I'm not crazy about Hillary Clinton, but it's her policy positions I don't like and don't support. I think the way the Republicans and the members of the corporate media, regardless of their actual or perceived political bias, have treated her for the past 18-20 years is despicable. The attacks are sexist, misogynist, as well as brutally personal. They are an affront to all women, and a not so subtle message that seeking positions of influence and power come at a very special cost if you are female.
(And Hillary isn't the only woman targeted, she's just the most common and longstanding one.)
The latest example, battering her — and us — with the so called weeping moment in New Hampshire, has really exposed this sick obsession with the Clintons and Hillary in particular that pervades the punditry. I'm glad it backfired and seemed to work to her advantage; maybe it will give pause to those who so obsessively and publicly hate her.
MSNBC's Chris Matthews is one of the worst of the slimy bunch, but there are so many who make dehumanizing and trashing her a blood sport that to try to list them would be a very lengthly exercise. Besides, I probably don't have to lay it out, it's a pretty open practice, performed by everyone from Drudge on his tabloid site to Maureen Dowd on the editorial pages of the New York Times.
Working Assets has created a petition addressed to the major media outlets to address the NH situation, and while I don't have much hope that it will break through the mindset that allows such activity in the first place (and considers it good journalism), if you agree with me, at least you can feel like you did something (though of course, if you have the time, personal letters would be much more effective).
Anyway, here's the appeal “Stop Pimping Prejudice” from WA's “Credo” Action site
Dear Friend,
CREDO Action (from Working Assets) is sponsoring a petition to force the media to focus on honest journalism over prejudiced, sensationalist punditry.
Journalists have been replaced by a punditocracy that makes its living (and gets its kicks) by perverting our democratic process. The misogyny that was unleashed by the media's recent feeding frenzy on the video of an exhausted Hillary Clinton tearing up at a small New Hampshire roundtable of voters was just the tip of the iceberg.
Our democracy depends on an informed public. And an informed citizenry requires a media that provokes thought, not prejudice. Tell the major media outlets to start doing their job or our country — and indeed the world — will suffer the consequences.
If you go to the URL below you can check out what is at stake and sign the petition telling the media to stop pimping prejudice: