History of a Smear

[Content Note: Classism; racism; misogyny.]

I've got a new essay up at Blue Nation Review, detailing the history of classism that underwrites many of the narratives that are used against Hillary Clinton:

We can trace a direct line back to the media's aggressive contempt for the "low-class" Clintons—with their fast food palates and Bill's hillbilly brother—as the genesis of the narratives being wielded against Hillary today.

It is understandable that, two decades and millions of dollars hence, people don't imagine that the Clintons could ever have been victimized by classism. Especially because they were never the country bumpkins the media perceived and purported them to be in the first place.

But it is a particular cruelty that, in an election where her chief primary opponent is ostensibly concerned with class warfare, media narratives born of the most rank classism are now being used to try to discredit her.

And it is a breathtaking deflection of responsibility that the media which created those narratives to keep her out of the establishment now regurgitate them without a trace of irony as they report on how she is emblematic of the establishment.

That they've now been thoroughly divorced from their classist origins does not make them any truer. The concealment abets the appearance of their legitimacy.

Click through to read the whole thing.