I've looked into Pfleger a bit because of his run-ins with gun militants, and explored a bit of his activism.
First, as far as his association with the misogynist entity that is the RC church: I think we can say for pretty definite that Pfleger is pro-choice, for starters. It's not something he can say out loud, but his lecturing of his flock about spending to much time fretting about fetuses and not enough doing important things (I've read some of his material) gives a solid indication. In fact, he's been in shit with his Cardinal for having what the brigade refers to as "pro-abortion" speakers at the church and supporting pro-choice political candidates.
I don't think Pfleger is a dogma kinda guy. And his misogyny, if such there be, would be personal rather than institutional.
Second, I don't think Hilary Clinton is a feminist or even a decent role model for little girls. I think she's a blindly ambitious and self-interested climber who exploited her marriage to achieve things that I expect people to aim for on their own merits, and in the process tacitly approved the degrading and exploitive behaviour of her husband and must bear blame for that.
(And I still don't care what anyone else's opinion on that question is, thank you.)
None of that means that Pfleger's actions and words were not misogynist. The fact that he supports women's reproductive rights, as I'm sure he does, and that Clinton is a lousy example of a woman, doesn't mean that he's not capable of misogynist actions and that criticism of Clinton can't be misogynist. One does not have to defend Clinton to object to misogynist attacks on her, and acknowledging Pfleger's misogyny doesn't imply denying his other good deeds.
The way it looks to me is that Pfleger is like many converts. In this case, he's determined to be blacker than black. He chose to work for/with the African-American community, and seems to have abandoned all nuance and lost his peripheral vision in the process.
It's to be expected that he would support Obama, since he's devoted his entire life to the welfare of the African-American community, and since Obama is the hometown favourite. It may also be expected that a principled progressive would oppose Clinton vigorously. (I don't think one has to oppose Clinton vigorously if one is a principled progressive; I think that's something on which reasonable people of goodwill can disagree, in the circumstances.)
... Okay, I just watched the video. That was one of the most disgusting performances I've ever seen. For fuck's sake, it was virtually a minstrel show. If any other white person had put on a black-preacher performance like that, s/he would have been dragged from the stage with a big hook.
Try this for contrast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0wvQMqSzTM&feature=relatedHe doesn't actually talk like that. He talks like a regular USAmerican white guy, and he can talk circles around any stupid person trying to trip him up. Ten minutes of owning FoxNews, off the cuff in a sidewalk ambush. He's what some might call articulate.
Maybe he came late to the cause, and missed that whole women thing in the late 60s. How women are an oppressed group, as are people of colour. And while Clinton may have grown up with white privilege, she also grew up with female subjugation. How male is not the gold standard any more than white is, and how women have a culture and characteristics that deserve as much respect as male culture and characteristics -- and as African-American culture and characteristics. How women of colour may just have interests in common with Clinton and in fact be victimized by men of colour, both individually and collectively, and including by the denial of their subjugation as women.
It's so hard to distinguish principled criticism of Clinton from misogynist criticism of Clinton, because principled criticism of her has to include her exploitation of women's interests in her own interest, and so it's too easy to hive Clinton off from women and make the misogyny deniable. But I do tend to see allegations that her sense of entitlement vis-à-vis Obama was race-based, however entitled she may indeed feel for whatever reasons, as dishonest, and as a denial in themselves of her own status as a member an excluded group. She is just as much a woman as Obama is an African-American. And frankly, he shares no more of the collective, common experiences of the African-American people than she does of the collective, common experiences of women. They're both outliers exploiting their commonalities with a group of which they are not representative and whose problems they cannot claim to have suffered in the way the people they are asking to adopt them as their standard-bearers have.
So I guess all I have to do is look at the situation in reverse. If Pfleger were a privileged white man who had rejected his privilege in order to join forces with women in their struggle for equality, and decided to put on some lipstick and do the equivalent of his blackface routine to mock Obama for dragging the gospel singers along with him on the campaign trail and charge him with relying on his lifetime of privilege as a man, based on centuries of oppression of women, to deny a woman the chance to make it big ...
Well, he'd look like a fool and a racist. Wouldn't it be nice if someone engaging in that discourse about Clinton was seen for a fool and a misogynist, just as readily?
Yeah. I think the performance was misogynist. And it confirms my feelings about Pfleger and his weird over-identification with a group he is not one of. Jesus may have told him to go walk in his parishioners' shoes, but he didn't actually tell him to forget about everybody else whose shoes pinch.