A brand exercise
Dan Froomkin points out that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems to make the people at the NY Times very nervous.
So rather than report on how Ocasio-Cortez’s riveting, viral speech on the House floor on Thursday was a signal moment in the fight against abusive sexism, Times congressional reporters Luke Broadwater and Catie Edmondson filed a story full of sexist double standards and embraced the framing of her critics by casting her as a rule-breaker trying to “amplify her brand.”
Here’s her speech in case you need a refresher.
Then consider that the Times described the speech as “her most norm-shattering moment yet,” leading with the fact that “she took to the House floor to read into the Congressional Record a sexist vulgarity that Representative Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, had used to refer to her.”
The point is not that it’s a vulgarity. The point is that it’s misogynist, and it’s meant to intimidate. Men don’t call women fucking bitches for the hell of it, they do it to express intimidating rage and hatred. Vulgarity is completely beside the point.
A critical “tell” in the Times’s coverage – something perhaps only fellow journalists would fully appreciate at first – was how the paper had previously avoided directly quoting Yoho’s particular words, but did so now:
“In front of reporters, Representative Yoho called me, and I quote: ‘A fucking bitch,’” she said, punching each syllable in the vulgarity.
You’d think the whole thing was her idea. It’s Yoho who said it; she was quoting him. It’s as if they decided to say she punched every syllable to make her sound like the aggressor. She did not in fact punch anything, nor did she call anyone insulting names.
In the first Times article on the matter, on Tuesday, Broadwater described Yoho’s words as “a pair of expletives” – noting that Ocasio-Cortez “sought to turn the insult to her advantage.”
Oh yes, what a whore she is, trying to make money from being called a fucking bitch by an adult man who works alongside her in Congress.
James Fallows, the renowned Atlantic national correspondent, asked in a tweet: “WHY should these words appear in a quote from AOC, at whom they were hatefully directed, rather than one from Rep. Yoho, who actually said them?”
Um…to make her look bad? To shame her? Am I close?
The Times reporters wrote that after her speech, “Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who excels at using her detractors to amplify her own political brand, invited a group of Democratic women in the House to come forward to express solidarity with her.”
The whore. How dare she invite a group of Democratic women colleagues to come forward to express solidarity with her? That’s so brand-amplifying. A decent modest woman would say nothing about it and pretend it never happened, and nice Mr. Yoho could get away without so much as a whispered rebuke. Maybe if they put her in a burqa they would feel less anxious?
Hamza Shaban, a business reporter for the Washington Post, called attention to the similarities between the Times’s framing of the story and the story’s own description, toward the end, of how Republicans have demonized Ocasio-Cortez.
She should just put up with it, like a nice prim quiet woman from 1955.
In fact, the double standards were everywhere. New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister, responding to Harris’s tweet, noted: “Women’s anger at male power abuse [is] regularly presented as path to self-advancement for the women. Voicing fury at systemic degradation is read as opportunistic. Whereas men’s abusive behavior rarely understood as fundamental to how they attained & maintain THEIR power. But it is!”
H/t Tim Harris
I work in a company that is almost completely devoid of written policies and codes of conduct. We employ good people and emphasis ethics, responsibility, respect, openness. Frankly it’s an HR lawyers nightmare. I’ve likened it to controlled anarchy. If I called one of my colleagues a fucking anything I would be out on my arse before the week was out and quite rightly so.
The NYT has never been a terribly liberal paper by NZ standards, but in recent years seems to have become a lot more welcoming to the polite end of establishment culture wars. maybe I just never paid enough attention previously.
“they do it to express intimidating rage and hatred” EXACTLY. Personally, I don’t think they care if it’s sexist or racist, he’s attempting to get her to a) shut up or failing that b) convince others not to listen to her.
I had similar thoughts when I saw that article – why are they treating it/her as if she’s only doing it for selfish reasons to “improve her brand” rather than to improve our country?
This description applies equally well to the response Rowling’s defence of the rights and safety of women and girls. Why, it’s almost as if it’s part of some kind of pattern.
YNnB, that’s exactly what I thought about this:
It so mimics the rhetoric leveled at Rowling. How dare she “weaponize” her abuse?
I’m not agreeing with everything the NYT has done here, but I have the opposite take on them using the quote only when she said it. I think they didn’t want to quote the nasty thing said about her. When she made it clear that she wanted people to know exactly what had been said, then they quoted it. I think that correctly put her in the driver seat on that issue.
Pace Skeletor, it seems to me to be utterly craven & irresponsible of the NYT not to have quoted what Yoho said. The question is why they didn’t want to quote it – and I don’t think it was because of some prim desire not to say bad words in public or to somehow protect Ocasio-Cortez’s feelings. They were sitting on the fence, waiting to see which way the wind would blow, before taking some sort of stand – though that stand was, I am sure, decided beforehand. And now that Ocasio-Cortez has pronounced the words publicly and got them into the Congressional record, forcing the NYT to actually make public the words, you can see whose part they have taken – and it’s not Ocasio-Cortez’s but good old manly Yo-ho-ho and his bottle of misogyny. She may be in the driver’s seat, but that is not thanks to the NYT but thanks to her brave response, which the NYT characterises as ‘an attempt to amplify her own political brand’. The sheer cynicism of Luke Broadwater & Catie Edmondson is contemptible, as is that of the editors who allowed this. How these craven individuals can call themselves journalists in any proper sense is beyond my understanding. But doubtless they think well of themselves, and regard themselves as possessing the glamour of fearless truth-tellers. Well-paid hacks is all they are, and they well know which side their bread’s buttered on.
Yeeeeaaahhh I think if it were a century or so ago, when people were not used to phrases like “fucking bitch” in public discourse, Skeletor’s interpretation might have some plausibility, but now? No. We’re all very very used to such phrases, and by hiding them behind “vulgarity” and “expletive” the Times was shielding Yoho and belittling Ocasio-Cortez by making her appear squeamish as opposed to political. It’s what I keep saying: the point is not that the words are “naughty” or “obscene” or “vulgar,” the point is that they are misogynist. Granted the “vulgarity” intensifies the misogyny, sharply, but it’s still not the core issue.
Tim Harris,
It’s entirely possible that the reporters lobbied for inclusion of his actual words in the original article, but were overridden by the editors. Of course that doesn’t excuse the framing in their coverage of AOC’s speech.
I wonder how this would have played out if he had called her a “freaking witch”. The “vulgarity” would be gone but the intent would be the same; would the press even have noticed?
“Amplify her brand”? Her “brand” is already plenty amplified, and she knows it. She was angry and spoke out. That’s what is REALLY bothering these people–that a woman is angry and speaking.
I do think the NYT is still squeamish about profanity, especially the f-word.
Regardless, I think we all agree with the main point that their framing of AOC’s response as opportunistic is insulting.
Anyway, even if AOC was seizing the opportunity to make points that align with her core beliefs and policies, what of it? She’d be an ineffective space-filling doormat if she let it slide, so good on her. It’s not as if Republican politicians aren’t quick to seize on talking points around the economy or right-to-life (even if they have to lie and misrepresent to do so) and politicians of all sides are happy to jump on the ‘lawn and border’ band wagon at the first hint of noise or graffiti.