I don’t see any of our Kos writers spelling out these words, but this election has necessitated editors and website administrators making decisions about the leeway to allow to those who submit stories in spelling out words that in the past, if used at all, had to contain asterisks and other symbols between the first and last letter.
Last night by chance I just read two articles in a row. One was by Amanda Marcotte on Salon (above left). I’ll edit out the version of the f-word (used in a lewd sense, not as just a swear word), below. It certainly fits and describes a something about what Trump does exactly.
Who would have thought that, thanks to Trump’s own words, the R-rated name for part of a woman’s body which Trump thinks he has free rein to grab is being spelled out everywhere, including on the TV screen.
In the past year and a half, a lot of ink has been spilled about Donald Trump’s problem with women: his misogyny, the way he evaluates all women (even his daughter) primarily by their blank-ability, his shaming women for their body functions, and, of course, his bragging about sexually assaulting women with the immediately infamous phrase “grab them by the pussy.” my italics
The Daily Beast article (above right) included the spelled out C-word in the text, and printed out a copy of the Tweet that included it. No reason to show it here, so I blanked it out (right).
My point has nothing to do with the editorial guidelines, although there is a case to be made for not sugar-coating the crude misogynist language.
Trump didn’t start it, but he gave his imprimatur to it when the Access Hollywood video was made public. He has normalized crude and demeaning language about women since this always attends a man who demonstrates demeaning behavior with and attitudes towards women.
While not lewd, the man shouting Jew-S-A at reporters was interjecting a different kind of obscenity into politics.
Even though overt racial animus wasn’t that apparent when Obama ran, we did see things like this… made far worse by Trump promoting birtherism.
Clearly the alt-right has brought politics into the gutter. However it is Trump’s rhetoric that has brought it into the sewer. As frequent commenter StillAmused (who I doubt isn’t all that amused anymore) put it in a comment below: “Trump has drawn all the knuckledraggers out of the tall weeds.”
Wednesday, Nov 2, 2016 · 1:30:12 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
This is how Politco covered the Texas Ag. commissioner story:
Texas elected official calls Clinton a 'c---'
The Texas Agriculture Commissioner has since deleted the tweet, claimed he was hacked, deleted the claim of being hacked, issued an apology for the original tweet and blamed his staff.
By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM and IAN KULLGREN
11/01/16 05:23 PM EDT
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller on Tuesday posted, then quickly deleted, a tweet in which he referred to Hillary Clinton as a “c---.”
The tweet from Miller’s account posted what appeared to be the results of a recent Pennsylvania poll, but swapped out Clinton’s name for the misogynist epithet.
“PENNSYLVANIA: NEW AUTO ALLIANCE POLL,” he wrote. “TRUMP 44 C*** 43”
He added: “Go Trump Go!”