No Blood for Hubris strongly supports the continuing use of the public airwaves to spread the important traditional twin American values message of sexism and stupidity, really, we do.
Whole story here, via Tennessee Guerilla Women.
Longer story of from Media Matters, here. Media Matters has been right on this story from the start, while MSNBC is trying to spin people's objections to their on-air nappy-headed ho language as being mere partisan hype.
Partisan hype? Not THAT!
Scarborough insisted, "This ain't about Hillary Clinton's campaign." [mere partisan hype -- don't pay attention to it. nothing to see here, move on]
Scarborough got that part right. This isn't about Hillary Clinton's campaign. This is about a consistent pattern of misogynistic comments by Chris Matthews. Comments about and directed toward a variety of women. A consistent pattern of Matthews objectifying women. And a consistent pattern of MSNBC looking the other way.
It's about an MSNBC host saying things like this: "I've been trying to call Alessandra Stanley with The New York Times for some time just to have lunch with her, and she thinks it's because I'm trying to influence her -- that's not the case at all, it's because, I was surprised, I saw a picture of her and I thought she was kinda hot!" . . . Joe Scarborough.
It's about things like a male MSNBC host describing a woman running for president as "shrill" (and "very shrill") and asking, "[W]hat about her housekeeping skills?" . . . Joe Scarborough. . . .
This is about Chris Matthews' pattern of inappropriate treatment of women, and about MSNBC's continued acceptance of it. It's about things like a male journalist doing a mocking "impersonation" of the women who host The View - an impersonation that featured a high-pitched, whiny voice...[from]. David Shuster. . . [Shuster is now being spun as the sad victim of a horrid horde of over-sensitive broads]
Tim Russert suggested that there is irony in a "self-avowed feminist" having shown "some emotion," as though feminists are the dour, humorless beings Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson think they are. At least Russert stopped short of using the term "feminazis."
A few days later, Tucker Carlson mocked the idea that Hillary Clinton could have been a "victim of gender discrimination," noting that she had gone to Yale Law School. Clinton's comments about "gender equality," to which Carlson was purportedly responding, were in fact general, and not about her specifically.
And his invocation of Clinton's graduation from Yale Law as evidence of a lack of gender inequity in her life was just bizarre: As Clinton noted in her autobiography, "When I entered Yale Law School in the fall of 1969, I was one of twenty-seven women out of 235 students to matriculate. This seems like a paltry number now, but it was a breakthrough at the time and meant that women would no longer be token students at Yale." . . .
MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, who has described Hillary Clinton as "whining" and suggested the reason there are so few women in Congress is that "most women are so sensible, they don't want to get involved in something as stupid as politics" and said of Clinton, "[W]hen she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs," and described her as "castrating, overbearing, and scary."
(MSNBC can't say they didn't know what they were getting when they hired Carlson; before joining the cable channel, he said women "want to be spanked vigorously every once in a while" and told Elle magazine that Clinton is his "guilty fantasy," explaining: "Every time I see her I think I could, you know, help. ... She seems tense.") . . .
Then on January 30, Joe Scarborough told co-host Mika Brzezinski, "Mika, don't make me backhand you." . . .
During MSNBC's February 5 primary coverage, correspondent Lester Holt seemed surprised that "[t]he first woman candidate with a serious shot at winning the presidency beat out her male rival" in exit polls on the question of "[w]ho would make the best commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces?" Holt even reminded viewers, "Keep in mind, this at a time the nation is fighting on two fronts." This wasn't the first time an NBC personality seemed to question whether a woman could be an effective commander in chief of the armed forces:
* On June 24, 2007, Chris Matthews asked if Clinton's "being surrounded by women" makes "a case for commander in chief -- or does it make a case against it?" Matthews went on to say, "But isn't that a challenge, because when it comes down to that final decision to vote for president, a woman president, a woman commander-in-chief, will be an historic decision for people. Not just men, but women as well."
* On May 30, 2005, Matthews asked retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey if "the troops out there" would "take the orders" from "Hillary Clinton, commander in chief." When McCaffrey responded, "Why wouldn't they listen to a [female] commander in chief? Sure," Matthews responded: "You're chuckling a little bit, aren't you?" When McCaffrey responded, "No," Matthews said: "No problem? No problem? No problem?" McCaffrey answered, "Absolutely not. None."
Most recently, David Shuster said on the February 7 edition of Tucker that "there's just something a little bit unseemly" about Chelsea Clinton contacting super delegates on behalf of her mother, adding, "[D]oesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"
This morning, Shuster offered a Matthews-esque quasi-apology for analogizing Chelsea Clinton to a prostitute.
But, like Matthews, Shuster didn't seem to "get it."
Maybe because they still live in Animal House? Not the charming funny movie part, the stupid actual real part?
Puerile misogyny seems funny for a year or two while you're a whiny pimply sophomoric hormonally-challenged sniggering frat boy.
But even puerile boys generally grow up into actual men.
Just not at MSNBC.
Update: and not at Time Magazine either: here's a little gem from their sniggering fratboys:
.Hillary Clinton
Clinton and sexism
sexism
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