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xxqqqzme

(14,887 posts)
Sat Jul 13, 2019, 12:32 PM Jul 2019

The Media Gaslighting of 2020's Most Likable Candidate

https://gen.medium.com/the-media-gaslighting-of-2020s-most-likable-candidate-4c42baab641e

From March 22
After CNN Town Hall


The Massachusetts senator took aim at a variety of subjects: the Electoral College, Mississippi’s racist state flag, the rise of white nationalism. Always, she was met with thunderous applause. Even a simple Bible verse — from Matthew 25:35–40, about moral obligation to the poor and hungry — prompted cheers so loud and prolonged that Warren had to pause and repeat herself in order to make her voice heard over the noise. Yet this was the same woman the media routinely frames as too wonky, too nerdy, too socially stunted. But then, Warren has always been an exceptionally charismatic candidate.

There’s an element of gaslighting here: It only takes a reporter a few sources — and an op-ed columnist a single, fleeting judgment — to declare a candidate “unlikable.” After that label has been applied, any effort the candidate makes to win people over can be cast as “inauthentic.” Likability is in this way a self-reinforcing accusation, one which is amplified every time the candidate tries to tackle it. (Recall Hillary Clinton, who was asked about her “likability” at seemingly every debate or town hall for eight straight years — then furiously accused of pandering every time she made an effort to seem more “approachable.”)
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The Media Gaslighting of 2020's Most Likable Candidate (Original Post) xxqqqzme Jul 2019 OP
Non of which scrutiny was applied to MythosMaster Jul 2019 #1
Telling that Hillary Clinton is the point of comparison caraher Jul 2019 #2

caraher

(6,276 posts)
2. Telling that Hillary Clinton is the point of comparison
Mon Jul 15, 2019, 04:28 PM
Jul 2019

"Elizabeth Warren has proven over and over that she’s a charismatic figure. Why do we keep casting her as a nagging schoolmarm?"

Sexism

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