Hillary Clinton, misogyny and the media
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Posted by Ammu Joseph May 21st, 2008 |
I’ve just read a recent article by Marie Cocco in The Washington Post headlined “Misogyny I won’t miss,” forwarded to me by a friend in Australia. It detailed some of the outrageous ways in which Hillary Clinton has apparently been pilloried in the course of the ongoing, acrimonious campaign to decide the candidate who will represent the Democratic Party in the US presidential election later this year. What the piece revealed was shocking in the extreme.
Now I understand what Clinton was talking about in her recent interview in The Washington Post (”Clinton puts up a new fight“): “The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted, and . . . there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head,” she said. “It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists.”
I tried searching WIMN’s Voices for comments on this aspect of media coverage of the election campaign. The only post I found that refers to misogyny was one by guest blogger Anika Rahman, discussing a January 08 column by Bob Herbert in The New York Times headlined “Politics and Misogyny.”
I am aware that there are serious concerns among many American citizens, including women, about Clinton’s stand on various important issues, genuine misgivings about her brand of politics, and well founded objections to certain aspects of her campaign. I know they say all’s fair in love, war and politics. But some of the stuff mentioned in Cocco’s article appears, to me at least, totally beyond the pale.
I have been following — to the extent possible from outside the US — the division and debate among American feminists on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, sexism and racism in the run-up to the November election. I could have easily missed comments on the appalling levels of misogyny that Clinton’s candidature seems to have brought to the surface and would certainly be interested to know about such criticism. I would also like to know what feminist media-watchers in the US think about Clinton’s comment on the media’s role in all this.
PS A quick google search did reveal quite a few comments on this topic on the Net. I found several of them interesting and illuminating but since I don’t know much about some of the sources I’m including just two here:
“Hillary Clinton and Misogyny: REVISITED” - this is interesting because it refers to research on media bias in eight campaigns.
“Question: How Much Did Misogyny Cripple Hillary Clinton’s Historic Campaign?” - this post has links to related articles in the press.
May 23rd, 2008 04:46
Try this by Julia Keller:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-fempower-0518may18,0,6987182.column
Here’s a video of a CNN “discussion”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEl4KMNUjI4
Unfortunately, there’s much more and plenty of feminist commentary. Yes, we noticed. It’s actually true that it will be a relief to have it over, pro-Clinton or otherwise.
May 23rd, 2008 15:51
Feminist blogs have been covering a lot of the sexism. You might try Shakesville or Echidne of the Snakes.
May 26th, 2008 11:35
There has been a lot of journalistic and blog discourse on the misogyny in media coverage of Hilary campaign. The best analysis I’ve heard, though, was from Kathleen Hall Jamison on “Bill Moyers’ Journal” (PBS) a couple of months ago - it can probably still be found online.
That said, I should add that I have wondered if there hasn’t been even more is that feminists within the U.S. are quite divided about Hilary as a candidate (there has also been much coverage of this). Many feminists don’t consider her the ideal female candidate for many reasons (her gender aside). I am actually among those. My preference for Obama as a presidential choice, however, does not mean that I find her treatment by the media any more acceptable. I do though encourage all of us to ask who own and operate and make the crucial content decisions about coverage. Hmmm. . . that should take us in the right direction for our media concerns.
Carolyn Byerly
May 31st, 2008 04:36
Thank you for your column. I’ve been wondering where is the outrage over the sexist remarks about Senator Clinton. It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to or what candidate you support-the remarks quoted in the article linked below are downright offensive and our lack of response reflects poorly on our society. I would expect a press conference condemning these types of remarks from a bi-partisan group of prominent women.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200804160002
June 11th, 2008 21:27
By the way, I meant to post this comment earlier — WIMN’s Voices columnists have written at great length about this aspect of media misogyny. Put “Hillary” into the search engine, and a great many posts will pop up. It’s a limitation of the search that for some reason, you can only search on one word, not two or more. But type in “Hillary,” an you’ll see many posts about this subject.