Ha Ha But Seriously Who Cares If You're a Woman

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton appeared on CBS' Face the Nation, and she talked about a whole bunch of stuff, including foreign policy and her email usage while Secretary of State, and the full transcript of her interview is available here. Toward the end of her interview with host John Dickerson came this exchange:

Dickerson: In the politics this year, it looks like everybody wants an outsider. [laughter] Now, that puts you in a fix. [crosstalk] Does it put you in a fix? Tell us why it doesn't put you in a fix.

Clinton: I cannot imagine anyone being more of an outsider than the first woman president. I mean, really, let's think about that.

Dickerson: Now, I agree, but your name—we have not...

Clinton: I mean, if you line up—if you— All these mothers and fathers bring me the place mats with all the presidents, and they bring their daughters, and they say, my daughter has a question for you. And the daughter says, how come there are no girls on this place mat?

Dickerson: I agree that that is a difference.

Clinton: I think that's a pretty big unconventional choice.

Dickerson: Yes. But you know what I'm asking.

Clinton: Well, I know you're asking, do we want people who have never been elected to anything, who have no political experience, who have never made any hard choices in the public arena? Well, voters are going to have to decide that.

That face all fucking day.

In this day and age, in the era of Citizens United, no one who runs for president and is taken seriously by one of the two major political parties and the media and the pollsters is truly an "outsider" in the way John Dickerson wants us to understand its usage. No one. If you have access to the people who fund presidential elections, you cannot be an considered an "outsider" in any kind of meaningful way.

Being a woman, however, does make one an outsider. Forty-four presidents, all of them men.

And the best Dickerson has in response to this crucial observation is "yes but." As if it doesn't matter.

It matters.