Not Only Women Are Subjected To Unfair Attacks

LIBERAL VALUES

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Not Only Women Are Subjected To Unfair Attacks

July 8th, 2009 by Ron Chusid

Peter Daou compares Palin-bashing to Hillary-bashing atHuffington Post. His message seems to be that both Palin and Hillary Clinton were treated unfairly as they were women. Both were subjected to some unfair criticism, and some of this was related to their gender, but both were also subjects of attack for reasons independent of this. While it is strange to lump both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton together because their views are so different, both of them have views which I (and many others) find objectionable, both have demonstrated a lack of integrity when pushing their agendas, and both tend to display poor judgment in matters of public policy.

If Peter simply wants to separate such differences of opinion on public policy from personal attacks I totally agree with this. While I would be reluctant to vote for a ticket containing either a Palin or a Clinton, there are many grounds to criticize them without resorting to many of the attacks which they have been subjected to. I not only agree with Peter in criticizing the comments claiming Hillary Clinton was pimping her daughter, I wrote a post defending Clinton on this while opposing her candidacy. When posting about the many lies of Sarah Palin I noted regret that personal issues were mixed in.

What bugs me about the way that Peter lumps together the attacks on both Palin and Clinton in such a manner is that it implies that only female politicians are treated this way. Gender differences do make it inevitable that there will be some differences in the nature of the attacks, but plenty of male politicians have also been treated quite unfairly. One example from each party in a presidential campaign quickly comes to mind–the attacks of the Swift Boat Liars on the honor of a war hero in theirfalse claims about John Kerry in 2004 and the Daisy Ad used by Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Unfair treatment is a fact of life in politics. It would be great if it could be eliminated but it cannot. Most politicians take their lumps and continue. They do not run away and hide like Sarah Palin.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Blogosphere, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, News Media, Politics, Sarah Palin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.