This video was featured on Judith Warner's NY Times blog, "Domestic Disturbances". It lays out some less-than-inspiring remarks from male anchors and pundits about Hillary Clinton. I thought it appropriate given that, no matter what you think of the Senator from New York, sexism within the rareified air of the national media is still thriving.
Wow. I'm not a fan of Clinton, but this video montage is really damning for the media. What a bunch of pukes.
ReplyDeleteThe reality, the harsh reality, is that if she had a dick she'd be applauded and called a real man. But she's a female - so the world calls her a Bitch.
Some things never change...
I could not have said it better! She was given a bad rap. She speaks her beliefs and is criticized for it. I am not sure why they went after her the way they did. It appeared to me that they did notreport in an unbiased way.
ReplyDeleteSad, but true.
ReplyDeleteAnd its not even close...some of those remarks, were they directed at a candidate's skin color or religion, would have got the speakers called out for being bigots. But all's still fair in the gender trap--the only funny thing from these "jokes" is that the remarks by buys like Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan make them dweebs.
ReplyDeleteHere in the UK we have got the Queen as head of state and we had Margaret Thatcher as head of government, so we know that women can be just as bad as men at running the government, although very few people of either sex could be as bad as Tony Blair and his protege Gordon Brown. The sort of sexism that was shown in the video can be seen on late night TV in the UK in acts by certain famously Un- PC working class stand up comics. It would not appear in news or serious political comment however.It would not be slipped into the corporate media sound bite 'news' programmes in the way it is in the video. This to me says something about the style of political campaigning in the US which is designed to constrain any expression of wisdom it seems to me. That is why these 'pundits' and anchormen can express views that are only expressed by right wing comedians(who also get a lot of critical stick) here I think , because politics in America is a form of entertainment first and foremost, a spectacle and therefore the methods of entertainers replace serious political analysis in much of the corporate media, I think. Hence Hillary Clinton actually set herself up for most of these beer hall gags.....that's entertainment, nobody gave her a fair chance to be' wise' but she like the sexist cavemen in the video is in the same media business. So the roadshow rumbles on with policies for ballast, I found it hard to take her seriously as well, but not because she's a woman, but because she is a bad actor and all I could see was lust for even more power and wealth with very little overlay of substance.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I suspected. Some of these boy-men "cable news journalists" over here are overgrown playground bullies who would fail if assigned to properly cover a one-alarm warehouse fire for a local newspaper. They have opinions, though, these saloon rats.
ReplyDeleteWell said AA. There is something Nixonian about Senator Clinton's transparent lust for power: ironic because she started her political career as a law clerk with the Congressional Impeachment Committee back in '74.
Like Nixon, the more he tried to reinvent himself (or have his handlers try) the more that Cromwellian ambition shone through. And, like Nixon in his day, no one that I know over here is neutral on the subject of Hillary.
This is exactly what as been disquieting me for quite some time now, the incredible slanging of women who stand up to speak seem to be receiving in the US. That video was vomitmaking puerile stuff. I don't have any particular liking for either Hilary Clinton or Sarah Palin, but then from over here in NZ all I have ever been shown of them has been negative and sexist.
ReplyDeleteThe Queen is our "head of state" also albeit as a figurehead, she has a representative here titled the Governor General, also really a figurehead but useful in hosting visiting dignitaries etc. Our current governor General is a gentleman of Indian ethnicity, the previous was Dame Silvia Cartwright, a retired and well respected judge. Our "real" head of state is our Prime Minister and for the last 3 terms of parliament this has been Helen Clark who has led stable coalition governments with wisdom and intelligence. The previous Prime Minister was Ms Jenny Shipley.
There are several women as well as men currently leading political parties in NZ. One never hears the kind of rubbish comments that were shown on the above clip, they simply would not be tolerated.
If we seem a bit backwards-looking on womens' rights in the United States compared to some nations, I don't offer any excuses... the first women's rights convention here was in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1847! Women won the hard-fought right to vote here generations ago. More women attend law school and medical schools in the USA than men. Women-rights groups in my lifetime have been both active and successful in many areas I've lived in here. And yet....
ReplyDeletePerhaps its having a Queen as a Head of State that has given more men and women comfort with female authority. Also, in New Zealand, there might simply be fewer reactionaries trying to do away with the social and political tumult of the 1960's by pretending there were all totally radical and Un American
Susan Jacoby in the book 'America in the Age of Unreason" has an interesting chapter on the 1960's. I think she might say that Feminism gained a great deal of force in the 1960's (Gloria Steinem, the NOW organization, reproductive rights groups) as did peaceful Civil Rights movements of all kinds. It just so happens that some radical domestic terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and some factions of the Black Panthers started at the same time. Conservatives choose to lump these groups all together and say they were all part of one big Movement. Some Conservatives do their best to blur the lines of an entire decade in the USA (roughly 1964-1974) and say if you were a part of one aspect of the protests, then you were in with every aspect of the Movement, violent-radical and otherwise.
American White Women got their franchise in the 1920's, some 30 years after all NZ women won their right to vote, despite the fact that the American movement had clearly started much earlier than ours. Both they and black movements of the time were combining their forces (perhaps to the distress of some of the more conservative women) but it became clear that if the white women kept pushing for black franchise as well as their own it would take longer for them to achieve their franchise. Therefore the white women made a separation from the African American people and got their franchise. It was around another forty years, into the sixties, before US black movements finally managed to achieve their franchise.
ReplyDeleteSadly, all too true. One of the representatives at that 1847 Seneca Falls meeting was Frederick Douglass, the most famous free black in America and author of "Up From Slavery".
ReplyDeleteYes, I was trying to remember his name, thanks for saving me having to look it up. An incredible man.
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