Rachel Sklar comments for the Huffington Post, where she is Media & Special Projects Editor.
Her analysis of the language David Shuster used to describe to Hillary Clinton (found here) seems sound, especially in response to Clinton’s infamous cackle. She suspects that as a woman, Hillary is held to a higher standard of behavior and is being treated unfairly.
On the argument, Sklar seems to be advocating equality (as a political ideal) and a critique of language usage by the media (which is moralistic, and avoids the deeper questions and problems regarding language). I can only assume her end is greater fairness in the media’s coverage of Hillary as a female candidate.
Equality isn’t necessarily the problem here for me. Neither is gender. It’s that Sklar and large numbers of people are looking through the lenses of these ideas at politics, history, economics and culture without………..political realism, even skepticism….philosophical depth…even reasonable criticism of the idea of equality itself…
Here’s the cackle:
Yep. That’s it.
Addition: There are many nobler things to do than push your beliefs of what media reporting ought to be like with an analysis of which words they use. Sklar is wise enough to know to remind us of the limits of her analysis, but, in that case, why do it at all?
Another Addition: I prefer to look toward Martha Nussbaum.
