It’s not like Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is the first woman to ever attempt to win a general election. Sure, she’s the first woman to have anything close to a shot at being the president of the U.S. but then, the U.S. has often been behind the curve in such things.
Women In Power
Angela Merkel, Dilma Rousseff, Park Geun-hye, Alenka Bratusek. You might not have heard of them all, it’s OK, it doesn’t make you a bad person. As of 2016, across the world, there are 15 female heads of state and seven female heads of government.
And that’s just those in office today. Since Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minister of Sri Lanka in 1960, no fewer than 60 other countries have chosen a woman as their leader.
Which makes the line of questioning Hilary Clinton was subjected to on the Today Show, this past week, all the more annoying. It was subtly done of course, but to anyone paying close attention, there was a hint of… well, of misogyny really.
It wasn’t what was said exactly. This was no repeat of the query Bill O’Reilly spat out in 2014:
“There’s gotta be some downside to having a woman president, something, something that may not fit with that office. Correct?”
It wasn’t the way it was said either, nor the framing of the questions themselves.
No, it was more about the obvious impatience with the detailed responses that Clinton was giving.
Clinton isn’t all that popular really. It’s her sense of entitlement, it just seems to rub people up the wrong way. She wants to lead the country, she wants to make the tough calls, she wants to be the one giving orders.
What a bitch.
Double Standards
Yet so few bastards.
I guess it’s OK when men are hungry for something. When they want the pay off at the end of a long and arduous career. But really, has there ever been anyone elected president who wasn’t driven by a sense of entitlement?
O.K, sure, George Washington, but after him?
Clinton is committing the ultimate sin, the sin of being a woman who has refused to sit on the bleachers waving her pom poms. She’s guilty of being able to keep up with the boys. You don’t have to like her, or support her, or even vote for her to admit that she is most definitely doing that.
Perception is always a tricky thing when it comes to politics, the only subject where everyone seems to have an opinion. There is of course, much evidence that an undercurrent of misogyny exists; the media obsession with Clinton’s hair, her clothes, her voice, it’s all there, it’s well cataloged. Nothing is ever truly spelled out, nothing ever is these days, but the bitter aftertaste is often hard to ignore. She’s too weak to be president. She just doesn’t look the part she’s so…so…
She’s so female.
Can’t See The Forest For The Trees
You see, not everything in this world is subjective.
During Wednesday’s forum at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan, as Clinton attempted to provide a nuanced response to Lauer’s questions, he interrupted Clinton no fewer than 25 times.
Trump? He got a much easier time, suffering only nine interruptions, most of which he ignored, before being allowed to plow on ahead with his agenda.
Not all see this for what it is, it’s just buried too deep. It’s not overt misogyny, it’s not a conscious decision we make. It’s hardwired somewhere deep in the R-complex of our brain, that piece of primordial jelly left over from our reptilian ancestors. I am man, hear me roar. That kind of thing.
And that’s OK, instincts are fine; in a state of nature, clearly defined gender roles make a perverse kind of sense. So after the bombs have dropped, and if Trump is elected, they probably will have been, let the menfolk fend off the starving wolves with flaming torches if they must. Until such time, let’s shoot for a little equality.
Because the faint whiff off locker-room testosterone has no place in this election, no place in that interview, no place in modern politics at all. Let’s just move on already.
OK?
Watch Matt Lauer interrupt Clinton over and over again.
Featured image from YouTube video.
