Campaign Desk

It’s The Man Show — on MSNBC!

Stick to your knitting, ladies

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Watching MSNBC this morning I was reminded of a cop-out line from one of Maureen Dowd’s recent harshing-on-Hillary New York Times columns (headline: “A Flawed Feminist Test”):

“But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We’ll never know how much of the backlash is because she’s a woman or because she’s this woman…”

How many bigoted assertions can you safely stash behind the “it’s not women, it’s this woman” cover? Quite a lot, if MoDo’s columns are any measure.

But to hear the talking heads of MSNBC this morning, it could be that for some people it is, actually, women. Or, at least, that their feelings about this woman can’t really be untangled from their feelings about women in politics, generally.

To wit:

Pat Buchanan: No doubt about it, when you come to what is called a rally speech. When you have to get up, and, for men, you start shouting. You’re making your points loudly [chops hand in the air].

Mika Brzezinski: That works for the men. Yeah, the chop works for you.

Buchanan: But the women, if they try that speech…

Brzezinski: We’re not allowed…

Buchanan: You can go ahead and do it but it doesn’t come off as well. Hillary knows her strength. It’s sitting at a table and debating calmly and coolly and answering questions … but you get up and deliver a speech? That was [Obama’s] strength. Reagan wasn’t that great at giving a speech, but he was great at being fiery…

Joe Scarborough: You’re right. Men seem to be more effective sometimes when they’re excited and fiery. Women seem to be a little bit better when they’re reserved…

So, to recap: Women should not get up and chop the air and make their points emphatically as women are “better when they’re reserved”—better seen, perhaps, than heard (at least too loudly). So, I guess that Bitch isn’t everyone’s New Black over there in the NBC empire.

And then—in a moment more crusty and sad than anything else—there was Pat Buchanan’s paraphrasing of Samuel Johnson (the eighteenth century English author): that seeing a woman making a stump speech is like “watching a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

So there’s Buchanan’s bar for women in politics—good and low (there’s a reason he’s known as a paleoconservative). He doesn’t expect women to do well on the stump so startled is he, still, to see them there at all.

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Comments

padikiller

Wed 27 Feb 2008 10:18 PM

The biggest difference between Pat Buchanan and Hillary Clinton is that Pat Buchanan has at least a slim possibility of getting elected President...

As for the all the whining from the feminazis... Who gives a damn?

These women are all excited about their (mis)perception that Billary could somehow make it back into the White House because she is a woman...

But if anyone else dares to criticize her campaign styles by noting that she is woman, this is somehow "bigoted"...

What a crock.

Clinton has been milking the "woman thing" to death... Leaving buckets of crocodile tears at every podium she sees... She made her gender an issue and so made it fair game for criticism..

Joe Scarborough

Sat 1 Mar 2008 11:16 AM

How disappointing that CJR would allow someone to post an article as false as Ms. Barrett's. After disassociating myself from Pat's comments, I named numerous women who were effective public speakers. I have also repeatedly made statements on my show critical of the double standards faced by "strong" women like my mother. For Barrett to write this intellectually dishonest post reflects poorly on her credibility. That it would be posted on a site with the CJR name is stunning. My God. Is CJR really allowing its site to endorse such crude political attacks?

padikiller

Sun 2 Mar 2008 10:25 PM

CJR has become nothing more than a liberal mouthpice. It not only endorses "crude political attacks", it provides an active forum for moonbat hit pieces on GOP candidates and it routinely censors criticism.