Clinton Sexism

Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate who ran a horrible campaign, but it doesn't excuse the permissiveness of the sexism that her campaign and thus our country had to endure. It was disgusting, from Faux News to corporate media outlets blatant sexism was given play as if it were acceptable discourse in a presidential campaign resulting in too many people disliking Hillary Clinton simply because she is a strong woman.

The clip from the Women's Media Center does a great job highlighting how pervasive the sexism was at all outlets for the corporate media.

Faux news, not unexpectedly, was one of the worst perpetuators of this sexism, which is one of the reason her embrace of the channel late in the primary process was so odious. But the corporate media’s sexist leader had to be Maureen Dowd who’s waste of editorial space, always included highly loaded gender terms, insipid gossip, and just downright stupid commentary.

In an article on media sexism in the Democratic primary, NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt singles out Maureen Dowd's columns as deserving more scrutiny:

Peggy Aulisio of South Dartmouth, Mass., said, "A real review of your own stories and columns is warranted." I think so too. And I think a fair reading suggests that The Times did a reasonably good job in its news articles. But Dowd's columns about Clinton's campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, Kristol.

While arguing that many complaints about Times' coverage "reflect a shoot-the-messenger anger," Hoyt concludes that complaints about Dowd in particular were justified: "She, I think, by assailing Clinton in gender-heavy terms in column after column, went over the top this election season."

Rachel Sklar also on Huffington Post has a great blog about some further examples of sexism

Two great op-eds in the Washington Post yesterday, on the presumptive Hillary Clinton post-mortem: Misogyny I Won't Miss by Marie Cocco and Belittled Womanby Libby Copeland.

Cocco reels off a list of things she won't miss once Hillary is gone: Hillary nutcrackers (with stainless steel thighs!), "Bros Before Hos" shirts, comparisons to crazy bunny boiling stalkers, anti-Hillary groups with vulgar acronyms, comparisons to first wives and scolding mothers, whores and bitches. Says Cocco:

…I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

…There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

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