Trump’s a bully, but Clinton’s no wimp
To say Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump isn’t fond of outspoken women would be an understatement grosser than the candidate himself.
As we witnessed during the first U.S. presidential debate this week, the only things the Donald appears to loathe more than Daesh and taxes is competing against Democratic contender, Hillary Clinton, and laying eyes on comedian Rosie O’Donnell.
O’Donnell is loud and large, characteristics that Trump (not exactly a demure fitness guru himself ) does not abide in a woman.
And Clinton, though not a “disgusting pig” or a “slob,” apparently lacks the “temperament” — a.k.a. the correct genitals — to be president.
Trump’s sexism has come to define the liberal media narrative of the U.S. election campaign, a narrative that will likely reign until America votes in November.
The story goes and goes that, like millions of women before her, Clinton has been forced to put up with a man whose professional experience pales in comparison to her own, but who jumps at every opportunity to interrupt her, chide her and — ultimately — shut her up; a guy who knows not when he is patently wrong, and cares not either.
This story is true. Trump is an out and proud sexist and a liar. There isn’t a glimmer of a doubt about it.
And yet, though he embodies some of the worst of mankind, it appears that the impulse in liberal media to denounce the candidate’s overt sexism has paved the way for an uncritical and in some cases blind sympathy for Hillary Clinton: a sympathy she doesn’t need or deserve.
Case in point: The Washington Post dubbed this week’s presidential debate the “mansplaining Olympics.” Salon concluded that, “Donald Trump is every woman’s workplace nightmare: Debate with Hillary Clinton was a crash course in everyday sexism.”
Bustle reassured us that Clinton would not let Trump’s “mansplaining” get in her way and NPR actually wondered, on a radio segment about sexism in the debating world, if we should grade Hillary Clinton on a curve.
The answer is, hell no — absolutely not.
Yes, the instinct to project our feminist sympathies and anxieties onto Clinton is natural; it isn’t every day a woman runs for president of the United States of America. And yes, every woman to some degree probably sees a little bit of herself in Clinton when she goes up against male opponents on the world stage — particularly when she smiles off Trump’s pomposity and error-laden barbs, all the while maintaining her composure.
But in much of the media, feminist solidarity with Clinton has morphed of late into an uncomfortably cosy and coddling embrace of the candidate. Perhaps it isn’t just Trump and his ilk but all of us who need a reminder that while Clinton is a woman she is most certainly not a wimp. Nor is she just any woman: she is among the wealthiest, shrewdest and most powerful public figures in the entire world.
Not only should we refrain from grading the candidate on a curve, we should stop referring to the U.S. presidency as though it is a corner office at a historically sexist investment bank. Clinton is not Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. She’s a foreign policy hawk seeking the highest office on the planet and the key to America’s nuclear codes. She can handle the interruptions, the badgering, and yes — the mysterious sniffling on the part of Trump or anyone else. As the antediluvian orange might even say himself: She’s a big girl.
In the end, the rush to defend Clinton against the injustices of “mansplaining” and “everyday sexism” when she repeatedly holds her own on a national podium before an international audience suggests that it isn’t just Donald Trump who doubts the stamina of the first female candidate for the president of United States. It’s the good guys, too. Emma Teitel is a national columnist.