In Her Shoes - Female Pols on Clinton's Treatment By the Media
And as op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes in today's Washington Post, "How much anger is there among women about how Hillary Clinton has been treated during this campaign? Some of the nation's leading female politicians will tell you: quite a lot."
For those who feel Clinton's drawn-out candidacy is hurting Obama, the female pols say no. Clinton supporters say they're not mad at him - they're mad at the media. Dionne notes:
"From the beginning, she's been treated very badly," says Therese Murray, president of the Massachusetts Senate. "No woman would have run with Obama's résumé. She wouldn't have been considered." But Clinton has been "demonized by the press and the talking heads. How do you get away with that?"...What do you think?Many women, said Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), "knew we had made many strides. They asked, 'Aren't we past this? What's going on?' They're not happy with what they see as sexism, permitted by the media and in some cases encouraged by the media."...Added Murray: "Obama wouldn't have gotten to where he got today if it weren't for the bias of the male media -- no offense."
Comments
It’s not just sexism but the misogyny that permeates our society as much as racism does. But where there were plenty of media to call out racism no one addressed the misogyny that allowed the media to treat as a joke the remarks about Clinton’s clothes, hair, weight, décolletage, the jeers about doing someone’s ironing, the assertions by many that they could never vote for a woman, the epithets, the urging for her to be nice, to be gracious. To the media all of this was a joke and presented to Americans and the world as such.
Typically, I am not a media basher but as far as I’m concerned they all get a D- on this.