Then again, then Senator Harris had Bill Barr's lower lip quivering during his senate testimony when he tried to lie about his role. What a meanie she must be!
You KNOW that, had Hilary won in 2016, there would have been a string of articles on what a bad boss she was - "harsh and humorless!" And that former Murdoch exec loses all credibility when he tries to convince us that Fox News only recently went off the rails.
One of the things I find disturbing is how Andrew Cuomo seems to be slowly regaining credibility with the press. The focus on sexual misconduct and lying about nursing home deaths is fading without new developments to drive headlines - yet those were merely the most obvious examples of all the ways Cuomo is the boss from hell as well as incompetent.
Ron DeSantis in Florida is another example of the type.
Men behaving badly in positions of power is apparently not news unless it goes to extremes.
This all comes down to the fact that white men in power are basically insecure about themselves. They are terrified of people of color, especially those who vote. They are also horrified by powerful and intelligent women. To them, women are just objects to be dominated by men. That's the root of these stories. They are written to continue the illusion that everything must be controlled by white men. Conservatism: keep things the same, no progress, none for minorities and certainly none for women, especially Democratic ones.
Women give birth. We can manage anything. The men writing public condemnations of VP Harris's management skills are trying to assert their power and authority in a societal system that no longer rewards them for being simply being male. Women are their competition and men are threatened. Gen X and Millennial men think they are so woke but they will experience a collective nervous breakdown the moment a woman wins the Presidency...and I am so looking forward to it.
Paraphrasing here, “There is a patriarchy. You are not part of it.”
Someone has to lose for someone else to win, and that’s politics (including office politics). If VP Harris has only one open slot on her schedule to meet with anyone and there’s 10 people vying for that opening, nine of them are going to be let down. Some of them are going to whine to the press.
I imagine the stakes at each rung of the ladder makes the politics even worse, and the ladder only has one more rung than where Harris is, so these stories are not surprising except that they are framed in such a “Devil Wore Prada” way.
The vague sense that there is political vulnerability in Kamala Harris struck me very early on in the process. A hint may have been that she used 'infer' instead of 'imply' while she was skewering Barr, but my sense of vulnerability was even fuzzier than that. With Amy Klobuchar, I never had that feeling at all. Yet the method of attack on both of them was pretty much the same. Just playbook stuff against very competent women, who are so clearly hard-working public servants. Mike Pence is not a competent, hard-working public servant. He is servile, but it took the press forever to begin using that appropriate word.
I’ve been wondering why the press has been putting the VP under an overly critical and distorted microscopic lens while the men in that position were virtually ignored, per Eric’s great piece. Some men in office have been harassing women on their staff and abusing the perks of the office as a matter of course. Those truths sometimes are reported on after having been ignored by the press for years. Misogyny thrives and is blatant among the press and, lacking any self awareness, is all over the pieces written about Harris, et al. Shameful. Lazy. Harmful. Monotonous. OLD!
Usually it's the poor performing former employer who runs around with those kinds of stories. How slow a news day must it be to make that an "exclusive."
When Bill Clinton was President all we heard from the media was how Clinton wasn’t disciplined enough and let too many ppl into meetings, debated issues far too long in his office and let too many ppl in to give their thoughts
Now, by their own parameters, Harris runs a disciplined office, keeping outside voices to a minimum & keeps distractions out and this is a bad thing
It really is ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’ when the media deals with Democratic politicians isn’t it
Then again, then Senator Harris had Bill Barr's lower lip quivering during his senate testimony when he tried to lie about his role. What a meanie she must be!
You KNOW that, had Hilary won in 2016, there would have been a string of articles on what a bad boss she was - "harsh and humorless!" And that former Murdoch exec loses all credibility when he tries to convince us that Fox News only recently went off the rails.
One of the things I find disturbing is how Andrew Cuomo seems to be slowly regaining credibility with the press. The focus on sexual misconduct and lying about nursing home deaths is fading without new developments to drive headlines - yet those were merely the most obvious examples of all the ways Cuomo is the boss from hell as well as incompetent.
Ron DeSantis in Florida is another example of the type.
Men behaving badly in positions of power is apparently not news unless it goes to extremes.
I think it's more than she's a woman; she's a woman of color who is competent and experienced.
This all comes down to the fact that white men in power are basically insecure about themselves. They are terrified of people of color, especially those who vote. They are also horrified by powerful and intelligent women. To them, women are just objects to be dominated by men. That's the root of these stories. They are written to continue the illusion that everything must be controlled by white men. Conservatism: keep things the same, no progress, none for minorities and certainly none for women, especially Democratic ones.
Women give birth. We can manage anything. The men writing public condemnations of VP Harris's management skills are trying to assert their power and authority in a societal system that no longer rewards them for being simply being male. Women are their competition and men are threatened. Gen X and Millennial men think they are so woke but they will experience a collective nervous breakdown the moment a woman wins the Presidency...and I am so looking forward to it.
Paraphrasing here, “There is a patriarchy. You are not part of it.”
Someone has to lose for someone else to win, and that’s politics (including office politics). If VP Harris has only one open slot on her schedule to meet with anyone and there’s 10 people vying for that opening, nine of them are going to be let down. Some of them are going to whine to the press.
I imagine the stakes at each rung of the ladder makes the politics even worse, and the ladder only has one more rung than where Harris is, so these stories are not surprising except that they are framed in such a “Devil Wore Prada” way.
The vague sense that there is political vulnerability in Kamala Harris struck me very early on in the process. A hint may have been that she used 'infer' instead of 'imply' while she was skewering Barr, but my sense of vulnerability was even fuzzier than that. With Amy Klobuchar, I never had that feeling at all. Yet the method of attack on both of them was pretty much the same. Just playbook stuff against very competent women, who are so clearly hard-working public servants. Mike Pence is not a competent, hard-working public servant. He is servile, but it took the press forever to begin using that appropriate word.
Ever since Dean Baquet put the knife in Jill Abramson's back ... but I digress.
PS. Cynically speaking, I think some enjoy bashing the women in power they write about. Just sayin’.
I’ve been wondering why the press has been putting the VP under an overly critical and distorted microscopic lens while the men in that position were virtually ignored, per Eric’s great piece. Some men in office have been harassing women on their staff and abusing the perks of the office as a matter of course. Those truths sometimes are reported on after having been ignored by the press for years. Misogyny thrives and is blatant among the press and, lacking any self awareness, is all over the pieces written about Harris, et al. Shameful. Lazy. Harmful. Monotonous. OLD!
Usually it's the poor performing former employer who runs around with those kinds of stories. How slow a news day must it be to make that an "exclusive."
When Bill Clinton was President all we heard from the media was how Clinton wasn’t disciplined enough and let too many ppl into meetings, debated issues far too long in his office and let too many ppl in to give their thoughts
Now, by their own parameters, Harris runs a disciplined office, keeping outside voices to a minimum & keeps distractions out and this is a bad thing
It really is ‘Heads I win, tails you lose’ when the media deals with Democratic politicians isn’t it
I agree with everything that everybody has so eloquently stated in this thread. And thank you, Eric yet again.