Hillary and Jennifer Love Hewitt: Attacked Because They're Women
After the Huffington Post and Hoops Hype, the first Web site I check out each day is the Drudge Report, for the very simple reason that Matt Drudge often gets the news before anyone else.
But today, when I went on the Drudge Web site, I was extremely disappointed, not at the news of the day that was being made, but at the news of the day that Drudge chose to make: the main photo on the site is of Hillary Clinton looking tired. The headline of the site, under this unflattering picture, is "The Toll of a Campaign." As if the toll of the campaign is weighing so heavily on Hillary's face that it is making her look haggard.
Now, Hillary does not need my help defending her. For one, I am a speechwriter for another candidate. Two, I'm a guy, and it seems awfully stereotypical for a man to have to step in and defend the damsel in distress.
But I am offended by the attacks on Senator Clinton because there is no question that the slams against her are hypocritical and come because she's a woman.
Where's the picture of Fred Thompson, exhausted from the campaign trail? Okay, that's a bad example. Fred may be exhausted, but if he is, it's from eating too many doughnuts and staying up late watching A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila.
But you know what I'm talking about. Mike Huckabee is all smiles on the trail, but if he looked tired, you wouldn't see a picture of his mug headlining the Drudge Report.
Hillary is a woman. Get over it. You may like her views, her experience, her campaign tactics, or you may not. That's legitimate. That's political discourse. But to put up an unflattering photo of her on a well-read site like Drudge for the purpose of showing that she's looking tired -- what's the point? The point is an attack on women for not looking perfect.
Recently, Jennifer Love Hewitt was on a vacation in Hawaii, celebrating her engagement. Web sites ran unflattering photos of Love in a bikini. They took pride in slamming her. One caption read: "We know what you ate this summer -- Everything!"
What did Jennifer Love Hewitt do to deserve it? She was celebrating her engagement! The sport of bashing women because they don't look perfect is the sport of misogyny.
I'm disappointed to see that this misogyny has gone from attacking celebrities to attacking presidential candidates. It wasn't right for celebrities. It's not right for presidential candidates. And it's we, the people, who have to say, it's shameful to publicly slam Jennifer Love Hewitt for her appearance, and it's simply terrible to do to Senator Clinton.
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great post! But even as the obvious is pointed out, there are still so many who miss the point of the post. As a nation, we're pretty much like a christian taliban. Whether for fear or favor, many buy into the extreme judgement and open hatred of women as important figures in our society.
Thank you for calling misogyny where you see it. we have a long way to go before we are enlightened enough for egalitarian relationships between fellow humans who are male and female and you have taken us a step forward.
There is no similarity.
Mrs Clinton is a lawyer, former first lady, legislator, candidate.
Ms Hewitt gained fame and fortune solely on her appearance.
The criticism of her current appearance is the other side of the same coin.
THE TITLE OF THIS ARTICLE "SAYS IT ALL"!! WOMEN GOT THE VOTE BUT EVEN IN OUR COUNTRY THERE IS THE MENTALITY THAT WANTS TO KEEP OUR WOMEN "PREGNANT AND BAREFOOT"!! THERE IS STILL THE "OLD BOYS CLUB" = ALIVE AND WELL = SMIRKING AND SMEARING THE REPUTATIONS OF STRONG WOMEN! AS AN ELDERLY WOMEN WHO HAS LIVED SEVEN DECADES I KNOW OF WHAT I SPEAK! IT'S VERY GOOD THAT I'VE READ SOME POSTS FROM YOUNGER MEN WHO'S ATTITUDES ARE NOT LIKE THEIR FATHERS...
Look around, and you find that most women in the world are treated like slaves, like dogs or livestock. In many countries a man can kill a woman without any legal consequences.
In the U.S., this "advanced" western country, women are victims of violence every -- I think it's 10 seconds? Often from the men who are their husbands or boyfriends. Women are beaten, punched, slapped, kicked, raped, murdered in the U.S. with shocking regularity. And verbally demeaned and humiliated. Although women represent 47% of the workers, only approximately 5% of the good-paying management jobs are filled by women.
That said, Hillary Clinton is not a feminist and her presidential campaign does not represent a breakthrough. She is running on her husband's reputation and the money he has solicited from corporations. She is not running on her own experience or talents. In fact, every time anyone asks exactly what qualifications she has, she retreats to the "I'm every woman" mode by gushing over what a terrific caretaker she is for her old mother (does anyone believe Hillary is a caretaker for anyone) and her daughter, what a "stand by your man" type of gal she is to her philandering husband, and she bakes good cookies.
Progressives don't like Hillary because her platforms and policies are mostly Republican. Witness the Bushes now signing on to support Hillary. And I assume there is a quid pro quo for the Clintons to support Jeb in 4 or 8 years.
Attacks on Hillary's qualifications, platforms, claims are not sexist. To the contrary, Hillary is humiliating women everywhere by having men go out in public to "protect" her and tell the old meenies to leave her alone. Give me a break. Hillary Clinton: Wrong on Iraq, wrong for America.
The distressing thing is the amount of Hilliary bashing that comes from women. The women who have been longing for a woman President should realize that they might not get another chance for 20 years. No one, except maybe Joe Biden, is better qualified. Her vote on Iraq, while not what I would have done, was shared by most male Democratic senators.
How can one say Jennifer Love Hewitt, and HRC in the same sentence? JLC is a beautiful woman, and Hillary is a Washington insider with questionable ties to Lobbyists,and Insurance/Drug companys, Jennifer, has never lied to the people, she don't change her position to fit the situation, and, i can dream about Jennifer, And dream with Hillary in it would be a nightmare.
Thanks, Matt, for your sensitivity and observations. Of course, as one who has been following women in politics for over 30 years, I can only, sadly, report that I am accustomed to such things. Take David Gregory yesterday on the Today show--when was he ever so aggressive with a male candidate? Take the word agressive--it is used negatively in describing women candidates and positively when describing male candidates. And on and on...
Deriding women as bimbos and whores and sex-crazy airheads is an evidently pervasive and permitted exercise throughout the media, and is practiced regularly on MSNBC by Chris Matthews, who evidently prefers the scent of English Leather to fairness in his "coverage" (a word in this instance meaning 'fearful attack')of Hillary Clinton.
But it is also a favorite stomping ground for Keith Olberman, who is evidently upset that some women in show business, such as Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and poor beleaguered Britney Spears, have not behaved up to his high manly standards, leaving hime free to make faces of loathing and disgust as he pretends to hate having to attack them, but as his producers insist...
It's so predictable a feature of his newshour's last 15 minutes that I just turn to another channel rather than get upset for the umpteenth time that an otherwise intelligent man relishes so much his opportunity to make nasty remarks about women he feels free to disrespect. Somebody told me he still lives with his mother, which if true, is fine with me. My question is, how does she live with him?
Thank you, Matt. As long as we women continue to internalize misogyny, nothing much will change. It's about recognizing what's really important and following your heart. Bullshit will always be around. The time is NOW to make friends with ourselves as we are!
I'm just tired (and probably look it too) of all the interest in how a candidate looks. It just shouldn't matter at all. If we elect a "beautiful" candidate and the have some sort of facial injury....
GWB was someone people thought would be fun to drink a beer with. I'd like us to elect someone smart & capable. They can keep the beer and if they are painfully unattracti
"But I am offended by the attacks on Senator Clinton because there is no question that the slams against her are hypocritical and come because she's a woman."
What you say has some merit, especially the part about the celebrity in the bikini, but if you think the attacks on Hillary Clinton are because she's a woman, then you haven't been paying attention. Hillary is attackable because she appears untrustworthy. She is attackable because she appears to have no principles. She seems willing to adopt any position she believes will favor her politically, even if she doesn't truly believe in it.
In other words, she isn't much different from Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney (although their lies tend to be more egregious and less carefully crafted). Cheney and Giuliani aren't women, but like Clinton they are politicians with a track record of skill at bamboozling people who really want to believe in them.
Beyond this, Hillary Clinton is eminently attackable because for all her talk, it's hard to tell exactly what she is means. When she says she'll "stop the war" she doesn't define the war or the idea of stopping. Stopping the war might actually mean keeping 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely while haranguing the Iraqi government to do things her way. How is that different from the Bush policy, a policy she supported with her vote in favor of authorizing "the use of force" in the first place?
Is Hillary Clinton a death penalty advocate? Well, shame on her if she is, but her position on that issue, taken in the "run-up" to her nomination campaign, is likely a strategic ploy, not as a strong leader, but as a panderer to public taste. Here's a prediction: once the inequities and inefficacies of the death penalty become more obvious, she will change her position on it, but not before the opinion polls tell her to.
It seems you DO need a weatherman to know which way Hillary will go, but even then you won't know for sure. That, among many related reasons, is why Hillary is attacked.
Thank you for these comments. It discourages me that sometimes the huffington post which is supposedly run by a woman shows so much mysogyny towards Hillary.
Golde Meier and Maggie Thatcher weren't no Sophia Lorens -- a lot a camera un-friendly photos of them -- they did all right with the electorate (although one often thinks The Iron Lady had her make up sprayed on by the Bruce Willis character from "Death Becomes Her"). Abe Lincoln was no Thomas Jefferson in the looks department and 1860 versions of Matt Drudge cartooned him as an ape. May be Hillary should grow a beard like Abe did, to help her image?
The point is THEY (whether the evil Republicans or the loyal, but evil-becau
I'm not so sure this is true. I was "abandoned by wolves, raised by Republicans," as Stephanie Miller puts it, and I remember the first time I voted against a Repub - had nothing to do with policy and everything to do with slimy tactics, but I was pretty young at the time. Alfonse D'Amato was running against Jacob Javits for the nomination (Senator from NY, ironically), and in one of his ads he put a perfect, posed, color, airbrushed studio portrait of himself next to a grainy, black-and-white shot of Javits looking old, rumpled and tired. R's didn't have primaries in NY back then, but I NEVER voted for D'Amato in the general election after that, even before I left the party.
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