Read Write Speak

Women in the political arena the public and the media handles them differently. White House reporter, Anne Kornblut has followed Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin to examine how women are portrayed and how they handled themselves throughout their own respective campaigns. She has recently written a book called Notes From a Cracked Ceiling: Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin, What Will It Take For a Woman To Win.

Anne Kornblut joined students participating from the George Mason University Video Studio alone with Steve Scully, the political editor for the C-Span networks, and students from the University of Denver and Pace University.

Anne Kornblut worked at the New York Times and began following Hilary Clinton in 2006 as she was running for New York Senate. She then found herself at The Washington Post when Hilary began running for the presidency. Through following Clinton, this quickly led into other female politicians such as, Nancy Pelosi and Condoleezza Rice.

As women began to become more prominent than they had been in recent years Kornblat noticed that no one had covered these women before, “I thought it was worthwhile to take down what did happen because they were women, how they dealt with being women, which of course was historic for both sides and then to try and have some note for the future, lessons that can be relevant, if and when another woman runs.” Kornblat was a woman recording history so other women could succeed.

Kornblat noticed during her time watching powerful and important women in this country that they were treated very differently. During the moment when Hilary Clinton choked up right before the New Hampshire primary in 2008 Kornblat saw how the media reacted.

“And for just a couple seconds, it was very brief, she had tears in her eyes and she choked up” explained Kornblat, “Well, the incident was universally portrayed as her having melted down… And then there was a backlash because of it….She won the New Hampshire primary.”

Kornblat argues that the reason why Clinton won that primary was because she showed her personality at the moment. Clinton opened up and it made it possible for people to connect with her on a level that they had not done before.

Now the media went on a whirlwind calling Clinton weak and even John Edwards said, “That doesn’t seem very presidential to me”.  However, one candidate who would go on to win it all, President Barak Obama took a different attitude towards the women running against him in their respective campaigns.

Anne Kornblat saw from the press conferences where Obama was, that is the press tried to get a rude comment about either Hilary Clinton or Sarah Palin he would not do it. “And my understanding” states Kornblat, “is that he knew, that people would not respond well to a man attacking a woman.”

Kornblat argues that the media does that enough anyway: tearing down women. She explained the three different categories that a woman can be put into were an iron lady, a grandmother in pearls and a young mom were all short hand terms that would easily describe someone to the public.

“So yes stereotyping is bad,” defends Kornblat, “reducing anyone to a slogan isn’t always true to their complexities of who they are as a person, but that happens both to men and women in politics. So the trick really is for women to use that to their advantage.”

The distance learning course, which is produced by C-SPAN, is a unique opportunity for students to interview guests via video conference. The course airs on C-SPAN3 on Fridays at 5 p.m. and also streams online (http://www.c-span.org/distance_learning/).