In middle school I was in the highly gifted program. The seventh grade science teacher had a trip he would take a select few boys on in the summer after seventh grade. It was supposed to be a great trip all across the US to see various national parks. The teacher would be the only chaperone for a group of about six…

I thought I was going to hate this. I was wrong, it was very good.

I cannot answer your first paragraph, as I am not the person who would jump on you for it without first asking what was found to be distasteful. As for your second point it is literally the easiest thing in the world to criticize a woman for her public speaking and avoid doing it without invoking gendered terms, there…

She’s not a great orator. She’d be the first to tell you that. I listened to a podcast recently (I think it was the 538 one) that talked about the fact that a lot of what she’s GREAT at (building consensus, one-on-one interactions, bringing people over to her side, quietly commanding the respect of everyone who deals…

There are a few words that are specifically gendered that one would want to avoid when describing the speech and its cadence, “Shrill” is probably the most common one so lets focus on that, it seems innocuous but in writing shrillness is often associated with femininity, annoyance, and fear. (when referring to males…

FFS, Ted Cruz’s nasally whine with his weird facial expressions has to be tied with Donald Trump’s huuuugggge vocabulary as the worst orators in this election year...if not in the history of election years.

I have 0 issues with her voice...but I find it absolutely fucking pathetic that a bunch of people here use terms and shade to describe other political candidates, on all sides, but are falling ALL over their goddamn selves for her and this “average” speech, albeit for an historic moment, that she gave last night.

That is a separate issue.

HRC is a gifted politician, a leader, and an inspiration. Just because internalized sexism exists with perceptions of female speakers, doesn’t mean she is a gifted speaker. She may be judged more harshly, but she is breaking that ceiling for others. The First Lady (MO) brought strength,…

Isn’t it funny that days after Michelle Obama gave the most outstanding speech of her career- and arguably the speech of the convention- that it is suddenly the minimum acceptable standard for Clinton? It’s a ridiculously unfair comparison, and one we should all note was not applied to either presidents Obama or Bill…

I had a similar observation. The closest imperfect answer I’ve come up with is that the incessant, meritless complaining from the GOP along those lines has rendered any ability to make a critique along those lines (even meritorious ones) a non-starter.

Salon sort of touched on this awhile back:

I saw some comparison of Hillary’s speech to POTUS too. Barack Obama is a brilliant orator and has a spot in the all-time greats list. His speeches will be in history books (probably not in Texas tho), quoted and studied years from now. Hillary is a fine speaker, but she’s not on his level and that’s ok. It’s not…

You can say what you said. It’s when you start using words like shrill, nagging, etc. that you’re entering dangerous waters because we rarely lob similar criticisms against men. For example, Trumps speaking voice aint that great, but other than mocking his pronunciation of huge, we don’t see that in the media much.

Every criticism of Hillary is sexist....

They’ve been doing it for the last thirtyish years....why stop now?

I definitely think Sullivan fell into the trap of double standards when it comes to men and women speaking.

Get used to it. They’re going to complain about her voice, her tone, her not smiling enough, her face, her hair, her clothes for the next 8 years. But not because they’re sexist or anything.

Bizarre Hillary attacks won’t go away in November. Just ask Obama.

I know it was mostly schmaltz, but I found Bill’s little Hillary bio (with the constant cutaways to Chelsea) pretty heartwarming. The mom video would’ve been it for me, too.

Meryl Streep is one of my favorite narrators. She did Eleanor Roosevelt in Ken Burn’s 7-part series about the Roosevelt family, and it’s so good. Eleanor had a uniquely strange and instantly identifiable voice, and Streep gets it down. The weird cadence is perfect, and she even gets the almost-cracking warble right.

Yep 95. When Clinton got the nom officially I was flooded with memories of how she was treated as FLOTUS. I honestly cried thinking about all shit she’s had to wade through to get here. It was bad. Real old school misogyny was thrown at her and dredged up in the 90's. Barely 20 years ago. And not much changes as Mrs.…