What a scrumptious day for news about the US presidential campaign of 2016 for someone who holds the magnifying glass to the events in order to spot anything sexist. You know, the kind of stuff which doesn't apply to only one Hillary Clinton but to several billion women on this little globe.
Take the comment of Rudolph Giuliani who used to be the mayor of New York City. He adores Donald Trump, which is sad in itself, but this is even sadder. I copied down what he said in praise of Trump, in case you can't be bothered with the video:
Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman and the only thing she has produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails.
Ooops! Our Rudy may have experienced one of those sexist moments, where the tongue races faster than the regulating part of the brain. Or perhaps he didn't really intend to have that little "and" in the sentence*? Perhaps he meant to compare Trump's economic genius (!!! I'm falling off my chair for laughing so much) to Clinton's e-mail debacle?
The Hot Air site argues that Giuliani only meant to compare that economic genius to the e-mails, and in order to prove that they did a gender reversal:
Just examine the sentence and imagine Hillary Clinton were not a woman. Insert “man” instead:
“Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a man, and the only thing he’s ever produced is a lot of work for the FBI checking out his emails?”Is there anything strange about that sentence when it is reoriented to male-specific pronouns? Of course not.
Yes, there is something strange about that sentence when it is reoriented to male-specific pronouns. It makes no sense, because of that little "and," once again. It's still comparing that-economic-genius man to some generic man. just as in the original the comparison is between the Nobel-prize-level thinker to a generic woman, who also has other problems.
Who knows what Giuliani meant. Still, I'd like to note that I believe an ironing board would be a better president for the United States than Donald Trump. A ham sandwich would be a better president, and neither would tweet at 3am in revenge for personal slights.
Which brings me to the second hilarious piece of the day: Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post fame, criticized Hillary Clinton for gloating after her debate victory:
Woodward: "Yeah. She won the debate. I think there's universal agreement on that. I guess Trump would not agree. But she really did. But, you know, that clip shows this kind of self-congratulation, this self-satisfaction. And as we know and as we try to teach our children, when you win something, don't gloat. Humility works. And the problem for her is this feeds the notion that she's in this for herself. You see that. She was overjoyed with what she did. Fine, take a victory lap, but there is — something like that doesn't get dialed back, and it probably should."
Think of the children! What makes this funny is, of course, the way Donald Trump gloats** and boasts about every single thing: His fantastic and beautiful corporations, his fantastic and beautiful bankruptcies, his fantastic and beautiful plans to salvage the country etc, and his great political victories.
So does Woodward then logically think that Donald Trump is really in this for himself?
I don't know, but I suspect that it's the idea of female ambition as deplorable that underlies his analysis of Hillary Clinton's behavior. Granted, it's tough to draw statistical conclusions from the way one female politician is treated, given that powerful female politicians are as rare as hen's teeth.
Thus, it's theoretically possible that Hillary is unusually self-centered and ruthlessly ambitious. But if that's the case, what is Donald???
And why isn't he equally criticized for his clear narcissism?
Nah. I smell entrenched ideas about the way "good" women are expected to act here: humble, unselfish and considerate. And then, sadly, ineffective, because humility, unselfishness and politeness are not rewarded in the power hierarchies of this world.
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* This would fix the problem:
Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman who has only produced a lot of work for the FBI checking out her e-mails.
** Examples can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.