aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

An avalanche of misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton

I’ve been watching with disdain the odious glee some folks are getting from passing around a not-so-flattering picture of Hillary Clinton. Limbaugh pushed me over the edge:

There is this thing in this country that, as you age—and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood—America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can’t get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, in the box office. While Hollywood box-office receipts may be stagnant, none of that changes the fact that this is a country obsessed with appearance. It’s a country obsessed with looks. The number of people in public life who appear on television or on the big screen, who are content to be who they are, you can probably count on one hand. Everybody’s trying to make themselves look different—and in that situation, in that case, they think they’re making themselves look better. It’s just the way our culture has evolved. It’s the way the country is. It’s like almost an addiction that some people have to what I call the perfection that Hollywood presents of successful, beautiful, fun-loving people. So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?

Kathleen Hall Jamieson addressed this use of imagery in a December 7 interview with Bill Moyers. This video (called Hillary Clinton - And then God Made Women) give the comments context:

BILL MOYERS: When they talk about men, they have Ronald Reagan, cowboy. When they talk about Hillary Clinton or they depict Hillary Clinton, it’s Hillary Clinton the witch.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: There’s also, however, another way to read this piece. What is Hillary Clinton actually doing? Frightening Reagan conservatives a whole lot. One of the things I think that happens with many of these visual depictions is that the people who are producing them are trying to attach what scholars call negative affect to Hillary Clinton… To the extent that you have negative feelings, have basic affect when you see something. If I can attach that to something, I can make you feel uneasy about it. I can increase the likelihood that you’re going to vote against Hillary Clinton. So we know, for example, that if I show you a picture of someone who’s smiling and feels comfortable and it’s a pleasant video, that’s that Reagan-

BILL MOYERS: Right.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: You think more positively of the person, even if you don’t know who the person is. Then I show you a scary picture, an off-putting picture. You react negatively. You respond negatively. I can increase the likelihood that you’ll say you’ll vote against that person even if you know nothing about them.

So some of this is what we used to call visual vilification. But it’s also attaching an emotional response to the picture to say feel uneasy, feel uncomfortable. And as a result, keep that emotional tag tied as you hear her explaining positions on issue. Keep that discomfort. Hold onto it till you go into the voting booth. Stay with that comfortable issue and comfortable image of Ronald Reagan.

Moyers noted that you can “discuss this avalanche of misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton without endorsing her campaign.”

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: ...The misogyny that is present on the Internet right now about Hillary Clinton is, I think, something worthy of public discussion. ...One of the complications of this is we’re moving into new linguistic territory. And we haven’t found a way to discuss this. When a woman stands up and asks Senator McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” and there isn’t a clear statement by Senator McCain that that’s not the way one characterizes, you know, my opponent on the Democratic side. And there’s not a public commentary that surrounds it the way there was a public commentary about the statement by Imus or about the comedian from SEINFELD. Essentially what we say to the culture at large is that must be appropriate discourse to apply to a female candidate running for office - or at least this female candidate.

BILL MOYERS: It’s okay to talk this way.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: It’s okay to talk this way. ... language is constantly open for discussion. We know what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate by the way in which society responds, what our peer group responds, the community we turn to responds. And so when someone uses language that is considered inappropriate and there is a national discussion, we dampen down that use. That’s what happened with Imus, who is now just coming back on the air. When something like this happens and we don’t have the discussion, we move it in to acceptable use.