The race is accelerating now. Each day brings 20 new state polls and every media outlet in the country seems to be running a national tracking poll. Ad buys are being expanded, spinners are furiously spinning, and Ohio is tied; it’s nearing the end. It will surely get yet more rapid as Nov. 4th approaches – and I will surely never again attempt to watch Obama’s YouTube channel – so there ought to be a brief discussion of an interesting moment on the television screens this week.
Campbell Brown on CNN
I missed the race in 1984, the last one where female contenders played s major role, so perhaps I lack appropriate historical perspective. Maybe Carol Moseley-Braun’s legion defenders were discussing sexism as a media tool at every turn in 2004. However, the sheer volume of sexism charges leveled in this campaign has been interesting. Much of it has been political posturing (see: Palin, Sarah, media management). Some of the discussion, though, I think is going to stick.
An example: The Caucus at the New York Times covered Campbell Brown’s editorial, which, of course, they would. But something caught my eye:
“Like an Arctic blast, Ms. Brown slammed the campaign for sequestering Sarah Palin from reporters — and blamed their behavior on sexism.”
Like an Arctic blast? My first thought was: are they calling her [Brown] some kind of ice queen? That wouldn’t even make any sense. And certainly the author wasn’t; it was just another godawful simile on a blog – alert the media – but the point is that I thought about it for a second. I wonder if that moment was repeated elsewhere. I can imagine that it wasn’t, but see the comments section of the entry for a conversation on sexism with a bit more depth and nuance than I’d imagine existed in the general punditry.
If nothing else came of the whole Clinton Fiasco (and yes, by late May it was a Fiasco) then at least there was this: by forcing the media - and its associated barnacles of political watchers and operatives – to sort real sexism from campaign manufactured sexism, we all gained a sharper ear for that sort of thing. The “…likeable enough” line came close at the very least:
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…and was a bit cold either way. The lipstick on pig uproar, on the other hand, was so clearly manufactured that it should be the litmus test for the sort of sexist discernment I’m talking about. If you can’t tell which side of the fence that falls on then you’re probably being dishonest.
Events will bear out whether or not this dialogue will stick, but I believe it will. The number of women in high office continues to increase, even though there is yet to be a representative number of women in places like the Senate or state governorships. And as we’ve seen over the past eight months, the fact that charges of sexism can be issued and rebutted from all sides of the political spectrum only serves to engage a larger conversation about the value of such charges as a political tactic. That sexism can be drawn out of the context of the corporate anecdote or the mournful statistic and into the context of the everyday seems a unique development to this election.
The jury is, of course, still out on whether sexism as such has much role to play in determining elections. But the more airtime that question gets, the more rebuttal of scurrilous charges we will see, the more exposure of de facto sexism we will get. This is where the media and the campaigns will do the most good. Not by example, certainly, but by giving an airing to real-time slights as well as patently false campaign memos. We’ll all know the difference when we see it. The Liz Lemon test, maybe.