Russert Watch: 5-25-08: In Which Tim's Round Table Considers Gender and Race

[originally published in the Columbia Journalism Review]

Tim Russert led his round table with Hillary Clinton's much-excoriated and certainly maladroit mention of the RFK assassination, a gaffe that was reasonably attributed by the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus to "exhaustion and a very heavy dose of self-pity." But the more significant question Russert raised for his amiable bull session this week was: "What role did race, gender, and religion play in this campaign?"

Maureen Dowd seemed to have a set piece ready to dump: Charges of misogyny and gender bias were

"poppycock, really. [Clinton] dominated the debates, she proved that a woman can have as much tenacity and gall as any man on earth. We can visualize her facing down Ahmadinejad. But the thing is, Hillary hurts feminism when she uses it as opportunism. And she has a history of covering up her own mistakes behind sexism. She did it with health care right after health care didn't pass. She didn't admit that she was abrasive or mismanaged it or blew off good advice or was too secretive. She said that she was a Rorschach test for gender and that many men thought of a female boss they didn't like when they looked at her. And now she's doing the same thing, and it's very you know, in a way it's the moral equivalent of Sharptonism. It's this victimhood and angry and turning women against men and saying that the men are trying to take it away from us, in the same way she's turning Florida and Michigan and riling up and comparing them to suffragettes and slaves. And it's very damaging to feminism."

Not many minutes later, as if to prove that misogyny is alive even if Maureen Dowd doesn't think so, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network referred to Hillary Clinton as whiny, for which Ruth Marcus took him behind the barn and smacked him gently around.

Russert was at his best dealing with numbers. He reminded us that, misogyny or not, Clinton was way ahead in the polls (among whites and African-Americans) and at the bank, up to the end of until Obama won the Iowa caucuses and turned the momentum.

Russert fed Newsweek's Jon Meacham the magazine's pertinent question about race: Is America ready for a black president? Meacham's way of answering was peculiar. He reported that Newsweek's poll found 29% of white Democrats ranking fairly high on something they called the racial-resentment index. People expressing some hostility toward racial questions. These people were affected by the issue of race.

Hostility toward racial questions? The issue of race? What he couldn't bring himself to say was: hostility toward black people. He continued: "To my mind it is one of the great questions of the campaign. It is very difficult to talk about. It makes white people very queasy and..."

Whereupon PBS's Gwen fill jumped in: "Black people, too." And later amended her remark: "Black people are not queasy about talking about race, they're only queasy when we talk about it with white people who are queasy about talking about it." Delicious.

Cross-posted from the Columbia Journalism Review

Comments

[lewes17266]

I am always amazed that any news organization would invite a reporter who works with CBN to speak on anything that matters. David Brody works for Pat Robertson who says he is a holy prophet of God and has the power to heal and to speak words of knowledge and tells his viewers to touch their tv screen for a miracle, and claims to be able to leg press 2,000 pounds. Pat Robertson told us to stock up on bottled water and candles in preparation for the Y2K disaster. Pat Robertson tells us who God is angry with and who God is punishing and why. I cannot believe that any news network would give anyone associated with Pat Robertson the time of day, much less take them seriously. Pat Robertson is a con artist, a fraud, and he is a hypocrite of the worse kind. He helped his son Gordon cheat on his wife and those two holymen continued 'healing' their gullible viewers throughout this extramarital affair. They tell others to confess their sins and repent yet they cover their sins and continue sinning. I guess adultery is not a sin for the son of God's holy prophet and I guess anyone who works for God's holy prophet has a seat at the table with qualified, respected, and sane professionals.
Perhaps Russert should touch HIS tv screen for a miracle and call that toll-free number for prayer and healing and send those gluttonous hate-filled frauds some money too.

[hopeless277]

Because Hillary is a helpless female victim of mean males, the superdelegates should overturn the voters of the nation and award her the Democratic presidential nomination. Is that what her supporters want? Someone please tell me.

She has already said that unless MI and FL are seated according to HER specifications, Obama will not be the legitimate nominee. If I were Obama, I'd drop out and see how her followers like the Republican smear machine when it gets hold of Bills library contributors list.

[SamanthaJaneSalem]

Thanks for reporting what happened on "Meet The Press" because I always make a point of not watching it.

Maureen Dowd certainly was right on the money in her comments on sexism-- which means the next time I hear something from her she will be maddeningly way off the mark.

Jon Meacham is one of those White Male Worriers, forever worrying about religion in America, worrying and worrying over hypothetical this and hypothetical that. No wonder Tim Russert often has him on the show.

One thing has happened since the famous SNL skit on NBC, and Hillary Clinton using real life to imitate parody in the CNN debate-- the MSM has turned against Barack Obama. He'll need to fix this in the general election. He can't continue to be battling it out with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and other tasteless, mushy combinations in Campbell (Brown)'s alphabet soup.

[Rockerbabe]

Sexism, overt sexism reared its' ugly head big time with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. M. Dowd appears to be oblivious to the world around her and to all of the nastiness going on in the crowds, the media and life in general. There is hostility towards women of stature in the workplace, government, military, every walk of life, the courts, marketplace, schools, etc. If M. Dowd doesn't see it, she's not looking..
Blaming Hillary Clinton for all the sexism directed towards her is shameful. The nastiness towards publically elected, prominent women has been going on for some time and is tolerated under the disguise of getting a "thick skin"; and don't bother exacting consequence for such bad behavior, because their are no consequences. We don't tolerate racism without consequence. Women complaining about mistreatment is considered whinying, not an offense to be considered seriously and what is so sad, is all the women who just don't get it, until it happens to them. That's one reason women haven't advance politically, economically, socially or as a group in the last 30 years - and it isn't for lack of work and trying. We have way too many women like M. Dowd, way too many groups like NARAL or Conerned Women of America, way too many daughters and sons who don't get it, and way too many men who just refuse to take the first step in building a team that will address society's view of women seriously.

[VeggieVeal]

But we do take our women seriously! Once a week I take my wife out of the kitchen for a nice meal at my favorite sports bar to show my appreciation!

[anon004]

I agree that sexism has hardly been vanquished in the past 30 years. I agree that Maureen Dowd doesn't know her oriface from a hole in the wall. She went after Al Gore because he was smarter than Bush (and who wouldn't want to vote for the dumber one for the most important office in the country?), and John Kerry because he wasn't macho enough compared to Bush (and who was the actual war hero and who was AWOL from the National Guard?). Where I don't think we agree is the sexism in the campaign. Most of the criticism of Hillary that I saw was that she didn't run an effective campaign. To some extent, it's understandable. All that slicing and dicing of the electorate and attack stuff came out of her experiences with Bill in the 1990s. They were very effective politicians for that era. However, it's not 1996 any more, and trying to use those same tactics just didn't work this time. I heard people say that they wouldn't vote for Obama because he's black. I never heard anyone saying that they wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a woman. I guess I might be convinced there was sexism if you provided an example or two. To me, Hillary is not a woman victimized by sexism, she's a just another failed politician.

[Querent]

And not enough proofreaders.