The Orbis

Issue date: 1/29/08 Section: News/Features

The Worst of Presidential Campaign Coverage:

The race vs. gender dichotomy

After Sen. Clinton came away with an unexpected victory over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, feminist icon Gloria Steinem wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, claiming that Clinton faces more sexism in the media than Obama faces racism. She argued that this is a sign women have more to overcome than African Americans, and finally, that this means the truly radical vote in this election will be for Clinton and not Obama. Steinem wrote, "I'm not advocating a competition for who has it toughest." And yet, in the same article she writes, "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life" and, "Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot," ignoring the fact that it took many black men and women until the 1960s to actually register and get into a polling place. Steinem's bizarre logic reinforced two common themes in the coverage throughout the election: the false dichotomy between "race issues" and "women's issues," and the notion that the election of Obama or Clinton will represent a major victory for their respective gender or racial identity category, but not for the identity category of the other.
After CNN's Democratic Congressional Black Caucus Institute Debate, Anderson Cooper devoted a special report to the topic "Race vs. Gender," addressing such one dimensional questions as, "Do black women see themselves primarily as African-Americans or women?" The segment came just a day after CNN.com ran a story on the same topic, which asserted, "For these women, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?" In conversations like these, nobody seems capable of acknowledging that a person might embrace multiple aspects of their identity at once, or that women and minority voters just might be bright enough to vote for a candidate because they share their political beliefs rather than an identity categorization, just like we've assumed white men have been doing for hundreds of years.

Chris Matthews shows his prejudice

Any regular viewer of MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews knows this talking head has a tendency to patronize, and frankly, creep out his female guests with his inappropriate flirtation during interviews. But the '08 election has brought out Matthews' misogyny in unprecedented proportions. In an interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards, Matthews waxed nostalgic about the days when marriages were based on inequality between a man and a woman, "Behind every great man is a woman trying to kill him... What's this with equal marriages? Why do people try to marry their equals? What happened to the Stepford Wives, the good old days?" He has called Hillary Clinton supporters "castratos in the eunuch chorus," and called Clinton both "witchy" and a "she devil."

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