RUSH: We’ve used this as our Nancy Pelosi theme now and then, the Flight of the Bumblebee, Queen Bee Syndrome, of course. Rimsky-Korsakov. (continued playing of song) It is just funny as hell to watch Snerdley listen to this stuff trying to figure it all out. Okay, we are back to the audio sound bites. This was yesterday on NPR’s Morning Edition. The media reporter, David Folkenflik interviewed Fox News pollster Frank Luntz, Democrat strategerist babe Susan Estrich and former press secretary Dee Dee Myers. The media reporter David Folkenflik said that journalists and pundits do constantly describe Hillary in different terms than they would her male rivals. In the following clip, Fox News pollster Frank Luntz was asking voters what kind of campaign they wanted Obama and Clinton to wage.
LUNTZ: How many of you want them to really argue, raise your hands? And how many of you want them to make love to each other?
FOLKENFLIK: Just try imagining John McCain and Mike Huckabee in that scenario, or Joe Biden and these remarks by conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
FOLKENFLIK: Clinton supporter Susan Estrich says Clinton’s struggle with her image evokes women CEOs who strive to be feminine, but not too feminine, and capable, but not overly assertive.
ESTRICH: I think that’s why there’s been so much attention to Hillary’s clothes and to Hillary’s cleavage and to Hillary’s husband and to Hillary’s marriage and to Hillary’s motherhood and her own daughter.
FOLKENFLIK: Dee Dee Myers says the media seems blind to its own behavior.
MYERS: Have we had male candidates with funny laughs? Almost certainly. Have they gotten as much attention? Absolutely not. Did the Times write about that, the cackle, because people were talking about it? Arguably that’s true. But it just reflects a sexist trait in society that some things that are acceptable in men are not acceptable in women.
RUSH: Did she remember what happened to Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live? Anyway, this is just basically NPR and a bunch of women complaining that Hillary’s been treated in a sexist fashion by Frank Luntz and me. Well, it would not be stereotypical to say these women are whining. Dee Dee Myers is a professional whiner; she’s gotten good at it. Estrich, she’s okay. I like Susan Estrich. I like Dee Dee, too. Look, there are women really upset about what’s happened to Hillary. I understand it. I’ve talked to them about it. You know, I’ve reached out to them on this program. I understand how they feel. I’m actually sympathetic to Dee Dee Myers and Susan Estrich, because this is it for their lifetimes. I mean to see a woman president, this is it. It’s gone. It’s gone. They’ve chosen this little dweeb that doesn’t know anything, with no experience whatsoever, with a wacko nutcase anti-American preacher, runs around with terrorists and embezzlers and so forth, and he’s a messiah. I mean you can understand why they are angry about this.