Cold, Calculating And Way Too Emotional

Portsmouth, NH - Heartless, unfeeling automaton Hillary Clinton broke down in hysterical tears today while cackling uncontrollably at Portsmouth's Cafe Espresso.  Even Clinton's supporters were surprised and not a little disturbed at the way she managed to display no emotion whatsoever while ambitiously emasculating every single male in a 150-mile radius.  During the entire campaign appearance her constant tears caused mascara to run down her cheeks, like it always does when chicks get weepy.

End "satire."

If you want to see a version of the above written in apparently all seriousness, go here.  I won't excerpt it because it would bring down the quality of this blog way too much.

Is Hillary ahead in the polls?  Then she's too cold, too ambitious and calculating.  She's a woman, after all, and women are all nurture-y and, um, I don't know, emotional and stuff.  Has Hillary lost her composure at any point?  Then she's too emotional, too unstable.  She's a woman, after all, and they can't be trusted to keep their inner weaknesses in check.  That's why women aren't good leaders, you know.

Unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me to see this type of treatment.  It's always there when a woman gets uppity.  She's too mannish until people find a way to describe her as too typically "female."  Then they'll go straight back to the original criticism without missing a beat.

What does surprise, even astonish me is how any woman is able to rise to high positions in any organization.  Misogyny* is so ingrained in our society, so prevalent and so bloody casual that you have to practically train yourself to even see it.  Whether you support Hillary's run for President or not, you have to admire her strength and abilities.  If she doesn't win the primary, then she'll go back to being a very capable, popular Senator, most likely ending up Senate Majority Leader before too long.  We're lucky to have her.

*Misogyny is one of those words that brings out the definition police.  I'm fairly confident that I can read Greek much better than you can, and I'm quite aware of the meaning of each part of the word.  If you really think that there isn't very much "hatred of women" going on in this country and that treating Hillary Clinton like this isn't an expression of it, then it might do you some good to wake up.

Comments

[Lisa Simeone]

BRAVO!!

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

This is how the media treats people who underperform in Iowa -- everything they do is presented as a fault and unfairly magnified to fit the media narrative of a fading campaign. In Howard Dean's case, it was the scream. In Hillary's case, it's this.

[Lisa Simeone]

I was out of the country when the Dean scream happened (way out of the country, so I hadn't even heard about it, let alone heard IT). When I got back, there all this manic coverage of it, how outrageous it was, how, and I quote two well-known people who shall remain nameless, "insane" he sounded.

So of course I went on-line and found a clip. And listened.

My reaction: "Is that it? All this schmerz over that??" I couldn't believe it. But as Neil points out, it obviously fit the media's favored narrative, so there you had it. It became THE important thing about Dean.

But we all knew this kind of dismissive ridicule would happen to Hillary, too. It would happen to any woman who would dare to run for President.

[ikl]

This sort of coverage is really unfair to Clinton. But I'm not certain that it will hurt her. Instead it could generate simpathy.

Especially if Edwards tries to exploit this in a not very classy way . . . that comment was a real mistake on his part.

[litbrit]

As a person who is in the midst of her own meltdown right now, having had three ADD boys underfoot for nearly exhausting three weeks and endured every possible holiday pressure there is (except air travel, I simply refuse to fly during the holiday, though Son One did), I truly feel for Hillary, who's been routinely attacked in the media for, what a decade and a half now? When you push your body and soul to inhuman limits, eating on the fly, meeting and talking to hundreds and hundreds of people, living out of a suitcase and rarely sleeping in your own lovely bed--and you do this for months on end--of course there will be moments when the façade cracks a little, whether you're male or female. Our different hormones mean that men will often respond with defensiveness/agression, and women with tears, though I've seen men cry and women speak in a snippy way, so there's no hard and fast rule.

It really galls me, though, to see how many people are making so much of this, especially the ones who are saying Senator Clinton faked the emotion. Oh, please.

Thank you for this, Stephen.

[Sir Charles]

Imaigine if she screamed and then cried?

(Haven't Reagan, Bush and Rumsfeld, the three stations of the red meat, codpiece and macho cross, all welled up in public?)

But that Hillary, she's a very versatile woman obviously -- cold and calculating, yet weepy and unstable. A floor cleaner and a dessert topping.

The stupidity (and misogyny) of the mainstream media are hard to overstate.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

ikl, the only comment by Edwards in the linked article came before the tears, and was on a separate issue. So he's not exploiting that.

[Lisa Simeone]

Very good point, ikl. This kind of coverage might indeed generate sympathy for her. I don't know; it'll be interesting to watch.