Deep Misogyny of Mainstream Media and Women Candidates

The day after Elizabeth Warren announced her intention to form an exploratory committee something very familiar happened.

Politico ran a piece about how Warren was really Clinton "redux" and as an unlikable witch, her candidacy should be dismissed. And, unsurprisingly, it was written by a woman, as editors love to give those hatchet jobs to female journalists:

She’s too divisive and too liberal, Washington Democrats have complained privately. Her DNA rollout was a disaster — and quite possibly a White House deal-breaker. She’s already falling in the polls, and — perhaps most stinging — shares too many of the attributes that sank Hillary Clinton.

It took less than 24 hours to frame her candidacy negatively. And she is by far the most qualified and electable Democratic candidate. She is the one who gave this speech in 2011 when both Republicans and Democrats had moved to the right of Richard Nixon.

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

She passed legislation to protect consumers, she made life difficult for too-big-too-fail banksters and she went after the Republican grifters.

Yet she is just Clinton redux.

But her DNA?

Around the same time Kirsten Gillibrand announced her intention to explore. A backlash followed. She was the first woman senator to have asked Al Franken to resign. And ever since then, this implicit accusation of humorless harpy followed her everywhere.

Compare this to the reaction to Joe Biden, who, if elected would be 78 in 2020. He declared himself to be the most qualified person in America to be president and the media reported this without any commentary.

Can you imagine the media shitstorm if Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren made such a statement? All the liberal (i.e. deeply conservative) and conservative (i.e. proto-fascist) opinion-makers would have a field day with "them arrogant feminazi."

(As I explained before, women are the only minority anyone can call nazi and the normally hyper-vigilant ADL has no problem with that.)

In all this, the corporate media is extremely complicit.

This is how it works. The Republicans will invent a crisis, say Benghazi, and the corporate media will report every utterance or tweet from the Republican leadership. The issue will remain on the front page for as long as the Republicans chose to talk about it.

Conversely, if they uncover (Democrats are too wussy to do it on their own) a Republican scandal, say, Trump's lies or his massive conflicts of interest or his racist record. The so-called liberal media will do a one-off detailed report and that will be that.

During the presidential race, they covered Trump family's racist rental policies, his Washington Hotel or his dubious business associates all linked to Russian criminal circles. But do you know how many articles were published on her emails between March 2015 and September 2016?

560,397. Yes over half a million stories on Clinton's emails. 

Cable news was not any better.

Network newscasts have, remarkably, dedicated more airtime to coverage of Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined. 

Cable news has been, if anything, worse, and many prestige outlets have joined the pileup. One malign result of obsessive email coverage is that the public is left totally unaware of the policy stakes in the election. Another is that the constant vague recitations of the phrase ‘‘Clinton email scandal’’ have firmly implanted the notion that there is something scandalous about anything involving Hillary Clinton and email, including her campaign manager getting hacked or the revelation that one of her aides sometimes checked mail on her husband’s computer.

In fact, this is standard modus operandi when it comes to women candidates The Republican slurs are repeated so frequently by the media that they become qualifying adjectives in the minds of the electorate.

And it won't do for such candidates to fight against the bogus charges. The media will use such efforts to rehash the original attack.

Let's take a look at the Pocahontas racial slur used by Trump to taint and belittle Elizabeth Warren. The Republican claim was that Warren lied about having Native American heritage for professional gain.

Well, is it true? No.

Snopes reports that:

-She did put herself on Minority Law Teacher list as a Native American
-Harvard used her Native ancestry to bolster their claim of diversity

But they could find no evidence that she used her ancestry to gain professional advantage. She maintained that

[S]he was recruited for the positions and did not “apply” for them; and for the most part, her record did not indicate any identification as part of a minority group:

The Globe obtained a portion of Warren’s application to Rutgers, which asks if prospective students want to apply for admission under the school’s Program for Minority Group Students. Warren answered “no.”For her employment documents at the University of Texas, Warren indicated that she was “white.”

Now calling her Pocahontas is racist. Do you remember media outlets bringing up this fact repeatedly or at least every time Trump used it in a tweet?

Me neither.

Let's take a look at your options when you are under attack as a progressive woman politician.

If you say nothing, the Republicans will continue to attack and the media will continue to report their attacks. Soon you are a liar and a fraud.

If you push back, they report your statement and counter it with a Republican talking point.

So, Elizabeth Warren was accused of lying about her heritage. She took a DNA test to show that she had Native American DNA only to be ridiculed by the same media outlets. They even quoted the execrable Lindsey Graham saying that he was going to take a DNA test to try to beat Warren's results.

You are doomed if you say nothing and doomed if you defend yourself.

And finally, the media will gleefully put these bogus changes around your neck by repeating them every time you make a statement.

Case in point: When Warren  announced her bid to presidency, most media outlets brought up her DNA tests and claim of Native American heritage. This is what the New York Times said:

While Ms. Warren’s stinging attacks on Mr. Trump and Wall Street have helped make her a favorite of grass-roots liberals, she also faces challenges as a presidential candidate: controversy over a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage, skepticism from the party establishment and a lack of experience in a national race.

Then they ran a piece about Warren apologizing to the Cherokee nation for the DNA test. And quoted Trump saying this

"[Warren's credibility has] "been hurt very badly with the Pocahontas trap". 

"I think she's been hurt badly. I may be wrong, but I think that was a big part of her credibility, and now all of a sudden it's gone."

Donald Trump the man who lied more than all politicians in American history combined was asked to comment on Elizabeth Warren's credibility. Can you see the irony? They don't.

The next day BBC brought it up and had Cherokee Nation's Secretary of State attack Warren:

"Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage." 

"It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonouring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven."

I can give you CNN, Washington Post, USAToday or Vox.

Compare this with Joe Biden withdrawing his 1988 presidential bid for plagiarism. No one remembers it. Do you know why? Because he is a man, no one brings it up.

Just like no one brings up regularly the fact that Donald Trump lied 7,645 times since taking office.

Do you see epithets like "his tendency to make misleading statements dogged him since he became president?"

Or do you see periodic reports on his paying off a porn star or a Playboy model on the anniversary of these incidents?

Me neither.

Yet Monica Lewinsky incident is always back in the news. This is from 15 February 2019 BBC News and the item was on the front page for five days.

In case you think this is about Bill Clinton, it is not. It is still the media's way of skewering Hillary Clinton.

Do you see periodic pieces on Dennis Hastert, the former Republican speaker who abused boys as a wrestling coach and paid them off afterwards?

Do you see anyone mentioning Louisiana (R) Senator David Vitter whose sex worker dealt with his diaper fetish?

All ancient history.

But Benghazi and email servers all the time. Or Warren's DNA.

They tried to do it with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but it didn't work for once, because millennials called their bullshit.

But that doesn't mean they won't try again.

There is a special place in hell for corporate media journalists.