2008 Woodie Awards
A personal reassessment: Clinton deserves praise for fighting sexism
Chris Satullo, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Issue date: 6/19/08 Section: Opinion
OK, I admit it: I can be a slow learner.
For most of Hillary Clinton's stubborn slog against long odds, here's how I viewed it: A self-absorbed act by a sore loser. A reckless bid to reap political gain by cracking open every fissure of gender, race and class. A breathtakingly hypocritical twisting of election rules and results, reminiscent of Bush-Florida-2000.
It was all that, viewed from one angle. But when life is the most interesting, it's also the most complicated.
Belatedly, I now see the other angle, the one from which Clinton was showered with plaudits, cheers and hugs.
I don't favor this viewpoint, but I now see it's legitimate.
For my late-breaking understanding, I thank Jon Stewart. And Gail Collins.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," which Stewart hosts, often pulls together video-clip montages that skewer media groupthink. The other night, the target was sexist riffs against Hillary Clinton.
As I watched this compilation of venomous idiocies, most but not all from Fox News, my jaw scraped the ceramic tile. In my little bubble, I tended to write off complaints from Clinton supporters about rampant sexism in the media as the typical blame-the-messenger whining of a losing politician.
About that bubble: Except on election nights, I never watch cable news. This boycott costs me little in the way of insight, and spares me hours of rumor-mongering and shallow bloviation. I follow the campaign in newspapers, in magazines like the New Yorker and the Economist, and on Web sites like RealClearPolitics. There, examples of sexist rhetoric have been few-unless you regard all criticism of Hillary Clinton as de facto sexism, a view that imprisons logic and throws away the key.
So, watching "The Daily Show" montage, all that snickering, labored, sexist claptrap hit me as a noisome revelation. Of course, if I'd spent decades having such crap heaved at me in the workplace, I'd be more than annoyed. I'd be enraged, as many women were.
For most of Hillary Clinton's stubborn slog against long odds, here's how I viewed it: A self-absorbed act by a sore loser. A reckless bid to reap political gain by cracking open every fissure of gender, race and class. A breathtakingly hypocritical twisting of election rules and results, reminiscent of Bush-Florida-2000.
It was all that, viewed from one angle. But when life is the most interesting, it's also the most complicated.
Belatedly, I now see the other angle, the one from which Clinton was showered with plaudits, cheers and hugs.
I don't favor this viewpoint, but I now see it's legitimate.
For my late-breaking understanding, I thank Jon Stewart. And Gail Collins.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," which Stewart hosts, often pulls together video-clip montages that skewer media groupthink. The other night, the target was sexist riffs against Hillary Clinton.
As I watched this compilation of venomous idiocies, most but not all from Fox News, my jaw scraped the ceramic tile. In my little bubble, I tended to write off complaints from Clinton supporters about rampant sexism in the media as the typical blame-the-messenger whining of a losing politician.
About that bubble: Except on election nights, I never watch cable news. This boycott costs me little in the way of insight, and spares me hours of rumor-mongering and shallow bloviation. I follow the campaign in newspapers, in magazines like the New Yorker and the Economist, and on Web sites like RealClearPolitics. There, examples of sexist rhetoric have been few-unless you regard all criticism of Hillary Clinton as de facto sexism, a view that imprisons logic and throws away the key.
So, watching "The Daily Show" montage, all that snickering, labored, sexist claptrap hit me as a noisome revelation. Of course, if I'd spent decades having such crap heaved at me in the workplace, I'd be more than annoyed. I'd be enraged, as many women were.
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