Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Have A DNA Problem. She Has A Sexism Problem [View all]

[babylonsister]

Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Have A DNA Problem. She Has A Sexism Problem
February 12, 2019
Steve Almond



On Saturday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced herself as a candidate for president who would take direct aim at the super-wealthy, and the power structure that so often coddles them.

She has set out a sweeping anti-corruption bill, and a proposed wealth tax that would be levied against billionaires, a plan widely hailed by economists and wildly popular with Americans.

A responsible Fourth Estate would focus its coverage of Warren on these ambitious proposals. Instead, the vast majority of coverage has focused on a phony “scandal” involving her Native American heritage.

If this pattern feels familiar to anyone, it’s because the exact same thing happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016. The media hung a phony email scandal around her neck like an albatross. They wrote more stories about her email than about her policies, and it wasn’t even especially close.

The question is why?

Why would the media spend more time focused on a candidate’s sloppy use of email than (for instance) the fact that her opponent was under investigation for colluding with Russia? Why would reporters fixate on Warren’s native ancestry and virtually ignore Trump’s white supremacist ancestry, or his documented racial discrimination?

What is it that Clinton and Warren have in common?

Here’s my theory: I think American culture is so steeped in patriarchal thought that it’s become a collective instinct to revile women of ambition, to dismiss their substantive ideas and focus instead on their outfits and their demeanor and whatever far-fetched smear can be used to justify our inherent mistrust of women in power.

I can offer no better explanation for why the American media essentially acted as a press agent for Vladimir Putin during the 2016 election. Outlets all across the political spectrum eagerly published damning material about Clinton, even though they knew the material in question came from Russian hackers. They were as eager to spread dirt on her as Donald Trump, Jr.

Women who seek higher office in America can expect to be picked apart, to hear angry mobs chant about how they should be locked up, to hear opponents fantasize about their assassination.

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https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/02/12/panic-of-the-patriarchy-steve-almond?fbclid=IwAR3wxsknZfW4e6wU7zIOKjBFU6ACGUYzVAG7xz7fLY-Ea3VFetrOUKUf6t4