Slate: The Subtle Misogyny in Matt Lauer’s Interview With Hillary Clinton Was Appalling

[book_worm]

...No, Donald Trump’s overt hatred of women—his reference to breastfeeding as “disgusting,” to various women as “fat pigs,” as 9s or 10s, as “dogs,” his suggestion that sexual assault in the military should be expected if men and women serve together, his routine humiliations of young women in beauty pageants, his references to Hillary Clinton as “a nasty, mean enabler” in her marriage, as a bigot, liar, and cheat—has been well documented.

No, I am interested in the far more subtle variation of the misogyny illness, the one that lurks behind phrases such as “even-handed” and “fair-minded,” that low-grade fever that caused Matt Lauer to continually interrupt Hillary Clinton’s sharp, specific answers to his questions in the Commander in Chief Forum on NBC (thank god Clinton stood up and ignored him), and which also prompted him to allow Donald Trump to ramble on in incoherent sentence fragments about secret plans for defeating ISIS in thirty days, as if such nonsense were serious political discourse. Would our “fair-minded” journalist have treated a male candidate the way he treated Hillary Clinton? I ask you to search your souls, men and women alike. My answer is no.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/09/08/the_subtle_misogyny_in_matt_lauer_s_interview_with_hillary_clinton_was_appalling.html

[UTUSN]

1. It was "subtle"?!1

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Great catch,

watched part of that debacle. My Spouse was telling me your wrong,kept saying,listen to the Guys usage of phrases and verbiage. Got a hunch,Ms. Clinton is going to turn the tables if this happens again. Lauer is a mental midget compared to Hillary.

[meow2u3]

3. Subtle misogyny?!

It was freakin' blatant! But not as blatant as the Orange Menace's.

Matt Lauer ought to be fired from NBC for his disgusting treatment of women in general and HRC in particular. His deferential treatment of the would-be tyrant #TraitorTrump is even more appalling and deserves punishment.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. Oh this article was GREAT!!!!! I came across it recently.

And I CANNOT BELIEVE that sexism on this most insidious incarnation is finally discussed in print, in a public (MASS MEDIA!!! ) arena.

Hooooo. Leeeeeee. CRAP!
When it's hard to get rapt and revved-up crowds excited about State Threats Against Women's Health and lives; when it's hard to get convictions against rapists, you never think phenomena that abstruse would come up in a big social setting.

[calimary]

5. I wondered how this became "A Thing" seemingly all of a sudden.

But Matt Lauer's "Lauering the Bar" botch job in the Commander-in-Chief forum may have spurred a surprising slew of op/eds and analyses about how maybe this email thing is just going way too far. We had that MSNBC online pulse.msnbc.com voting that asked whether you agree with the latest Washington Post opinion piece - that "The Hillary Clinton email story is out of control."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-hillary-clinton-email-story-is-out-of-control/2016/09/08/692947d0-75fc-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html?utm_term=.b0188b96e71e

Indeed - I looked at it again and the FIRST LINE of the long piece mentions the new poster child for "Don't Do It Like This", Matt Lauer by name.

Maybe it was just that glaringly obvious (it wasn't just me)? Has there been a critical mass level reached, at long last? Paul Krugman even muses whether "the fever" is broken.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/is-the-fever-finally-breaking/?smid=tw-nytimeskrugman&smtyp=cur

GAWD I HOPE SO! Suddenly there's just a whole slew of discussions in print and on camera and radio regarding the way the press is covering this election and how badly they're going overboard in one direction in particular. I'm firmly with Bernie Sanders: "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!" Maybe? Hopefully? Could the media FINALLY be noticing?

Hope springs eternal, anyway... I keep wondering if there'll be an ironic twist at the end of this, where all the years of persecution and witch hunts and investigations that waste a lot of taxpayers' money and always come up with nothing, finally render Hillary Clinton a sympathetic figure? It'd be nice to see the public start waking up to the fact that she's received a disgracefully bad rap - one that's completely unearned and thoroughly undeserved.

[Hekate]

6. Not. Subtle. At. All.

[TipTok]

7. Is the author suggesting that 'even handed' and 'fair minded' are coded sexist phrases?

[Cerridwen]

8. Not at all.

Not at all. The author is pointing out how the context of what, when, and how something is said can be used to create different meaning(s).

For example, the following two sentences use the same three words but have completely different meanings:

Prick your finger.

Finger your prick.

(thanks to George Carlin for the tip)

It's not the three words that are different, they are not. It's the context and their placement in the sentence, noun/verb that determines the different meanings.

Another example of context, meaning, etc. is double entendre.

Tone is another issue. But, that takes more than just a couple of sentences to discuss.

[senseandsensibility]

9. It wasn't subtle. Not even a little bit.

[ananda]

10. It didn't sound very "subtle" to me!

It sounded egregious!

[awoke_in_2003]

11. I think Will Ferrel said it best

[yurbud]

12. more importantly, it was incompetent. Someone who half-listened to a half hour of right wing talk

radio could have done about as well a job.

[Maru Kitteh]

13. there was subtle misogyny too?

In addition to the IN YOUR FACE blatant variety on display throughout?