"Aggressive"
Ann E. Kornblut, just moved to the WP, in this morning's paper, describing Hillary Clinton: "In perhaps her most aggressive speech since announcing she is running for president...."
Number of times the word "aggressive" has been applied to a speech by George W. Bush in the WP over the past year: 0.
Number of times the word "aggressive" has been applied to a speech by Dick Cheney in the WP over the past year: 1. (By Michael Powell, Josh White and Theresa Vargas)
Number of times the word "aggressive" has been applied to a speech by John McCain in the WP over the past year: 0.
Number of times the questioning of Bush administration officials by reporters has been called aggressive in the WP over the past year: 3. (All by Howard Kurtz.)
Note: Bush's "policies," "stance," etc. have been called "aggressive" (not McCain's, however), but not their personal performances.
Here is why the discrepancy matters. In America today, what with decades of television and derivative media, positions count, sure, but the candidate's person is immensely, and independently, important. Manner matters. And when those notoriously liberal media label a candidate "aggressive," and the candidate is a woman, you know what they're saying. As Barbara Bush so memorably said of her husband's 1984 vice-presidential opponent, "it rhymes with rich."
And when those notoriously liberal media label a candidate "aggressive," and the candidate is a woman, you know what they're saying.
Um ... they're saying she's an aggressive candidate?
Stop shilling for Hillary. You're trying to provide her with a built-in shield against any frank media characterizations of her campaign performances. Just about any adjective connoting energy, when applied to a woman, could be claimed to be a code word for "bitch" by those determined to run protection for the candidate.
February 2, 2007 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't have to be "shilling for Hillary" to note the fact that Ann Kornblut's pretty much infamous for painting Hillary in as bad a light as is humanly possible, and often twisting the facts in order to do so. I'm not a huge fan of Hillary, both because of her support for the Iraq War, and because of her stance on things like flag burning, but years of reading the NY Times---from which I am perfectly happy to see Kornblut go---has taught me to discount anything Kornblut has to say about Clinton.
February 2, 2007 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not everyone who defends Hillary is "shilling for her." She's not my choice for the nominee, not even close, but I'm also not willing to see her snowed under by bullshit codewords. Gitlin is, of course, correct: the word "aggressive" has certain connotations when it is applied to women, something that has been known for decades.
Many people in the liberal nutroots hate Hillary, and are happy to see her shit on in the primaries by the "liberal media,", but the shit that gets on her now will stay on her in the general if she reaches it, which means she will lose. And then you clowns will be crying and moaning about losing yet again.
February 2, 2007 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Adding to what Luigi said, I suggest you reared Todd Gitlin's list and ask if it really does single out Clinton as victim. Does it leave any doubt that any Democrat will be slimed by the media? Do you have any doubt?
That the "aggressive" label will be specifically part of the double-bind a woman faces is obvious, too, and it's not worth venting on Clinton to deny it. To do so is also a betrayal of the feminism that is fundamental to at least my liberalism. And of course the slime would just shift to another label for another Democratic candidate.
The unanimous, vehement, unmitigated hatred of her, both here and in the post where she speaks on the war, has even me taken aback. This demonization has no relationship whatsoever to her record, likely policies in office, or character. If she says something people dislike, they'll rub it in. If she says something they like, they'll just say she's lying.
I hope to work against her and vote against her for the nomination, as not liberal enough and too calculated. But this really has me frightened. Heck, I guess the Jacobins will now call me a shill for her, too. But tough: if that's what you feel like, bring on the guillotine.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
February 2, 2007 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Looks like Anne Kornblut is taking over the Ceci Connolly slot in the WP.
February 2, 2007 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have pointed out in several posts that Kornblut had to have 2 stories corrected by her editors in the NYT while she covered Hillary. In one story she took as gospel truth strange statements that supposedly made by Hillary. Kornblut got the story from a book by a wingnut published by a Conservative outlet. No other source could confirm the story. Editorial correction number one(1).
In the second bogus story, Kornblut said Hillary gave a speech in Little Rock lashing out at Democratic Party members. In actuality, Clinton was chastizing the GOP. Kornblut NYT correction number two(2).
Now Kornblut is the national political reporter for the WaPo. Whatever you feel about Hillary, if Kornblut is not confronted she will next strike out at candidates that you do like.
I was watching Chris Mathews before coming to TPMCafe. Mathews' guest, Jerry Brown (former CA Gov and Presidential candidate), was bemoaning the fact that due to the length of the campaign, mistakes were bound to be made. Brown said that the press would be all over the candidates when this happened. The camera showed Mathews not only smiling, but swooning. He made have had an on camera orgasm! I kid you not. If you can watch later feeds of the show (and can stomach Mathews) you will come away terrified that this guy occupies an important media slot. Bashing Democrats is a sexual perversion for the DC media.
Kornblut is a frequent guest on Chris Mathews. The two feel free to slam HRC and Bill with abandon. If they "kill" Hillary politically, then Edwards or Obama or Richardson will be fodder for their next feeding frenzy.
This is a pattern that may be deeply pathological regarding Hillary, but Kornblut/Mathews are the snakes to the Democratic mongoose. Any Democratic candidate will face the same treatment.
February 2, 2007 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Damn! You beat me to it, almost word for word.
Anne Kornblut is going to be the subject of many blogosphere discussions in the next two years. The Washington Post really has gone to hell since Katharine Graham died.
February 2, 2007 3:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd be curious to know, if such things were quantifiable, what the Mathews effect is on the DC Press Corps. I know he loves people who bash Democrats--and there is his very weird (and I think you're right, sexual) attraction/repulsion fascination with Hillary. I recall Jack Germond said quite frankly that he went on McLaughlin because TV appearances drove up his speaking fees and he had a daughter to put through college and Med school. The Kornbluts (to say nothing of the Finemans and the rest) are not exactly cut from the same cloth as Germond. If playing the part of Dem-bashing MoDo wannabes gets them on Matthews' show (which leads to speaking fees and book contracts and the Holy Grail: Their own show in that Alan Keyes/Dennis Miller/Tucker Carlson timeslot that MSGOP can never quite fill), they'll do it.
February 2, 2007 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
As with Biden's comments, it's the history that makes this troubling. This isn't Kornblut's first offense, and it won't be her last.
February 2, 2007 4:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Todd is not 'shilling' for anyone, he is examining the use of language by the same media that was a doormat for George Dubya and his dirty little war in Iraq. It is this media that is the 'built-in shield' that 'shills' to power.
DannyK you are full of it if you think 'any adjective' connoting 'energy' is a code word for bitch. There are half a dozen of more that would fit here
February 2, 2007 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, sometimes political candidates do make aggressive speeches or put on aggressive performances or aggressively challenge a rival. I did a quick search and found numerous media reports from several outlets during the 2004 campain describing both both Cheney and Edwards debate performances as "aggressive".
Personally, I don't think saying a political candidate made an aggressive speech, or that the candidate's most recent speech is more aggressive than the previous one is necessarily a bad thing for that candidate. And the idea that we should never say a female candidate was aggressive because it might connote that she is a "bitch" is a very bad marker to lay down. I doubt the Clinton campaign is particularly eager to squelch that kind of talk.
Do we really want to start in now with the notion that you can't say certain things about Clinton's actions and campaign performances because the adjectives used are all "code words" for misogynistic animadversions? Since almost all of our language is inflected with positive and negative gender associations of various kinds, there really would be no end to this exercise. I look forward to more defensive verbal fussiness about future comments along these lines:
1. Clinton articulated a set of tough principles in her recent statement on Middle East policy. [butch]
2. When the debate turned to the question of health care, Clinton dominated her rivals. [dominatrix]
3. Clinton upbraided her fellow Democrats for their failure to work hard on the bill. [nag, harpie]
4. Clinton worked furiously behind closed doors to get the bill out before the recess. [fury: woman scorned]
5. Clinton showed flashes of brilliance during her most recent campaign swing. [menopausal]
6. Clinton fascinates many observers. [seductress, enchantress]
7. Clinton cast a spell over the audience. [witchcraft]
8. Clinton's involvement with the flag burning issue issue has waxed and waned. [lunar cycles/menstruation]
9. Clinton attacked the White House position on insurance reform. [Amazon]
10. Before Gates could complete his response, Clinton cut him off. [castrating bitch]
This is the second time in a week that Todd Gitlin has come back with a kneejerk response to some adjective that rubbed him the wrong way, both times veering away from evaluation of the substance of what Clinton is reported to have said or done. Earlier, he was upset that her behavior during a committee hearing was characterized as "partisan", when in fact the news reports of the hearing indicate that she used her time for questioning General Petraeus to issue a series of campign sound bites - which is partisan behavior in anyone's book.
February 2, 2007 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps I shouldn't have used "shill", which improperly suggests Todd Gitlin is being paid for his rapid response defense of Clinton. But these kneejerk defensive posts, with their trifling word count arguments stand in some contrast to his more usual thoughtful and analytical style.
Luigi, you suggest we have to lay off criticizing Democats too harshly becausethe criticism will damage them for the general election. But based on my observations of primary campaign up here in new Hampshire, the mud only toughens them up. Bill Clinton got creamed by the Gennifer Flowers episode during the first New Hampshire primary. You would think nobody could dig out from under that load of dung, but he went on to win two terms. Perhaps if John Kerry had been swift-boated by some Democrat during the primary season, he wouldn't have reacted like a disoriented zombie when it happened during the general election.
February 2, 2007 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The unanimous, vehement, unmitigated hatred of her"
Interesting comment. This hatred has had a strange effect on me. I never liked Hillary much, but in the past half-year I seem to have become a Hillary supporter. It's because she sustains this unrelenting slime and she comes out doing fine. So far.
February 2, 2007 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan K -- your vehemence reveals more than you think. you are also in deep denial about the way D.C. journalism pegs certain descriptives on candidates.
February 2, 2007 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
And WaPo has never forgiven the Clintons for coming in and "trash(ing) the place" (David Broder) "where they spend their lives, raise their families, participate in community activities, take pride in their surroundings." Sally Quinn
As Brad DeLong says, in ten years no one will read that rag.
February 2, 2007 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mainstream political journalism is the worst, it is not "journalism" by any ethical standard.
Again here I will call for a mass movement of activists to protest the desire of the leading mainstream so-called journalists to choose our candidate for us, and to protest shallow, "pack" journalism in general as it "covers" (read: distorts) our Presidential nomination process.
Write the WP a letter against Ann Kornblut, now. Make it clear you will not support or accept this type of elitist, prejudiced journalism. Make it clear you will not accept stories that rely on polls, make it clear you demand that any mention of polls must carry disclaimers on phone polls of less than 10,000 persons, pointing out the unreliablity of such polls in the era of message machines and cell phones and over 50% of persons reached refusing to take part. Make it clear you will not accept shallow pack journalism that focuses on insider gossip or "horse race" conventional wisdom. Make it clear you want to select your own candidate, not have a candidate selected for you by the hidden agendas of the prejudiced 'reporters' of the more-often-wrong-than-right mainstream media !!!
And do it again, every day, every week. Maybe eventually we'll get somewhere.
February 2, 2007 11:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's interesting that you would compare this stuff to the swiftboating of Kerry. Initially you implied the criticism was warranted.
At any rate, the swiftboating of Kerry came from an outside group. The media actually, in their own bumbling way, tried to debunk the swiftboating. When attacks like these come from the media themselves, however, it's an entirely different thing. Many people still think Gore is a crazy man, for example. I don't know a single person who believes Kerry didn't deserve his medals, or that Kerry shot little kids in the back and so on. When the media pull these things it has a far more profound effect than the kind of cheap shots the Republicans throw. That you would somehow compare these things, yet still consider yourself competent to pass judgment on someone, both as a politician and a person (and you know nothing about her except what people like Kornbutt or whatever her name is tell you) as you and your cohort do with Clinton, is just flat out incredible to me.
You people, with your ignorant passion, enable an already drunk-on-its-ass media establishment by going along with garbage like the stuff in this article. It wasn't "harsh criticism," any more than all the bullshit stories about Gore were "harsh criticism." It was a calculated attempt at character assassination, nothing more. And by the way, I saw how you folks cheered that Gore shit on, too, just as you are doing now with Clinton.
February 2, 2007 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
What does it reveal Douglas?
In all of the above comments, not one person has made the case that Clinton's speech was not her most aggressive since the beginning of the campaign. In other words, it doesn't seem to matter to anybody whether the reporter's characterization was accurate or inaccurate. Somehow the very idea that some speech or action of Clinton's would be characterized as "aggressive" is supposed to set off alarm bells.
Now I would propose that this is a double standard, rooted in some sort of anachronistic and chivalrous impulse to treat Clinton as entitled to special deference and gentle consideration because of her gender. Somehow because our society's traditional gender roles tend to portray aggression as an appealing trait in males (at least sometimes) but not nearly so attractive in females, we must all avoid saying HRC is aggressive, lest we make her look "unattractive" or "bitchy". Is that it?
If Todd Gitlin goes on in future to criticize reporters for saying John Edwards "came out aggressively in the debate", or that Barack Obama has "an aggressive agenda for change" or that Joe Biden "is aggressively pursuing the nomination", then I may take this current bit more seriously. But so far it looks like gender bias: it's only Clinton to whom we are to avoid attributing aggression of any kind - healthy or otherwise.
Well I would say based on her past performance, Clinton is indeed an aggressive campaigner and political operator. In my book, that is one of her more appealing traits, since I have longed for some time for Democratic candidates to be more aggressive. My only concern is the direction in which she is likely to take the country.
I don't want Clinton to be president, and I'm not about to deterred in my critisms of her position and character by attempts to erect special shields around her. Infer what you like, but from where I sit the vehemence reveals nothing but the fact that I think Clinton would be an exceptionally crappy president.
February 2, 2007 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's interesting that you would compare this stuff to the swiftboating of Kerry. Initially you implied the criticism was warranted.
I didn't at all compare the reporter's criticism to swiftboating. In fact, I am hard pressed to discern any kind of "criticism" in the report at all. If Todd Gitlin were not here to tell me otherwise, I would have taken a description of a speech as "the most aggressive so far" as a somewhat positive comment to make about a campaigner. I really don't know how to respond to the idea that it constitutes an "attack" or "character assassination".
I brought up swiftboating in response to your suggestion that the "liberal nutroots" should take it easy on Hillary. And my point is that, unlike reporters, ordinary citizens with a committed political agenda shouldn't be afraid to attack candidates whom they think it is important to defeat - even attack them "aggressively". This is race to determine who is going to have the US armed forces and nuclear arsenal under their command. It's not a race for class president. The only restriction should be that you try to tell the truth, as you see it. And the truth isn't always pleasant or decorous.
February 3, 2007 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
It might be that Matthew's was having an orgasm - what, no drool - when Jerry said that mistakes would be made (during this endless campaign) and the press would be all over the candidates when this happened because Matthew's likes to trash Dems, but I suspect Matthews was relishing two years of controversy filling his normally dead air.
Let's face it, who profits from two-year- long media coverage of battling numskulls throwing barbs at each other. The media - not to mention where does that $500 million/per candidate mostly end up. In media coffers.
February 3, 2007 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Since when has backbench Senator and hapless Bush war-enabler You-Know-Her done anything "aggressive" other than grubbing for money with reactionaries like Rupert Murdoch? And those burning flags! Those awful video games! The shameless pandering to Christian religious fanatics and the AIPAC Israeli lobby! Her "questioning" of the all-volunteer military (code for re-instating the Draft) and threats against Iran (again in the interests of Israeli Zionism), and so on and so forth. One can easily find any number of reasons for legitimately criticizing and opposing the candidacy of Senator You-Know-Her that don't involve Xena Warrior at Helm's Deep gender issues. And if any use or misuse of language bothers the ineffectual Senator, then she should address and dispell those issues herself. Relying on media surrogates to fight her linguistic battles for her only reinforces whatever point the reflexive anti-feminists try to make with their innuendo.
Any Democrat will trounce Republican Mad Dog John McCain in the 2008 election, so the Democratic Party can well afford to openly and vigorously debate every difference of opinion so as to eventually select the best possible President for America -- one who will need every last ounce of intelligence, integrity, and leadership ability in order to right the grievous wrongs perpetrated by the Cheney/Bush crypto-fascist cabal. No shrinking violets need apply.
February 4, 2007 2:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good point.
Might have been better, though, if we could have compared some actual speeches, and figured out what term would have been less sexist.
Hawkish?
Dominating? No, that sounds loaded, too.
Yet, certain things I've heard about her recently add up to SOMETHING.
1. Telling her donors that they can't donate to other candidates.
2. Telling her donors they need to contribute $1 million to be on her special Friends of Hillary list. (Bush's minimum equivalent donation was $100,000.)
3. Telling the audience that when she is president, she will stop this war. (You know the quote I mean. Sounds like a bit of grandstanding.)
4. Raising her voice to a shout 5 times, unlike the other candidates. (I didn't watch the video, but this is what I read.)
Trying to pull a Trump? A Gates?
Maybe "aggressive" was sexist. Or maybe it just happened to fit the bill.
February 4, 2007 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
catD:
I did watch the video, but who should I believe, you or my lying eyes and ears?
Todd Gitlin
February 4, 2007 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enough! This is Bob Hornby's beat. Kevin Drum says so.
February 4, 2007 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink