Maureen Dowd's Vicious Attack on Hillary: Internalized Misogyny or Something Much More Basic?

by Damozel | As blogger Molly Ivors at Whisky Fire suggests, Maureen Dowd must have had a really kickass piece all ready to hand for Hillary's big New Hampshire loss, judging by the viciousness with which she attempts to kick Hillary's win onto the ash-heap.  She's apparently really bitter.  The title  of this journalistic gem is "Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?" and the burden of it is that Hillary won in New Hampshire only because she was seen the night before with an unshed tear twinkling in her eye. It's absurd, outrageous, riddled with envy (which other bloggers call "misogyny"), and laced with bile.

As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”

The Clintons once more wriggled out of a tight spot at the last minute. (NYT)

Note that.

Bill churlishly dismissed the Obama phenom as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” but for the last few days, it was Hillary who seemed in danger of being Cinderella. She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite....

How humiliating to have a moderator of the New Hampshire debate ask her to explain why she was not as popular as the handsome young prince from Chicago. How demeaning to have Obama rather ungraciously chime in: “You’re likable enough.” And how exasperating to be pushed into an angry rebuttal when John Edwards played wingman, attacking her on Obama’s behalf.

“I actually have emotions,” she told CNN’s John Roberts on a damage-control tour. “I know that there are some people who doubt that.” She went on “Access Hollywood” to talk about, as the show put it, “the double standards that a woman running for president faces.” “If you get too emotional, that undercuts you,” Hillary said. “A man can cry; we know that. Lots of our leaders have cried. But a woman, it’s a different kind of dynamic.”(NYT)

Which is, of course, true.  But Maureen Dowd doesn't agree with this.  "[I]n the end," she sneers, "[Hillary] had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim, both of Obama and of the press. Hillary has barely talked to the press throughout her race even though the Clintons this week whined mightily that the press prefers Obama." (NYT)

Maureen Dowd thinks that Hillary Clinton won because she cried and people felt sorry for her.  Who cares what Maureen Dowd thinks?

But as political analysis, the aforesaid hypothesis is worthy of Fox News itself.  Does she really think that people are so stupid that they voted for her because they felt sorry for her?   This is so typical of the condescending attitude of most of the media, which blindly trusts in polls but never factors into any equation the notion that voters are complicated individuals with their own individually complicated reasons for doing things.  Most media pundits make the mistake of assuming that the "average American" is as simplistic-minded and superficial as they are. 

The "victim card," which I certainly expect certain disappointed right-wing pundits to tout as an explanation, is of course merely their lame excuse for having been so very wrong.  No Democrat in this country wants a victim as a candidate.   If the tear had any impact on their votes at all, it is much more likely that it was because seeing Hillary be herself reminded them how much they really like her. But I don't even believe that.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville unleashes a soul-satisfying rant against the blatant misogny of Dowd's piece.

Wow.  MoDo needs some spectaular amounts of Shutting Up for this one, which is mind-blowingly appalling even for the World's Most Obnoxious Feminist Concern Troll^TM:...There's really not enough Shutting Up in the world to deal with that sputtered puddle of bile.

I could rant for a nonillion years on the patent lunacy of the assertion that Hillary Clinton has deliberately played the female victim, but instead I'll just note that it was not Hillary who called herself a She Devil and broadcast pictures of herself bearing horns, and it was not Hillary who published pictures of herself cast as a feminazi monster, and it was not Hillary who circulated an unflattering image of herself as purported evidence she isn't up to the rigors of the presidency, and it was not Hillary who designed a nutcracker in her own image, and it was not Hillary who diminished her own experience as attending tea parties, and it was not Hillary who, after a moment of candidly expressed emotion, turned it into a national story using dog-whistles once removed from "hysterical," and, well, you get my point.

Nonetheless, MoDo's thesis, as you'll surely recall, is that Hillary made herself a victim of the press, playing the damsel in distress, despite, I guess, what MoDo would argue is the totally fair, unbiased, and not remotely misogynistic treatment of Hillary.  (read more:  Shakesville)

Molly Ivors at Whiskey Fire isn't calling Dowd names only because she can't think of any bad enough to call her (that she's willing to use).  She also raises the question that's in the forefront of my mind:  what on earth did Hillary do to Dowd to cause such a concentrated dose of acidity?

I cannot for the life of me figure out what Maureen Dowd has against Hillary Clinton...some kind of weird, bitchy, destructive impulse to take out the most viable female candidate for our highest public office in many years. But to what end? Seriously. Is it worth making shit up and parroting her idols on Fox to damage a person who may very well be the only thing standing between America and "Ten Thousand Years o' War" McCain.....

The sheer volume of destructive hatred leveled at Senator Clinton, much of it gender-based, should make any self-respecting woman retch. But no, for MoDo it's apparently much more fun to jump on the hogpile with the boys and hope that David Brooks or Bill Kristol manage to give her a squeeze before everyone has to get up, shamefaced, when Krugman enters the room....

[T]rue to form, it's all personal for MoDo, and so it has to be all personal for everyone else, too....
I don't know what's worse, MoDo's freakish insistence, on the day after a solid victory in NH, that Hillary is "humiliated" and "demeaned," or that she's "playing the victim," and "arguing against hope." It's bizarre and twisted. (read more:  Whiskey Fire)

Brilliant at Breakfast:

You know, I've seriously thought that if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I'll do a write-in vote or sit this one out. I'm only saying this to show that I am no Hillary partisan.

But Maureen Dowd, who out-Hillary-hates even Chris Matthews, outdoes herself today...Here's the thing: Like Dowd, I too saw the Infamous Diner Incident™ as showing more narcissism than humanity. But this column made the back of my head explode. It's rare that you see even MoDo show her "Let's Re-live High School" card so completely....

See what she makes me do?  She makes me defend Hillary.

Echidne of the Snakes can't understand how Dowd can be so alert to the unshed tear in her sister's eye and so blind to the film of misogyny over her own.   She thinks that some of the voters for Hillary might even have been reacting against the vicious sexism of the attacks against her.  I am too cynical to believe this. I think people are so inured to misogynistic attacks on Hillary that they don't even recognize them for what they are.

But in Dowd's case it's not necessarily even misogyny.  It could easily be envy:  the distaste one feels for another who has achieved greater success, particularly when one just can't see the other's merits....  It doesn't necessarily have to be because Hillary's a woman that Dowd despises her.  She might despise her simply because she's Hillary Clinton, a woman who has risen above pressures and adversity that most of us can't even imagine to become the country's first female candidate with a real chance of becoming president.  I hate thinking this because I can remember a time when I quite liked Dowd's columns (and sometimes I still do), but the viciousness and personal tone of the attack seem to indicate that something else---something personal---is indeed in play....

UPDATE.  Oh man, Jon Swift exceeds himself here:  The Crying of Maureen Dowd.  Quoting from it would ruin it.  Just be sure you read Dowd's piece all the way through first....Okay, damn it, just this little bit (and there is so much more):

Cry, Dowd, cry. Cry for Chris Matthews who can only weakly protest that he is not obsessed with Hillary. Cry for Dick Morris who faces the prospect of years and years of predictions that never come true. Cry for David Broder who will be nervously counting the silverware at the thought of the Clintons coming back to trash his place again. Cry for Ann Althouse who will soon run out of Freudian food metaphors to bash Hillary with. Cry for all of the pundits, pollsters and prognosticators who have been proven wrong once again, though not so wrong that they will lose their jobs. Cry for all of us, Maureen Dowd. Bury that rag deep in your face. Now is the time for your tears.  (READ THE REST)

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