I have gone on record as an author, a therapist, a professor, an expert courtroom witness–and an activist to document and oppose the ways in which false psychiatric diagnoses are used to stigmatize, even demonize people. But, I’ve never denied that mental illness exists. On the contrary. It is a formidable enemy and causes great human suffering.
Still, I am uncertain about how to describe certain political “crowd” behaviors that might be characterized as “mad,” cult-like, hysterical. In the Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami, quotes Elias Cannetti’s 1960 work about Crowds and Power. Cannetti believes that marching together gives people the “illusion of equality.” But Ajami views American pro-Obama crowds as behaving more and more like crowds on the Arab Street, with huge emotionality and faith in a Great Leader. Ajami states that the “politics of charisma wrecked Arab and Muslim societies.”
There are important reasons to vote for Obama and important reasons to vote for McCain. Neither candidate thrills me, both frighten me but for different reasons. But, what worries me even more than the candidates is the way in which so many Americans seem to have lost both their gravity and their sanity. They are behaving like drunken soccer fans or like ecstatic True Believers undergoing a religious transformation. During Obama’s acceptance speech 100 years ago in Denver, I saw people of all ages, both genders, and of every color, weeping, trembling, transfixed.
Pro-Obama grandmothers are behaving just like “bobby-soxers” once did at a Frank Sinatra or Elvis concert.
McCain-Palin supporters do not seem to be behaving in this way. Perhaps that is because they do not view McCain or Palin as Messiahs. I am not saying that Republican supporters are free of weird and tragic behaviors. Au contraire. A week ago today, I wrote about the young woman (a McCain supporter) who’d claimed she’d been attacked and mutilated by an angry, black, pro-Obama supporter. It was all a hoax, the woman clearly had “problems.”
But this was one individual, it was not an entire crowd; this was a young and powerless individual, not a successful and powerful one.
So, what are we to make of someone like my friend and colleague, the accomplished and hard-working Erica Jong, when she tells the Italian media that she has begun to somatize the election? Insomnia, back spasms and all? I’ve emailed her to find out if she really, honestly said this but as yet, have heard nothing back.
According to Jason Horowitz in the New York Observer, Jong told Corriere della Sera that an “Obama loss will spark the second American Civil War. Blood Will Run in the Streets.” Now where did I read something like that before? Oh yes, on September 5, 2008, nearly two months ago, I wrote about The Coming Civil War in America right here at Pajamas. I guess the piece has its secret admirers.
Jong allegedly told Corriere della Sera that her “fear that Obama might lose the election has become an obsession. A paralyzing terror. An anxious fever that keeps you awake at night.” She also mentions that her friends Naomi Wolf and Jane Fonda are “extremely worried that Obama will be sabotaged by Republican dirty tricks” and that it will lead to a “second American Civil War.”
Il Foglio’s New York based correspondent, Christian Rocca, has translated parts of the Jong interview into English. What is going on when Jong and her equally creative, accomplished, and wealthy friends (Ken Follett, Susan Cheever, Wolf, Fonda, Michael Chabon) claim that the Republican Party is causing a psycho-somatic “meltdown?”
According to Jong, Fonda says that she “cried all night and can’t cure (her) ailing back for all the stress.” Jong herself is also suffering from “back spasms” and has had to turn to “acupuncture and valium.” Jong is quoted as saying:
“It’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets…Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.”
Oh, Erica, say it isn’t so, tell me you were quoted out of context, tell me you took too much valium, tell me anything. What can it mean when smart, feminist women start acting like hysterical nineteenth century heroines? When they feel “victimized” even as their candidate appears to be winning?
Torture is what Muslim dictators do to Muslim dissidents, day in and day out. Reporters are routinely imprisoned or shot in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Iran –not in America. Muslim dissidents view their last, best hope as right here in the West, especially in America.
So, while I respect anyone’s right to vote and campaign for Obama it is important to keep gravitas alive.
Oh, and remember to keep the aspidistra flying as well.
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24 Comments
1. heather:(I posted this at Belmont Club, too)
You know, the most interesting question is: where do those huge Obama crowds come from, and what do they expect to receive from the Messiah???
Among African Americans, is it the fruit of years of hate sermons by such as the Rev Wright?
Is it the financial meltdown, especially among the elderly whose savings have vanished?
Is it a general opinion among the upwardly mobile African Americans that they are being held back by racism (at least partially resulting from affirmative action policies that have ignored basic education requirements; see Thomas Sowell’s writings).
Is it Isolationism’s resurgence, just a vast resentment over “the War”, which never goes away, and the concomitant responsibilities of being the world’s municipal policeman?
Is it a feeling that no matter what you do, you will never be as beautiful or as rich or as sparkling, as those people on TV??
Is it BOREDOM, a feeling that all that stuff you can buy is just not “enough”, that what you want is something more, ie HOPE and CHANGE?
Oct 31, 2008 - 12:15 pm 2. SeanLA:Oct 31, 2008 – 12:03 pm
Governor Palin said her son was off fighting a war somewhere to protect and enable the views of people like this?
Why? I am shocked to think she likes being treated the way she’s been treated by this country? Laughed at in her face on `nation wide’ TV? Hung in effigy and called art while the leaders effigy hangers go to jail?
Sarah Palin is too good for that. I agree with the secessionists of Alaska, and if they did and elected her president I would emigrate there in a second, and have nothing to do with protecting or defending Fonda or Jongs views.
My son will soon be of `military’ age, and you can bet your f’ing A** hes NOT going to fight for their right. Hes not going to fight for the rights of Jane Fonda, Jong or any of them. Let them sink, wear a veil, get stoned, literally and figuratively.
If a vote against Obama means civil war, and an end to this monster called the federal oppressor, then so be it.
I am loath to give one penny or drop of blood in defense of the people you quote or their ideas.
Oct 31, 2008 - 1:07 pm 3. Hev:Naomi Wolf has been saying equally nutty stuff, even going so far as to imply the 9/11 commission members said things they did not say, and that America is turning fascist, she’s suddenly a military expert. But this is from a woman who endorses the hijab as sexy, so what more can be said about her? Look, these old battle-axes of the far-left are dinosaurs. Gloria Steinem’s op-ed after Palin was picked made me wonder what planet she is on. I know she hasn’t ever really held a job that you actually have to show up for at 8:30 a.m after dropping off your kids at school, so perhaps she imagines all women to still be taking nembutals and drinking gin for lunch in their nightgowns while their husbands work in advertising. Or those that do work are subject to workplace rape, if you listen to her. They are not taken seriously, except by each other.
Oct 31, 2008 - 1:53 pm 4. Gaffe Prices:Will Fonda be awarded an oscar for such dramatics? Oh, the irony! Fonda, the victim of her own medium.
thats why we with a backbone must not sit out this election; otherwise we will be getting judges like Ginsgurg, or Souter, or Stevens, or Breyer, that may give us some spasms ourselves.
Thats the paramount issue of this and any presidential election. Ooh, I can already feel my back muscles tighten.
Oct 31, 2008 - 1:58 pm 5. Dave:SEANLA: Put your left hand on your left ear.
Put your right hand on your right ear. Grasp both ears firmly. Tug vigorously. Remove your cranium from your rectum.
If your son chooses to join up and put his body between the war’s desolation and those whom he loves, that is his choice, not yours.
Anybody who does that, or anything else worthwhile, has to put up with the fact that certain ingrates will benefit. That is an inescapable part of the human condition.
I learned that in a war where success was getting the dead down from 300 a week to 100 a week while backing out of a dangerous and exposed salient where we should not have been sent.
Why should I care about Jane Fonda? Dr Chessler and Heather (above) are both representative of why it was all worthwhile.
Oct 31, 2008 - 2:10 pm 6. SeanLA:Hey Dave!
Ha ha ha! your directions, while appreciated, require more than two hands to execute, perhaps if I just hold and push as seems to be the case.
What happens when your `certain ingrates’ comprise a super-majority of the populace? and you were asked to go to war to protect Palestinians against Israeli occupation? Or fight to give Odinga his true leadership role in Kenya?
Oct 31, 2008 - 4:03 pm 7. Gloria:I really do believe that their “fear” of a civil war is actually a tactic to intimidate others into voting for Obama: “if you don’t vote for Obama, YOU–not the gangsters and thugs in the streets– will be responsible for the ensuing bloodbath.”
Screw them. Let them show who they really are–useful idiots herding the sheep for the thugs.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:11 pm 8. john peter maher:Fouad Ajami is one of the biggest Serbophobes around, the designated Muslim on PBS etc. Why no denunciation of Bosnian Muslim atrocities on Serbs: mutilation of genitals, impaling… Sarajevo is a veil wearing, burqa town now, thanks to the Serbophobes’ support of Balkan Islam. Albanian Muslims in Kosovo destroyed in 2004 150 Serb Orthodox churches, kerosene supplied by German Army. The Germans (old ways die hard) have painted yellow crosses on Christian houses in Kosovo, to ensure the Muslims wil find them. –Oh yes, the Fort Dix Six, referred to only as “foreign-born Muslims’, are Kosovo Albanians. 78 days of bombing Serbia — thanks Bubba Clinton, Wesley Clark, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger (Jamie Shea cheer-leading). Both Obama and McCain stand for continuing war in the Balkans, ultimately against Russia. –Where is the biggest US military base in the world? –Camp Bondsteel in “cleansed (of Serbs) Kosovo…
Oct 31, 2008 - 7:17 pm 9. Cristina:Phyllis:
You surely see the irony of the creme de la creme of the 60s feminism validating the 19th and early 20th centuries psychiatrists about female hysteria, which every pedigreed feminist has fought so hard to dispell as a “male construct”, bla bla bla, you know the rote…
You forgot to add Russia to the list of states that kill inconvenient journalists and critics of the regime. There they don’t bother putting them in prison, since the gulag or the psychiatric ward is no longer an option.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:40 pm 10. Roy M:Cristina,
I saw irony too. Phylis Chesler calling women hysterical. Except she didn’t. Except she did.
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:56 am 11. susan:“During Obama’s acceptance speech 100 years ago in Denver”
for a moment i hope this was true and fast forward in 2108 obama is a long, distant memory and universally recognized as the biggest missed mistake of modern history.
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:57 am 12. Dee:Why does “Elmer Gantry” come to mind, and the real-life Benny Hinn? I am baffled that Obama plays to his crowds as if he is intellectually serious. Surely he must do it only to collect: for the life of me, I cannot see otherwise. It is truly frightening and getting close to Jimmy Jones-type loyalty.
If only Fonda and Jong could see themselves on video tape with side-by-side comparisons of religious zealots. These women need serious therapy, or at acknowledge the gentle check by Phyllis.
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:09 am 13. Jaci:The most shocking thing about this article is that the author is shocked. Am I the only one not surprised by the histrionics of feminists? Since when were gravitas and sanity bedfellows with such a movement bent on oppressing men and brainwashing women?
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:23 am 14. ApplePie:I have long been a fan of Bill Maher but his attack on the entire Governor Sarah Palin family on last night’s show – went way too far and was downright despicable. Mahar describes the entire Palin family as the “bottom of the barrel” and the reason a fence should not be built on our Southern border with Mexico but rather on the border with Alaska.
Maher makes no bones (or boners) about his being a mysogynist – but I hope that the majority of true feminist women (not the herbal tea drinking – hysterical – anti freedom of thought – academia shielded – think like me or you’re on our hate list effete pseudo feminists)choose to:
NEW RULE – Boycott the Real Times HBO show
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:43 am 15. Gianni:The comment I am reading, expecially the last ones, show the forum is slowly degenerating.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:21 am 16. NahnCee:From comments on the general feelings of the american electorate we are moving to an anti-feminist slugfest.
Wait a moment.
Are you totally sure that women, expecially feminists are all so ysterical? Are men, or McCain supporters so calm and relaxed?
From the postings it seems that Obama supporters are a bunch of brainwashed idiots while McCain supporters are such good mannered guys.
This is very unfair.
Vote who you want, but stop demonize the other.
And, excuse me, but the Obama camp is on the receiving end of the nastier comments.
You don’t like Obama and plan to vote McCain? Do it. But don’t speak about Obama supporters as evil monsters from outer space.
They should be people with whose political views you disagree. No more and lo less. Is it that complicated?
And that after what the black people had endured the tension is a form of general catharsis they hope will happen.
Yes, some of Obama supporters behavior is sort of weird. But have you ever gone into a evangelical/pentecostal church?
And let me add that after two consecutive republican victories to the precidency, a change is just another confirmation of the seriousness of the us democracy.
This is how democracy works. Once party A wins and another one party B wins.
Is it such a tragedy? I would say the same is democrats had just wom precidency twice.
And, by the way, people should discuss issues and platforms, not clappings or real or perceived hysteria.
All the world is holding the breath for the outcome of this election you are having, so I don’t see where is the big deal is some people are having headaches in these days.
And…you are not just electing the president. There are local elections, ballots, etc. Discuss these. It is more constructive than lynching Fonda, Jong and Steinem.
I’m feeling a little sorry for poor Hanoi Jane. She hasn’t even said anything this time, let alone had any pictures taken perched on an enemy gun, and she’s being hoist again for shit that happened decades ago and which she has apologized for publicly and earnestly several times.
I think Jong needs to be skewered mercilessly for her self-absorbed hsyteria, but how do we know that Jane Fonda — who always struck me as being a very tough cookie — said or did what Ms. Jong claims?
Jane is an easy target because of what she did back then, but for me, I’m going to wait until she actually says some dumb damned thing all by herself before I ratchet up the rage against her.
In the meantime, whacking the Jong pinata is excellent fun and I encourage all your efforts in hitting it hard enough to ricochet off the B. Hussein pinata, making it open up and spill its guts.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:12 am 17. Gianni:Folks: when I wrote about the lynching Fonda, Jong and Steinem I did not meant that the author did that. In fact Chesler did not even mention Steinem in her article. Hev did.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:35 am 18. Micha Elyi:It is some of the people who are posting here are doing a bit of it. So YOU for not referred to Ms. Chesler but to some of the people commenting.
“What can it mean when smart, feminist women start acting like hysterical nineteenth century heroines?” As an expert witness to feminism and matriarchy I must ask, when has it not been thus?
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:55 pm 19. Wassom:Phyllis
I’m really enjoying the different outlooks and opinions. Keep stirring the pot. Eventually all the crap boils to the top!
Gianni, I am wondering what country your from? I sense an accent, and
a very real disassociation with THIS country.
If your on a high horse about Fonda, you might as well get off.
Nov 2, 2008 - 7:07 pm 20. SRBUSS:It’s what she stands for that most conservatives are against, and we all know she is on the far left. The reason she’s having convulsions about supporting her man, is that she has so much at stake in what her and her fellow feminist stand for, which is NOT what real women in America stand for.
The hysteria associated with the obamabots, is scary. He doesn’t stand for anything this country was built on, and will surely destroy the foundation for which all true Americans have died to uphold.
I’d rather see hysteria in a Pentecostal Church, with people under the power of the only True and living God, than the Idea of change, that is so falsely being clung to.
That’s desperation.
As a holistic psychotherapist, I have learned that back problems frequently stem from feeling a lack of support, usually experienced as support one’s belief system provides. It makes sense that anxiety experienced over this support system feeling under threat would manifest as physical symptoms. Fear is running rampant in today’s world and an effective antidote is faith. Obama is riding this wave and using it to his political benefit. Those who hunger for faith over fear within their own lives, AND search for it outside of their own internal belief systems, cling with the desperation of one who has been treading water does to a life preserver. Obama has been presented as the embodiment of faith over fear. This is a powerful elixir.
If Obama becomes our next president, he will have an awesome (and virtually untenable) task to fulfill as the provider of this faith. He is a politician, not a messiah, as the world will soon discover.
Nov 3, 2008 - 12:42 am 21. iammefrommiami:I’m not voting for either -but I understand the excitement, how could you not? You would have to completely lack empathy with the historical suffering and oppression of black people in America. Yeah I guess if you just brush off slavery Jim Crow and “I have a dream” then it’s like, “what are these crazy people so excited about”?
Nov 3, 2008 - 1:59 pm 22. Akira:There is strong symbolism in a black man becoming president-personally I would have been happier with Hillary -but I am excited, also saddened about Obama because he is not going to take us all to the mountaintop. But still if he wins it is a big deal. Of course a female VP is also a bit of a big deal so either way this is one cool election!
My translation of the Corriere della Sera article re Jong, Fonda etc:
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/prospect-of-obama-loss-and-subsequent-civil-war-has-hanoi-jane-and-comrades-terrified-in-tears/
Nov 4, 2008 - 4:19 am 23. Election-induced insanity — Cranach: The Blog of Veith:[...] Phyllis Chesler is worried about Pre-Election Psycho-Somatic Hysteria: There are important reasons to vote for Obama and important reasons to vote for McCain. Neither [...]
Nov 4, 2008 - 5:06 am 24. Milos:First, in response to comment no. 19 from Wassom: Jane Fonda has been absent from the “far left” of the political spectrum for some time. Anybody with a computer can verify that about 10 years ago, Fonda became involved with evangelical Christianity and publicly declared herself a Christian on (where else?) the Oprah Show in 2000.
Dec 7, 2008 - 9:08 amSecond, in response to Ms. Chesler’s article: other than an annoying tone of reproach and in-fighting that I detect with respect to her opinions of Fonda and Erica Jong, I agree with her underlying point. The Obama rock-star personality cult is scary. I reluctantly voted for him because he’s not John McCain, not because I’ve accepted Barack as my Personal Savior. What Obama will do for the country remains to be seen, and it’s an unfortunate weakness within the human psyche to look for icons and gods to prop us up and make us feel good. Feminists are human and fall prey to this tendency just like anybody else, and Chesler is right to comment about it in an area where she’s very qualified to do so. Let’s not forget that Ms. Chesler is a lifelong, committed feminist herself (as am I, by the way – men can be feminists too if they have any notion of fairness and equality for all human beings). The feminist-bashing tone of many of the responses here is offensive and stupid. And third, Ms. Chesler, you are correct that Muslim dictators torture and kill Muslim dissidents. Even the term “Muslim dissident” is rarely discussed in the news. However, the U.S. government has been equally guilty of torture and false imprisonment with respect to Muslims and suspected Muslims. Guantanamo has falsely imprisoned and held, tortured and overseen the brutal and needless deaths of many individuals during the course of the Iraq war. On this earth there are no hard and fast heroes and villains. All of us human beings are susceptible to evil, weakness of spirit, and cult-like behavior. If we adhere to principles, rather than individuals or groups, we’re less likely to go astray, or, as in the case of the Obamabots, get “hysterical.”