[inaudible conversations] thank you, everybody. Thank you for coming. First a round of applause so excited to be hosting susan bordo and Katha Pollitt, and were also so luck to have Katha Pollitt here in conversation. [applause] so, welcome to become culture on columbus. And just a quick notice also, see a couple of cameras here. Were recording for booktv on cspan 2 so after the formal conversation well take questions but wait for me to find you with me microphone so they can hear you as well. A quick show of handed if it is your first time to book culture of columbus . Welcome. 20 years ago, this space was the endicott book septemberers but is closed along with men a wonderful become stores about we just celebrated two years here at 450 columbus. [applause] and were looking forward to staying here for many more. One small thing you to help is pick up a copy of two or three or four of the become tonight so we can continue to be here and host great speakers and talk about important topics. I know i was so excited that book culture and column because was able to host this talk and youre in for a wonderful treat. Again, special thanks to melva for being a great partner and bringing us great authors bringing great authors to print. So then the last susan bore deis a media christianic, cultural historian and feminist scholar. She was a book nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the creation of ann bolin and buy destruction of Hillary Clinton out now. Joining her in conversation is Katha Pollitt, has won many prizes, including the National Book critic circle award for her collection of poetry and last point of procedure, after the talk, if you could give us just a couple of minutes to set up. Well have the authors on the other side of the register where we have copies book. After the talk, everybody wants to congratulate so give us a couple minutes to get sit up. Without any further adieu, turn it over to susan and katha. Thank you. [applause] thank you for having us. I thought id start by saying a couple of words about what the book and is what it isnt and then do a very brief reading, which actually was inspired by something that i heard as we drove to washington yesterday. The book first of all is not an insider look at the campaign, which as most of you know, there has been recent lay book published that is such an insider look. I dont know the clintons. I dont in the people that worked in their campaign. Have no insider knowledge. What i come to this book as is a voter, a viewer, purveyor of popular culture, who a had has the great privilege by virtue of the fact i have a job that allows me to im a teacher and writer to pay a certain kind of attention to what was going on. That most people cant. Most people who have ninetofive jobs, get up in morning and dependent on the Headline News in the morning to tell them what is going on go to work, come back, hear the 5 00 news. So what theyre getting is whatever the media has decided to headline and present as the Important News of the day. Very often that is fragmented, its misleading, its not necessarily because the media are im not a trump. Dont think the media are an opposition party. Evil people. And at their best we rely on them enormously to do really good journalistic work for us. But its a very hard job keeping up, especially on these rolling news channels which go on for 24 hours. Sorting things out, fact checking. All comes at them very fast and theyve rely more and more on narrative rather than on the investigation of events and people. So often the last one to a narrative and that becomes the guiding thread of what they announce. And this happened over and over again with Hillary Clinton. The book is also not an examination of her policies. I dont really look at that. It is not too different from the become that i wrote before this, which was called the creation of ann bolin and seems like thats a stretch in centuries, but the books are very similar in that they both really are studies of representation and misrepresentation, and the way in which women with their faults and their virtues, have gotten translated, reproduced, mug mythologized in certain ways that become caricatures. My contention is that a lot of people who voted against hillary were voting actually for such a character, a caricature. The big difference, of course, is that were talking not about 500 years but were talking about three decades, and in particular, the last election cycle. In which this happened in a very, very come pressed way. Compressed way. What im going to read from the become also does not have as some recent books about hill havedoesnt but the blame on any one factor for the loss. It tries to do a multidimensional analysis that looks at number of thing that contributed to what happened. Do see certain things as effective but currently are not really being given enough credence bit the media. I see comeys announcement 11 dibefore the election as very, very important, especially in the context of the incredible attention the emails were given over the course of the election. Hillary would try to describe her policies and all your heard was, email, email, email from the press. So that when the were revived the last moment as a point at which trump was actually in quite deep trouble, because the access hollywood tapes just came out and Michelle Obama had given her stirring speech about how it had shaken her to the core and women had come forward with stories of his sexual abuse. His numbers were plummeting, and then what do you know . Comeys announcement, which really we know did turn things around. There are charts and graphed that show that. I mention that because as we were it has a lot to do with what im going to read here. As we where are driving here we were listening to shattered. I have not read the whole book and wont provide a review or commentary but what struck me in the part we heard was the fact that the authors accepted the narrative that hillary lied about her emails. They simply presented it as, yes, she lied about her email, and her fatal mistake at least in the part i was reading is that the didnt apologize enough. Nowow, i thought i was actually shocked because even though i know that a number of myths have persisted, i thought that one probably had been disspelled at this point, but actually it hasnt. Actually the numbers of people who believe that she lied, and indeed the number of people that believe she should be in jail because of this, is still rather astoundingly large. So what i want to read from then we can take the conversation any direction you want. What i want to read from is a section about the emails because, frankly, when i first brought the become out i thought it would be the big scoop of the book because in this chapter i believe that i definitively approve that hillary did not lie but that she didnt even behave carelessly. I dont know why it hasnt been pick up as a big scoop. Maybe because it puts the blame on the mainstream media. Im not sure. But im just going to read you a little bit from it. Heres a shocker. Clinton did not lie about the damned emails. Nor did she treat classified material in an extremely careless manner. The email scandal, like many previous investigations into the clintons, was a whole lot of nothing blown to Nuclear Proportions by the g. O. P. And helpfully served up in an endless stream of tasty poisonous portions by the mainstream media. For week we snacked on high calorie accusations and i insinuations including some delivered permanently by vladimir putin, via wiki licks and then just as wikileakss and then as we appeared to be stuffed to brim and the attention turned though trumpish behavior that has shaken Michelle Obama and other women to her core we are were presented with a flaming dessert courtesy of james comey. The next couple of sections which i wont treat you describe how the email scandal got constructed by the press. Part one is called the scandal. Its born. Part two is called, clinton becomes a criminal, courtesy of the new york times. Part three is called, clinton is vindicated but no one knows it some may have on she Rachel Maddow show after the state department produced their report on how the email systems were handled and she came out with this huge stack of paper which represented how theyre supposed to keep and classify their emails, just a completely archaic, disshelved, cumbersome system. Which led some people to conclude that theres really what is going on here is just a mess of a system. Nothing to do with Hillary Clinton at all. And then part four is comeys abuse of power, act one. Ill summarize a tiny bit and then read a page or two. Think you all remember the james comey the first james comey announcement. Dont have to real the whole in which the delivered what many people thought was a mixed verdict. He cleared her of all criminal charges, but he went on to accuse her of being extremely careless with her emails, and in fact he spent so much time talk about how careless she was was number of people came away, having seen that television presentation, thinking that it was a mixed verdict are right . She was sort of guilty. What republicans were not happy and democrats were unhappy. The republicans hauled james comey into a hearing and its at that hearing that i was lucky enough for watch it from morning to night, and i it was at that hearing that comey actually admitted that not only had clinton nod lied but that she had not behaved carelessly at all but in an entirely reasonable manner, and yet this didnt make the headlines and i want to read a bit of this to you. Because its a kind of illustration, a very decisive one, that in miniillustration of what went on all the time. On july , 2016, House Republican unhappy with comeys failure to indict clinton had asked him to answer questions from them to which he agreed. Grilling him they got little more than a slight elaboration of the initial extremely careless assessment but when democrats took over the questions thinks got rockier for comby. First, a Alevi Cummings pressed comey to that only three of the 110 emails in question had any kind of markings on them at all which would have aced the recipient to their classified status. Those three, moreover, as cummings got comey to admit, were mismarked, as it later turn out, only entirely with a little tiny c in the body of the email. Then congressman Matt Cartwright who i think of as the money shot, right, this particular change formed comey to admit the emails with the internal cs were not properly marked according to the state department manual, and that his previous comments that comey had made, that any reasonable person would have known the emails were classified was imimapplause able if not an out and out falsehood. To judge an unheaded email a classified was a starred that was unreasonable to apply. It would be a reasonable inference that the the documents missing the header were not classified. Holding the manual in his hand cartwright got to the point and here i just read from the transcript cartwright you were asked about markings on a few documents. I have the manual here, Marking National classified security information. And i dont think you were given a full chance to talk about this three document with the little cs on them. Were the proper live documented . Were they proper my marked according to the manual . James comey no. Cartwright according to the manual dish ask nance unanimous consent to enter this into the record. Chairman so ordinary. According to the manual if youre going to classify something there has to be a header on the document. Right . Comey correct. Cartwright was there head ago this three documents with the little c in the text someplace . Comey no. There were three emails, the c was in the body in text but no header on the email or in the text. Cartwright so, if president excuse me if secretary clinton really were an expert about what is classified and what is not classified and were following the manual, the absence of a header would tell her immediate he the three documents were not classified. Am i correct in that . Comey speaking in a very lawyerly way that would be a reasonable inference. Comeys admission exen rated hillary not only from any carelessness or negligence but also from the charge of lying about not sending of receiving classified emails. It be ryan for her to conclude that the emails were not classified, which is what he had been saying for months elm res mad been badgering her and badgering her and badgering her and every time she said this they accused her of hiding something. Surely at this point, comey ought to have held a fullblown press conference, apologizings for his inaccurate assessment of clintons handling of classified material. Instead he was silent while the media incessantly hammered away about lies. It was a recklessly dissive named narrative with no basis in fact, yet did his mischaracterizize was disclosed he offered know reextraction of his previous commentary which was let than political dirty work. Thats i mean nbc, cnn and fox. He is exen rating the exchanges never their importance was never turned into break news or a headline story. Na start, the media dug its heels in, even further, on belying clinton issues. Im going to skip a bunch because i want to get to interchange here but i want to finish the end of the chapter. Having gone through a couple of example houston the media doug its heels in, and what impression that left with viewer, i think say consider, too that every comeys exen racing, polling showed that 56 of americans believed clinton had indeed broken the law by relying on a personal email address, with another 36 piling on to say the episode showed bad judgment, albeit not criminality. Those numbers are gastly, considering as demonstrated in the chap she has in fact broken no law order behaved carelessly but theyre unsurprising given the overwhelming negative attention that network and cable news had paid to clintons emails, more air time, as matthew would report, than to all policy issues combined. During the entire general election campaign, from june 7th to november 8th, clinton only led over trump in quantity of Media Coverage four times. Once when she had pneumonia, once during the dnc, and the other two were during and right after james comeys announcement. Thus, a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the u. S. President ial election. And of course came back to become what i think was a fatal blow. Creating a misleading impression of clintons character and competence and vastly overshadowing her policy comp peps and policy. It gave a false impression of what a club continue president si would bike. With san at the and the g. O. P. Obsession with temperature emails, both of which were lavishly covered by the meet ya the Clinton Campaign as defined be negative sound bites. Wasnt the case he had no message which we now hear over and over, she was never given a space to deliver it as the email scandal swamped the media. [applause] well to get the full story, its all in the book and its extremely fascinating. I want to move on from the email. What dibernie say . Enough about the damned emails. And i your book is quite an indictment of the media chug what we think as the centrist, objective or liberal media, msnbc, the new york times, cnn, Washington Post and you say they basically created a portrait of hillary as ununtrustyworth request, differ honest, hautey and unlikeable and then they reported on people saying she was untrustworthy and you show that impression went from being an impression to being a piece of news once in the to polls and then you can ask about it. And i just remember at one point during various opinions during the campaign, ask hillly why do people dislike you so much . When did you start beating your wife. It is like that. Id like to know what you think as a media critic and a brilliant philosopher, why do you think the media took this approach . Its a great question. I think it requires sort of multifaceted answer. Okay. Part one is the long history of the way the media, inspired by the g. O. P. I think that the sequence of transmission here is now were going back to bill clinton and bill clintons presidency and the sense of the g. O. P. Had that the world which was rightfully there is was being taken over by a bunch of liberal hippies, and one of whom was a radical feminist, right . And there began at that time what hillary later described as a vast right wing conspiracy, we thought it was paranoid at the time. Turned out to be pretty damn true. The g. O. P. Got into the habit of ferreting out whatever they could that could be turned into a suspicious bit of behavior, potential scandal on the part of bill clinton at that point, mostly, and treating it like red meat to the press, the rightwing press and also the liberal press. So theres a tradition, media tradition and jonathan allen, wrote a wonderful piece called the five rules for covering the clintons or Something Like that. Basically the rules are, suspect everything, never let them explain. I cant remember what all five were but very good piece. We begin there. And with the couple potholes that hillary herself fell into, the remark that some of you might remember in which clinton was being questioned about here career choices and she said i suppose could i have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas instead i began i chose to follow my career. Media took that piece, right, put it out there and neglected to also include what she said after that, which is, for my entire career so far and in the future i will always work for women being able to have the choice of one or the other or both. Media didnt report that. She got into terrible trouble. For saying that. Housewives across the country were she is cite sizing us, she hateses us, the disdains our choices. She didnt disdain their choices when you describe being stay at home mother as baking cookies and having teas, you have kind of expressed it in a way that doesnt show that you think this is a valuable way to spend your life. I think the thing that people didnt get was she was actually talking about bag governors wife and having those official functions itch dont know that governors wives bake cookies but she did dig that hole for herself but she should have said, i want to be a lawyer. She wanted to be both. She was both. She was mom. And she was a lawyer. Right. She always had trouble in arkansas which was not, i think, ready for a whom who kept her own name. She had to take it bills name to hip him get reelected and her hair. She just wasnt there took her glasses off, makeup on, straightened her heir. Leads me to another question. Let me finish. I wont go on. Realize im giving a whole narrative and ill cut it short. I think that over time she has become very cautious with the press. And i think that her caution with the press has annoyed them no end. She doesnt go she doesnt speak as spontaneously as she once did because she got into trouble. She has gotten used to having her long she tends to long, complicated explanations when given the chance, and she is consistently had them chopped up and put out there in inflammatory sound bites so she has become much less available to them and theyve been annoyed as hell at her, and they have come right out and said that. You followed thrill this from the primary which is constant talk about hillary wont do press conferences, what is she hiding. What is she hiding i attached to that. I think that is a big piece of it. Ill leave the i had the thought that if she had been able to just drinker into have barbecues with the press, like john mccain was always buttering up the press and it pate paid off because he was able to do that. Thats much harder for a woman to do but i think that this brings me to another question i have which is do you think in some way hillary was transitional figure because she tartedded as a radical feminist by the standards of the 70s which meant you had a job and wrote aurals for the law review and things like that. But what we have seen now looks more like a slightly starchy and conventional worm who woman o is much less radical than your norm, standard issue, urban democratic woman. We talk about the generation gap all the time and there has never been any problem. But i think a number of things happened, first of all, about that book is that it did not give credit to the thousands of supporters of Bernie Sanders that once she got the nomination did not want to support her. I think at the time there was so much hate coming that it occupied my consciousness. But there is such a large contingent of bernie supporters that the choice with Hillary Clinton may not have been the first race and trump was no contest. They saw them as two evils and she was the lesser of two evils. But i think that what happens with this book is interesting because the piece that was published in the guardian it was from the bernie chapter there is only one chapter in the book that is about bernie. So the headline was a distraction for Hillary Clinton which right away it makes it seems that argument is not my argument. I have some beef with the bernie but when it comes to the millenials that they understood that and i talked to them all the time. That would lead them not to support Hillary Clinton . That is a good question and for some people that was grounded in policy differences however it is very difficult to sort out what were the wellrounded policy differences . So there are a number of issues but what happens to the problems that theyre not progressive and every way but they were turned into a hallmark of the establishment issue was not a true progressive. She was ever and. A lot of people responded to the branding. Especially if you were young and on the left. Budget hillary has but her hair is rarely a mess it is neat and tidy ever seen her in a pair of jeans . I dont think so. But she is so composed and contained. And those things translate so to talk of those end to something so when there is plenty of times it wanted to mess up her hair. Or change her outfits for her. That was playful on my part. So a lot of the book where you talk about so it gives just wonderful to find out everything about them. That both levies ambitious women were married to very powerful men even with those accusations to just being a witch with a broomstick. And to have a very ancient what does that tell us about the process of the next woman . Even christiandom of france said she had no interest in running is the problem being a woman . So a lot of the women we have seen around the world is a conservative tuesday to take away the mail privileges so when iniki navy common to that . That is a good question we have come to these conclusions but it seems that our country that the countrys are more comfortable with powerful women. To have that legacy of reverence that just wont let go. One of the things you learn from hillary and other women that there is the crazy tight rope walk that if you are too feminine but on either hand if youre seen as too powerful were too masculine to defy those gender roles. Manchin Elizabeth Warren. When she ran for the senate of massachusetts but i dont like her voice like pocahontas. Dont summon refer to her as that . But that is certainly the case of hillarys carrier so when she was helping the survivors of 9 11 people lung telerate. Are then to go beyond the rightful place. And then with anybody. To see like maybe she has that sweet spot. A think there are problems of her voice also. [laughter] the voice will always be a problem. Will be the live long enough . This gives us some time. And i probably didnt communicate as effectively where that would come from but it would be a much under generation if they dont have that stereotypical advantage but that is just my guess. So we should take your vitamins. Water, a Blood Pressure medication. There was a moment during the debate i held my read from that moment to have that policy position some people in the audience began teaching and that and then to say i am not going on. There was a sense of frustration there is anything in the social contract and things like that kept happening over and over. Young people from 12 or older say we have a choice of the to flaunt candidates so how could they be on the same stage together . So with this aspect it is very hard to see what she did or did not do how incredible the actions in behaviors work. Is a really good question and in terms of what he did i am not sure what she could have done to avoid the trap were talking about. We all lot about trump what allows him to get away with so much . That is not a definitive answer but there is the place they think archetype because it erases the real person but there is falafel of con man professor harold hill from the music man, if you want to call a the collective cultural consciousness, and there is a male figure who will just lie and steal and let them get away with it and pareve of the feeling of affection for trump predates the election. He was already a famous figure coming into your living room and people are charming to by the fact of his sentences people feel this is land mobile and charming they can forgive him anything. And i think that is part of what is going on. That he falls into the niche because that suggest that what we will call him to task for. But dont stop there. [laughter] they give for writing the book i want to make a couple of comments that i will ask a question but first i want to say that the emphasis on femininity and capitalism that is what that is all about. Second, i want to say the burden of the times i agree completely i only wished i looked and looked for hillary and she was walking amongst the families i can find it but also another point is the birdie supporters honestly i ama policy wonk and International Airline pilot and i see policies overseas but there bernie supporters have no idea. For instance what they consider fracking was remarkably indepth transitional issue for cleaner energy in the countrys you could not even breathe the air or find the runway. The other thing is, obviously the narrative is still out there with the emails but still being perpetrated by men like frank and even did from the your time see shittah been removed from his position as chief editor he was largely behind the emphasis on her email. Do you have the opportunity to do other speaking engagements . From newark new jersey by the way. Like to suggest a friend to get in touch with she is extremely male love preview that places like that i hope you had the opportunity to go there tremendous book. You started to touched on this you talked about a moment of extreme popularity but as secretary of state but as a millennial the number one thing i kept hearing was a windfall for Elizabeth Warren but not Hillary Clinton. There was a great article that k mount a year ago it is easy to like a woman hypothetically you would vote for her but so looking into the future i hope it is someone of a little older than me to be the first female president. So is there a way over the hump to get that hypothetical powerful woman to get that power . [laughter] i am very bad at foreseeing what is possible in what is not possible and i now it is even harder than ever before. We are off the rails it is just hard to know. Wonderful questions like is impossible . I dont know like it would have to start happening to figure out whether this person whether or not they would make over the hump. I dont see it Elizabeth Warren would be able to do it. Teefour barack obama ran for president i dont think too many people said america is ready for a black president. Braddish young as he was in really didnt have any parcel of experience. But he won because it was a disastrous situation people voted for him that would not have been called in times. So we tend to forget of what is happening at that moment so people said it is a change here they wanted change and they meant that in a good way but they wanted donald trump but remember she won the popular vote so we dont know what the world will be like in three years and nine months i hope the time goes fast and one reporter their rights about helleri a lot in the York Magazine and she said if america is ready for a woman president and sexism was not a big piece of for a downfall, how come she is the only woman that got that far . That is a good way to say but she did get that far so i have to believe that when we sort this out and called down a little bit then it is more possible to imagine a woman of substance that was before. One of the things that struck me about misogyny is it manifested itself and not talky about the superficial i hate her voice nonsense but her style of governing was the consensus that she cannot make up her mind she need a committee it would not be with the fire and brimstone and i think she was hurt in ways that cannot be measured and i think that will be a problem for whoever comes next the tisch she was really rejected for that. Absolutely i think as wrote a piece about hillary style versus the style of bernie overtrumping or trough donald trump with a large mass gathering to be speaking in short and declarative and forceful, i dont care what you call it but to get to people with each other and talk to them in small groups were very appreciative of that we are glad we have somebody to do that work. But what we expect from a president . It did not in talks about how that style did not translate the other piece is how it is harder in america for a woman to become president and in other countries. I did think it is true but the commander in chief is bristling with weapons and military might and that is a completely masculine role. But the interesting thing with hillary is she got along well with the generals. But she fell between the two it was a woman as the more conservative end of the party says she will be seen as transitional. I think one of the things im starting to be more hopeful about bed did not work in this country but it has in others but consumerism and capitalism would help but they think the country is so religious with judeochristian and women cannot be the head of the household. A lot of women voted for trump a lot are evangelical women who are not the head of anything and until the get the religiosity not that religion is bad that it has been a little too dominant in our culture with the influence of women and mothers. I think as we get away from that i think were going to see a little more acceptance of women in power. Just like europe, which is hutce more secular than we are, and its not a big deal. Canada, not a big deal. Na we are so puritanical in our ways x i think this we get over that, its going to be tough for any woman to rise above that noncaretaker role. I think that is an important piece of it, but theres some other pieces that i dont even know how to begin to figure out. But i do know that in talking, for instance, when i was researching the ann bo lin ann boleyn book, the way their households were structured as they were growing up, there was much more of a, how should i put it, a mom. Im not saying that the country had gone beyond sexism. But mom was allowed to be much more powerful. F but i think theres a kind of greater comfort with strong women in cultures wherever they are that have the how mom role. Even though its the how many, its a different kind of mom when you think back to the 50 kansas the whole legacy of father knows best and the aron and the high apron and the heels and the pearls, thats a particular version of mom that isnt shared by all cultures. People grow up. We have a different comfort level, i think, which is not to say that the religion part doesnt matter. Well, from your mouth to gods ears. What can i tell you . [laughter] if shes listening. G. If shes listening. [laughter] so thanks, everybody. Thanks, susan, for this wonderful book. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Please give he about a minute, minute and a half to get set upa but again, thank you everyone, and congratulations to susan. Thank you. Yea. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]