Lou Dobbs Calls Attention to Media Bias against Clinton

On March 31, Lou Dobbs was a rare voice in the media, calling attention to media bias against Hillary Clinton and in favor of Obama on his Lou Dobbs Tonight show. Here is a link to more video of the show:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/31/lou-dobbs-says-anticlint_n_94358.html


Dobbs mentions a Non-Partisan Center for Media and Public Affairs study that found that since last December, 83 percent of reporting on Obama by the media has been positive, only 53 percent positive for Hillary Clinton, and he called attention, along with Howard Kurtz from the Washington Post, to how the national media is unfairly making the main story how Hillary Clinton is ruining the party by staying in the race (trumpeting the words of Sen. Leahy and Sen. Dodd and Governor Richardson, in other words, Obama supporters), even though it's a close race, and how this preventing her from speaking out on the issues.

As Kurtz said, news coverage is making the main story whether Hillary Clinton is ruining the party by staying in the race. It's amazing how the media outlets copy one another, all echoing the same story, in the same way that all the media outlets parrotted each other in covering the "sniper" story. The New York Times op-ed this week by two women who staff members of Hillary Clinton's and on that March 1996 tour to Bosnia with her, which supported Hillary Clinton's claim that there was sniper fire in the area, was not picked up by any national TV or Internet media, unlike all the negative coverage of Clinton in columns such as Maureen Dowd or David Brooks from the same paper. (From the op-ed, "These facts explain why many of us, including the first lady, believed that the conditions on the ground were precarious. We were worried about sniper fire and were prepared to rush off the tarmac when we landed.")

Kudos to Dobbs and Kurtz for calling attention to media bias and how the media twists and shapes public perception.

What's unanswered is what is behind this wholesale media bias? Why only a few lone voices in the media that call attention to this bias? There must be something deep in the Jungian psychology of the media to explain the slanted negative coverage of Hillary Clinton, and gender must be at the heart of it.

Below is the entire transcript of the show:

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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/31/ldt.01.html

LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

White House Proposes Wall Street Overhaul; Interview With Joseph Stiglitz

Aired March 31, 2008 - 19:00 ET

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: "Good evening, everybody.

The media bias against Senator Clinton appears to be worsening tonight. Newspapers and other media across the country are giving an increasing voice to those calling for Senator Clinton to drop out of this race. Many of those pleas are originating with Obama supporters, but some of the calls are coming from columnists whose remarks are picked up by not only other newspapers, but television and the Internet as well.

Those voices in favor of Senator Obama say Senator Clinton should end her campaign for quote "the good of the party." And that a long campaign would quote "tear the party apart and ensure a Republican victory in November", but when it comes to the largest audiences the three nightly broadcast newscasts, the bias is seemingly most pronounced.

The nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs has found that since last December, 83 percent of the reporting on Senator Obama was positive. Only 53 percent of the reporting on Senator Clinton was positive. Joining me now are Lanny Davis, former special counsel to former President Bill Clinton and adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign, and Howard Kurtz, media critic for "The Washington Post" and host of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES" and Jim Zogby, a super delegate for none other than Senator Barack Obama. Good to have you with us. Howard, let me turn to you, first. I mean this is straight forward objective quantifiable research saying point blank the national media has blown it on this campaign.

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST, CNN'S RELIABLE SOURCES: Well those figures are a little dated though, because I think the coverage was starting to be a little more even until the last 10 days when you had this drum beat, as you just described, of columnists, commentators and about 700 cable news segments saying why is Hillary Clinton still in this race. She can't possibly win. I think that should be up to the voters to decide and I think that by making this topic (A) in the race, it means that her message can't get through on the economy or...

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: But, how many of these reports originating in national mainstream media have referred in headlines and subtitles and cut lines to the call for Senator Clinton's withdrawal without noting that those calls for withdrawal are originating exclusively and without exception with supporters of Senator Obama.

KURTZ: Well, some of the stories have made that clear apparently, for example, calling on her to bow out. But look at my newspaper, "The Washington Post", on Saturday front page headline, Clinton resist calls to drop out; Sunday front page headline, Clinton vows to stay in the race until convention, although that was an interview initiated by the senator saying that she is not getting out, but we won't let her talk about anything else.

DOBBS: Well and Howard Kurtz that is one of the reasons you are here is because you are a honest journalist and tough enough to say it straight up about your own news organization and I commend you for that. I know others do as well.

Let's turn to you, if I may, Lanny Davis, what is the Clinton campaign's response to this? You have watched this go on literally for months now, and there was a "Saturday Night Live", and the senator's reference during the debate to may we get you another pillow, Senator Obama, but this has got to be incredibly frustrating and you have got to do incredibly better.

LANNY DAVIS, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL TO BILL CLINTON: Well, let me just make two points, first of all the night before the New Hampshire primary most of the same pundits for saying she was gone because she was going to lose New Hampshire, after the South Carolina caucuses she was going to lose Super Tuesday and then a "Newsweek" columnist actually said she should drop out before Ohio and Texas. She continues to surprise everybody, because she is tough and she fights and she's not going to let them bully her out of this race.

The second point, very quickly, Lou, is the double standard. We had this tremendous media frenzy, because I believe she made an honest mistake where news reporters at the time described and this is from the "Charleston Gazette" at the time in Bosnia that there were snipers protecting the first lady in a combat zone. She made an honest mistake when she said she was fired upon and we had two days or three days of media frenzy.

Now in the last three days we had Barack Obama on the front page of "The Post" yesterday where he misrepresented his father coming over to America through the use of Kennedy money. We have him taking credit for an immigration bill which he actually according to Senator Dodd had very little to do with. We have him saying that he didn't know that Rezko was involved in wrongdoing...

DOBBS: Not to participate...

DAVIS: ... where is the media on...

DOBBS: Not to participate on the bias, Lanny. I think we get the point.

DAVIS: Double standard is my point.

DOBBS: Let me turn to Jim Zogby. At what point -- you certainly are the beneficiary of this imbalanced coverage if I can put it that way, how are you -- how is the campaign going to react to what is almost certainly going to be a I think probably an adjustment?

JAMES ZOGBY, SUPER DELEGATE SUPPORTING OBAMA: I'm not the beneficiary and I'm not going to go through talking points like Lanny did here. Let me make a point though. This game of politics always involves the ability to deal with media and to get your message through and control media and the Clinton people are not doing a good job.

They've tried. Lord knows they have tried. They tried with the Bosnia story. They blew it. They tried with the dream team story to demean and diminish the Obama campaign and they blew it there, too. They have tried to control the message and it has not worked frankly because it has not worked.

The calls for Senator Clinton to leave the race are based on that fact that numerically she simply cannot win and therefore all she can do is do what she is doing, which is try to beat up and draw some blood from...

DOBBS: Whoa, whoa, whoa...

ZOGBY: ... the front-runner...

DOBBS: Whoa, whoa, whoa...

ZOGBY: ... and make his candidacy in November...

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: Numerically you say she can't win.

ZOGBY: Right.

DOBBS: That is in point of fact with certain assumptions made true. ZOGBY: Right.

DOBBS: If you don't make those assumptions, it is not true.

ZOGBY: Well I know, but the assumptions...

(CROSSTALK)

ZOGBY: The assumptions they tried to make is she tried to go to Michigan and do a little bit of I think incitement of Michigan voters. It was really not a fair thing to do.

(CROSSTALK)

ZOGBY: The fact is that the party rules have been very clear she keeps trying to change...

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: ... away from those talking points, Jim. Now if I may.

ZOGBY: Yeah.

DOBBS: The point is that neither will Senator Obama have the number of delegates necessary to clinch the nomination.

ZOGBY: But the simple fact here...

DOBBS: But...

ZOGBY: ... is that being about 170 up in pledged delegates and the polling with the super delegates, I think it's pretty clear the direction this is going in and that is all the columnists are saying is that if you cannot win this...

(CROSSTALK)

ZOGBY: ... and the only way you can win it is to have a 1968 moment at the convention, then is it in the good of the Democratic Party that you go forward with this? That is the issue that's out there right now.

(CROSSTALK)

ZOGBY: But I don't think you can make the case...

(CROSSTALK)

ZOGBY: ... that it is not...

DOBBS: Jim, may I say this before I turn...

ZOGBY: Sure.

DOBBS: ... to Lanny Davis that I want to first of all applaud your campaign as Senator Obama for having the best, the best, the best interest of the party at heart in that altruistic motivation is I think persuasive to many. Lanny Davis?

DAVIS: Well, first of all, I went through a series of facts that can't be disputed about misstatements by Senator Obama which I assume were honest mistakes. The media jumped to the word lie when Senator Clinton made an honest mistake. I say there is a double standard and secondly, Jim, with all due respect, you changed what you said. You said she can't win from you are relying on assumptions.

The fact is if she wins the way she surprised in Ohio and Texas, she won Ohio big. We have to win Ohio to win the White House. If she wins Pennsylvania, most of the rest of the primaries and comes in that convention...

(CROSSTALK)

DAVIS: ... ahead of John McCain in the polls, then that convention is going to nominate her over Barack Obama, because we are not a suicide party.

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: OK, I'd like to turn now to Howard Kurtz. As we were watching these -- both Lanny and Jim duel a bit around the talking points and the positions of their campaign and understandably so, what is most troubling is, as you point out and acknowledge, the number of national news organizations, electronic as well as print, we should be absolutely clear, that have really taken on this idea that 10 more states should not vote, that it is perfectly rational that neither Michigan nor Florida should be enfranchised with the vote.

I mean, millions of Democratic voters have been disenfranchised as if there is no party preference whatsoever on the parties of the members of the DNC making these judgments. I mean, the national media is really messing this up a bit, don't you think?

KURTZ: Well, I don't have any problem, Lou, with journalists saying that it's an uphill struggle for Senator Clinton...

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: ... the delegate math works against her, but when you get into these scenarios, I'm reminding of the fact that many of these same geniuses in the press said last summer that John McCain was dead, he was toast, he was finished and it seems to me he came back and he is the Republican nominee, so there obviously is some chance that Senator Clinton could win this nomination and we ought not in this business say that she ought to get out or suggest that it's hopeless until the voters have spoken.

DOBBS: As an Independent, with no vested interest whatsoever in the Democratic or the Republican side here, I don't recall a race in which we have seen quite the transparent favoritism that we have seen in this campaign.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, Lou, I don't think you can't say that. Look, I remember... DOBBS: Well, I was actually asking Howard Kurtz...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Sure.

DOBBS: ... who is something of an expert on this sort of thing...

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: ... he can dismiss me if he wishes.

KURTZ: Well, it is certainly true that most of the liberal columnists are for Senator Obama and against Senator Clinton, but you know they are in the commentary business, that's OK.

DOBBS: Sure.

KURTZ: But when that -- when you marry that to news coverage that seems to make the only operative question right now, not who is going to win Pennsylvania or Indiana, but whether or not Hillary Clinton is hurting the party and being selfish by staying in the race, the effect is one that looks like we are not being entirely fair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Could I just -- maybe Jim and I will agree on this. What the news coverage should do is report issues and what Lou you try to do on your program is the candidates debating issues. The personal character attacks by the Obama campaign against Hillary Clinton, the whole stampede to call her a liar rather than an honest mistake is diverting the American people's attention from the issues and that is why she won Ohio, it's why she's going to win Pennsylvania and all of the battleground states that you have to win as a Democrat, because she is right on the issues.

DOBBS: Jim Zogby, you get the last word.

ZOGBY: Well, again, Lanny, I think that that's fine from your point of view. The fact is that you guys have tried to do it all along and it simply hasn't succeeded. The nastiness of this campaign has been one I think that is difficult for all Democrats to deal with, which is why I think there are increasing calls that it just be over.

It is not disenfranchising people. What it is saying to Democrats is do we really need to continue to draw blood and beat up our candidates before November...

DOBBS: So it's a position of the Obama campaign...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... should we not have a different campaign.

DOBBS: It's the position of the Obama campaign that you should simply foreclose...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

DOBBS: Ten primaries...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

DOBBS: ... and the voters in those states...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not at all. Not at all.

DOBBS: ... and disenfranchise the voters...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm saying...

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is what some Democrats are saying.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

DOBBS: And disenfranchise the voters in Michigan and Florida.

(CROSSTALK)

DOBBS: Is that the position?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is not the position of the campaign and Senator Obama himself said she ought to stay in if she wants to stay in. I'm saying this is what others have said, Senator Leahy has said and others have said...

DOBBS: And Senator Dodd and Senator Durbin...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.

DOBBS: ... and former Governor Bill Richardson...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I would say...

DOBBS: ... or Governor Bill Richardson...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... that the cases of Michigan and Florida need to be dealt with quite separately. They broke party rules. Frankly look I have a huge...

DOBBS: Jim, I've got to break...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... constituency in Michigan. I don't want them disenfranchised, but this was not done right and Michigan unfortunately has to come up with a better way to do it than what they have done so far.

DOBBS: Jim Zogby, thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

DOBBS: Howard Kurtz, thank you very much, sir. Lanny Davis, thank you, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Lou.

DOBBS: And we want to hear from you on this question. Do you believe there is a media bias against Hillary Clinton and in favor of Barack Obama? We'd love to hear from you. Yes or no. We'll be bringing that -- those results at the end of the broadcast..."

Barbara Walters and her Obama is sexy comment

On yesterday's "The View," Joy Behar, one of the fearsome female foursome asked Obama about the new finding that he is related to Brad Pitt. Obama answered, "I guess we're ninth cousins removed or something.. .I think he got the better-looking side of the gene pool."

Barbara Walters then said, "Can I say this? ...We find you very sexy looking." Catcalls and cheers from the audience ensued.

I wish Whoopie had spoken up because she, for one, seemed a little disgusted.

Why did Walters feel the need to say she finds Obama sexy? He's running for President, right? He's not a movie star. And when you contrast Walters' words to how Hillary Clinton has been derogatorily sexualized in the media, how a brief show of cleavage on CSpan led her to being condemned by a female journalist in the Washington Post and how she is constantly criticized for her "unfeminine" appearance, this vote of approval for Obama's appealing sexuality by a respected woman journalist such as Barbara Walters just reeks of sexism, of how Hillary Clinton has been treated so negatively by the media because she is a woman. Think of it this way: a male TV speaking-head has never and would never call Hillary Clinton "sexy". Hillary Clinton is expected to desexualize herself, her image, otherwise she would not be taken seriously as a presidential candidate, and yet she is condemned for not being feminine enough. Yet Obama gets himself called "very sexy looking" on national TV by Barbara Walters.

Obama no longer a Messiah?

In today's New York Times, Dowd writes favorably about Obama's speech yesterday on race. In her view, that Obama's pastor and spiritual adviser of twenty years has spewed racist statements from the pulpit just shows that Obama isn't perfect, which is a good thing. As she writes:

"A little disenchantment with Obama could turn out to be a good thing. Too much idealism can blind a leader to reality as surely as too much ideology can. Up until now, Obama and his worshipers have set it up so that he must be so admirable and ideal and perfect and everything we’ve ever wanted that any kind of blemish — even a parking ticket — was regarded as a major failing. With the Clintons, we expect them to be cheesy on ethics, so no one is ever surprised when they are. But Saint Obama played the politics of character to an absurd extent. For 14 months, his argument for leading the world has been himself — his exquisitely globalized self. He should be congratulated on the disappearance of the pedestal. Leaders don’t need to be messiahs."

It's funny that she uses the word "messiah", because that's exactly what Obama has cast himself as in his run for presidency. (And weren't Michelle Obama's comments in Vogue about Barack's smelly breath and failure to pick up his socks also designed to not have him hoisted on a pedestal? And her remarks were criticized, largely, I think, because people want a messianic, perfect figure, someone to wrap their hopes in, in this empty spiritual age.)

This morning on NPR Jesse Jackson Jr., Obama's National Co-Chair, said that after his speech, Obama is "almost approaching deity." To me, that was a scary statement. I, for one, don't want my president to be a deity.

But all along, Obama's candidacy has been cast in religious terms.

When Oprah stumped for Obama in New Hampshire to an audience of thousands of mainly African-Americans, she introduced Obama with a reference to the book, “The Autobiography of Jane Pittman,” a story of an African-American woman. In a moving rendition, she said how the slave Jane Pittman asks of each new baby, "are you the one?," the one who will free her from her bonds of slavery. Oprah answered, "Obama is the one." This had both messianic and racial undertones: she was directly framing Obama as a savior.

And in April 2007, Jodi Kantor reported in the New York Times, "The day after the party for Mr. Wright [in March 2007], Mr. Obama stood in an A.M.E. church pulpit in Selma, Ala., and cast his candidacy in nothing short of biblical terms, implicitly comparing himself to Joshua, known for his relative inexperience, steadfast faith and completion of Moses’ mission of delivering his people to the Promised Land. 'Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go,' Mr. Obama said in paraphrasing God’s message to Joshua."

So, contrary to what Dowd writes, all along Obama has cast himself, using biblical imagery and rhetoric, as a kind of messiah.

Perhaps this explains the tremendous appeal among twenty- and thirty-somethings, the post-Boomers, for Obama. Princeton University professor Robert Wuthnow writes in After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty Somethings are Shaping the Future of American Religion about "how in the absence of institutional support many post-boomers have taken a more individualistic, improvised approach to spirituality." It's likely, therefore, that Obama's rhetoric holds an attraction to young people looking for spiritual meaning that they are not getting from their religious institutions.

And this explains why Obama's polling numbers have gone down since videos of Wright hit the TV news and Internet. These videos of Pastor Wright are so damaging because they speak to the YouTube generation in the their visual digital language. The other YouTube videos have been tremendously powerful for Obama: the Black Eyed Peas Yes We Can video, the Obama Girl video. But these clips of Pastor Wright might cloud the image of Obama as a post-racial messianic figure in the eyes of twenty- and thirty-something post-boomers who want to truly move beyond racial division.

Tribune's Interview of Obama

Why such a softball question on the issue of Obama's pastor?

Obama sat down for an interview with the Tribune editorial board, to establish the notion that he is being forthright and honest. But if you sit and down and read the (edited) interview, he gets lots of free passes.

Read this question the Tribune asks him:

Tribune: The issue of [former U.S. Rep.] Geraldine Ferraro's comments on the role your race has played in this campaign. Then comes the video that has comments that your pastor Jeremiah Wright has made. How are we to look at these, what's the best way to look at this and in what context do you put them to the American people?

Why does the Tribune equate his pastor's racist and anti-Semitic remarks with Ferraro's? Obama has been a member of the church for 20 years and just this week denounces the pastor's comments, even though the pastor christened his children and married him, and he took his book title, The Audacity of Hope, from one of the pastor's sermons. Ferraro's comment wasn't even racist, and she isn't in the same position to Clinton as the pastor is to Obama. Here was an opportunity for the Tribune to make Obama explain himself, but instead, the editorial board asked an open-ended question that's basically allowing him to equate his pastor's remarks with Ferraro's. This is a question that reveals the paper's bias.

And what about this question:

Tribune: There's been some sense that you've treated Sen. Clinton with kid gloves on the issue of ethical standards. If she were to do a session like this, what do you think we ought to ask her about?

What is the Tribune talking about? The media has been giving Obama a "kid glove" treatment on the issue of ethical standards--haven't they seen the SNL sketch that Hillary Clinton made reference to? Whose sense are they talking about--their own warped one? Here again is an open question allowing Obama to turn the lens onto Hillary when this is supposed to be a chance for him to sit down and answer tough questions about himself, his association with Rezko and his pastor.

Notice how many times Obama says "I'll be honest with you." Why continually use this phrase--isn't it assumed throughout this whole "frank" interview that he's always being frank and honest?

Spitzer Sex Scandal-Another Reason to Vote for Hillary

Alessandra Stanley in an article in today's New York Times contrasts the stated reactions of female and male commentators on TV. The male pundits, like Alan Dershowitz, are largely sympathizing with Spitzer and claiming that Spitzer's was a "victimless crime" and that Spitzer is a victim of "selective prosecution."

On Anderson Cooper tonight on CNN, Dershowitz was actually yelling at a female anchor who dared to argue that Silda Spitzer should not have appeared by Spitzer's side, that she should have made a different choice and not humiliated herself by standing by him publicly. Dershowitz screamed, "how dare you judge this woman, this marriage, etc." He didn't get her point which was why don't the wives of these philandering husbands get to make a choice, a choice not to appear by their unfaithful husbands' sides?

As Stanley writes, "The female hosts on “The View” have also had their share of tabloid stories, but most of those scandals followed catfights behind the scenes, not lapses in morality or professional probity. Certainly there were no tears shed for Mr. Spitzer on Tuesday on “The View,” where for once all five women agreed emphatically on almost everything about the scandal."

“Aren’t you sick of men?” Joy Behar, one of the hosts, said. “Viagra is destroying our government.”


Again and again, male leaders have been found guilty of sex scandals, their desire for political power part of a thrill-seeking personality that leads them to commit these infidelities, in which power is at play, with the woman being used by a much more powerful man. A female political leader, no matter how powerful, would not commit such an act of hubris.

Hillary Clinton should argue that her presidency is the one that represents change--a presidency where there's no chance that her power-seeking personality will lead to a sex scandal, a distraction from her governing.

It's interesting, we don't have enough of a history of women in positions of political power to know what their overweening pride would lead them to do, whether it would lead them to go astray. Would a female leader even have hubris? I wonder.

Is "Charisma" something only men can possess?

A professor of history sent me this article idea in an email:

"I was thinking it might be interesting to write a piece on how charisma is gendered male – unless you are, maybe, mother Teresa. All these attractive men – Kennedy, Clinton (Bill), Obama, are “charismatic, “ -- which means that people want to follow them anywhere. It’s ok for women to fall in love with a male candidate, but it is not ok for men to fall in love with a female one. I don’t remember what Max Weber said about charisma, but I suspect none of his examples of political charisma were female."

She wrote this to me a week before the New York Times published the article, The Charisma Mandate" on the front page of its "Week in Review" section, on February 17th. The article mentioned Weber's definition of charisma, but didn't mention anything about "charisma" being gendered male.

This is a fascinating subject that no one, to my knowledge, has written on. Charisma, by definition, is powerful in a political leader--how unfair, and restrictive, for women leaders, if it is in fact, gendered male, and therefore not an attribute that is available to them. It seems to be a widely held notion that Hillary Clinton lacks this quality of "charisma," which the public seems to think Obama has (though the "tipping point" is surely at work here in mob psychology). Has there been a female leader who has "charisma"? Or is it by definition something only men can possess?

Maureen Dowd twists the truth today

Today Maureen Dowd writes in her column, "I know that the attacks against powerful women can be harsh and personal and unfair, enough to make anyone cry." (Meanwhile, she has been one of the first to always attack Hillary Clinton, but she needn't flatter herself, neither she nor any of the other pundits who regularly criticize Clinton have ever made Hillary cry; it's an attack in and of itself to imply that Clinton has been crying because of attacks against her. This is a reference to the two times on the campaign trail that Hillary got a little emotional, but she never actually shed tears. The fact this is focused on is sad: a woman candidate is expected to be steely and strong, if she is too strong, she is seen as too masculine).

Dowd also writes, "While Obama aims to transcend race, Hillary often aims to use gender to her advantage, or to excuse mistakes. In 1994, after her intransigence and secrecy-doomed health care plan, she told The Wall Street Journal that she was “a gender Rorschach test.”


Obama has managed to convince people that he is "transcending race." But what does this mean? In his lofty poetic rhetoric he is always making references to race, and to his own mixed racial background, in a way that connects with African-Americans and gets them to support him, while at the same time saying that he is "above" race. Hillary Clinton could never get away with such doublespeak.

Slight sexism in WSJ coverage today of Clinton

It seems no coverage of Hillary Clinton can appear without being tainted by some sexism. Today a WSJ article is balanced until the end, which reads, "All day yesterday, the Clinton and Obama campaigns traded barbs via emails to the press. Mrs. Clinton stayed on the stump, wearing her trademark yellow jacket and a sunny disposition, while the campaign song blaring here, in Spanish, was "Estos Celos," or 'This Jealousy.'"

Note two things: first, there's no description of what Obama has been wearing on the stump, though Hillary's outfit is detailed, and second, "jealousy" would not be attributed to a man, it's an emotion that is gendered female. It's kind of like the image of Tracy Flick, the wanna-be high school president from the movie Election that Slate.com has had plastered on its home page in a video comparing Flick to Clinton. Men don't get jealous of competitors, they get angry, they fight, they battle to win. Jealousy is underhanded, secretive, it's one way people view angry women. Society would prefer to view strong women who are stymied as jealous rather than as angry.

No wonder Chelsea's been silent till now...

Her parents were right to worry and to try to shield her from the media. Every thing she says and does is dissected and then discussed on national TV. In the same way that her mother has become a lightning rod for praise and criticism, so has she.

"The View" made fun of her for her soft voice; apparently she called up three of the co-hosts to ask them to support her mother in the NY primary.

But "The View" hosts' jesting was in good faith.

In contrast, David Shuster's said on MSNBC's Hardball, "Doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Bill Preiss answered no, but Shuster insisted in continuing his metaphor of unseemly behavior on the part of Chelsea.

His choice of the word "pimping" was sexist and unnecessary. All of the candidates have had their adult children campaigning for them. The Romney boys were spoken of in the same way, even though they were much more proactive in campaigning for their father. I think this blog entry by Taylor Marsh is well-written on this subject, and she includes a video link to the exchange between Shuster and Preiss.