Time.com's Cox latest to attack Sen. Clinton on her voice

Written by Sarah Pavlus

Published

While live-blogging a health care forum featuring Democratic presidential candidates on March 24, Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox wrote in a post on Time.com's political weblog, Swampland, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) was “eerily LOUD” and summarized Clinton's position as: “YOU CAN TELL I CARE ABOUT HEALTH CARE BECAUSE I AM SHOUTING ALL THE TIME.”

From Cox's March 24 post on Swampland:

Shorter Hillary: YOU CAN TELL I CARE ABOUT HEALTH CARE BECAUSE I AM SHOUTING ALL THE TIME.

She is in favor of universal health care (now) and thinks it could take as little as ... eight years to get there. She did this weird thing where she walked around during the question time rather than sit and talk like a normal person. (Though now Kucinich is doing it, too. Uhm...) Also, apparently people are “drowning in paper,” which sounds unpleasant.

She's more concrete than Obama but eerily LOUD.

Media Matters for America has documented several previous examples of media figures attacking Clinton for the tone and volume of her voice:

  • In her March 7 column about Clinton's speech in Selma, Alabama, Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, wrote that “Clinton's voice sends mannequins into a fetal curl.” Parker continued: “It may not be Hillary's fault that her voice sounds like it was fashioned from metal, but it is her fault that she sounds like a car alarm when she's handed a microphone. It is her fault that she panders -- badly -- to her audiences.” As Media Matters noted, Parker also wrote that Clinton “effectively mocked her audience” during that March 4 speech and showed “disrespect for the people gathered” when “she hijacked” Rev. James Cleveland's hymn “I don't feel noways tired.” In fact, as footage from the speech shows, the crowd cheered Clinton as she recited the hymn and gave her a standing ovation when she concluded her speech.
  • On February 2, the National Journal's Hotline On Call posted capsule reviews of various Democratic presidential candidates' speeches at the February 2 Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting and noted, in its review of Clinton, under the category “Discordant note,” that Clinton's "[v]oice climbed into a yell five times" during her speech. On Call did not mention any other candidates' yelling.
  • Discussing the victory speeches of Clinton and then-House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) during MSNBC's special election coverage on November 7, 2006, co-anchor Chris Matthews told Republican pollster Frank Luntz that Clinton gave a “barn-burner speech, which is harder to give for a woman; it can grate on some men when they listen to it -- fingernails on a blackboard.”
  • On the August 10, 2006, edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, radio host Roe Conn said of Clinton: “Is it a surprise to you that [former President] Bill [Clinton] was running out on her all the time?” While host Glenn Beck responded with, “that's not necessary,” Conn nevertheless went on to mock Sen. Clinton's voice, stating, “See, there's the thing about that sound -- there's sort of that shrill kind of thing,” adding, “I don't think that America is ready for six or eight months of that on the campaign trail. ... [S]he's constantly yelling at us like we're 4-year-olds.”
  • On the February 10, 2006, edition of MSNBC's Hardball, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asserted that “there is a shrillness in Hillary that comes out on TV whenever she gets excited about something.” Referring to a speech Clinton gave “a year ago,” Scarborough added: "[E]very time her voice goes up, she gets very shrill, very un-Clinton-like, if you're talking about Bill Clinton."