I hear this usage all the time, and read it hereabouts, and it never fails to bug me. Almost infallibly, Senator Clinton is referred to as “Hillary”; whereas in discussing, say, the financial bail-out, it’s always “Paulson” or “Secretary Paulson,” never “Henry.”
I do understand that her husband’s existence invests the surname in question with some ambiguity. But usually the context makes it clear, and if it doesn’t, one could simply say “Senator Clinton.”
I’d be surprised if you were the only Doper vexed by this, but I think it’s not terribly sexist or worth being vexed over. She was a public figure known (or differentiated) by her first name before she became the junior senator from New York, and as such, she gets called Hillary more often than she might otherwise be.
She campaigned as “Hillary.” Her campaign signs all said Hillary, as did all her gigantic banners and billboards. Her TV and radio advertisements all talked about how great Hillary is, and so forth.
So it appears, at the very least, that she doesn’t have a problem with it.
/owner of several “Hillary” stickers, buttons, etc.
Yeah, I don’t see the the problem here. She’s actively embraced it. If it bothered her or was foisted upon her by her enemies, I’d possibly agree. There is another famous pol by the same last name (granted not a senator) as well, so that’s another complicating factor.
For some reason, “I Like Ike” just flashed through my head.
It’s OK, Skald, I’m with you despite the facts. If you wouldn’t refer to a man who held the job by his first name, why would you refer to a woman who holds the job by her first name? It is possible to embrace something demeaning if you see it as inevitable, as you should know as a practicer of evil. It’s one of the ways us do-gooders have of taking all the fun out of things for you. To me, she will remain Senator Clinton, until I hear someone referring to that guy from Arizona as “John”.
But Senator McCain hasn’t actively worked to brand himself as “John”. Senator Clinton worked to make people think of her when they heard “Hillary” as evidenced by her campaign materials.
I obviously can’t take credit for Siege’s post, which is obviously much smarter than the OP, but I take him to mean that Senator Clinton’s branding herself as “Hillary” is less an embracing of the informatlity than a surrender to the patronizing usage.
Another vote here for how Senator Clinton’s own campaign/PR “branding” was around the usage “Hillary”, so it does not create the same unease it could. But yes, even with “Teddy”, there is usually at some point in the article SOME reference to the senior senator from Massachussetts as “Senator Kennedy”, so as long as there is some “establishing” reference and then she’s addressed as “Hillary” I’m unbothered.
I think it has more to do with disambiguating between Hillary and Bill than sexism. After all, Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are referred to as Senator Pelosi and Boxer, not Senator Nancy or Senator Barbara.
I would add that people probably referred to Ted Kennedy as Ted a lot more than they referred to JFK as John or Jack. For that matter, what about FDR? We refer to him as FDR, not Roosevelt because of Teddy Roosevelt. Most people prefer to refer to people with one word rather than two and Clinton was used to refer to Bill for a long time before HRC became a politician.
“Hillary” strikes me as a little over-familiar, and maybe a tad sexist. I much prefer “that lying smarmy two-faced hypocritical nepotistic cunt” myself.