Merchandise on display outside the RNC. Credit: Kira Lerner.
CLEVELAND, OHIO — Each day of the Republican National Convention, as tens of thousands of delegates, reporters, and curious onlookers pushed and shoved their way down a single narrow street leading to the arena’s main stage, a group of vendors hawked t-shirts and buttons attacking Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Delegates and other convention-goers eagerly purchased items that called Clinton a “bitch” and a “tramp,” suggested she be imprisoned, and described her “fat thighs” and “small breasts.”
Mary Patterson, a guest of a delegate from Racine, Wisconsin, perused the merchandise on Sunday morning with her friend, Carol McNeill-Skorupan. Both women stopped in their tracks to buy pins featuring Clinton’s face and the words: “Life’s a bitch. Don’t vote for one.”
“This sums it up right here,” Patterson told ThinkProgress. “She comes off as a bitch, quite honestly. She doesn’t have a warm personality. She seems very cold. It has nothing to do with the gender.”
Her friend agreed. “She is just not a pleasant person,” McNeill-Skorupan said. “Her husband had some charisma, which allowed him to get away with a lot of things, obviously. But she does not have it and she does not have a winning personality. She is kind of a screamer. In my mind, if you’re just out there screaming, you’re negative, you are not positive, you’re a bitch.”
Interesting how screaming and being negative makes Ms. Clinton a bitch, but it makes Trump not only a viable candidate, but a good one. But that’s not anything to do with sexism, no. Nope, not at all.
A few paces down, wearing a rubber Hillary Clinton mask and holding a large neon yellow sign reading “Trump vs. Tramp,” sat Florida resident and longtime political gadfly Bob Kunst.
“Is this sexist? Go fuck yourself. Excuse my language,” he told ThinkProgress when asked about the sign.
“I could have said she was a killer, but this rhymed,” he continued. “This is the door-opener. This gets people’s attention. It works.”
Yes, sexism has worked remarkably well all these centuries, because there are always a wealth of fragile white men to latch onto it.
Offered without commentary.When did I ever say or call a name @TheAdvocateMag @politeracy @tamronhall @TamronMSNBC pic.twitter.com/xOtIEpSxpy
— Scott Baio (@ScottBaio) July 19, 2016
There’s much more on the not only embedded sexism in the GOP, but their most serious celebration of it at Think Progress. I need more tea.
Tea’s not enough for this.
It’s things like this that are enough to make me sympathize with Clinton to the point where I’d vote for her without any crisis of conscience.
But I’m not USAmerican, so… yay me?
No, tea isn’t. I’m just so damn weary of this crap. If the GOP is so damn proud of this, they are admitting they couldn’t possibly win a fair fight. Which doesn’t seem to matter for way too many people.
That must be the sound of the point, whooshing right over her head.
That’s part of what seems so incongruous -- they mouth words about wanting a fair fight, then they turn around and fight dirty. I guess there are no mirrors in Republicanland.
People have been saying, “I’ll hold my nose and vote for Clinton”. Do they still need to hold their nose when the republican stench is even worse?
I’m not trying to put ideas into their puny heads, but I wouldn’t put it past such slimebags to use guns and physical violence on election day to prevent non-white people from voting (e.g. carrying guns in the streets, blockading voting booths, shooting people).
In fairness, I can certainly imagine “X belongs in jail” being used by them even if their opponent X was a white male. As fascist wannabes, locking up everyone who disagrees with them is always going to sound good.
Using gendered slurs, though, is clearly misogynist. No war against women here, though, nope!
So she seems like a bitch, but this has nothing to do with her gender. HMMM. I wonder how many other presidential candidates have been described as a bitch in the history of US elections. Just one you say? Curiouser and curiouser.
“Doesn’t have a warm personality,” says no one who’s actually worked with her, ever, and besides which, has Trump’s personality everbeen described as warm?
Onamission5 @ 7:
His own wife of 16 years couldn’t come up with one humanizing, warm anecdote about him. As for the whole prison business, Trump certainly belongs there, given the amount of fraud he keeps being indicted for, but no one seems to care about that.
This sounds to me a whole lot like the objections to Obama, the specifics vary but, when you walk back the logic, it all comes down to an objection about the singularly most obvious physical characteristic. Obama is black and OMFG, breaking news, Hillary is — gasp — a woman.
Of course, if you call it what it is: racism and sexism ; they will deny it.
So… This is what the slymepit is evolving into?
Marcus @ 10:
Devolving, perhaps. I wouldn’t characterise anything going on there as evolution of any kind. People not only stuck in a fetid, stagnant swamp, happy and content to be there. Same with the repubs.
Sorry… It just seems like the tactics are a bigger version. The lousy photoshop jobs. The “ha ha hurr hurr” simplicity of it. It’s familiar.
Caine@#11:
happy and content to be there
Yeah, except they’re about to get disempowered. Somewhere down inside they know their future sucks and is limited.
Caine
Since when has committing fraud, being a slumlord, swindling fellow not-quite-as-rich people through shady real estate dealings, refusing to honor contracts or render agreed upon payments to subcontractors, et al, ad nauseum ever been a crime for born-into-it white guys with banks of corrupt lawyers? I mean if Clinton did it, sure. (Or Obama) Or if she thought about doing it. Or if she looked like she might know someone who might have thought about doing it 40 years ago, or sat next to them in a cab once, or sent an email that people are just positive would contain information relevant to her maybe having done it, or something sort of like it…
*full body head desk*
Marcus:
Oh yeah, it’s familiar. It’s all juvenile and thoughtless as hell, while those who do this bray with laughter, congratulating themselves on their cleverness. It’s beyond tiresome, because people are supposed to evolve out of that behaviour at a fairly young age.
But they point to someone like Trump, and think they can do the same damn thing. And if they are good enough at conning, they probably can. That’s the thing -- Trump is a walking advert for how crime pays. You too can be a filthy rich asshole, as long as you are immoral, dishonest, and of course, white and male.
Onamission5:
Since never. It’s fully approved White Man Crime. The American Way and all that crap.