Sherry Chandler » The Hillary Factor
The Hillary Factor
I found this Reuters video posted by egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Woman. I think Deborah Tannen makes some very valid points about what is going on in this Democratic primary, a problem that she calls “The Hillary Factor.”
You also need to know that there’s been an absolute media storm over the perception that Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous treated Senator Obama unfairly at Tuesday night’s debate, though few, few have protested the long history of such unfair treatment of Senator Clinton at previous debates:*
My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.
Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?
Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.
That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining.
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.
It is, in fact, his status as media darling that makes Big Tent Democrat an Obama supporter. He thinks that will give Senator Obama the edge he needs to win the general election. But Tuesday’s affair may indicate that Obama’s media buddies are fair weather friends. And if, as is reported, Mr. Obama performed poorly under the barrage of character questions on Tuesday, he needs to get over it and learn how to deal. Hillary Clinton has done so.
“If as reported” I say because I don’t watch television debates and I agree that questions about flag pens are just possibly not as important as questions about torture policy. On the other hand, if you’re going to protest this treatment of one candidate, then you must protest this treatment of all candidates or your protest is just partisan whining.
Senator Obama gets pretty snarky about the debate, whether or not he deliberately flipped the bird at Senator Clinton. (Where have I seen this kind of behavior in a young male pol before? Oh yeah. Here.) Call me stodgy but I don’t find this behavior presidental, and I cannot imagine either Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton behaving in quite this way, no matter how avid the crowd.
He is also planning to pour $2 million into ads in Pennsylvania over these last four days of the campaign there. No wonder the media love him. And if Clinton ekes out even the squeakiest victory, she has done so against incredible odds. And it might say something about the real will of the people.
If I have learned anything in my 63 years, it is that you can’t often predict the consequences of events. Whatever the outcome of the presidential primary, I hope one consequence is that young American women wake up to the fact that the fight for women’s equality is not won, even here where women have gained a lot of ground. Around the world, the condition of women is pitiful.
Update: Let the powerful words of Robin Morgan speak for my hopes that women will become activists again. If you have not read her Goodbye To All That #2, I suggest you do so:
Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”
______
*egalia also points out that some women’s organizations have begun a belated protest.
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4 Comments
1. JimT replies at 20th April 2008, 11:08 am :
My anger at the ABC conduct of the debate last week has nothing to do with fairness of the questions and everything to do with their relevance. That seems to be Obama’s reaction, too, although his opponents have taken his objections to the dominance of tabloid and overly rehashed “issues”, recasting it as whining about mistreatment.
The questions asked in the ABC debate were the shoddiest I’ve heard, and I’ve been watching presidential debates since those between Nixon and Kennedy. I kept wondering what Eric Sevareid would ask, or Cronkite or Murrow or even Bill Moyers. This is, after all, a time of growing economic problems, an ill-conceived and poorly executed war, war deaths and injuries beyond comprehension and mounting, and a federal government in Washington that is paralyzed by special interests. And their questions are about a babysitter’s father’s political activities in the 1960’s and flag pins?
I started watching the Democratic debates last fall ready to support Edwards, Obama, or Clinton in the general election. With Edwards gone, I was happy with either of the remaining two. This changed several weeks ago when Hillary Clinton went negative on Obama. (Specifically, when she was asked about rumors about Obama secretly being a Muslim, she hemmed and hawed and shrugged and said, finally that if that’s what Obama said, then she saw no reason to not believe him. It was a ludicrous question, and she should have said so. But she answered in a way crafted to keep doubt alive.)
Hillary Clinton might make a good president. I don’t know. But I’m increasingly uncomfortable with her willingness to stoop to get there. And it’s Obama’s sincere effort to elevate the dialog and address the complexity of issues and their solutions that draws me to him. These are real issues that he wants to talk about, to address in debate. Not flag pins or a babysitter’s father or a former pastor’s most outrageous comments.
2. sherry replies at 20th April 2008, 2:02 pm :
Hey JimT. Thank you for commenting. You and I hold one another in high esteem and I hope we will continue to do so for many years.
I think we tend to see things through a different filter, you as one who likes Senator Obama and me as one who is outraged by the unchecked sexism of this campaign. Maybe we’re just acting out our demographic profiles.
But I am not convinced that he is above the negativity. The video to which I link doesn’t show me a man trying to elevate the dialogue. It shows me a man pandering to the basest instincts of his crowd.
Though I didn’t watch it myself, nothing I’ve read about last Tuesday’s debate makes me disagree with you that it was egregious. I think either one or both of our candidates could show real leadership (and get themselves a lot of votes) if they stood up to this trivializing, not by refusing to debate, but by confronting the moderators and refusing to play the game. George W. Bush did this. He said, “When I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish.” And that’s all he would say on the question of his drug use. And whatever I may think about Bush, which isn’t much, he did take that particular silly question off the table.
Obama or Clinton could do something similar. Instead they both play gotcha and I stick by my point, which is that you have to protest all media bias if you want to protest any media bias.
I quote Eric Boehlert of Media Matters:
The allegation that Hillary Clinton fudged on Barack Obama’s religion does, in fact, originate with Drudge and is part of the whole native-costume kerfluffle. Here’s a different take on the “as far as I know” incident that indicates how the reporter kept pushing at Clinton for the answer he wanted:
3. JimT replies at 20th April 2008, 3:21 pm :
I hold you in equal esteem, Sherry, and I’ll confess that I’m ill-informed on what’s being said on political blogs. As proof: I’ve heard of the Drudge Report, but just this minute is the first time I’ve ever clicked there.
Like most people, I’m not particularly aware of my filters. But I know irrelevant questions when I hear them. Instead of the 27th variation on a Rev. Wright question, or the eighteenth about a Bosnian airfield in 1992, someone could have asked: “Assuming you’re elected president, what two or three individuals would you primarily rely on for foreign policy advice?” Or: “How would you go about choosing a nominee for the next Supreme Court vacancy?” Or: “What role, if any, do you see Iran playing in a post-occupation Iraq?” Or: “Is there a reason to stem the flow of manufacturing jobs from the US, and, if so, how would your administration reverse the trend?” Or one of a hundred other questions that you or I or some other reasonably interested citizen could pose. But that’s not what we got.
I think the problem of irrelevance stems from the shift of network news bureaus to being run as entertainment entities. (”Next up on the nightly news, two Survivor outcasts tell what went wrong!”) That mindset opens the door to all sorts of silliness masquarading as news.
All of which has little to do with the main point of your original post, I know, Sherry. So I’ll quit on that (unrelated) note.
4. sherry replies at 20th April 2008, 4:06 pm :
On this, JimT, my friend, we are in complete accord. If questions like that were asked in the debates, I might watch them. I also agree with you about the news bureaus. They have to make a profit when, in say Cronkite’s day they did not, and just this week, I read some one saying that it’s all about emotion now. (It’s disgraceful to quote without citation but I read so much…) Instead of reporting facts or social implications of events, reporters find some one they can put on camera to say how it makes them feel — usually pretty bad. It’s why I read blogs. I can usually ferret out the whole story on them.
But I’ll also admit that I work to my prejudices. That’s the downside of the internet. And another bad thing that’s happening to our culture, I think. We’re all withdrawing into our little walled enclaves, metaphorical or real.
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