Call her Clinton

I want to initiate a conversation here that I began at Separation of Spheres. All political preferences aside, I'm having a really hard time with the media's tendency to call Hillary Rodham Clinton by her first name. Our own Megs even does it in one of her recent posts. I'm sorry to use you as an example, Megs, but you have, unfortunately, illustrated it beautifully. People from Maureen Dowd to Chris Matthews to the other candidates have routinely referred to Clinton by her first name. Calling her "Hillary" rather than "Clinton" is sexist and disrespectful. No one ever (at least not as far as I can tell and I have been looking) refers to Barack Obama, John Edwards, John McCain, or Mike Huckabee by their first names--not even the people they are running against. And to reiterate the point I made here, no one is calling Senator Clinton by her first name to differentiate between her and former-President Clinton. In the appropriate context, I think the average American realizes what Clinton is running for president in 2008. I also don't buy the argument that the media and political pundits call her by her first name because they are familiar with her from her time as First Lady. Last time I checked no one was calling Laura Bush by her first name; she was being respectfully addressed as Mrs. Bush or as the First Lady. Calling Senator Clinton by her first name implicitly questions her ability to do the job and , her viability as a candidate, disrespects the work she has done for the country, and directly undermines her authority as a U.S. Senator. While I certainly don't think the average person consciously does any of these things, I do think that Clinton's opponents and the Republicans are conscious of what it means to refer to a woman in power by her first name. Further Calling her "Hillary" rather than "Clinton" is the equivalent of calling adult women girls while calling adult men men.