Clinton's Wishes Don't Spoil PUMA's Fun
At around 7 p.m. on Sunday night, Representative Charlie Rangel walked out of a Sheraton ballroom in the heart of downtown Denver and told The Observer that Hillary Clinton had instructed him to spread the word to New York delegation to vote for Barack Obama.
This was very bad news for members of the Clinton-holdout group PUMA, or "Party Unity My Ass," whose members started gathering on the other side of town about an hour after Rangel made Clinton’s wishes clear.
In a flat, windswept part of Denver known, depending who you ask, as LODO, for lower downtown, or RINO, for River North, where the city’s yellow cab company once had their depot and where office and loft space now sit in the middle of parking lots and tall body-dumping grass, the PUMA women, and a smattering of PUMA men, held a premier of the anti-Obama movie, “The Audacity of Democracy.” Under pink and yellow neon lights at the sleek Fuel Café, the group’s organizers offered a respectable spread of sautéed spinach, prosciutto-wrapped dates, seasoned mushrooms, falafel, mushrooms and assorted salads, including one fattened with steak. The party had a cash bar, but it carried all sorts of top-shelf alcohol served by a handsome wait staff dressed seriously in culinary whites. A large contingent of foreign press, nearly outnumbering the Clinton loyalists, gave the proceedings an even greater air of sophistication.
A reporter from Le Monde interviewed Edwin Paytner, a round man who blogs as Texas Hill Country, for more than a half an hour. Two German reporters flanked Darragh Murphy, the founder of PumaPac, who has accused Obama supporters of killing bunnies as a scare tactic, scribbling her every word into notebooks. A glamorous Italian reporter talked sympathetically to a white-haired woman in a white Hillary t-shirt .
Taku Tsuchiya, a Japanese television reporter explained the intense international scrutiny.
“It’s interesting,” he said, “Because Obama’s popularity is declining right now and they might have something to do with it.”
Actually, probably not. But the small group of Clinton outliers boasted about all the attention they had scored nonetheless.
“Obviously we’re making some noise,” said Lynne Robinson, one such Clinton diehard, who lives in New Mexico. “You’re all here.”
That the press loves conflict and tension in a narrative is no secret, but what is less well known, and probably as relevant to all the press attention the PUMAs have garnered, is that some of the group’s leading voices proudly describe themselves as public relations professionals.
And Diane Mantouvalos, the tall and deeply tanned co-founder of JustSayNoDeal.com, Murphy, and Elizabeth Joyce, who edits a site called Hireheels.com (motto: “We adore shoes but we love Hillary”) all seemed to subscribe to the flirtatious school of flackery: eye contact studiously maintained, hands meaningfully squeezed. Physical assets went enhanced, not hidden. (Though some blemishes you just can’t hide. Joyce wore a slinky black dress that sparkled like glass in new asphalt, a black stiletto shoe on one foot, and an enormous ski-boot like cast on the other. She explained, “The day Hillary conceded, no, no, I mean suspended, a deer crossed in front of my path on a four-lane highway in rural New Hampshire, and I was thrown from the Harley Davidson. I was riding bee-atch. Just Say No Deal was born the next day.”)
As some of the more conservatively dressed PUMAs ate hummus, Andy Martin, who wrote the book “Obama: The Man Behind The Mask,” (“It’s kind of the bible for them,” he said) paid the three women several compliments on their appearance. “So, are you Irish?” he asked Joyce.
Some of the women sitting around a table in the back of the Fuel Café’s bar seemed less interested in the media and PUMA celebrities.
One of them, Billie Jo Conlee, from Walnut Creek, California, got up only to get another drink, though she did enjoy the compliments she received from her friends about her shirt, onto which she had painted an actual puma and written in black ballpoint ink, several times to make it sufficiently bold, the letters "HRC" inside a rhinestone heart. For the most part though, Conlee was angry, especially when she heard about Rangel’s comments only about an hour earlier.
“It makes me very upset,” she said. “We will vote for McCain, and it is going to break my heart.”
Joan Lipman, a theater director, also said she would support Clinton against the senator’s wishes. It was she said, a question of ethics, a subject upon which she considered herself an authority. “I should know,” she said, “I won the James F. Hornback ethical humanist of the year in 2007.”
For about an hour the women drank cocktails and explained to the press why they were not, not!, sore losers, but instead the last-ditch defenders of democracy who were equally appalled by the sexism they perceived Obama to have committed against Clinton and the short-circuiting of the nominating process (read: caucuses) which led to Obama’s victory.
Watching them drink and eat and chat and self promote from outside the kitchen’s swinging door, Josh Forcum, the café’s chef concluded, “I think it’s more about the ride than the outcome. They’re having a good time.”
Shortly after 9 pm, one of the organizers announced that the moment for the long-awaited, and much publicized, screening had arrived. Everyone filed into the back room with a high ceiling and a roughly 32-inch flat screen television facing ten rows of foldable seats, where the PUMAs sat for some time, growing restless as nothing happened on the screen, no matter how many buttons and jacks were pressed or prodded.
“They’re trying to make it work,” one elder-stateswoman PUMA member said after rising from her seat. “If everybody could just relax.”
To kill time, Murphy, dressed in a red gown, thanked all the PUMAs from all over the country for coming. “I’m not going to cry,” she said bravely.
Another few minutes went by. The director, Brad Mays, a shaggy man who looked something like Bruce Vilanch, stepped forward and explained to the impatient women, “I was just burning the disk like 40 minutes ago,” and offered some technical information about the television’s “ratios.” He warned the viewers that what they would ultimately see would be heavy. “Some of this will be like reading Marshall McLellan when it first came out,” he said. “Difficult to wrap your head around.”
.
POLITICAL DRAMAQUEEN, HILLARY RODDAM CLINTON, WAS DENIED AN OSCAR FOR BEST
ACTRESS IN THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN FOR HER “LANDING UNDER FIRE IN BOSNIA”
TALE. --- CHELSEA WAS ALSO DENIED FOR HER ROLE IN “YES, IT HAPPENED THAT WAY.”
.
THE AWARD IS GOING TO BARACK OBAMA FOR HIS STARRING ROLE IN “THE FAIRY TALE.”
BILL CLINTON WILL BE PRESENTING THE OSCAR TO OBAMA AT THE DENVER DNC.
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Um, that should be "paid the three women 'compliments,'" not "complements."
Bad enough the reporter can't spell; neither can the editors!
Great...middle aged...dopey women--crying in their beers... GET OVER IT! You lost!!!
'
POOR BILL CLINTON .... HE WANTS TO GET HIS EGO BACK.
Poor Bill Clinton was injured by the Democratic presidential campaign.
Poor Bill Clinton ... CRY FOR BILL CLINTON, AMERICA. His ego is crushed.
Poor Bill Clinton says that his 'race-baiting' comments were "misunderstood."
Poor Bill Clinton is being FORCED TO EAT CROW AT THE DNC. ... Obama is no Fairytale !
=============================================================
How exactly is it crying? It has been part of the convention process until the 80's to have an actual vote on the nomination. I'm no HRC fan but if memory serves me correctly JFK almost fought his way into the ballot as the VP in 1956 so keep in mind there is a history of insurrections in the party.
You mean the same Andy Martin (aka Andy Martin-Trigona), who's a "Vexatious litigant" in several state and federal courts, and named his 1986 State Senate campaign the "Anthony R. Martin-Trigona Congressional Campaign to Exterminate Jew Power in America." Not to mention a NewsMax writer with a reputation as an anti-Semite.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200703290011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Martin_(U.S._politician)
When is the media going to wake up and realize what a bunch of wackos and half-wits the Pumas are?
Does McCain actually plan on campaigning with Andy Martin, the Lyndon LaRouche supporters and 9/11 Truthers who give the Pumas their well deserved reputation for idiocy, or would he just like to take advantage of whatever irrational fear they can raise that Obabam's real name is Sotero?
It's going to come back to haunt him one way or another.
PUMAS are not wacko's. We are not racists. We are not idiotic.
Face it fearmongers..sexists, chauvenistic pigs we wont lose ROE V WADE, we wont see tax increases.. we wont see an end to the Iraq war.. We wont see our economy tumble out of its misery and we will not see BO as President of the USA.
We PUMAS represent a mass voting block. LARGER and MORE diverse then the kindergarten group Obama currently plays with. We dont need Barack Obama. HE NEEDS US.
and that feels good.
Party on.. and leave the sloppy beer with the sexist who like it so much.
I'll have my usual, Manhattan.
Pumas are patriots unlike Senator Obama. We care what happens in this country and that's why we are opposing him as the presumptive nominee. He cheated in the caucuses. It is documented in the film "We Will Not Be Silenced." He bought the votes of the super delegates in the states that Hillary won. He accepts lobbyist money through his bundlers. Only half of the $250 million dollars that he raised in the primaries came from small Internet donors. The other half came from bundlers representing law firms, the financial industry and others.
This should be a Democratic year, but it isn't because the DP and Senator Obama have gamed the system. The American people do not trust Obama and the polls reflect that.
With Obama as the nominee, we are all losers.
Is the MSM incapable of understanding that the major reason for disunity in the Democratic party is because of fraud? The election was rigged! Again! And the American people aren't putting up with it any more!! The DNC doesn't want to have the usual roll call vote that their own rules call for because Hillary could (and after all that has taken place in this nomination process) probably would WIN.
NO DAMNED MORE CORRUPTION !!! No more abuse of power at the expense of the American people!!
This is hysterical! PUMAs have proven to be phenomenally inept in their messaging, organizational and event production skills. From their rant-filled email "prowls," to their humiliating "convention" at the Airport Country Inn and their glitch-filled blogradio broadcasts, everything they do is strictly amateur-theater-league activism. But holding the world-premier of their overhyped half-a-documentary in the Denver boonies (on a 32" monitor, no less) and making the assembled press wait because the "director" was still mastering his disks during the cocktail hour -- well, that one may be untoppable.
I think the cafe chef got them dead to rights: For the PUMAtrices in Denver, “it’s more about the ride than the outcome." In their minds, they're media stars and "the Big Story" of the convention...when, in fact, the media views them as an almost comical footnote, a novelty, a curiosity and the sort of eccentric sideshow that is often the only relief a bored reporter can hope to find during a week of otherwise interminable dullness.
Look at Chris Matthews -- he used the PUMAs as a colorful background prop for nearly an hour today. Instant curbside casting...and you don't even have to pay them.
HalJordan
Pumas are a force because we care enough about our country to take a stand against the corrupt DP and Senator Obama. It matters to us that DP officials have preempted their own voters to select Obama.
Unlike Senator Obama, we cannot stand by while the Democratic nomination is manipulated and sold to the highest bidder. Buying super delegate votes and committing caucus fraud to become the presumptive nominee damages our democracy.
The Hillary Democrats are moving on---to John McCain. You see, this is what the Obama coalition of rich white liberals and racist blacks doesn't understand: the Hillary Democrats don't subscribe to the crackpot social causes of the new left; they never did. They're FDR Democrats, not LBJ Democrats. They have no interest in placating racist blacks, illegal immigrants, Islamists, gay activists, environuts, etc. They're in it for good jobs, for fair taxation of the wealthy, for healthcare, and for proper regulation of industry.
The Obama constituents tried to pull the same scam in 1976 with Jimmy Carter, and the result was the so-called Reagan Revolution, which, contrary to popular belief, was fueled not by hardline conservatives but by disaffected white Democrats (the "Reagan Democrats") who rightly recognized that the party had veered from its traditional focus on working- and middle-class issues and become beholden to the quixotic social causes of the Harvard-Hollywood set. And although Reagan's fiscal policy did the working-class whites no favors, their Republican votes succeeded in sending a message to the Democratic party. That message was heard in 1992, when Clinton distanced himself from Carter and LBJ and declared his intention to bring the party back to its historical base, working- and middle-class people.
Now, 16 years later, the social liberals have apparently forgotten the lessons of Jimmy Carter. Thank goodness that the rest of us haven't.
PUMA!
McCain '08
Hillary '12
PUMAs are a legend in their own minds.
They are an effect, not a cause. Silly, selfish people who have repackaged their personal disappointment as a "crusade to save Democracy." How charmingly pompous.
This is hysterical! PUMAs have proven to be phenomenally inept in their messaging, organizational and event production skills. From their rant-filled email "prowls," to their humiliating "convention" at the Airport Country Inn and their glitch-filled blogradio broadcasts, everything they do is strictly amateur-theater-league activism. But holding the world-premier of their overhyped half-a-documentary in the Denver boonies (on a 32" monitor, no less) and making the assembled press wait because the "director" was still mastering his disks during the cocktail hour -- well, that one may be untoppable.
I think the cafe chef got them dead to rights: For the PUMAtrices in Denver, “it’s more about the ride than the outcome." In their minds, they're media stars and "the Big Story" of the convention...when, in fact, the media views them as an almost comical footnote, a novelty, a curiosity and the sort of eccentric sideshow that is often the only relief a bored reporter can hope to find during a week of otherwise interminable dullness.
Look at Chris Matthews -- he used the PUMAs as a colorful background prop for nearly an hour today. Instant curbside casting...and you don't even have to pay them.
"They're FDR Democrats, not LBJ Democrats. They have no interest in placating racist blacks, illegal immigrants, Islamists, gay activists, environuts, etc."
Nope, sorry. You're a Republican who really wanted to vote for a woman...and now you're just jacked that you can't.
No actual Democrat could formulate the phrase you typed, or make the FDR/LBJ comparison with a straight face.
Pompous - A perfect word that describes Senator Obama. Country comes before party when Obama is the presumptive nominee.
Hello - President McCain
"Country before party." You guys are already wearing that one out.
Try "Grievance uber alles." It's a better fit.
If you saw someone robbing a bank, would you just stand by and do nothing? We saw this nomination gamed by Senator Obama and the DP leaders. Caucus delegate votes illegally given to Obama through fraud and intimidation. Super delegates bought and paid for by Obama, Pelosi, Dean, Hoyer, and democratic PACS. You're damn right, we are going to stand up to this cheating. Many Americans have fought and died to preserve our voting rights, a system of one person, one vote. The party leaders and Senator Obama have dishonored their own voters.
I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary but these people who won't get over it and vow they're going to vote for McSame are morons! What good would that do? Four more years of Bushism? They are compounding a disaster. They couldn't possibly love their country. Who needs them? Let these idiots join the Republiscum. Or let them start their own party.
Spare me the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" hooey about standing up for the rights of the voters. Hillary Clinton -- arguably the most powerful politician in America -- ran as dirty a campaign as anyone else, with mudslinging surrogates, backstabbing praise for John McCain's leadership qualifications, and her own rather creative and hypocritical efforts to game the Michigan and Florida votes and the RBC meeting. In the end, even her OWN representatives on the RBC sided against her.
PUMAs (and ALL Democrats) have some very legitimate beefs about the byzantine and patchwork primary process, as well as the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that has defined "party politics" for 200 years. But the assertion that the Clintons (of "Arkansas Mafia" fame) were somehow bushwhacked and victimized by a Conspiracy of Dark Forces is absurd on its face.
I CANT BELIEVE HOW YOU MADE SUNDAY NIGHT LOOK LIKE IT WAS A JOKE~ NOTHING ABOUT THIS SHOULD BE TAKEN WITH SUCH DISREGARD! YOUR REPORT OF US AS IMPATIENT WOMEN BECAUSE OF THE TECH DIFFICULTIES IS AN ABSURD LIE! WHY DIDN'T YOU REPORT ABOUT THE WOMAN FROM TEXAS THAT WAS THERE WHO SPOKE ABOUT HOW SHE AND THE 2 OTHERS THAT WITH HER HAD WITNESSED THE FRAUD RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES WHEN THE VOTES WERE STOLEN!!! AFTER WHAT WE SAW DOCUMENTED FOR CAUCUS FRAUD IN DIFFERENT STATES ONLY CONFIRMS WHY WE ARE PUMA!! AND ANYONE IMPATIENT WAS ONLY DO TO THE SERIOUSNESS OF THIS BEING REPORTED!!! [WHICH YOU OBVIOUSLY BLEW!!!] SOME WERE JUSTLY UPSET BECAUSE WE HAVE INTERNATIONAL REPORTING ON US WHEN WE NEED OUR OWN NATION'S MEDIA TO TELL THE TRUTH AND DO HONEST REPORTING~ WHICH I SEE YOU ALSO CAN'T REPORT~ MURPHY SHOWED UP IN A RED DRESS AND YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE TO KILL TIME SHE CHANGED AND POPPED OUT TO GIVE US A SPEECH TO SAVE THE DAY!! I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE YOUR JOB! YOU STINK REPORTING WHAT TYPE OF PEOPLE WE REALLY ARE FROM THE EAST COAST OF ATLANTIC CITY TO WEST COAST OF OAKLAND CALIFORNIA, AND INFACT THE WOMAN I AM ROOMING WITH THAT YOU REPORTED ON, BILLIE JO, AS YOU KNOW WAS FROM CALIFORNIA, YOU ASKED HER ABOUT HER SHIRT WHEN YOU COULD HAVE ASKED SO MANY MORE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS! YOU REPORT ON HER SHIRT? COME ON~ YOU CALL THIS REPORTING????? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HER TELLING YOU WHY SHE TRAVELED TO DENVER AND WHAT SHE SAID ABOUT THE DNC? WHY DIDNT YOU MEET OTHER PUMAS LIKE MYSELF THAT CAME FROM THE EAST COAST OF THE SHORES? GOSH YOU COULD HAVE REALLY WROTE A GREAT PEICE~ THIS IS SUCH LAME REPORTING!! BUT MAYBE YOUR EDITOR ALSO MAY HAVE CUT THE TRUTH AS THE REST OF OUR OWN NATIONS MEDIA EXCEPT FOR HANNITY ON FOX~ HE HAS THE GUTS TO TELL THE REAL TRUTH AND PRESENT IT AS IT IS~ YOU ALL COULD LEARN SOMETHING FROM HIM!! I GUESS YOU WONT POST MY RESPONSE EITHER~ I HOPE I AM WRONG! AS I SAID, LAME, VERY LAME~
SOUTHJERSEYPUMA~
that's fine... except in 1956 the Repukes hadn't come near as close to destroying the Constitution and the American Middle Class as they have now... oh yeah, and they also hadn't yet assembled a MSM Goebbels Wurlitzer machine, nor had they staged "another Pearl Harbor-like" event to cow the American Sheeple into line with the whole Re-Feudilization thing.
HRC is a corporate whore. So is B.O., but at least he responded to the grass roots masses. (most customers prefer the prostitute who is the better actor). But now he may have thrown all his goodwill away by choosing another corporate whore as his veep. Now as more Americans fall into bancruptcy, the repukes can point to Biden's legislation on behalf of the credit card industry.
This convention should be about bashing republican policies for 4 days, in a way that makes it difficult for the MSM mediawhores to spin. Yeah, Cheney and Chicken George aren't running but so what? There are plenty of NeoCon scum left to remind folks of how we got from a $200B surplus to a 1/2 $Trillion deficit, and managed to kill 4500 GI's, 1 million Iraqi citizens, gutted the constitution, destroyed the middle class, became a banana republic, all while making the 1% Club a gajillion dollars richer. People are Pissed Off, and they don't need bromides like last night's convention. Please don't tell me HRC would have played it any differently. The DLC's fingerprints were all over that trainwreck.
God help us all...
You know what the PUMA women strike me as? BAD MOTHERS. They don't give a flying frak about the future of their children-- just their own hurt pride. They make me sick, and I hope when they vote McCain in and he re-instes the draft, they might sing a different tune when their children come back from Iraq in body bags.
No, you're not fear mongers or racists. Just bad mothers.
You're an idiot, and your whining makes you look even more foolish. Stop lying and STOP CALLING YOURSELF A DEMOCRAT! You're a Republican and damned proud of it.
Seamus Artaud (not verified) says:
When is the media going to wake up? I agree. You think it is a joke and really don't want to look at the real issues. Since when in America do we codone these type of actions in our political process?
http://wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/video/index.htm
Funny video huh?
More officials being bought and paid for
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPoV4diMjk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a593lfawFBU
Enough is enough. You childish reporting should be in a supermarket tabloid. Get off you lazy ass and start doing your job.
So, what did this so-called 'reporter' find out from the movie itself, 'The Audacity of Democracy'? If Mr Horowitz bothered to get his eyes off the food and finery he saw, he would have learned something more about the extensive fraud, theft, corruption that transpired in some states' caucuses, which forms a large basis for the disgruntlement of PUMAs with the Obama-DNC camp - Obama 'won' more delegates (but not the popular vote or the required number of delegates for the nomination) by cheating in and gaming the caucus system.
When will you folks start doing your jobs as real reporters, and not just gossips, please?
The PUMAs need not be an organized nationwide movement with polished media productions. They need only take care of business when the curtain is drawn in November.
Have your revenge against Obama and his coalition of rich liberal elitists and racist blacks! If you think those people care about working- and middle-class whites, you're a fool.
Remember when they shamelessly accused the Clintons of racism in South Carolina? This after the Clintons had pandered to these people for 15 years!
Remember when Obama disgracefully implied that Hillary Clinton's LBJ comment was a swipe at MLK?
Remember when Obama refused to denounce Jeremiah Wright but willingly skewered his own grandmother in an effort to tell whites they had no right to be outraged by Wright?
Remember when the liberal media ran Hillary out of the race because they were dead set upon electing a black at all costs?
Remember when the blacks who formerly lionized the Clintons suddenly dumped them as soon as they had a chance to vote for a "brotha"?
VOTE McCAIN IN NOVEMBER!
Let the Fifth Avenue liberals understand that this is the party of the working and middle class, NOT the Harvard-Hollywood set of silver-spoon kids and racist blacks!