"The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election" - A groundshaking article today by Jill Filipovic at the NYT

[gristy]

Just an amazing article. All obvious now that the author points it all out. But I hadn't a clue until she did.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/opinion/matt-lauer-hillary-clinton.html

Matt Lauer, like Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin before him, is a journalist out of a job after his employer fired him for sexually harassing female colleagues. It’s good news that real penalties are now leveled on men who harass — after centuries of the costs mostly befalling the women who endure harassment. But the deep cultural rot that has corroded nearly all of our institutions and every corner of our culture is not just about a few badly behaved men. Sexual harassment, and the sexism it’s predicated on, involves more than the harassers and the harassed; when the harassers are men with loud microphones, their private misogyny has wide-reaching public consequences. One of the most significant: the 2016 election.
...
A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable. These recent harassment allegations suggest that perhaps the problem wasn’t that Mrs. Clinton was untruthful or inherently hard to connect with, but that these particular men hold deep biases against women who seek power instead of sticking to acquiescent sex-object status.

[Chasstev365]

6. ?

[MaryMagdaline]

2. Excellent article

[Squinch]

3. Great piece. We all saw it. Nice that the rest of the world finally is seeing it.

[SharonAnn]

37. Yes, I recognized it immediately. But then, I've lived it - like she has.

[delisen]

4. We need League of Women Voters running debates again

No female candidate ever again should be subjected to the Matt Lauer crap.

They consider these characters "talent" They are just misogynistic pig-sty dwelling no-talent bullies.

The damage done to us and our families by the little tin gods and their evil greedy string-pullers is incalculable.

They are truly vile-the front office dwellers and on-camera faces.

[burrowowl]

15. I agree the WLV should be running the debates!

[Jarqui]

5. I'm usually somewhat reserved on allegations of misogyny

and how much of a factor it played. Maybe that is partly because I do not think that I feel that way myself (though I've caught myself in suspect moments maybe a little guilty of it).

Now, there is no doubt in my mind that like racism, it is a significant factor. But I rarely conclude that it is THE overwhelming factor.

However, this time, this quote from the article instantly resonated with me:

"It’s hard to look at these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton and not see glimmers of that same simmering disrespect and impulse to keep women in a subordinate place."

I never liked or trusted Halperin. And I never was a big fan of Lauer or Rose. But they all help to represent something women face that seems frequently unfair and discriminatory.

Like racism, it's taking way too long to have true equality in practice.

[delisen]

20. Thanks for this recognition.

I can really feel now how it's holding us all back from accomplishing great things together as a country.

[Jarqui]

21. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc -

they all take away a bunch (or in suicide all) of the potential from the target of that hatred.

The country and our society needlessly loses. It's so stupid and wasteful.

I remember thinking when the civil rights changes came through with MLK in the 60s that it looked like we had finally turned the corner and this problem was finally going to be behind us. How naive!

I was optimistic when we got the university I attended to provide a small amount of money to a gay club for students in the early 70s.

Women burning their bras etc for feminism in the 60s looked like it was putting that issue to rest.

More than 50 years later, we look back only to sadly realize how much we fell short. I continue to struggle with why it has to still be a problem and why police have to shoot unarmed black kids in the back. Makes my head spin.

[LiberalFighter]

7. Personally I think Chris Matthews did not treat her right either.

[Hortensis]

24. Sure. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, most MSM campaigned against her.

The NY Times was huge against here. WHY, though?

This is a very good article, but only the tip poking up of the iceberg. The most powerful misogynists are also the most powerful anti-Democratic factions. But it's not primarily male against female, but rather kleptocratic/possibly theocratic autocracy against democracy. A billionaire class that own whole media conglomerates and can purchase senators with their chump change is incompatible with one person/one vote.

American ultraconservative billionaires, who took over the GOP, shared the crucial goal with Russia of taking Hillary out, not because she was a women, but because she was the DEMOCRATIC PARTY candidate for president.

Because we are THE anti-plutocrat pro-democracy party who would destroy all their ambitions if they didn't block us from power. They knew that and are spending billions convincing voters that it is NOT all about a giant, fierce struggle for power.

The Democratic Party battling American kleptocrats and Russia for the the future of our democracy. If we lose, replacement with an autocracy masquerading behind a fake democracy such as Russia has. If we win, continuation of the American way with an unprecedented period of wellbeing for We The People.

And old-fashioned and religious misogyny is just one of the weapons being deployed.

[Wellstone ruled]

26. Thanks for the post,so agree.

When a Narrative is established and supported by unlimited Funding,we see the results. Propaganda at it's finest.

[Farmer-Rick]

8. Perhaps

But since little Putin and the GOP rigged the election, we will never know if Hillary could have won an honest election.....she did win the popular vote after all.

And most of the handful of times in US history when the popular winner doesn't win the electoral votes, a rigged election was strongly suspected.

[mopinko]

11. she should have mopped the floor w him.

it should never have been close enough to steal.
but there you have it.

[StevieM]

19. She did mop the floor with him in three national debates. I disagree that it shouldn't have been

close given the way that the FBI set out to sabotage her. They did unbelievable damage.

And they would have done that damage to any Democratic candidate IMO, especially a female one.

[spooky3]

34. Agree nt

[StevieM]

18. Our own FBI did a lot more than Putin did IMO. (eom)

[Farmer-Rick]

22. Well, since the GOP and little Putin aren't telling us or investigating the bizarre voting outcome

We can only speculate.

Still all those Putin trolls, ads, fake accounts everywhere, Russian cyber experts hacking into everything they could and proven phishing expedition but Putin's spies didn't affect the vote count? I find that totally unbelievable.

I was not a big fan of Hillary's but even I found Comey's letter to be manipulative and beyond the scope of his job. It was so obviously done by him as an October surprise that at first, I really didn't care that Trump fired his manipulative a**.

Maybe in the future the Russians will explain how they threw the election to Trump.

[NurseJackie]

9. And others.

[Lunabell]

10. I read this article

Plain truth.

[question everything]

12. Led by Evangelicals men (and women) who did not have problem with a gropper

who hardly follow the "family value" (whatever this is) life but, hey, a woman has to stay at home.

[marble falls]

13. It absolutely irked me how easy the press went on Trump so as to be not accused of attacking ....

him and gave him enough press coverage he didn't even need to mount a real campaign and just really handed Hillary Clinton nothing but the same innuendo hard-balls over and over and over - e-mails and servers (all legal if ill advised) and Benghazibenghazibenghazi (which was a success it got 36 people out of Libya safe and sound in the middle of a for real anarchy).

And that slimy weasel Matt Lauer was one of the worst.

[NNadir]

14. It makes perfect sense. Lauer is a piece of fecal matter. n/t

[SergeStorms]

16. Love it!

So true. Of course we can't expect the chauvinistic males who read this tomorrow to understand, or agree, but at least it will offer them some food for thought. Hopefully every woman who reads it, and recognizes the inequalities that Ms. Clinton was forced to endure, will start doing something about it, if they haven't already.

Great article. Thanks for posting this, gristy!

[Honeycombe8]

17. Well, yes. I hadn't considered that until all these harassment allegations surfaced.

Now that we see how pervasive it is, this attitude that apparently a lot of men have about women, that no doubt had an effect on the election.

This may be a good enough reason for the next female Presidential candidate, and all other female candidates, to try and do as many interviews with female journalists as possible.

We should also start insisting that the major networks hire more female journalists in the first chair. Almost half, if not half, of the first chair jobs should be women, if there are qualified ones (and there are).

In some ways, it's not intentional. It's just a way of thinking about women that some men have. They don't see women the same way that I, another woman, sees them. It may be part biological, but maybe mainly how they are used to thinking of women. We live in a patriarchal society, and men, being raised to make the advances, are used to thinking of women in that light. Someone they would or would not make a move on.

It probably was a factor. I must admit I didn't recognize it at the time. But thinking back on it...yeah, it was probably a factor.

Of course, that would also be a reason why some men wouldn't vote for a woman. So there's that, too. It would take someone who breaks that barrier to succeed. Like Obama broke the racial barrier.

But let's face it. There's a way for a candidate to handle a hostile interviewer. Even tho people think that Obama was loved by the media and had it easy, he had his share of hostile interviews, I'm sure. Can you imagine Obama not coming out on top of that? I can't, either.

[yurbud]

23. I'm a guy, and oddly, when Hillary was First Lady, senator, & sec of state...

I liked her more when she was feisty and pushing back at the right wingers.

[barbtries]

32. you seem like the kind of guy i love:

the ones who understand that women are just human beans like we all are. just 100% human

[yurbud]

33. thanks!

[barbtries]

35. i have 3 sons

and this was my goal in raising them. i think i've done well, but they will dismay me from time to time. but the finest compliment i got was in a letter written by my son to someone else when he said "she raised us to be feminists."

[yurbud]

36. Norman Lear raised me to be a feminist. A lot of guys must have been watching a different channel

[CrispyQ]

25. Excellent article. -nt

[dalton99a]

27. Great piece.

[riversedge]

28. Good concluding comments also...

....This moment isn’t about a nation of confused men. It’s about a minority of men who choose to treat women alternately as walking sex objects or bothersome and potentially devious nags. It’s about a majority of Americans who give men a pass for all manner of bad behavior, because they assume men are entitled to behave badly but hold women to an entirely different standard.

That is why it’s so egregious that sexual harassers set the tone of much of the coverage of the woman who hoped to be the first female president.

These “Crooked Hillary” narratives pushed by Mr. Lauer, Mr. Halperin, and a long list of other prominent journalists and pundits indelibly shaped the election, and were themselves gendered: Hillary Clinton as a cackling witch, Hillary Clinton a woman it was easy to distrust because she was also a woman seeking power, and what kind of woman does that? Mr. Trump emphasized this caricature as part of his more broadly sexist campaign, but he didn’t invent it. Nor was he the only famous man going on television to perpetuate it — while revealing a deep disdain for women when the cameras weren’t rolling.

[Upthevibe]

29. Really good article...I remember being very irritated at Matt Lauer

after that interview before the election last year. What a p.o.s. a hole!

[Motley13]

30. countries that have or have had a female head of state

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2016/06/politics/women-world-leaders/

It makes me sick to think we had one of the most qualified world leaders of all time & she lost to the incompetent buffoon

[barbtries]

31. watched a clip of lauer

questioning Hillary. he was extremely disrespectful and antagonistic and negative toward her, so much so that i'm glad he's fired and publicly humiliated for his misdeeds. on top of it to learn that he's an mcp and pervert puts it all in focus. it was so much more than the news or even the politics to him. it was that she was a powerful, brilliant woman.