Not the reckoning we wanted…

… but this is as close to understanding how the media is responsible for Clinton losing as we’re ever going to get.

It’s a post by Jill Filipovic at the NYTimes outlining how the media men with status used the “calculating, devious, untrustworthy and unlikeable” stereotypes about ambitious women against her to craft the narrative that dominated the campaign. We heard virtually nothing about her policies, which were remarkable in their depth, complexity and vision.

What these guys were essentially saying was she didn’t have any mitigating characteristics to their own strong implicit bias because she was unfuckable.

Sexual harassment at the hands of political journalists also pulls back the curtain on how too many of these men view women generally. The journalists in question are accused of a range of behaviors, some more serious than others, from drunken unsolicited kisses to, in Mr. Lauer’s case, sexual assault (in addition to exposing himself to a colleague and sending another a sex toy with a note detailing how he would like to use it on her). The theme running through nearly all of the complaints is a man in a position of power who saw the women around him not as competent colleagues or as even sovereign human beings, but as sexual objects he could either proposition to boost his ego or humiliate to feed a desire for domination.

It’s hard to look at these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton and not see glimmers of that same simmering disrespect and impulse to keep women in a subordinate place. When men turn some women into sexual objects, the women who are inside that box are one-dimensional, while those outside of it become disposable; the ones who refuse to be disposed of, who continue to insist on being seen and heard, are inconvenient and pitiable at best, deceitful shrews and crazy harpies at worst. That’s exactly how some commentary and news coverage treated Mrs. Clinton.

This has ripple effects for all women. Men are assumed to fail or succeed based on merit; they are mentored and supported by more senior men, and no one bats an eye. Young women, though, are often treated as suspect if more senior men take an interest in them (and too often, more senior men’s interests are suspect indeed, but it’s women’s reputations that suffer the stigma of being thought to sleep or flirt their way to the top rather than earning their perches).

When men see women as sex objects first and colleagues second, their actual talents, skills and smarts are easily overlooked. A boss who harasses the woman in the cubicle next to you may not be sexually coercing you or torpedoing your career, but his actions signal that he does not see women as competent co-workers entitled to a rewarding and effective workplace.

It’s the women who had to work with these assholes who are taking them out. The problem is the bench is deep and these guys mentored other guys who are just waiting to step into their shoes.

It puts the firing of Jill Abramson for Dean Baquet at the NYTimes in a whole new life. Because wasn’t it Jill who was accused of not being warm and fuzzy enough with the staff? Gosh, I wonder who complained about that? And who had the publisher’s ear and fed him distortions and rumors over lunch?

In any case, at least we are starting to put the blame where it belongs. It’s not enough to make up for the Trump catastrophe but I’ll take it.