as entitled is bad politics.

Outrageously offensive comments by feminist icon Gloria Steinem and another former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, both supporters of Mrs. Clinton, illustrate that. Both are upset that young women overwhelmingly support Clinton's primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders. Steinem said that young women only supported Sanders to get boys. Albright said that a "special place in hell" was reserved for females who supported Clinton's opponent (some argue that there's a special place in hell reserved for Albright herself).

Their "feminist" message is that young women should shut up, turn their brains off and do what their (feminist) elders command them to. Does their idea of feminism want to replace patriarchy with matriarchy or with meritocracy? Seems like they are hijacking feminism to push their partisan agendas.

The second, and it's really related to the first, is that Clinton and Gore both suffer from what the French call syndrome de premier de classe, the smartest kid in the room syndrome. They are both extremely intelligent people. They think that alone is enough.

Being intelligent and well-versed on key issues is very important to being president. We've seen the disaster of presidents who aren't and end up being manipulated by their inner circle.

At the same time, we've also seen extremely intelligent presidents get themselves into trouble because either they were borderline sociopaths (Nixon) or they grew up thinking their intelligence gave them impunity (Bill Clinton).

Politics and governing are not school exams where the smartest person always come out on top. But politics does have one similarity with school: no one likes the person who thinks they're entitled.

'Radical feminist' nuns

It's no secret that the Catholic Church is hemorrhaging members in much of the western world and it being an out of touch organization run exclusively by theoretically celibate old men, it's little wonder why.

A good example of this came recently when the Vatican slammed a group for promoting 'radical feminism.' The organization slammed was not Planned Parenthood or NOW but... a group of nuns.

The nuns' grave sin is related to social issues. It's not that they are promoting women's or gay rights, but  it seems that they are complicit in promoting decent treatment for such pariahs. The nuns argue such 'radical' positions as in favor of the ordination of women and ministering to gay people.

In an NPR interview, Sister Simone Campbell chastised the priorities men running the institution, pointing out that those things "are big issues, but they aren't at the heart of the faith." In other words (my words), Church leaders are obsessed with sex and keeping women submissive.

And Sister Campbell offered wise counsel to her judgmental co-religioners: "When you don't work every day with people who live on the margins of our society, it's much easier to make easy statements about who's right and who's wrong."

Update: As Garry Wills opines in The New York Review of Books, the nuns are interested in the powerless. The bishops are just interested in power. 

Further update: A reader pointed out this story where a Catholic school teacher was fired for receiving fertility treatments. So it's not enough to pro-create within the bounds of a faithful heterosexual marriage. Apparently there is a 'right' and 'wrong' way to do it... just like everything else the Church tries to micromanage.