Male Chauvanism, 1
Today is Tuesday, 10 June 2008.
Follows from the Op-Ed page of The New York Times:
"Boys on the Bias"
By CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
Published: June 8, 2008
"Fifteen years after I was elected New Jersey’s first female governor, women running for office continue to face huge obstacles. Indeed, watching Hillary Clinton these last few months, it’s clear that voters and the news media still struggle with images and expectations of women as candidates.
When Mrs. Clinton made points forcefully, people called her shrill, not bold and determined. When Mitt Romney teared up, he was described as compassionate, while she was labeled weak.
For its part, the news media paid too much attention to Mrs. Clinton’s haircuts and jackets, ignoring the male candidates and their endless parade of blue suits and red ties. The press presented Barack Obama with his two years in the Senate as an agent of change, not a novice. In contrast, ABC’s Charles Gibson asked Mrs. Clinton if she would “be in this position” if it weren’t for her husband.
To this day, a businessman with no elected experience is considered qualified for high public office; a woman with the same background is called unprepared.
Mrs. Clinton’s sex was not solely responsible for her loss, but the implicit and explicit challenges that women face are such that we as a country must take notice if we want all people represented in public service.
— CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003."
I"ve been a hard-core leftist for more than 4 decades, and, for once, I agree with Christine Todd Whitman.
Stay tuned.
Follows from the Op-Ed page of The New York Times:
"Boys on the Bias"
By CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
Published: June 8, 2008
"Fifteen years after I was elected New Jersey’s first female governor, women running for office continue to face huge obstacles. Indeed, watching Hillary Clinton these last few months, it’s clear that voters and the news media still struggle with images and expectations of women as candidates.
When Mrs. Clinton made points forcefully, people called her shrill, not bold and determined. When Mitt Romney teared up, he was described as compassionate, while she was labeled weak.
For its part, the news media paid too much attention to Mrs. Clinton’s haircuts and jackets, ignoring the male candidates and their endless parade of blue suits and red ties. The press presented Barack Obama with his two years in the Senate as an agent of change, not a novice. In contrast, ABC’s Charles Gibson asked Mrs. Clinton if she would “be in this position” if it weren’t for her husband.
To this day, a businessman with no elected experience is considered qualified for high public office; a woman with the same background is called unprepared.
Mrs. Clinton’s sex was not solely responsible for her loss, but the implicit and explicit challenges that women face are such that we as a country must take notice if we want all people represented in public service.
— CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003."
I"ve been a hard-core leftist for more than 4 decades, and, for once, I agree with Christine Todd Whitman.
Stay tuned.
posted by HH at 7:27 PM
2 Comments:
Personnally, I have long ago stopped viewing Hillary Clinton as a woman. I view her as a political entity who happens to be female. It seems as if the fact that she is a woman was not emphasized as much until right up near the end of the primary season. Although this fact was floating around always, it was waved as a "reason she was losing" when reality was setting in.
If Obama was losing at the some point, racism would have been the cry.
I am a female, but I don't believe Hillary lost because she is female. Obama's message just struck with more people is states with more pledged delegates.
In the nature of piling on...
Any attempt to frame the media discussion related to Hillary's treatment by the media in terms of her being made an unparticipating victim of media bias has a substantial credibility hill to climb.
By every account, her campaign included an highly agressive media relations staff that maintained constant pressure on the media to establish a favorable campaign image in support of her candidacy. She reinforced that media strategy by soliciting and obtaining Rupert Murdoch's, (king of all media regardless of Howard Stern's pretensions)support of her candidacy.
Hillary ran an old fashioned, hard edged, rough and tumble, take no prisoners primary campaign. Now that the primary campaign has finished, casting her as a victim of sexist bias (if genuinely asserted) is, in my opinion, the epitome of sexist bias (poor woman couldn't take care of herself), or in the alternative (if not a genuine assertion) the pinnacle of opportunistic political cynicism.
I can admire Hillary for fighting a bare-knuckle 50 round bout without suffering a knockout and placing the decision of the match in the hands of the judges(delegates). I vigorously disagreed with that strategy and it alienated me to the point that not only did I find myself unable to support her candidacy based on my comparison of her record with her campaign platform, as an armchair referee I found her efforts to marginalize her primary opponent through repeated attempts to cast him as a lightweight in comparison to the presumptive Republican nominee to be 'low blows' that in my final analysis, were sufficient to disqualify her as a viable democratic candidate.
As it turns out she underestimated Obama and did not develop a winning strategy for a national electorate that her campaign mis-gauged.
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