Because You Know How Women Are
Feb 16th, 2008 at 10:10 am by Susie
Talk about dog whistles! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s considered okay for a presidential candidate to talk this way about female opponents. After all, the only people it upsets are, you know, other broads:
“[OBAMA] I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal,” he told reporters.
Yeah, you know how we old broads are, what with the hormones and shit, and worrying about our [sex] appeal. We just can’t think straight!
Andrea Mitchell, referring to this statement made by Barack Obama - “This is, I understand Senator Clinton periodically when she is feeling down launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal. ” - suggested it was a sexist thing to say. I have transcribed the exchange:
Nora O’Donnell: “He said, ‘I understand when she’s down (emphasis hers), that she makes these kinds of attacks. It’s getting a little personal.”
Andrea Mitchell: “It’s getting a little personal and, very frankly, you know how deeply we interpreted every comment to look for some sort of racial motivation before South Carolina. A lot of people said it was there. But, you know, when you start describing a female (emphasis hers) candidate as being “down” and “striking back.” I don’t know, that’s a little edgy, don’t you think?”
Nora O’Donnell: “Yeah. And I think there’s gonna be a lot more comments about that.”
Don’t worry your wizened old head about it, Andrea. No one who “counts” will notice. And Nora, you do know enough to keep your mouth shut about icky female things if you want to climb that corporate media ladder, right?
UPDATE: Here’s a little walk down memory lane:
“You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out.” - Senator Barack Obama
Ooo, meow! Cat fight, fellas!
Had Obama’s opponent been a Henry Clinton and had he said the same thing, would anyone even had noticed? Come on, folks, lets use sexist for remarks that are actually sexist!
FWIW, I didn’t think Bill Clinton’s remarks were racist, either. Time for folks to develop thicker skins.
Susie…I think you are reading too much into the exchange. Here’s the transcript:
You are reading something sexist in that response? In context, I understand him to mean down as is behind, not down as in depressed.
I’m only a stupid white male, perhaps you could clarify how that was an attack on Clinton’s gender.
The use of the word “feeling” is the key. “Feeling” down? “We can’t really blame the little lady, folks, she was ‘feeling’ down.”
Dismissive, diminishing and infantilizing.
Dear SWM @ 10:58,
You must be very young or very stupid. Here is a presidential candidate saying of another presidential candidate, “She gets down, you know, periodically. [Nudge: those hormones, you know, can't ever trust them. Wink] and then she does silly things.”
Neither Susie nor I am reading too much into this exchange. You are refusing to see what is there, and the worst thing that is there is that Senator Obama said this spontaneously and casually. I agree with you that he probably didn’t mean much by it, because his misogyny, or, if you prefer, anti-female bigotry, is so deeply ingrained he does not even realize he has it. I assume that you know enough about prejudice to know that the prejudices that are not admitted are the most difficult to eradicate.
Would you be so sanguine if Senator Clinton said of Senator Obama, ” I understand that when he’s upset Senator Obama reverts to his tribal roots as a way of boosting his self-esteem”?
You would be appalled, as would I. And that sentence does not carry half the bigotry and sexual innuendo as Senator Obama’s remark does.
While Senator Obama should apologize forthwith, his exposure as a misogynist remains.
The whole point of dog whistle politics is that it goes right over the heads of people who would never condone the message. That’s what makes it so effective. That’s why it’s called “dog whistle” politics - it can’t be heard by most people, just the people it’s pandering to. And it’s oh so easy to disavow, too.
And by the way, my experience with politicians is that they rarely have the prejudices they sell to their constituents. It’s just something they do to get votes - which is pretty damned cynical.
Amazing, liberal white women hear EVERYTHING as a sexist attack on Clinton, and yet manage to hear absolutely nothing as a racist attack on Obama. I’m sure you’ll say this is a dogwhistle that went over my head, but you were never willing to consider the same about yourself when the Clintons made their own statements.
To put it bluntly, if you were unable and unwilling to consider the arguments of others to be in good faith, why should we consider these accusations to be of good faith? You can be lying as easily as you claimed Obama’s people were. You were not willing to hear others out, and you were not willing to give others the benefit of the doubt. Yet you ask that we extend it to you?
soullite,
Liberal?
White?
Women?
WTF you talkin’, ’bout? You neva met me, has you?
you guys are really reaching, and you need to take a break.
EVERY candidate that gets hit with a negative attack will use some variation of “now that they are losing, they are going negative.”
you are totally over the top, and it is clear that if hillary is not the nominee you are going to have some real work to do to reconcile yourselves with what will need to be done in november–voting for obama and against the gop.
really, this is getting ridiculous.
she does attack every time she is down in the polls and in trouble, and she was the first one to do it, and yet you are going to claim that obama pointing this out is sexist?
please.
Who am I, your mother? It’s not my job to prove anything. It’s your job, as a citizen, to perform due diligence.
It doesn’t matter which candidate it is: USE YOUR OWN BRAIN. Be skeptical. That’s what I’m trying to say here. The thing that disturbs me so much about Obama supporters is how willing many of them seem to be to suspend their natural skepticism.
He’s a politician. No more, no less. Not evil - and not a saint. Yes, he gives pretty speeches. Beware of anyone who makes you feel like you could hand them the keys to the store and the cash register and then walk away for four years. Your stubborn refusal to trust blindly is all that permits us to maintain a democracy - “if you can keep it,” as Franklin said.
I don’t support Clinton. I don’t even want to vote in this primary, that’s how disgusted I am. But at least if she wins, I don’t have to worry about people taking everything she says as the Gospel.
I’m a brown liberal woman (who supported two white Progressive men for the ‘08 Dem nomination,) and I still have no problem seeing the rampant sexism aimed at Clinton.
My (mumble-something) white mother and I, a 57-year-old white male, both heard that crack and damn near threw something at the screen. I don’t know if the Obama campaign knows the term dog-whistle or not, but the candidate surely knew that was a nasty attempt at a put-down. If he’d meant “behind in the race” he could have said it that way.
“Over the top”?
I’m not actually looking for anyone else to calibrate by their standards how close to the top I am (because by mine, I’m not anywhere near the top), but I do appreciate your concern.
“Real work to do”?
Not really. I’ll simply hold my nose and vote for the person with the D next to their name.
I am a 56 yo white woman with very long standing libel & feminist credentials going back over 35 years.
I think this overreaching attempt to find sexism where it is at best tenuous and needs to be explained (even to ME - I couldn’t figure out what the potential issue was when I first viewed the clip) only serves to increase the demeaning perception of Clinton playing the poor weak little woman for sympathy votes. The comment makes perfect sense and means exactly the same thing if you insert a man’s name for Clinton’s.
I find dubious claims of sexism to be very counterproductive.
oops libel sb liberal (no not Freudian just lousy spelling/typing and forgot to preview)
i’m sorry, this is just unhinged. I’ve seen a half-dozen sites going cuckoo-bananas over this, and it’s really bringing me down.
Suburban Guerilla is usually the first or second site I visit every day, before the NY Times, even before atrios or dailykos at this point. But it’s just getting over-the-top: every day seems to bring some new and contrived reason to say “Obama sucks”. I get it. You don’t like Barack Obama. You don’t think he’d be a good president. He’s not a progressive (and Hillary “War in Iraq/Kyl-Lieberman/telecom-ally/insurance-shill” Clinton is?).
I get it. He’s the worst person in the world.
Give me a ring when the election’s over and there are other things to write about.
Have you seen the collection of videos of Obama events in which a woman close to the stage faints and he gives the same spiel about helping her? Creepy or coincidence?
BTW, love ya Susie!
I don’t know how many times I can repeat this: I don’t like either of them, and I’m not voting for either of them in the primary.
I don’t like double standards. I don’t like the media shaping the narrative. I don’t like it that sexism is still so much more acceptable than racism in the “progressive” world.
I stand up for Clinton because so few other people do. Isn’t that what progressives do?
I especially don’t like it that the single most common way men react to women who disagree strongly with them is to describe them as “moody,” “over the top” or “unhinged.” But then, you know how women are.
Thank you, Susie. Very well said. I would only add that women are not attacked for their gender until they are perceived to be a threat. Senator Clinton is so much a threat, that one of Senator Obama’s main supporter groups are white males. Not the usual demographic one would find supporting a black man in the past, but at least they have not bolted the Democratic party altogether.
I worry, however, what will happen to their support in the general if McCain is the Republican nominee.
i understand why people could take obama’s remark as sexist. it’s not a stretch to see it that way. but i do doubt that obama really intended to imply that clinton was on the rag.
it’s kind of like when i made a joke about how with all the candidates descending on PA to beg for our votes, i should make obama shine my shoes. someone called me on it as racist. and i definitely see why it could be viewed that way. but that’s not what i meant and i felt really stupid for not thinking of it before i said it.
literally everything that comes out of candidates mouths is being recorded. a wide net like that is going to catch a lot of badly phrased stupid things.
On any big campaign, very little is said that isn’t scripted and rehearsed. There is very little margin for error. That’s why I find it almost impossible to believe that someone as polished and smooth as Obama (a lawyer, after all) didn’t mean it exactly the way it sounds.
aren’t dogwhistle appeals suppoosed to APPEAL to a group while going over everyone’s head? Like Mike Huckabee’s obscure bible quotes or Condi Rice’s “birth pangs in the middle east” line? Only the fundamentalist christians knew what those people meant: the rest of us normals didn’t catch it.
You say in comment 20, “I find it almost impossible to believe that someone as polished and smooth as Obama (a lawyer, after all) didn’t mean it exactly the way it sounds.”
If this is a dogwhistle attack on clinton, it’s a pretty piss-poor one:
I’ve been bopping around left wingistan enjoying the freak-out, and there’s one thing I’ve noticed. Men don’t seem to be getting the message at all (see me, john cole, a number of your commenters), while women are getting upset. If the line was meant to suggest all sorts of negative female stereotypes about women, then it’s failed because men (the intended target?) didn’t hear the dogwhistle, while women have. And why would “polished and smooth” Obama choose words that deliberately antagonize women away from him?
I’m not buying this one. Like I said earlier, it’s so contrived as to be malkinesque.
uh, i’m a lawyer.
i wish my law degree was innoculation against making stupid comments. in fact, i suspect it’s probably the opposite.
and yes, much of what they say is scripted. and yet its very hard for human beings to stay on script all the time. you really find it “impossible” that he could have said something like that by accident? i think that’s the real stretch. i mean, it’s not like obama never used the word “periodically” before. maybe he was secretly saying that he himself was on the rag when he tried to quit smoking. or maybe that’s what you were saying about yourself two years ago?
Watch the video…then you will get it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qNpeGPdhEw&eur
He said she attacks to boost her appeal, not her esteem.
Using the word “feeling” was not the best choice of words, but I really don’t think he was trying to dog whistle misogyny.
The subject was legislation that he authored, she voted on, and now is attacking, not what Hillary’s mood today!
I didn’t say “impossible.” I said “almost” impossible. Big difference.
Of course I know you’re a lawyer. And you’re very precise in your use of language, more than most people I know.
“Much”? ALL of what they say is scripted. No big campaign allows a candidate to make unscripted comments. They rehearse all likely questions, the communications shop signs off on everything the candidate is going to say. It would be, shall we say, highly unusual for him to say these things spontaneously.
No one would believe the extent to which these things are controlled if they weren’t on the inside to see it. And by the way, I worked with Hildebrand-Tewes, the same consulting firm Obama now uses, so I’m quite familiar with their strategy. (In fact, they used to hold three-hour long Obama planning meetings in our office all the time.)
” I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal,” he told reporters.” Some have parsed that and found definite sexism. Being a cynic, I guess my response is “mebbe.” I am neither young nor very stupid, thank you. I find it difficult to get outraged as you more expert folk here have, over this. I don’t feel as if it would be right to call you over sensitive. You have experienced a lot more bull shit, as women, than I ever have, since I am a man. Maybe….maybe, you are right. However, my sense has been that she DOES attack when she feels as if she is losing and how could it be anything but an attempt to belittle Obama and by reducing his stature, elevate her own when compared to his?
Brendan, your comment doesn’t even make sense. Sexist dog whistle statements aren’t supposed to be heard by ALL men - just the men who already have their doubts about whether a woman can handle being president because they’re so “moody” and “irrational.” If his campaign thinks they can peel off another percentage point in Texas by him saying this, you’re goddamned right they’ll get him to say it. He’s going to listen to the people who have brought him this far.
I think you all underestimate the sophistication of these high-profile communications campaigns. I’ve been in those strategy meetings, with the very same people. That’s how they think: “Barack, it would help if when you were in a position to criticize Hillary, instead of dealing with nuts and bolts, talk about her ‘feelings’ and her ‘moods.’ That way, it’ll play into the fears men have about a woman in the Oval Office.”
And by the way, as long as we’re talking stereotypes: Studies consistently show that women as a group have greater communications skills and emotional intelligence than men. Gee, maybe the reason women are getting upset about this is because we’re better at picking up the subtext.
whatever susie. It’s hard to take anything here seriously anymore, so I’m not even going to engage.
see you at DL sometime.
Gug, that’s not really what he was getting at. Of course she attacks when she’s down in the polls - that’s not how he put it. He said “feeling” down. See the difference?
Brendan, what do you suppose it illustrates about the balance of power when the male in a conversation considers himself the only legitimate arbiter of what is worthy - and what isn’t?
And what do you suppose it’s done to women’s voices when male approval is conditional on men hearing what they want to hear, the way they want to hear it?
Nothing changes the fact that you decided you didn’t want to hear anything you didn’t want to hear. You can call it a stupid comment all you want, but the reality is that you’re angry that someone will challenge you on this. You can wave all the degrees you want around, it doesn’t change the obvious. The truth is simple and self evident, You clearly just don’t care about racism, even though you are clearly worried about sexism. You care about oppression that can hurt you, but you’re happy to turn a blind eye when oppression hurts people who are not like you. Third Wave at it’s finest.
I won’t bother with this again, I won’t even read your blog anymore. But don’t pretend this is anything other than what this is.
well, if you look at the video, it’s pretty clear to me that it is unscripted. obama is much much better and polished a speaker when he’s using prepared remarks than he is off the cuff. in the video there are all these pauses and “uh”s that simply don’t appear when he gives a speech or is working off a script.
then again, maybe you’ll see the video differently. i really don’t want to get personal like others seem to be. i still love you as much as always, susie! and i can’t imagine stopping reading your blog just because i don’t agree with everything you write.
“Degrees”? Racism? Only care about oppression that hurts me? ALL oppression hurts everyone, everywhere. Maybe you’re the one with the problem. I don’t think any form of oppression is acceptable.
Thanks, Noz. Dittos.
What I’m talking about are phrases designed by the communications shop that are to be used, say, for a press conference or any other seemingly off the cuff event. They’re designed to sound casual.
But there aren’t any “off the cuff” events. That’s what I’m trying to explain. The first thing in the morning, a staffer meets with the candidate and briefs him or her on anything at all that might be brought up during the day. The communications team has usually already come up with a response they want the candidate to use. If something really big happened, first they have a conference call with the consultants to examine the pitfalls of different approaches.
They’re so fixated on staying on message, there is ALWAYS at least one person (and usually more) whose job is to make sure the candidate keeps moving and doesn’t answer any questions he hasn’t been prepped for.
The communications shop has two goals: defensive and offensive. Keep the candidate from saying anything that can bite him in the ass, and come up with ways of making the candidate look good (and the opponent look bad) that won’t come back to bite him in the ass. Plausible deniability is important.
Now, everyone keeps pointing to Obama’s well-run campaign as an example of his executive ability. I’m supposed to believe that his campaign was suddenly too incompetent to keep him from saying this? Theoretically possible, but that’s not how it works. And, as I pointed out, I worked with his communications firm. I know how they work.
I feel like a little koala bear just crapped a rainbow in my brain. Anyway, perhaps my knowledge of current trends in biology is a little out of date, but is it really all that common for 60 year old women to menstruate?
For the record, I personally don’t think Obama said what he said on purpose. But, what he said sounds sexist to my ears.
Sexism just is so ingrained in our very language …well, as they say, privilege is blinding.
BTW: Remember how people used to fight on the intertubes about Howard Dean? This, too, shall pass.
Chris, men talk about menopausal women the same way.
[...] But shit, you know how women are. [...]
Oh, that noose thing was cool with you? Yeah, you’re right. Why are black people so damned touchy about lynchings, anyway?
This isn’t about Clinton being fragile. It’s about a presidential candidate speaking dismissively about women.
Ditto on what Roxanne said, plus a helping of true believerism.
Oops, I think you missed another explanation: The one where I explained that I WORKED FOR HIS COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANTS ON ANOTHER CAMPAIGN and I’m quite familiar with their tactics?
Or do we ignore Occam’s Razor for this one?
Are you deliberately obtuse, or are you just not quite bright?
Where did you get “I worked with them, so I know first hand what a bunch of sexist d*cks they are” from what I said? Talk about reading into something what you want to hear! They weren’t sexist dicks at all. It was worse. They were very pleasant, completely amoral mercenaries. They were TECHNICIANS.
They suggested statements like this AS STRATEGY. You know, as in, “Men are nervous about a women in charge of the military, so if you
get the chance, don’t attack her. Try to sound sympathetic about Hillary’s ‘moods’ and her ‘feelings’, and that will resonate with guys who have their doubts about a woman president. That could translate into another 2%, and you’ll have plausible deniability. It’s perfect, because if she reacts, she’ll just sound crazy.”
I sat in these meetings. If you don’t believe me, I really don’t care. I don’t know you from Adam.
And if you don’t understand that campaigns put at least as much attention into these details as ad agencies do into selling a product, then you should just go back to sleep. Really.
“General affability”? Used car salesmen must see you coming a mile away. As my grandmother used to say, “The fishmonger never yells ‘Rotten fish for sale!’”
Where do you keep coming up with this stuff? I didn’t say Hildebrand Tewes recommended sexist stuff specifically - I only used that as an example of how things were typically decided in strategy meetings.
Arrrghhhh…. I’m trying to explain how these statements are DESIGNED to be missed by the people they might offend - namely, men who don’t approve of sexism. Of COURSE you don’t think it’s sexist, you’re not the target audience! Phrases like this are aimed at men who are on the fence.
#45
Yes, because stupid old men just are not capable of keeping pernicious sexist memes from entering our poor, impotent minds when it is draped in apparently non-sexist language (what an effective way of NOT getting the message across).
Apparently most of my argument has become victim to a form of rhetorical rendition via spam software. However, and in closing, there really is not much else to say but that this statement is not sexist in any fair minded sense of the word. If you mean sexist as in, “it is a negative comment directed at human who just happens to have a vagina”, then I guess I would have to agree but by that definition we are all guilty. Any politician in a tight race could have said the same about the other regardless of gender. Therefore, any attempt to label it as a sexist statement is reactionary and unfair to Obama. Thanks!
Yeah, kind of an odd move on deleting those. Unless I missed something, I don’t think dude was being all that….whatever.
I do wonder about your campaign experience and what you extrapolated out of it. Just my opinion, and I hope you know I mean nothing personal, but I’ve never seen a campaign go negative as ineptly or self destructively as the one you worked for. The phone book sized pile of rank, vile and over the top crazy shit, distributed by your dude’s campaign, that would pile up in my mailbox every day was the primary reason I finally decided to vote against him and for the guy who wound up winning. This, despite the fact that you were working for his campaign and I trusted your judgment on these things. My wife and my parents all arrived at the same decision, independently, for the very same reason. The insinuations in those mailers were poorly veiled, generally repugnant and well beyond the threshold of believability. If you’re taking your lessons on campaign strategy from the cats that came up with that crap you should probably take a step back, because they were either totally inept, or they desperately wanted your dude to lose and were trying every way they could to embarrass him horribly.
That said, I like the way Lauren put it in her post linking to yours - “If you’ve never been told you are “ruled by your emotions” in a professional capacity, you probably wouldn’t get it either.” I hadn’t thought about it that way and I didn’t get it until I read that, but it makes sense to me a little bit more now.
I didn’t delete his comments - at least, not on purpose. Why would I delete someone who argues without personal attacks, especially someone who seems to be making an effort to have a dialogue? That’s not what I do.
I did delete someone else’s comments, because he’s a troll who keeps coming back under different names and the spam filter isn’t working on him. I hope I didn’t hit the other guy’s by mistake.
My ten cents as a man. If this isn’t intended to be a dog whistle, why didn’t he just say that Hilary Clinton always goes negative when she’s behind in the polls or something like that? Instead, he specifically talks about her ”feelings”, as if he knew anything about them. Moreover, even if we don’t make the obvious connection, the word “periodically” at the very least insinuates that Hilary suffers from a recurring pattern of mood shifts. So what he’s saying is that Hilary is “feeling down” at regular intervals and then starts to do crazy and hysterical things. According to Saint Obama, this is the only explanation why she suddenly changed her mind about a bill she allegedly used to approve of. Now this strikes me as a rather odd and awfully contrived way of saying that she’s aggressive because she’s behind in the polls. That it’s a sexist stereotype should not have to be pointed out.
Susie,
I found you (again) via Faux Real.
If I haven’t already, I wanted to let you know about a pro-Clinton grassroots network and blog: The Hillary 1000. We’re a group of women in CT and MA who are trying to raise $$ for Clinton through our networks. I’m the blogger in the bunch, and am trying to raise awareness of our efforts as well as provide a positive space for Clinton supporters on-line.
I hope you’ll check us out, consider donating, and spread the word!!! If you’d like us to link to your blog, please let us know.
http://hillary1000.wordpress.com/welcome-to-hillary-1000/
Thanks!
Best,
Leigh
a.k.a., Redstar of The Redstar Persective
You neva met me, has you?
Yet ANOTHER reason not to take you seriously. If that’s your way of proving you’re a woman of color, clio, you’ve failed miserably. In fact, you sound like a 15-year-old white emo girl with that crap.
i agree. Obama would not have said that about a male candidate, say for example edwards, “I understand that Mr. Edwards, periodically when he’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost his appeal.” that’s how you know its sexism folks, when you put the language on a male. Obama is playing on a stereotype and his own thinking about women. women are so emotional, we have to understand them, and maybe even feel a little sympathy for their difficult state….