Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Clinton's Health Is a Barely Disguised Way for Conservatives to
Wallow in Bigotry
________________________________________
Clinton's Health Is a Barely Disguised Way for Conservatives to Wallow in
Bigotry
By Amanda Marcotte [1] / Salon [2]
September 13, 2016
Any other year, a presidential candidate who got wobbly at a 9/11 memorial
service because he was battling a minor case of pneumonia would be regaled
as a hero. How tough and patriotic he is, to brave the summer heat while
wearing a Kevlar vest, even though his doctor told him to stay in bed for a
couple days!
But since the candidate in question is a she and not a he, the narrative is
very different this time around. Now that it's Hillary Clinton, everyone's
wondering if Grandma is too weak and fragile for the job. Never mind that
she's running against a man who is himself an elderly grandfather, or that
most presidents have been older men. Or that, as Digby noted in Salon on
Monday [3], previous male presidents have had a slew of common health
problems, from the common flu to cancer surgery. Or that getting sick
occasionally is just the price you pay for being human.
"Have you told everyone every time you've come to work with a bad cold?"
Sady Doyle, a feminist author whose upcoming book "Trainwreck: The Women We
Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear ... and Why" [4] looks at how women in the
public eye are shamed for having human flaws we tend to forgive in men.
"It's very strange to me because we know that campaigns are long and
grueling and candidates are working seven days a week. They don't get a lot
of sleep. They're constantly on airplanes and buses and shaking hands with
strangers. We know they get tired. We know they get sick. But with Hillary
there is this weird, conspiratorial, possessive attitude."
The hysteria over Clinton having very normal and minor health problems is
"uniquely tied to her gender." Doyle continued.
"The fact is that Trump is older than her," Doyle continued, also nothing
that Bernie Sanders is 6 years older, as well.
"But she is the one we want to see as this withered up, useless old crone,"
she added. "We want to believe that an older woman is not capable of
contributing to the world in any important way. For that reason, people are
exaggerating and exaggerating concerns about her age, which is coded as
physical fitness."
A huge part of the reason that this episode is catching so much media
attention is that, for weeks now, Trump has been making insinuations about
Clinton's "stamina" and allowing his right-wing shock troops to spread
ridiculous myths about her health. Even Wikileaks got in on the misogynist
feeding frenzy by putting up a poll - which they quickly deleted - inviting
people to speculate about Clinton's body.
Previous presidential candidates have endured partisan chatter about their
health, of course. John McCain's disability has been the source of
speculation, as has Barack Obama's history as a smoker. But there's never
been this much attention paid to a candidate's body.
Women are perceived as public property in the way men are not, which is why
"nip slips" and "upskirts" are a much bigger business than monitoring the
state of celebrity penises.
Trump, in particular, has a long history of displaying outright disgust at
any evidence that women have biological bodies. As I noted on a Facebook
live video for Salon [8], the list of instances here Trump has shamed women
for having normal and basic bodily functions is as long as your arm.
Or this lovely exchange, from the Howard Stern show [11]:
Trump: Howard let me just ask you. You said something a while ago about Beth
that amazed me because it applies to Melania. You said you've never seen her
do anything, like, bad, in terms of her own personal.
Stern: That's true. She would never even do another chick.
Trump: No, no, not even that. You said you've never heard her fart.
Stern: Not only is that true, she doesn't make doody. She hasn't made doody.
Trump: I can say the exact same thing about Melania.
I cut much of it because they talked, at length, about their shared
obsession with believing that women don't - or shouldn't, anyway - have
normally functioning digestive systems.
Or, last December, Trump went on a rant shaming Clinton [12]for using a
commercial break during a primary debate to use the bathroom.
"I know where she went - it's disgusting, I don't want to talk about it,"
Trump sneered, though he clearly wanted to talk about it. "No, it's too
disgusting. Don't say it, it's disgusting."
And who can forget what he said about Fox News host Megan Kelly [13], when
he was angry with her for asking him tough questions during a primary
debate: "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming
out of her wherever."
Or what attorney Elizabeth Beck said about how Trump [14]reacted during a
meeting when she asked for a break to breastfeed: "He got up, his face got
red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, 'You're disgusting, you're
disgusting,' and he ran out of there."
"Historically, women's physical weakness relative to men has been used as an
excuse to prevent us competing for everything from corporate promotions to
Olympic medals," Ann Friedman wrote for the Los Angeles Times [15]. "A
similar fallacy about female fragility crops up in politics."
But there is no evidence-based reason to think Clinton is fragile. Quite the
opposite, in fact.
"A 68-year-old woman, with pneumonia, still kept a schedule that most of us
wouldn't make it through, flying here and there, holding multiple events and
briefings a day," Eric Schmeltzer wrote in the Huffington Post [16]. "That's
not weak. That's actually strong and tough as hell."
If she were a man, it would be easy to see that. Especially when the
opponent is Trump, a man who rejects the grinding schedule of the typical
presidential campaign [17] in favor of flying home, in his private jet, to
sleep in his own bed. It's hard not to notice that Trump's preferred
outreach - rallies and phone calls to cable news shows - are exactly the
sort of things that make it a lot easier to sleep in your own bed at night,
whereas Clinton maintains a grueling campaign schedule [18].
This fits into history, as well. Trump isn't shy about his hatred of
traveling [19] overseas and he famously once nearly lost out on an important
business deal [20] because he didn't want to travel to China and eat foreign
food. Clinton, in contrast, was the Secretary of State and kept a schedule
- including mountains of foreign travel - so dense that her two-and-a-half
year stint resulted in 3,721 pages of schedule.
(Kellyanne Conway, Trump's new campaign manager, is reportedly trying to
steer Trump away from the rally-heavy schedule [21] and towards more
time-intensive voter outreach efforts, and it will be fun to see if her
efforts have an influence over her notoriously stubborn - and travel-averse
- candidate.)
The feigned concerns over Clinton's health strongly resemble the feigned
concerns that Barack Obama was faking his natural born citizenship, right
down to the posturing about how this is all the target's fault for not
providing more and more documentation, to drive home how much those of us
who aren't white men cannot be trusted. In both cases, it's about wallowing
in ugly stereotypes - that black people aren't patriots, that women are
inherently fragile - without admitting that's what's going on.
And no surprise that the person behind the Clinton health hysteria is also
the same man that was pushing the Obama birth certificate hysteria: Donald
Trump.
Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon. She's on Twitter
@AmandaMarcotte.
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [22]
[23]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clintons-health-new-obamas-birth-certi
ficate
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/amanda-marcotte
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/12/health-hysteria-and-hypocrisy-heres-a-news-a
lert-republicans-have-taken-ill-too/
[4]
https://www.amazon.com/Trainwreck-Women-Love-Hate-Mock-ebook/dp/B01CBLP27Q
[5] https://twitter.com/wikileaks
[6] https://t.co/IdrgFlxP3A
[7] https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/775110996071424001
[8] https://www.facebook.com/salon/videos/10153964440266519/?pnref=story
[9] https://twitter.com/hashtag/WheresHillary?src=hash
[10] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/766791143291916288
[11] http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/282051/melania-trump-poop-fart-stern/
[12]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/21/donald-trump
-calls-hillary-clinton-disgusting-for-using-the-restroom-during-a-debate/
[13]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/07/trump-says-f
oxs-megyn-kelly-had-blood-coming-out-of-her-wherever/
[14] http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/politics/trump-breast-pump-statement/
[15]
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-friedman-hillary-clinton-health-c
onspiracy-20160824-snap-story.html
[16]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillarys-pneumonia-the-medias-lowest-mom
ent_us_57d5d5fae4b0f831f70721ff
[17]
https://politicalwire.com/2016/07/19/trump-flew-home-after-first-night-of-co
nvention/
[18]
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/21/nprs-tamara-keith-dismantles-right-
wing-medias-clinton-health-conspiracy-theory/212550
[19]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-o
n-foreign-policy-ive-got-no-time-to-travel-abroad-america-needs-my-attention
-now-10475659.html
[20]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/us/politics/donald-trump-hong-kong-riversi
de-south.html?_r=0
[21] http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/trump-ground-game/
[22] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Clinton's Health
Is a Barely Disguised Way for Conservatives to Wallow in Bigotry
[23] http://www.alternet.org/
[24] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Clinton's Health Is a Barely Disguised Way for Conservatives to
Wallow in Bigotry
Clinton's Health Is a Barely Disguised Way for Conservatives to Wallow in
Bigotry
By Amanda Marcotte [1] / Salon [2]
September 13, 2016
AddThis Sharing Buttons
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Any other year, a presidential candidate who got wobbly at a 9/11 memorial
service because he was battling a minor case of pneumonia would be regaled
as a hero. How tough and patriotic he is, to brave the summer heat while
wearing a Kevlar vest, even though his doctor told him to stay in bed for a
couple days!
But since the candidate in question is a she and not a he, the narrative is
very different this time around. Now that it's Hillary Clinton, everyone's
wondering if Grandma is too weak and fragile for the job. Never mind that
she's running against a man who is himself an elderly grandfather, or that
most presidents have been older men. Or that, as Digby noted in Salon on
Monday [3], previous male presidents have had a slew of common health
problems, from the common flu to cancer surgery. Or that getting sick
occasionally is just the price you pay for being human.
"Have you told everyone every time you've come to work with a bad cold?"
Sady Doyle, a feminist author whose upcoming book "Trainwreck: The Women We
Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear ... and Why" [4] looks at how women in the
public eye are shamed for having human flaws we tend to forgive in men.
"It's very strange to me because we know that campaigns are long and
grueling and candidates are working seven days a week. They don't get a lot
of sleep. They're constantly on airplanes and buses and shaking hands with
strangers. We know they get tired. We know they get sick. But with Hillary
there is this weird, conspiratorial, possessive attitude."
The hysteria over Clinton having very normal and minor health problems is
"uniquely tied to her gender." Doyle continued.
"The fact is that Trump is older than her," Doyle continued, also nothing
that Bernie Sanders is 6 years older, as well.
"But she is the one we want to see as this withered up, useless old crone,"
she added. "We want to believe that an older woman is not capable of
contributing to the world in any important way. For that reason, people are
exaggerating and exaggerating concerns about her age, which is coded as
physical fitness."
A huge part of the reason that this episode is catching so much media
attention is that, for weeks now, Trump has been making insinuations about
Clinton's "stamina" and allowing his right-wing shock troops to spread
ridiculous myths about her health. Even Wikileaks got in on the misogynist
feeding frenzy by putting up a poll - which they quickly deleted - inviting
people to speculate about Clinton's body.
Previous presidential candidates have endured partisan chatter about their
health, of course. John McCain's disability has been the source of
speculation, as has Barack Obama's history as a smoker. But there's never
been this much attention paid to a candidate's body.
Women are perceived as public property in the way men are not, which is why
"nip slips" and "upskirts" are a much bigger business than monitoring the
state of celebrity penises.
Trump, in particular, has a long history of displaying outright disgust at
any evidence that women have biological bodies. As I noted on a Facebook
live video for Salon [8], the list of instances here Trump has shamed women
for having normal and basic bodily functions is as long as your arm.
Or this lovely exchange, from the Howard Stern show [11]:
Trump: Howard let me just ask you. You said something a while ago about Beth
that amazed me because it applies to Melania. You said you've never seen her
do anything, like, bad, in terms of her own personal.
Stern: That's true. She would never even do another chick.
Trump: No, no, not even that. You said you've never heard her fart.
Stern: Not only is that true, she doesn't make doody. She hasn't made doody.
Trump: I can say the exact same thing about Melania.
I cut much of it because they talked, at length, about their shared
obsession with believing that women don't - or shouldn't, anyway - have
normally functioning digestive systems.
Or, last December, Trump went on a rant shaming Clinton [12]for using a
commercial break during a primary debate to use the bathroom.
"I know where she went - it's disgusting, I don't want to talk about it,"
Trump sneered, though he clearly wanted to talk about it. "No, it's too
disgusting. Don't say it, it's disgusting."
And who can forget what he said about Fox News host Megan Kelly [13], when
he was angry with her for asking him tough questions during a primary
debate: "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming
out of her wherever."
Or what attorney Elizabeth Beck said about how Trump [14]reacted during a
meeting when she asked for a break to breastfeed: "He got up, his face got
red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, 'You're disgusting, you're
disgusting,' and he ran out of there."
"Historically, women's physical weakness relative to men has been used as an
excuse to prevent us competing for everything from corporate promotions to
Olympic medals," Ann Friedman wrote for the Los Angeles Times [15]. "A
similar fallacy about female fragility crops up in politics."
But there is no evidence-based reason to think Clinton is fragile. Quite the
opposite, in fact.
"A 68-year-old woman, with pneumonia, still kept a schedule that most of us
wouldn't make it through, flying here and there, holding multiple events and
briefings a day," Eric Schmeltzer wrote in the Huffington Post [16]. "That's
not weak. That's actually strong and tough as hell."
If she were a man, it would be easy to see that. Especially when the
opponent is Trump, a man who rejects the grinding schedule of the typical
presidential campaign [17] in favor of flying home, in his private jet, to
sleep in his own bed. It's hard not to notice that Trump's preferred
outreach - rallies and phone calls to cable news shows - are exactly the
sort of things that make it a lot easier to sleep in your own bed at night,
whereas Clinton maintains a grueling campaign schedule [18].
This fits into history, as well. Trump isn't shy about his hatred of
traveling [19] overseas and he famously once nearly lost out on an important
business deal [20] because he didn't want to travel to China and eat foreign
food. Clinton, in contrast, was the Secretary of State and kept a schedule -
including mountains of foreign travel - so dense that her two-and-a-half
year stint resulted in 3,721 pages of schedule.
(Kellyanne Conway, Trump's new campaign manager, is reportedly trying to
steer Trump away from the rally-heavy schedule [21] and towards more
time-intensive voter outreach efforts, and it will be fun to see if her
efforts have an influence over her notoriously stubborn - and travel-averse
- candidate.)
The feigned concerns over Clinton's health strongly resemble the feigned
concerns that Barack Obama was faking his natural born citizenship, right
down to the posturing about how this is all the target's fault for not
providing more and more documentation, to drive home how much those of us
who aren't white men cannot be trusted. In both cases, it's about wallowing
in ugly stereotypes - that black people aren't patriots, that women are
inherently fragile - without admitting that's what's going on.
And no surprise that the person behind the Clinton health hysteria is also
the same man that was pushing the Obama birth certificate hysteria: Donald
Trump.
Amanda Marcotte is a politics writer for Salon. She's on Twitter
@AmandaMarcotte.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [22]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[23]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/clintons-health-new-obamas-birth-certi
ficate
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/amanda-marcotte
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/12/health-hysteria-and-hypocrisy-heres-a-news-a
lert-republicans-have-taken-ill-too/
[4]
https://www.amazon.com/Trainwreck-Women-Love-Hate-Mock-ebook/dp/B01CBLP27Q
[5] https://twitter.com/wikileaks
[6] https://t.co/IdrgFlxP3A
[7] https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/775110996071424001
[8] https://www.facebook.com/salon/videos/10153964440266519/?pnref=story
[9] https://twitter.com/hashtag/WheresHillary?src=hash
[10] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/766791143291916288
[11] http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/282051/melania-trump-poop-fart-stern/
[12]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/21/donald-trump
-calls-hillary-clinton-disgusting-for-using-the-restroom-during-a-debate/
[13]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/07/trump-says-f
oxs-megyn-kelly-had-blood-coming-out-of-her-wherever/
[14] http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/politics/trump-breast-pump-statement/
[15]
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-friedman-hillary-clinton-health-c
onspiracy-20160824-snap-story.html
[16]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillarys-pneumonia-the-medias-lowest-mom
ent_us_57d5d5fae4b0f831f70721ff
[17]
https://politicalwire.com/2016/07/19/trump-flew-home-after-first-night-of-co
nvention/
[18]
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/21/nprs-tamara-keith-dismantles-right-
wing-medias-clinton-health-conspiracy-theory/212550
[19]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-o
n-foreign-policy-ive-got-no-time-to-travel-abroad-america-needs-my-attention
-now-10475659.html
[20]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/us/politics/donald-trump-hong-kong-riversi
de-south.html?_r=0
[21] http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/trump-ground-game/
[22] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Clinton's Health
Is a Barely Disguised Way for Conservatives to Wallow in Bigotry
[23] http://www.alternet.org/
[24] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
