Sexist bias in US media
Hillary Clinton withdrew from the contest. That should have consigned her to the limbo but she continues to figure in the media as columnists and commentators do a post mortem of her exit. The Hoot carried an article very early in the race for Democratic nomination highlighting the hostile press that marked the beginning of Hillary’s journey. The debate that refuses to go now is centered on the role sexism played in prejudicing the minds of her electors. I do not know if media retrospection is driven by a sense of guilt but quite a few media people are defending themselves, some using attack as a pre-emptive weapon. However, it is not anybody’s case that media bias was the reason for her failure.
Clinton herself seemed to have inaugurated the sexism debate when in her concession speech she had said that women deserved equal respect, along with equal pay, and that ‘there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century in our country.’ She was referring to a view her campaign threw up that racism is taboo but not sexism. The chairman of the Democratic Party Howard Dean called for a national debate claiming that the media had adopted a sexist perspective to
Both the National Organization for Women (NOW) and Emily’s List, which endorses women candidates advocating abortion rights, flood the cable channels with e-mails when they see sexism. In its Media Hall of Shame, NOW has entered the names of 23 worthies known for sexist bias against Hillary. Its president Kim Gandy said her members would remain alert. ‘We’re going to keep watching because we think Michelle Obama will be the recipient of the same kind of attacks that Hillary was.’ Chief of Emily’s List Ellen Malcolm said they wouldn’t take it lying down.
The media have taken a mixed view of the sexism charges. Some agreed with the complaints of the Hillary camp. Critics of sexism cited unassailable evidence in the campaign. The day after
Even Barack Obama was quoted as saying, ‘You¿re likeable enough, Hillary,’ and ‘Suddenly, her claws start coming out.’ But her critics are not repentant. She brought that on herself, whether it was the Bosnian snipers or not conceding on the night of the final primaries, said editor of American Journalism Review Rem Rieder. She had a long track record in public life as a serious person and a tough politician, and she was covered that way, he said.
When a man shouted ‘iron my shirt’ at a town hall meeting of Hillary in New Hampshire, America’s feminist icon Gloria Steinem pointed out how that newspaper had covered the incident. She said, ‘I endorse wholeheartedly my Slate colleague Meghan O¿Rourke¿s observation that USA Today hedged its description of the incident in its headline, ‘Clinton Responds To Seemingly Sexist Shouts.’ Seemingly? What other intent was possible? Had the two men shouted, ‘Shine my shoes!’ at Obama, USA Today wouldn¿t have dared run the headline, ‘Obama Responds To Seemingly Racist Shouts.’ But another columnist asked Steinem why she had never taken Bill Clinton to task for having good time with Monica Lewensky inside their very home.
It is the TV channels which reveled most in sexist bias, though managing editor of CBS Kate Couric was the exception. She said, ‘One of the great lessons of (Hillary Clinton¿s) campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life, particularly in the media....It isn¿t just Hillary Clinton who needs to learn a lesson from this primary season — it¿s all the people who crossed the line, and all the women and men who let them get away with it.’ Again, it is the same Couric who as reporter asked Clinton, ‘Someone told me your nickname in school was Miss Frigidaire. Is that true?’
ABC’s Charles Gibson asked Mrs. Clinton if she would be in this position if it weren’t for her husband. But there is a second reason, said Heather Wilson, another op-ed contributor and Republican representative, that some are reluctant to openly acknowledge: a latent and lamentable sexism. Hillary lost because the super delegates — the Democratic establishment — went against her. ‘She became a caricature: too smart, too strong, too assertive, too rational, too competent.’
Somebody on cable TV called her a she devil. Another said that she looked like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court. ’When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs,’ said Tucker Carlson on MSNBC. Things were said about Hillary that crossed all lines of decency and abused First Amendment rights. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh wondered: ‘Are Americans ready to see a woman president such as Hillary Clinton age before their very eyes?’
In spite of all this calumny, it would be unwise to suggest that it had deprived her of the nomination. As Chrystia Freeland said in the Financial Times one has to blame ‘the catastrophic mismanagement of her campaign if you are looking for a single reason why the once inevitable candidate has become the runner-up.’ One of the Republican-supporting New York Post columnists also said the same thing. ‘All this feminist whining suggests that it was apparently just sexist to oppose Clinton, to suggest that she had no mathematical chance in the last few months, or imply that she was putting her own dreams of power ahead of her party’s chances for victory. If the media were so opposed to a woman being president why was it that this library-donor issue wasn’t raised to more than a whisper over the year and half that she was running hard for the nomination?’
The latest in this sexist bias litany is its appearance in the Obama-McCain run-up to the November election. This is sexism of a different kind which is about how Obama is a sissy and McCain a macho. A woman from Women for Obama told reporters that Obama would really be our first woman president. A heading in New York Post shouted, ‘Bam: Our 1st Woman Prez?’ Susan Faludi in an article in the New York Times Week in Review predicts that Obama would be cast as ‘either the epicene metrosexual who can’t protect the country or else as the modern heathen with a suspicious middle name. On MSNBC, Tucker Carlson had already called him kind of a wuss. Another talk show host said that Americans want their president, if he is a man, to be a real man.
The game has just begun and in the coming weeks the election air will smell of this new genre of sexist bias.