Here We Go Again

Back in 1999-2000, the media created a narrative of Al Gore the liar. Things such as his non-existent claim of having invented the Internet took over the major news networks as a major focal point of their presidential politics discussions. It became the "conventional wisdom."

Hillary Clinton recently spoke at her alma mater Wellesley, and made the following comments:

The world class faculty and staff who push you and challenge you, those late nights and long lunches where you challenge each other and learn from each other, the camaraderie that develops when smart, ambitious young women come together in a community of learning. In so many ways, this all women's college prepared me to compete on the all boys' club of presidential politics.

(APPLAUSE)

This was a place where you could try out all different kinds of leadership styles, where you could ask for critique and support from your friends and the faculty with whom you had an ongoing relationship. It was a place that truly did prepare women to make the best choices that we thought were right for our own lives.

Nothing sensational here. She absolutely did not say that people were picking on her because she is a woman. Nor did she say that people should vote for her because she is a woman (in fact, she's explicitly said the opposite). All she said was that the "all women's college" (it is) gave her the leadership skills to compete on the "all boys' club of presidential politics" (she is the only female among 17 contenders, and the first really serious female contender ever - this statement is simply an accurate description).

Nonetheless, there is a new narrative about how Hillary Clinton is playing "the gender card." The implication is that she's either a wimp, or unfairly using her gender as a shield.

According to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, this is an "anti-male thing," and "she should just lighten up on this gender -- 'the boys are coming to get me' routine."

According to MSNBC's Tucker Carlson:

TUCKER CARLSON: She clearly is playing the gender card -- "You can't hit a girl."

[...]

Women are angry at men in a lot of ways. They don't say much about it, but they are.

BUCHANAN: Holy smokes.

CARLSON: And she's pandering to that resentment and anger, and it's wrong.

PRESS: I think men have a reason to be angry at women based on what Lorena Bobbitt did.

CARLSON: Well, I couldn't agree with you more. No man would ever defend the corollary. But women are like, "Oh, I understand why Lorena did that." I mean, they're really mad. And she's taking advantage of it.

According to the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, "Sometimes when Hillary takes heat, she gets paranoid and controlling. But this time she took the heat by getting into the kitchen."

According to FOX News' Mort Kondrake:

This idea of using this gang of theme and the gender card that she is playing may work in the Iowa caucuses. And her staff says this is all about Iowa, and something like 55 percent of the Iowa caucus goers are, apparently women. So if she can get the lion's share of them and split up the guy vote, then she obviously wins.

But I think it is very unattractive for a general election candidate, who wants to be the Commander in Chief of the free world, to be saying 'They're ganging up on me!' I mean, this is the NFL. This is not Wellesley versus Smith in field hockey.

However, the most egregious and ridiculous distortion came from ABC News. After Nancy Pelosi explicitly disagreed with this narrative, ABC ran the horrible headline "Pelosi: Clinton Camp Played Gender Card." Even though that was the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Pelosi said (go ahead and read the article itself if you don't believe me). To highlight their shitty journalism, ABC included the following graphic:


When did the retards take over network news?

Moreover, who will point out the seriously flawed narrative at play here? At MSNBC, it seems unlikely that any of their talking heads or newsmen will say anything. If anything, Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, and Chris Matthews have proven that they will do the opposite. The only liberal talking-head over there is Keith Olberman (despite Bill O'Reilly's claims that NBC is "in the Democratic party's pocket"). He might say something, but he has a limited audience. Over at FOX, I wouldn't recommend holding your breath waiting for such coverage. Sean Hannity, etc. are gonna hit the "I'm a girl" meme pretty hard, and the only hope over there is that an invited guest will point out the insanity at play here. Over at CNN, I don't suspect you'll see much coverage, either. Instead, they might (at best) cover it with their usual he-said-she-said reporting ("Some say Clinton is playing the gender card... others disagree"). You can probably expect the same from major newspapers, if anything at all (it's also worth noting that they probably have less influence on these narratives than the television shows). Although they're already proving themselves to be awful at covering this.

The Wall Street Journal pushes the "gender card" meme:

According to The Politico, a "debate" is "churning in feminist circles, where some women's activists said she had every right to invoke sexism and gender stereotypes as a defense on the campaign trail--and predicted that this tactic will prove effective against fellow Democrats and against a Republican, if she is the general election nominee"

The New York Times:

Shortly after the Democratic debate, when Mrs. Clinton came under attack, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign posted a video on her Web site called “The Politics of Pile On” that showed short clips of the men at the debate.

On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton went to her alma mater, Wellesley, and said, “In so many ways this all-women’s college prepared me to compete in the all-boys’ club of presidential politics.”

The same day, her campaign sent out a fund-raising appeal condemning the men’s actions at the debate and saying, “Hillary’s going to need your help.”

Mrs. Clinton was swiftly criticized on the Internet and by some female columnists for wanting to have it both ways, projecting herself as a strong leader but then complaining of mistreatment by men.

This was one of the more maddening treatments. First, the NYT describes the video as showing "short clips of the men at the debate." That is an absolutely horrible description of the video, transparently intended to create the impression that the video is about gender. It's not. You can watch it here.

The thing is that it's so obviously not about gender. Nowhere does the word "man," "woman," "gender," "male," or "female" appear. Her point was simply that her opponents had recognized her as the frontrunner (she is) and started to go after her (they did - as anyone who watched the debate realizes). This was not about gender, but about making her opponents look like they're playing catch-up. Her opponents just all happen to be men.

Second, her remarks at Wellesley (as I've repeatedly said) obviously do not amount to "playing the gender card."

Third, I haven't seen this fund-raising letter, but if all the New York Times can cite in support of its narrative is that it condemned "the men's" (read: her opponents, who all happen to be men) actions, then it seems like a pretty thin branch on which to hang one's coat.

Finally, it's not "some female columnists" "on the Internet." It's horrible articles like this one that reinforce and spread these horrible narratives. It's not "some people" and it's not "the conservative media." It's awful, lazy, careless journalists like this one.

UPDATE: Has anyone seen any coverage of Hillary Clinton's newly released climate and energy plan? I haven't (not outside the world of blogs, at least). This seems like the kind of substantive issue that people should be writing and arguing about (rather than her "gender card," her "Chinese" clapping, or how much she tips at a restaurant). If you see any serious coverage, please pass it along.

UPDATE II: A recent Marist poll indicates that these empty narratives might be taking their toll in New Hampshire.

Tucker Carlson on Hillary Clinton

Here is Tucker Carlson's take on Hillary Clinton:

TUCKER CARLSON: I notice married people, married men and married white men, getting more extreme, despise her. Why is that? I‘ll tell you why. Because she gives off the feeling that she despises them. If you give the voters the feeling you don‘t like them, they won‘t like you back.

Does this really pass for journalism these days? Tucker Carlson is unable to cite anything to back up his proposition, so he retreats to some "feeling" that she magically "gives off." I'm certainly no shill for Hillary Clinton, but this is clearly horse-shit journalism at its worst.

Clinton, Immigration, Clinton, and Carlson

During the "lightning round" of the recent Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked a question about Eliot Spitzer's New York plan that would allow illegal aliens to obtain limited drivers' licenses. Clinton responded that, although she did not think that was the best way to handle the issue, she understood that, in the face of our failure to achieve comprehensive national immigration reform, this could serve as a remedial measure that would get "people to come out of the shadows." Leaving the wisdom of such programs aside, her answer seemed perfectly clear to me at the time.

In all these past debates, the candidates have been evasive about various issues. I've watched these things in frustration as candidates would bob and weave, change the subject, and start talking about Republicans or socialism, or whatever it is they preferred to be arguing against. Clinton was particularly slick about this, and it frustrated me how the moderators and commentators largely ignored it. Maybe they'd back up and ask for a clearer answer to their particular question, but nobody made a big deal about it. That's why it surprised me so much when all the talking heads chose this answer to jump all over her. All this time, they've ignored legitimate evasiveness and outright lies by the candidates. But now, when a candidate adds nuance in a response to a complicated question, everyone gets confused and outraged that she didn't give a quick yes/no answer.

Anyone who's watched the network news in the past week knows what I'm talking about. On top of the usual talking heads, the other Democratic contenders also portrayed this as a case of double-talk (EDWARDS: "Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago;" OBAMA: "I can't tell whether she was for it or against it. And I do think that is important. One of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face").

Bill Clinton responded to this phenomenon:

"The point I'm here to make to you is whoever you're for, this is a really big election. We saw what happened the last seven years when we made decisions in elections based on trivial matters. When we listened to people make snide comments about whether Vice President Gore was too stiff.

"And when they made dishonest claims about the things that he said that he'd done in his life. When that scandalous Swift Boat ad was run against Senator Kerry. When there was an ad that defeated Max Cleland in Georgia, a man that left half his body in Vietnam. And a guy that led several departments ... with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden because he dared to vote against the president's version of the Homeland Security bill. Most Americans still don't know the truth. The president was against the Homeland Security Bill for 8 1/2 months.

"And Karl Rove told him they were going to lose the 2002 election unless the American people were scared about terror again. So they decided to be for a bill they opposed. And they put a poison pill in it. That bill was designed by the president to take the job rights away from 170,000 federal employees that had no access to secure information, no access to secure technology. No business being treated like CIA. We need to be able to fire CIAs. .. But we don't need to treat secretaries at FEMA that way. The whole thing was a scam.

"So Max Cleland said, I didn't go to Vietnam and leave one arm and two legs to come home and hold my job by stripping the job rights of 170,000 good, hardworking Americans. I don't want to do it. So they put an ad on comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Why am I saying this?

"Because, I had the feeling that at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again. Ya'll raise your hand if you're for illegal immigrants getting a driver's license. So, we then let the Republicans go ahead saying all the Democrats are against the rule of law.

"I think it's fine to discuss immigration. We should. I believe immigration needs to be discussed. And it's fine for Hillary and all the other Democrats to discuss Governor Spitzer's plan. But not in 30 seconds, yes, no, raise your hand. This is a complicated issue. This is a complicated issue.

"So do I hope you vote for my wife? You bet I do. It'd be good for America, and good for the world. But, more than that I came here to tell you today, don't you dare let them take this election away from you. This belongs to you.

"Don't be diverted, don't be divided. Thank you ... "

Obvious conflicts in interest aside, I think that the point he's making here is a solid one: political pundits focus in on soundbites and allow them to turn into major issues (often despite their dishonest or misleading nature, and always omitting any trace of nuance). You get the candidates to give simple yes/no, for/against statements to complicated issues, and then you pounce with oversimplified soundbites and campaign ads.

Political hack Tucker Carlson, however, decided to pick up on (Bill) Clinton's remarks, transform them into an oversimplified soundbite, and prove them to be true:

The defense of Hillary Clinton crossed over from the strident to the ridiculous, according to the AP prospective first gentleman compared his wife‘s experience in last Tuesday‘s Democratic debate to the experience of John Kerry with the swift boat veterans for truth in the ‘04 presidential campaign. Was Bill Clinton serious? Did that comparison do more harm than good to his wife‘s run for the presidency?

[...]

Bill Clinton says his wife is swift boated. She is being criticized by both parties for position on giving driver‘s licenses to illegal aliens. They say she‘s a flip flopper. Could both parties be wrong?

[...]

Swift boating, it used to describe riding the rivers of Vietnam in search of the enemy now part of the American political lexicon particularly on the whiney left. It refers to group of former soldiers, sailors and marines called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who according to Democratic Party mythology unfairly kept John Kerry from taking his rightful place in the White House in ‘04.

So when Bill Clinton in speech to the postal workers union compared the treatment his wife received after waffling her way through last week‘s debate to swift boating, some wondered whether the Clinton campaign was cracking under the pressure of being the frontrunner. Or was trotting out the defense to defend his poor piled upon wife smart politics?

[...]

It‘s cry baby politics, it‘s woe me, how dare you attack me, that‘s the M.O. that we saw for eight years while the Clintons were in Washington. And it‘s also - it is though. Everyone is mean to me, oh, it‘s bias. You don‘t like me because of my politics, for ever it‘s ignoring the validity of the central question. What is your position on driver‘s license, I still don‘t know what her position is.

Coupled with the recent misleading claims about Clinton playing "the gender card," it seems like the media pundits are creating a narrative where Clinton is some sort of weak front-runner who complains everytime somebody criticizes her. All of this, mind you, has been based on a single sentence about presidential politics being an "all-boys club" (note: she's the only female among 17 presidential candidates, and that statement was true), and a single sentence by Bill Clinton using the Swift Boat advertisements as an example to make a larger point.

UPDATE: It looks like there are plenty of other news outlets that are more than happy to pass this oversimplified and inaccurate meme along.

The New York Daily News:

Democratic White House candidates ridiculed Bill Clinton Tuesday for suggesting they were trying to sink Hillary Clinton's bid with slimy Swift boat-style attacks.

...

Bill Clinton theorized the recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, in which Hillary Clinton was criticized for zigzagging on Gov. Spitzer's controversial driver's license plan, veered dangerously close to intraparty character assassination.

The New York Post (big surprise):

The rebukes came after Bill took a swipe at his wife's rivals. He likened recent Democratic attacks against his wife to a "scandalous" 2004 ad by John Kerry's fellow swift boat Vietnam veterans, questioning the candidate's military valor.

CBS' The Early Show:

HANNAH STORM (anchor): What do you make of Bill Clinton criticizing Hillary Clinton's Democratic rivals, saying they were swift-boating her?

However, it looks like Bill O'Reilly has had the journalistic integrity to see through this one, even when being baited by Hannah Storm:

O'REILLY: No. I think they make it up. You know, it's -- and I do this because they make stuff up about me. They make stuff up about any controversial figure. So, they're sitting around going, "What can we say about Bill Clinton?" We tracked it yesterday, and we couldn't find any Swift boat reference that Bill Clinton --

STORM: So you're saying he never said it?

O'REILLY: I don't know. I couldn't find it. I didn't report it. I couldn't find it. I had a segment last night on The Factor. I couldn't find it.

STORM: What's Barack Obama's stance, then?

O'REILLY: I don't know.

STORM: Because he's criticizing Bill -- he's taking on Bill Clinton.

Three cheers for not buying in to rumors.

Tucker Carlson: Totally Not Gay

Gay Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) recently had the following to say about an incident in which he solicited sex from an undercover male officer in a public restroom: "I am not gay."

Conservative pundits Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough both weighed in on MSNBC Live yesterday:

TUCKER: Let me be clear, Dan. I am not gay.

SCARBOROUGH: Let me just say for the record, I am not gay, either.

With those formalities out of the way, Tucker then had this bizzare comment:

"I'm not anti-gay in the slightest, but that's really common [soliciting sex in a public restroom], and the gay rights groups ought to disavow that kind of crap because, you know, that actually does bother people who didn‘t ask for being bothered."

Funny. I've never heard them avow that kind of conduct, either. Why the hell should "gay rights groups" denounce something that is so obviously bothersome and creepy?

But what makes this particular segment disturbing is how Tucker Carlson reacted to a similar incident himself ("I got bothered in Georgetown"). Rather than dealing with this maturely, Carlson did this:

ABRAMS: What did you do, by the way? What did you do when he did that? We got to know.

TUCKER: I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the—you know, and grabbed him, and—and...

ABRAMS: And did what?

TUCKER: Hit him against the stall with his head, actually!

(LAUGHTER)

TUCKER: And then the cops came and arrested him. But let me say, I'm the least anti-gay right-winger you‘ll ever meet...

(LAUGHTER)

So there you have it. Tucker Carlson: Definitely Not Gay. But he's not anti-gay, either. He just thinks that gay people in general "ought to disavow this kind of crap," and once beat the hell out of a guy for making sexual advances on him.