Maureen Dowd Bases Whole "Gender Card" Column On Something That Never Happened
November 4, 2007 -- 11:28 AM EST // //
People have already started taking their whacks at Maureen Dowd's dismal column today decrying Hillary for playing the "gender card." But I wanted to add one other point: The entire column is based on something that just never happened.
Dowd's whole effort is based on the idea that Camp Hillary's strategy is, as Dowd describes it, a "don’t hit me, I’m a girl" strategy. From there Dowd concludes that Hillary says she should be able to do and say whatever she wants -- or "have it both ways" on a variety of fronts -- because she's a woman.
I'm going to get all boring and earnest on you again, and focus on what the candidate and campaign actually said. And guess what? None of the above stuff ever took place.
Reality to Maureen: Hillary and her campaign did not say...
(a) The male candidates are beating up on me because I'm a woman; or
(b) The male candidates should stop beating up on me because I'm a woman.
As I noted the other day, there's no question that the Hillary camp is in some ways highlighting Campaign 2008's gender dimension for political reasons. Did Camp Hillary push the imagery of men attacking her because they think it will appeal to women and present her as a tough woman? Yep. Did Hillary describe politics as a "boy's club" for a similar reason? Sure -- she did it to appeal to her largely female audience (imagine that) and because it's, you know, basically true. Was this stuff partly motivated by politics? Um, yeah -- this is a political campaign, after all.
But again, Camp Hillary did not say men were attacking her, or that her rivals shouldn't attack her, because she's a woman. She just never tried to use gender as a "shield" in any meaningful sense. If someone can prove otherwise, I'll gladly post it. Without this false point, Dowd's entire column collapses.
It's also worth noting that Dowd defended Tim Russert from criticism of his "gotcha" debate questions. This is instructive. It reminds us of the extent to which Dowd and Russert -- and so many other D.C. insider pundit types -- traffic in the same currency. The "gotchas" Russert generates are the sort of thing that Dowd needs as the hook to spin off those has-been standup comic one-liners and to hang the bogus narratives on.
I think Atrios wrote somewhere that one reason he started blogging was because he had grown sick of the storylines he was being fed by the Beltway journalistic establishment, and wanted to tell the story the right way. This probably is the reason that a lot of lib bloggers geared up -- in reaction to the bogus narratives that the Dowds of the world were spinning in 2000 and 2004. As today's effort reminds us, as long as Dowd and company can keep making the stuff up without taking a hit from social or professional peers, the frolicking and frivolity at the Royal Court just isn't gonna stop. In other words, let's get busy, all.
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