She was constantly harassed by Trump supporters
A reporter who has the bad taste to be a woman reports on what it was like to cover Trump’s campaign while female.
During his campaign events, Trump often called out the news media, but he delighted in singling out Tur, publicly deriding her as “little Katy” and a “third-rate reporter.” Part of the animosity was in response to Tur’s (accurate) reporting about his behavior at rallies, which prompted him to threaten a boycott of NBC News and to demand an apology. (They settled things over the phone, although Tur is adamant that she did not apologize.) On one occasion, Trump went so far as to kiss her — an unwelcome and uninvited act — just before he appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Before I know what’s happening, his hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek,” Tur writes. “My eyes widen. My body freezes. My heart stops.” Her immediate reaction is telling. “F—. I hope the cameras didn’t see that. My bosses are never going to take me seriously.”
You can grab them by the pussy. You can grab them by the shoulders and plant one. You can do whatever you want to.
Trump chastises Tur at the end of a July 2015 interview, telling her, “You’ll never be president!” (“Neither will you,” she thinks to herself.) It’s an odd line of attack — Tur is not the one running, after all — but it’s meant to undercut her confidence. “I’m not going to let this guy get into my head,” she tells herself when he mocks her at a rally. “Unbelievable” shifts between a chronological timeline of the race and a detailed breakdown of Election Day, and along the way Tur provides an italicized inner monologue of what she was really thinking.
“Can I say penis on TV?” she deliberates after Trump defends his girth during a GOP primary debate. “What about manhood? Mini-Trump?” She bucks herself up after one of his public attacks: “Shake it off. It’s worse if they think he scares you. Just smile.” And after she realizes that Trump has indeed won the presidency, Tur wonders: “Does anyone really believe he’ll respect term limits?”
This last point is less a constitutional concern than a personal one; by this time Tur was exhausted with the race, with Trump, with concerns about her personal safety — she was constantly harassed by Trump supporters, and after a rally in which the candidate called out her name, Secret Service agents escorted her to her car — and with the uncertainty of what would come next for her career.
Notice the way the fear and the harassment and the personal targeting by Trump are just tucked in there, as if they were a side issue.
Tur invariably looks sharp and composed on television, and the author reveals the effort behind it all. “Being a woman is a pain in the ass,” she explains. You have to look ‘good.’ Your hair needs to be neat — not just combed through, but ‘done.’ Blow-dried, ironed, curled, sprayed. Your face needs to be enhanced. Foundation, powder, eye shadow, mascara, lipstick, blush, contour. Your clothes have to look sharp, too. And you can never wear the same thing twice — at least not in the same week. A guy can throw on the same suit every single day and no one would notice.”
It’s impossible to watch tv news without noticing that. It drives me crazy. All the women are foofed up like poodles; only the men are allowed to look as if they’re working as opposed to modeling. Maddow is the only woman I know of who is allowed to look as if she’s working as opposed to modeling. This is part of the picture too; guys like Trump feel free to bully women like Tur partly because of this differential treatment. Men are on the job, women are there to look pretty – which are ya gonna bully?
I thought Katy Tur did an excellent job of covering the Trump circus during the campaign. She was smart and insightful, and neither downplayed Trump’s lunacy nor pumped it up for publicity.
Even without reading her book, I got the impression that the stress and harassment really took a lot out of her, so while I’m disappointed that I haven’t seen her doing much front-line politics reporting recently, I can completely understand why.
But I imagine that’s because we also have a perception of LGBTQ that fits with the idea of women being “masculine” – so Maddow can get away with it. She always looks cool, calm, and composed, but never looks like a supermodel – all trussed and tressed. But she too fits with the image – a “non-feminine” woman who can comfort the men that they can tell the difference between women who are straight and women who are not – thus, the straight women are fair game. It’s all a code, and we all have the decoder ring. Our minds immediately slot people into that particular pigeonhole that their appearance tells us they should be in.
Slightly OT, but not sure if you have seen this Australian TV host who wore the same suit every day for a year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlojFlsKfSU
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/karl-stefanovics-sexism-experiment-today-presenter-wears-same-suit-for-a-year-20141115-11ncdz.html
Reinforces the point about “women being puffed up poodles”.
Another excerpt from Tur’s book here
No, Roj Blake, I didn’t say women are puffed up poodles. You put quotation marks on something I didn’t say. I said “the women are foofed up like poodles” – meaning, by the makeup department and the hair dept and the wardrobe dept and especially by the producers. They’re foofed up by others because that’s The Rule for women. I’m not saying women are poodles or puffed up like poodles; I’m saying the opposite: the fuffing up is imposed from the outside.
iknklast @ 2 – well sure, and that’s what I meant – Maddow can escape being foofed up but she’s the only one who can (as far as I know).
Mind you, her ability to escape may have more to do with her success than with the idea that only straight women have to be foofed.
But come to think of it, if so…wouldn’t you think it would start to occur to producers that maybe women don’t have to be foofed up after all?
Roj, I watched that segment. I discussed it with a young male friend of mine. And he, this liberal man who considers himself on board with feminism, had to mansplain me by explaining how in spite of the “poofing” of women, men actually have it worse because they have less freedom. Women, he explained, can choose a wide variety of interesting outfits, while men must wear a specific type and color of suit and shirt.
By the time I gave up, I wanted to throw something at this usually decent human being. Doesn’t he realize that men having to wear that type of outfit goes to precisely what we’re talking about? It differentiates them from women, shows that they are “men” and not “girls”. They aren’t bothered by all that silly frivolous empty headed fashion nonsense.
In addition, he thinks that is getting better. I tried to explain that we seem to be in a slide right now, but he’s convinced that everything is copacetic. Why? Because girls in his high school don’t have to wear knee length skirts anymore. Jesus Christ on a stick! My high school, which he states is probably not equally regressive because it isn’t here in Nebraska (It is in Oklahoma!!!!!), went to a very progressive dress code around 1977. They then began to back up to a much more regressive dress code for both males and females, using the excuse that it was to “reduce gang violence”, which was almost non-existent in this school system.
I have been banging my head against the desk for the past hour.
I hate mansplaining. Especially from a young man who is explaining to an older woman what it was like to be a young woman during the period before he was born and during which she was a fully cognizant teen who didn’t have brain damage and thus was able to comprehend what was happening around her.
Oh gawd. All the sympathy.
iknklast, you’re doing frustration all wrong. I recommend banging your friend’s head repeatedly against the desk until he gets it.
You know, AoS, that might keep me fully cognizant and without brain damage. I hadn’t thought of that. ;-)
AoS, Iknklast – clearly a religious war coming. I know deeply religious people who scoff at Usher and the Fundies that swallow that drivel. I’m sure once the atheists have been put to the sword attention will be turned on the heretics.