Poor old Howie Kurtz. Those meanies over at Media Matters are always picking on him and making him look bad by just reporting on what he wrote: Fox's Howard Kurtz On Media Gender Bias: "Deal With It":
Gender bias and sensationalism in the media is something political figures like Hillary Clinton simply need to "deal with," according to Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz.
In a May 28 column, Kurtz highlighted a newly released excerpt from Hillary Clinton's upcoming book, Hard Choices, in an attempt to analyze Clinton's purported wariness of the press. He gave particular attention to a New Yorker article, published the same day as the book excerpt, which detailed the media's obsessive focus on Clinton. While the New Yorker noted that Clinton supporters attribute "some of the negative" coverage she has faced to sexism, Kurtz offered an alternate take:
My take is this: Let's say Hillary's people are right and that the press is petty, sensationalist, often unfair and sometimes mean to women? Deal with it. It's like complaining about bad weather. Every candidate has to cope with an adversarial media, and Democrats usually get a break at least on social issues.
Clinton has had to "deal with" an inordinate amount of these baseless attacks in the media for years, sexist coverage that imparts a serious impact on women in politics. [...]
In recent months, right-wing media have worked overtime to stir up concern about Clinton's age, an effort led in part by conservative strategist and Fox contributor Karl Rove in anticipation of a possible 2016 presidential run. The conservative bubbled first encouraged the media to revive old conspiracy theories about Clinton's health, relentlessly hyped their own attack, and then demanded that Clinton respond with evidence to their specious claims. Far from subtle, as recently as May 27 Fox News painted Clinton "old and stale," amplifying an affront first used by Rove. Read on...
Kurtz's cohort Megyn Kelly came to his defense this Thursday and said that Hillary needs to "put on her big-girl pants" and get used to the attacks as well. Little surprise that Fox decided to use one of their female anchors as a shield for Kurtz.
Here's more on Kurtz's column from Digby:
This is why Ailes is paying Howard Kurtz the big bucks: [...]
He left out the most important part of that quote. It's supposed to be "deal with it, bitches", amirite?
Women have to put up with being treated like second class citizens and endure specific, disgusting, demeaning sexist insults because that's just how the world works. Hey, they get breaks in other ways --- they're hardly ever caught with their pants down in a whorehouse for instance. And they tend not to get stalked on twitter for showing off their boners. So, it's not as if they aren't cut plenty of slack.
Does everyone remember when Howard Kurtz insisted he wasn't a right wing shill? Good times.
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