The Fix: The 13 words you cant write about Hillary Clinton anymore
Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye for a very long time, which means much has been written about her -- including quite a few adjectives.But some of these adjectives are now off-limits.
That'saccording tothe Clinton "Super Volunteers," who havepromised to track the media's use of words theybelieve to be sexist code words.The New York Times's Amy Chozick tweeted amissive she received from the group (which we would note is almost definitely not connected to official Team Clinton) on Wednesday:
So these words are now off the table: "polarizing," "calculating," "disingenuous," "insincere," "ambitious," "inevitable," "entitled," "over-confident," "secretive," "will do anything to win," "represents the past," and "out of touch."
Also apparently off the table: "tone deaf" -- at least according to a new Twitter account that appears to be from the group:
The thinking here, of course, is that these kinds of words are attached to Clinton in a way that they wouldn't be attached to male candidates -- thatpeople wouldn't call Clinton "ambitious" if she weren't a woman, that there is a double-standard for such traits.
But do the media actually use these words to describe Clinton? Well, yes, but only if you loosely define "the media" as "the conservative media" and "people who don't like Hillary Clinton."
In fact, if you Google "Hillary Clinton" and "calculating," there are 140,000 results. The first slew of results come from conservative outlets like The Daily Caller, The Blaze, Breitbart, the Daily Telegraph and also the Republican "America Rising" super PAC. One result comes from the Los Angeles Times, but it's a defense Bill Clinton lodged in 2007 against the attacks.
"Calculating" is almost completely something used to attack Clinton or describe the attacks on her. The same goes for "disingenuous," "insincere," "entitled," "secretive," "over-confident," "represents the past" and "out of touch." These are all loaded words and not terms used casuallyby mainstream media journalists like Chozick to describe a politician.
The same cannot be said for some other words. "Polarizing" is a word that has long followed Clinton, as has "ambitious," and "inevitable."
And some of thesewords should indeed be reined in -- ifnot necessarily for the reason this group wants.
See the article here:
The Fix: The 13 words you cant write about Hillary Clinton anymore