Rush to Judgment
By Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Sphere: Related ContentOne of my male colleagues was explaining why men age better than women.“It’s evolutionary,” he said. “As we wear out our wives, who are running around taking care of the kids, we know we’re going to have to get another younger wife, so we stay good-looking.”
He was kidding. (I think.) We were discussing Hillary’s latest hurdle: the Old Hag routine.
When men want to put down a powerful woman in a sexist way, they will say she’s a hag or a nag or a witch or angry or hysterical.
First, the Republicans tried to paint Hillary as angry, but that didn’t work because she has shown a steady composure and laughed a lot (even if the laughter isn’t always connected to people saying anything funny). She has kept her sense of humor — which has a tart side — mostly under wraps, so she won’t be accused of being
witchy.
But some conservative pundits who disagree with a woman on matters of policy jump straight into an attack on the woman’s looks or personal life.
And so the inevitable came to pass this week when Rush Limbaugh began riffing about an unflattering picture of Hillary in New Hampshire that Matt Drudge put up on his Web site with the caption, “The Toll of a Campaign.”
“So the question is this,” the radio personality said. “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”
Observing that Hillary is stuck with a looks-obsessed culture and that the presidency ages its occupants, including W., Limbaugh observed that “men aging makes them look more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished. Sadly, it’s not that way for women, and they will tell you.”
And Hillary, he noted, “is not going to want to look like she’s getting older, because it will impact poll numbers, it will impact perceptions.” So, he added, “there will have to be steps taken to avoid the appearance of aging.”
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