By David
Swimwatch is about to embark on a swimming website first. We are going to offer our endorsement of two candidates in general elections about to take place.
If this is not a first then we apologize. It’s just that we have never seen Swim Info or Swimnews or Timed Finals or Texas Swimming hold their hand up and say vote for Bill Smith, he’s our man. There is no reason why they shouldn’t. In fact there is every reason why they should. Swimming is as much affected by who’s running the country as any other activity. If you find that hard to understand, consider this. Was Title Nine political? Did it affect swimming in the USA? And in New Zealand: is the distribution of pokie machine profits political? Does it affect swimming in New Zealand?
It seems silly that swimming websites get all hot and bothered over performance enhancing drugs, the timetable for heats and finals at the next Olympics and where some swimmer is now training and, yet run shy from offering an opinion on who should run the country. Politicians show no such reluctance. When it suits them they dive headlong into the question of drugs in sport and think nothing of using the Olympics to try to get the Russians out of Afghanistan. Well if politicians are prepared to meddle in our patch it is entirely appropriate we should meddle back.
In the United States, one Swimwatch contributor endorses Hillary Clinton. She’s experienced, tough, able, and intelligent. She’s been a fine senator for New York. There’d be no nonsense in the Oval Office with Hillary in charge. But her ability and experience are not the principal reasons for our support. We are disgusted by the sexist bile of her opponents; for example Chris Mathews of MSNBC. He’s turned his nightly Hardball program into an anti-Hillary, anti-woman rant. It’s the worst we’ve heard since Fred Dagg called his girl friend a “grouse looking sheila”. Gender should never be a factor in deciding who is going to be President. But, while there are chauvinists like Mathews out there, it would do him and the USA a power of good to have a woman in charge. Swimwatch’s editor is backing Barack Obama so felt it necessary to mention him in this post, even though it was written by the Clinton faction. Still, since we still do not know who will gain the Democratic nomination, much of this debate is academic, at best.
Bedroom and kitchen bigots like Mathews are intent on keeping women out of the Oval Office. They just cannot abide the thought that there is a woman out there who’s tougher than them. While Hillary’s campaign carefully tries to avoid the gender card, Mathews and the boys are smacking her as hard as they can with every gender stereotype. You should have heard him tonight showering cheap shots on Hillary because she had husband Bill out there on the stump. In Mathews’ eyes Bill was protecting the little woman. The men candidates meanwhile were reported as having loyal wives supporting their warrior husbands. Mathews is pathetic.
Well, 60% of the participants in swimming are women. Hillary is worth a vote even if it is only to show this 60% that achieving anything, even the White House, is possible. She is also worth a vote to show to the 40% of participants that are male that they cannot treat women the way Mathews does and expect to get away with it. Is that a sexist reason for voting? Yes it is, and it’s a bloody good one as well! Oh, and along the way, the US gets a good President.
In New Zealand Swimwatch endorses the current Prime Minister, Helen Clark. Forbes magazine says she is the 38th most powerful woman in the world. She’s been the Prime Minister of New Zealand for eight years and has done an exceptional job. The place is fairly humming along. Unemployment is at a twenty year low of 3.5%. A week ago the government announced a record surplus of $NZ11.5 billion for the 2006 year. Financially, what Bill Clinton managed to achieve in the USA, Helen Clarke has done in New Zealand. Isn’t it strange how all the stuffed shirt conservatives accuse liberals like Bill and Helen of having no fiscal responsibility, when it’s their poster boys like George Bush who start wars that spend their country into insolvency. For fiscal management there’s not much wrong with Helen’s record.
She hasn’t been everything we might have wanted for sport. Athlete’s civil liberties have been put at risk by the legislation passed by Helen Clark’s Government sharply increasing the power of the New Zealand drug agency. Her Government founded and financed the formation of a sport’s funding agency called SPARC. Since its birth that agency has been responsible for a steady decline in the health of New Zealand sport. Lydiard said it would happen and it has. This year alone New Zealand has lost the rugby World Cup, the netball World Cup and the America’s Cup. To be fair to Helen Clark, she has put her hand in her pocket and given sport a heap of money. She has received some pretty awful advice on how to spend it.
Unfortunately we here at Swimwatch can’t vote in either the New Zealand or USA elections. If we could, Hillary and Helen would get our votes.
