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Fabulous book of essays. I’ve always had a passing interest in politics, but what happened in 2016 was eye-opening for me, and I’m eager to learn more and stay involved. Bordo’s essays on the past 3 years help put the election into clearer focus, particularly concerning Trump’s rise (“How the Evolution o the Fact-Free Universe Empowered the Rise of Donald Trump”), Hillary’s fall (no thanks to “The Talented Mr. Comey”), and the media’s shortcomings (“Pseudo-Realities, Optics and false Equivalences”). They also serve as a useful warning about what traps and failings to watch for as we move forward.‘Imagine’ is a cool book that compresses pithy social political ideas into 212 pages. This book is Windex for a minds eye with smudged with the medias greased up manufactured jargon. Bordo encourages readers not to surrender to the shop worn prose of the news business; and in a universal way supports the reader to question language delivered by the authority of media, or people in authority seats.In one chapter building on George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ she updates the Orwell critique of the methods and ‘catch you’ phases media uses, then applies the expanded awareness to current events and politics. Did Orwell already cover the bases? He did a lot, but Bordo pushes these ideas further by pulling up her reserves of feminist knowledge and training as a philosopher, bringing Orwell up to speed on the politics of reproductive rights in modern America.She possesses an originality, a cultivated talent at bringing historical comparisons to her analysis of current news cycles. It serves the reader to help them put together how today’s events fit into a bigger matrix of history. She brings in Anne Boleyn ( Bordo is also the author of a significant book on Boleyn’s life and times) to illustrate historical connections of current events in politics revealing the misogyny used as a tool to steal power from powerful women.Another author she shares an affinity with and expands upon is Simone de Beauvoir. Through S de B’s observations and lessons she looks carefully at the layers of patterns through history then sifts out the most important facts that are that are taken for granted or glossed over by media today. These are the gems the reader to nods to in appreciation that she took effort and teased out these truths.Her references to pop culture figures like Murphy Brown put a smile in the corner of your mouth, but also serve as serious cultural icons she works with to explain detailed points about how women and power are perceived. She spends a proper amount of time demystifying the tangle of nonsense wound around Hillary’s emails - those damned emails, and later puts Bernie Sanders in a dress and heels, does his nails, then sets him off on the campaign trail.She can bring up the details of the interior political infighting of the English court in the Elizabethan era, not for scholarly virtuoso display, but to draw a salient and puncturing critique to the meting out of double standards by the media during the course of the 2016 election. ‘Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman’ is a guide to keeping your mental windshield clear of media fogs. Written with political meat and potatoes urgency, but accompanied by the elegant pulse of a courtiers dance.Fresh, relentless, smart analysis informed by logic, humanity and feeling. Bordo exposes the traps which journalists fall into regarding sensationalizing political news, and she clearly explains how political chronicling can actually serve truth---by reporting what actually happened. Hillary's 2016 fainting episode is such a case: What if the news story had focused on the facts: how she simply continued to work despite illness (as many women do!) rather than frame the story as bad “optics” and cooking up (or at least repeating) a conspiracy theory based on no evidence that she was deviously hiding something important, falsely painting her as “untrustworthy.” I particularly love Bordo’s writing on "dying metaphors and verbal false limbs" and the like—perfectly illustrating how these seemingly innocuous rhetorical framing techniques influence the perception of the reading/listening public. After I had finished the section referencing one of George Orwell's books, I felt like I just got done being in a class with her as my professor and gained a whole new outlook on how we use and surrender to words and how it relates to our political discourse.There are so many memorable and quotable pages in this book.One example is her chapter on Thurgood Marshall. What struck me is not only her observation that he was ahead of his time and did much to change our understanding of the 14th amendment, but that “in the 60’s, younger activists dismissed him as not being radical enough…”. The historical perspective and parallels to how many younger people today speak as if the Democratic Party isn’t “radical enough” points to a long time problem in our political discourse as it relates to the issues we care about and our progress working through them.In the age of “OK, Boomer” Susan does a brilliant job of pulling us back into the lessons she has learned throughout her life and how the struggles we have now fighting oppression and fighting for equality are not very different from the fights for those same struggles during the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s-70’s. Her knowledge and wisdom is key to building on accomplishments we’ve already made. Her observations and analyses are vital to identifying just exactly where we are still lacking in that fight.This book is a must read for deconstructing our political discourse as Democrats and really digging into the media complicity of 2016 - which continues to this day. I feel this book is a requirement to help our minds shape our collective political strategy for the rest of 2020.Susan's writings should be required reading in every history class.“I don’t think we can move forward effectively unless and until we understand the past.”In 2017, Susan Bordo published THE DESTRUCTION OF HILLARY CLINTON. It was a detailed analysis of many of the factors that led to her defeat in the 2016 Presidential election, something that very, very few expected. She was very popular, especially for her accomplishments as Secretary of State, until she ran for President. There were several causes for her defeat and Bordo put the blame heavily on political hatred, James Comey, and the media. It is an excellent analysis of the entire 2016 election process. But when Bordo spoke about it publicly, she faced the same problems, e.g., media bias and public attacks, as Hillary. Susan had very few TV interviews after publishing a book because she would not attack Hillary.IMAGINE BERNIE SANDERS AS A WOMAN is a collection of her writings since November 2016. She not only includes some that deal specifically with that election but also events that have happened since then which have bearing on the current political climate. Much is an analysis of media coverage and how it has changed over the past few decades but it also includes essays on Jim Comey’s book, the GOP, Donald Trump’s pathology, Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s job restrictions and report, the #MeToo movement, reproductive rights (fetuses, through heartbeat bills, have more rights than pregnant women). It ends with the question: Will we ever have a woman president?These issues that Bordo raises are our challenges for the future but they are necessary to understand thoroughly to regain our country’s soul and spirit and move forward. Being a collection of previously published essays, each chapter in IMAGINE BERNIE SANDERS AS A WOMAN is complete without having to read the entire book. Because of that, one problem with reading the whole book is that there is some repetition. However, skipping parts will diminish some of the context and force. So much of what we hear or read about our female politicans is negative, diminishing, and perjorative, and the kinds of slanderous comments over the years hurled by numerous TV Anchors, some of whom I normally appreciate is mindboggling to say the least. Comments they would never make about a man.Susan Bordo lays this open in this great collection of her essays on our political world and how women have been treated and misrepresented either because they are too shrill, too aggresive, too this, not enough that. It is sickening and everytime I pick up this book I am reminded of how I feel about how we got ripped off in the last election by Trump and Putin.This book is eyeopening if you've had them closed for any length of time. Read it and get smart about how our system works for men and not for women.Susan Bordo's latest collection offers an important feminist analysis of the current political moment, from the 2016 Presidential election to the current battle for the White House. As in all her work, Bordo uncovers the gendered nature of American culture and brings to light the biases at work. Her essays on media and politics always offer creative and insightful commentary written in clear prose. I walked away from this collection awakened to the depths at which gender bias undermines our possible futures. This collection is a must-read for anyone watching the upcoming election.It would be polite to say that Susan Bordo writes at the intersection of feminism and politics. It would be more accurate, however, to say that she writes at the collision of feminism and politics, part of her career-long examination of cultural approaches to women.“Imagine Bernie Sanders” is a collection of her pieces surrounding the 2016 election, before and after, and a worthy successor to her book, “The Destruction of Hillary Clinton.” She takes aim at those misguided pieces of society that inflict their prejudices about women on women, often in the context of political coverage.She isn’t shy not only about taking on institutions like the New York Times, which we all knew blew Clinton’s emails all out of proportion, and James Comey, but also MSNBC and Chris Hayes, the bastion of liberalism that as with others in the media squeezed her book about Clinton into a pre-determined narrative or, in the alternative, ignored issues entirely. The double standards, even in hindsight, are hard to take, and you can see the reflections then of coverage this year of other women candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren.As with her earlier book, her defense of Clinton is full-throated and unapologetic, as it should be. These are the books a real-life Diane Lockhart from the Good Fight should be reading to her hubby as bedtime stories.Some of the most powerful stuff in the book are the tweets and other communications she received in response to her writing about Clinton. They are truly vile, and Bordo was brave to include them here. You would only be semi-surprised to learn they came from Bernie Bro’s, or at least those claiming to be Bernie Bro’s. In the days of ever-present bots, it’s hard to tell, but if even if some of them were legit, Sen. Sanders and his supporters should still be ashamed.As we enter into the final phase of the 2020 campaign, Bordo’s lessons from 2016 are later should be a guiding light of what went wrong and how to correct it.Bordo lives and teaches in Kentucky, home of Mitch McConnell and what could be one of the hottest Senate races this year. Personally, I look forward to her observations on that campaign and on the national scene. They will be well worth reading.In Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman, and Other Writings on Politics and Media 2016-2019, feminist philosopher and cultural critic and, most recently, political analysist Susan Bordo offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of the 2016 presidential election, as well as of the 2020 presidential primaries, and the current political moment.Bordo is the author of several works including 2017’s The Destruction of Hilary Clinton, “a play-by-play of the political forces and media culture that vilified and ultimately brought down Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign.” Drawing on the theories of the late French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, as well as on Orwellian ideas of writing, Bordo argues broadcast news’ emphasis on optics rather than facts during the 2016 presidential election and currently, contributes to the spread of misinformation, distraction from, and ultimately helped lead to the electing of Donald Trump as the U.S.’s 45th president. This emphasis on optics by the media in tandem with primarily white male media pundits’ entrenched bias toward powerful women political figures, argues Bordo, proves time and again detrimental to the political careers of women, and in particular those who aspire to the highest office in the nation. As Bordo writes, “The fact is that the biggest obstacle any woman has faced and will continue to face in aspiring to the highest office in any country, at any time in history, is that she is not a man” (202). Bordo’s lens in Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman however is directly on the United States, and across historical time, as well as contemporarily. Bordo follows her fact of gender being the biggest obstacle for any woman anywhere who aspires to be president, with “I know—duh,” before adding, “But the reality is that we haven’t yet begun to comprehend, let alone address, everything that flows from that seemingly simple fact” (202). Building off groundbreaking theories of “woman” proffered by deBeauvoir in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bordo argues “In any era, in every culture [as deBeauvoir] pointed out, Man is the norm.” Bordo continues, “Woman may be reviled, she may be revered, but she is always judged by standards that are ‘special’ to her sex while the fact that men have a sex, too, goes unnoticed (emphasis mine, 202).In Bordo’s own words, Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman details the “double-bind” of being a powerful woman in a political arena historically dominated by men (219). Bordo’s language is clear, her writing free of jargon, and her tone engaging and, at times, uncompromising, and rightfully so it would seem, considering our current national predicament, as outlined in the book.Divided into eleven sections, the titles of which include “The Stolen Election,” “On Not Letting the Mainstream Media Off the Hook,” “Trumpian Pathology and Hillary Derangement Syndrome,” and “Will We Ever Have a Woman President?”, Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman is a dynamic and readable book composed of straightforward book chapters, interviews, and original Facebook Posts by Bordo. The book offers up an astute analysis, and criticism of unacknowledged gender (as well as race) dynamics at play in broadcast news’, the medias’, and media pundits’ engagement with, presentation and assessment of powerful women political figures such as but not limited to former presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris. Postmodernist in structure and scope. Philosophical. Assertive. Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman is a book for the record, as Bordo writes.