The City’s Pulse Newsletter
By Mary Souza, November 10, 2008
Our United States Presidential election is now over. It has been a long, intense campaign and I join my fellow citizens in hoping for a quiet return to normalcy. But whether the outcome makes you happy or sad, there is a loathsome lesson to take from this 2008 election: Sexism is alive and well in America.
Hillary Clinton started the campaign cycle years ago, positioning herself for the top job, and Democrats were enthusiastic about her potential. Her gender was then honored, her experience and capabilities highlighted. After all, she was the heir apparent and a liberal in every way.
Enter Barack Obama and the gender celebration was quickly pushed aside in favor of race relations. Which minority status deserves higher consideration? The answer was clear as the mainstream media crowned Obama and turned their backs on the formerly emulated Hillary. Their moves were subtle, but the sexist attacks were real: Gradually downplaying the value of Sen. Clinton’s experience, raising new questions about her husband wandering in the White House and whether she was strong enough to face foreign leaders.
But when the Republicans chose the Governor of Alaska to be their VP pick, the gloves came off. Governor Palin is a conservative woman. She does not share the same values as liberal feminists but holds an impressive list of accomplishments from her 13 years in elected office. No matter, most media outlets went into personal attack mode.
How best to diminish and discount a popular female governor with an approval rating of 80%? (Especially when the approval rating of the US Congress was 9%) Talk about her appearance constantly; focus all attention on her hair, glasses, clothing and shoes. Dig up swimsuit photos from a high school beauty pageant and call into question her motherhood.
Do not talk about her fight to clean up corruption within her own political party or becoming the first female governor in Alaska’s history. And absolutely do not discuss her responsibilities as the state’s chief executive, accountable for 15,000 employees and a nearly $7 billion dollar budget. No, the media said Gov. Palin should be home with her children, while they alternately and incongruously labeled her as “hot” and “sexy”. Interviews with liberal journalists, and I use the term lightly, asked about everything except her background, experience and plans as VP.
Oh, but it got worse, much worse. With the perception of public fascination, comedy shows, fringe media outlets and attention-starved celebrities all rushed to create foul, vulgar images or statements about Governor Palin, some pornographic, in an effort to get themselves in the news. It worked. Mainstream stations reported the repugnant fabrications, simply for the shock factor.
Can you imagine the uproar if the same was done to Barack Obama?
An effigy of Sarah Palin was allowed to hang by a noose as a Halloween decoration while two men were arrested for a Halloween effigy of Sen. Obama. The law considers it a hate crime in the case of race but not in the case of gender.
It’s depressing to think that our country’s leadership choices cannot be made on the credentials and abilities of candidates rather than their gender. We must stop supporting media outlets that resort to these offensive, biased methods. No matter what your political loyalties, sexism should not be tolerated. Never the less, throughout this campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin continued to carry themselves with grace and dignity. For this they have both earned my respect, and I hope yours as well.
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Dear Newsletter Readers,
You didn’t receive a newsletter last week because of the election. Here’s my column from yesterday’s paper, and I was surprised at the large number of negative comments it drew on the Press web site.
Some commenters did not understand that my column was not about the value of Sarah Palin as the VP pick, it was about sexism in this election diminishing us as a country. No one, of course, made any reference to Hillary Clinton; all the negatives were about Sarah Palin.
One commenter proved my point exactly by calling Gov. Palin “America’s favorite cocktail waitress”. Can you imagine someone calling Barack Obama “America’s favorite shoe shine boy? Or some other racially connected slur? The country would come unglued, as it should. But the sexist attacks on female candidates go uncontested.
Several people wrote that it was “whining” to bring this up after the election. I am not speaking to this issue because neither Clinton nor Palin were chosen by the public, I’m bringing it forward because it’s a terrible way to treat any candidate and it robs our country of serious leadership options.
Hope you all have a positive, productive week. –Mary
I agree Mary that Sarah just got hammered. As you and I both know, it is easy to get hammered.
I just think that she was not ready to take the national stage and hold that high of elective office. She needs time four to eight years learning the national issues and building her credentials. After that time, she will be a dynamite force and truly a national figure. My best wishes to Sarah.
steve badraun
Comment by steve badraun — November 10, 2008 @ 2:54 pm
Very true, Steve, we’ve been through some of that fire. Like the old saying goes, “that which does not kill us will make us stronger…”
Comment by mary — November 10, 2008 @ 2:56 pm
If anyone’s still interested, there’s a great new column by Camille Paglia, a very liberal writer for Salon Magazine online at Salon.com. Her style is cutting and witty but she has the courage to step out of line and think independently, which is rare in the liberal world today.
In her new column, Ms. Paglia talks about the Ayers conflict (her viewpoint surprised me) and reiterates her reasons for liking Sarah Palin. What a shock, a liberal writer likes Sarah Palin! Here’s a clip from her column:
“…reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don’t know their asses from their elbows.
Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.
As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee — what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry’s nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama’s pick and who was on everyone’s short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin’s. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.”
You can find the whole column at: http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/11/12/palin/index1.html
Comment by mary — November 12, 2008 @ 8:54 am
paglia is more libertarian than liberal.
Comment by reagan — November 12, 2008 @ 10:10 am
I know people who voted for McCain only because,Sarah Palin was on the ticket as VP.Had she not been on the Republican ticket McCain would have lost by bigger margins IMO.
I’m a little surprised that african-americans have made more progress than white females have;when
it comes to the media and getting elected.If Hillary Clinton had more favorable media reporting,we might not even be talking about the president elect.
Comment by kageman — November 12, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
paglia is a liberal demoncrat, an avowed atheist who openly supported b. hussein obamo. the claim that she is a libertarian is a ludicrous effort to obfuscate. palin is the reason mccain did as well as he did. what is really amazing is that mccain did what he did in the worst year for the gop, without the sixhundred million dollars b hussein obamo raised and with a media so deeply in the tank for the kenyan obamo that we never did see his medical records or birth certificate. palin will be a power for decades after this election is over.
Comment by TheWiz — November 12, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
Yes, Camille Paglia, by her own description is very pro-abortion and pro-Obama. That makes her support of Sarah Palin as a viable and credible candidate all the more interesting.
Just a little side note: I have personally decided to stop using the term “pro-choice”, instead I am going to say “pro-abortion” because that is more direct and clear. I will refer to myself as “pro-life” because that is easily understood.
Comment by mary — November 12, 2008 @ 8:54 pm
My ideal for a female candidate for president was Jeane Kirkpatrick. One the other hand there are male candidates whom are more ideal than the ones who run, and win. But, on a continuum Sarah is nowhere near the likes of Kirkpatrick when it comes to knowledge and the ability to articulate it into powerfully succinct messages. That said, Sarah had other virtues which made her an excellent option for leadership in todays Washington muck. She has solid ethics and is not afraid to use them. Had Sarah enjoyed just a little more of what Dr. Kirkpatrick has she would have been unstoppable.
Was she unfairly discriminated against because of just her gender? To some degree that is certain. It was more certain that Hillary was gender bashed. Sarah handed too much ammunition to too many groups. She offered much for criticism and was criticized on everything real or imaginary. Her shallow knowledge left her vulnerable to many of the false rumors that plagued her. For example nobody would have believed the Kirpatrick or Hillary would have said that she could see Russia from her porch. And if anyone did both would have cleaned their clock in dramatic and short order.
Basically the McCain campaign was run like a wagon train under massed artillery fire (the media) and Obama’s like a Ferrari illegally spiked with nitrous oxide on an open road. Obama won for clear reasons and McCain lost for clear reasons. I do not think that McCain would have won regardless of who his VEEP choice was. I do think that Sarah is lacking in substance and well endowed with character. She needs more substance even if she were a ‘he’.
Comment by Wallypog — November 13, 2008 @ 7:43 am
No, Obama’s campaign was an old used car pushed by millions of myopic followers who loathed Bush and placed messianic aspirations upon a relative unknown. The car was dressed up with millions of dollars of campaign contributions to look like something it’s not. When that car is finally parked in the White House garage, we’ll see it for what it is.
Comment by Dan — November 13, 2008 @ 8:18 am
Over on the Press site, a reader cued me into this poll of 1000 people by Newsbusters: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/11/19/poll-sexist-media-far-harsher-palin-clinton
It shows some surprising results.
During the election season, do you think the media treated…
Showing Fairly / Unfairly:(%)
Barack Obama 76/16
Joe Biden 73/12
John McCain 56/39
Hillary Clinton 56/33
Sarah Palin 35/58 …… Only 35% thought Sarah Palin was treated fairly.
Thinking about the kinds of stories the media ran, please indicate whether you remember
any stories about the following during the campaign.
Showing Yes/No:(%)
Sarah Palin’s appearance-her hair and clothes 81/14 …… This was the most remembered of all!
Barack Obama’s views about healthcare reform 73/19
Sarah Palin’s abilities as a parent 71/21
John McCain’s views about healthcare reform 66/25
Hillary Clinton’s views about healthcare reform 63/26
Hillary Clinton’s appearance-her hair and clothes 48/42
In general, do you think the media treats male and female candidates…
The same 16%
Differently 79%…this one says it all
Don’t know 5%
Comment by mary — November 19, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
I agree with most posts. The grand hypocrisy of this presidential campaign was the questioning of Palin’s credentials, and the virtual free pass given Obama. Water under the bridge. Let’s watch for the coverage of Obama’s presidency. Thus far we have some questionable appoinments. I think we’re witnessing “back to the future.” Sadly, this time around, the damage might prove irreparable.
Comment by Chris — November 20, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Yes, Chris, it is water under the bridge, but it also shows trends for the future. Will the media actually give us clear information about the economic disaster? Will they report any problems or failures of the new administration?
Comment by mary — November 20, 2008 @ 1:37 pm