CORNERING THE MAN-HATING VOTE: At Commentary, Christine Rosen asks, “What does Elizabeth Warren think of men?”
[A]t a recent CNN-sponsored town hall on LGBTQ issues, she let slip an emotion that she hasn’t previously shown toward men: contempt. Answering a question (which turned out to be planted) about how she would talk to someone who is opposed to gay marriage, Warren responded, “Well, I’m going to assume it’s a guy who said that.” She then added, “And I’m going to say, ‘Then just marry one woman—I’m cool with that.’” Then came her contemptuous “zinger”: “Assuming you can find one.” As the Washington Post described, “Warren turned, took a few steps and smiled broadly as the room exploded in laughter.” Soon her campaign team “was crowing that the clip had garnered more than 12 million views on Twitter.”
If this is what Warren’s campaign team thinks is worth crowing about, then they clearly haven’t learned anything since Hillary Clinton dismissed a large swath of the country as “deplorables.”
Casual misandry might play well on Twitter (and among the Democratic base), but it’s insulting to a large number of voters Warren will need to persuade in a general election if she secures the Democratic nomination.
In keeping with the gentle treatment Warren has experienced from the media, few mainstream outlets (with the exception of the Post) even bothered to question whether her remarks were offensive or point out the irony that she was calling out intolerance by being intolerant herself.
“Down With the Clapback,” adds Matt Purple at the American Conservative:
[C]lapbacks don’t even have to be clever anymore. All they need to do is invoke the trendy left-wing wisdom of the moment, especially if it can be encapsulated in a single term: “mansplain,” “gaslight,” “toxic masculinity”—“you mad, bro?” Everything you need is there, except, of course, a point. Call it the Daily Show method of discourse, and indeed, when it comes to clapback culture, Jon Stewart may be a more primordial forbear even than Twitter. Once upon a time, his smackdowns of suspiciously edited Fox News clips were considered entertainment; today his method of grab, sass, and discard is widespread and serves more as cultural enforcement. The purpose of the clapback is to signal that debate ends here, that one needs think no further. Is it possible that Maduro might be both a socialist and a murderous thug, that one might even enable the other? That doesn’t matter. Rand Paul has been “destroyed” and this meeting is adjourned.
Is it any wonder that Joe Rogan has become a minor celebrity? The comedian and YouTube host is a lefty of a sort, but he also prizes probing conversation over brusque dismissals, and on today’s Internet, that feels like a novelty. As for Elizabeth Warren, I don’t mean to pick on her. She really is one of the deeper Democratic candidates, even if she can’t seem to figure out how she’s going to pay for any of her proposals. Still, there lingers the problem of that stubborn third of the country that refuses to embrace same-sex marriage. And Senator, not to mansplain, but you never answered the question. How do you respond to those who say that the definition of marriage is set and must remain between one man and one woman?
As Rosen concludes, “Like many politicians, Warren uses her personal stories and personal history to try to connect with voters. By making half those voters the butt of a contemptuous joke, she signaled that not only does she place honesty about her personal history on a sliding scale, but the dignity of voters she dislikes as well.”