Echidne uses the following Glenn Beck quote as an example of anti-Hillary misogyny.
From the March 15 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program:
BECK: I don’t want to sound like the old ball-and-chain guy, but Hillary Clinton cannot be elected president because — am I wrong in feeling, am I the only one in America that feels this way? — that there’s something about her vocal range. There’s something about her voice that just drives me — it’s not what she says, it’s how she says it. She is like the stereotypical — excuse the expression, but this is the way to — she’s the stereotypical bitch, you know what I mean? She’s that stereotypical, nagging, [unintelligible], you know what I mean? And she doesn’t have to be saying — she could be saying happy things, but after four years, don’t you think every man in America will go insane? Is it just me? I mean, I know this is horrible to say, but I mean it not — I would say this if she were Condi Rice and she sounded like that. Condi Rice doesn’t have that grate to her voice. You know what I need to do? I need to talk to a vocal expert, because there is a range in women’s voices that experts say is just the chalk, I mean, the fingernails on the blackboard. And I don’t know if she’s using that range or what it is, but I’ve heard her in speeches where I can’t take it.
I actually feel the same way about Hillary’s voice. And it’s not misogyny to point out that Hillary’s speech/rally voice sounds way too much like my mother’s when I haven’t cleaned my room or shoveled the snow. It’s a nagging tone that grates on me in a very disturbing, psychic, probably even Freudian way. Once I hear that voice I will do almost anything to make it stop. And it really is her vocal range, too, because I can’t think of anyone else except Roseanne Barr that has the same effect on me. It has nothing to do with what Hillary or Roseanne are saying, if they say it loud enough I am going to run for cover.
This isn’t misogyny, this is my own psychological problem that I appear to share with the truly awful Glenn Beck. I’ve talked to some men that feel the same way and others that don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t think this is something that makes Hillary Clinton unelectable. I don’t think it makes her a ‘stereotypical bitch’. I don’t think observing this is a substitute for debating her policy positions and qualifications for the job. And on the scale of things that annoy me, the fact that Glenn Beck has a platform on CNN to spew his hatred ranks much higher than my idiosyncratic distaste for Hillary Clinton’s voice.
Also, in the interest of gender equality, I think Dennis Kucinich has the most annoying voice in politics.