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Yellow Bird: Stereotypes and Hillary Clinton
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Filed Under: Opinion

"Sen. Barack Obama is black and Sen. Hillary Clinton is a woman, two traits voters have not experienced at this level in presidential elections.

These issues may seem incidental in the endless number of analyses from talk shows, news clips or editorial writers. They are, nevertheless, part of the scenario, no matter how much we try to say they don’t count.

We have no experience with a woman in the most powerful position in the nation and world.

As Clinton moved forward and tried to catch a fast-moving Obama, she became more and more hard line, talking over moderators of the debates — always pushing, pushing. Also, she looked for weaknesses in her opponent and tossed daggers that mostly missed their target.

The crass term “bitchy” comes to my mind — something we say of women, not men. And not a worthy comment about a woman who would be president.

Then, in the past few weeks, a sound of desperation leaked into her campaign, “Please vote for me,” she seemed to whine to factory workers she met at 5:30 a.m., just a few mornings before Tuesday’s vote. Little sleep but a lot of makeup, I would say, probably held her up.

It’s that “too needy” factor that came off in the last days before Tuesday’s vote. Do we see the “too needy” factor as a woman’s trait?"

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Dorreen Yellow Bird: Campaign calls up old stereotypes (The Grand Forks Herald 3/5)
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