The tears incident
I'll bet that Barack Obama cries sometimes, as does Bush, as does McCain. The only person I suspect does not cry is Mitt Romney though he probably has hired some very talented people to cry for him. -- Matt Schultz, Cedarburg, Wisconsin
Hillary Clinton's tears (Youtube) are being widely credited for her 2-point win in New Hampshire (CNN). Polls in the days just previous had favored Obama by 4 to 7 percentage points. Gloria Steinem, in a letter in the New York Times praises Clinton's "courage to break the no-tears rule". Fred Hallmon, in a letter to the Boston Metro, calls it "emotional blackmail" and quips that "there's no crying in politics" (a headline shared by dozens of bloggers over the past two days). Blogger Kelvin Wade points out a couple of examples of men in politics crying: presidential candidate Ed Muskie's tears in 1972 (which didn't work for him) and Bill Clinton's "trembling bitten lower lip" (which did).
Carrie Lane (2007) suggests two theories for why women may have evolved to cry more easily than men. The most commonly cited figure for differences between male and female crying frequency is Frey et al (1983), who found that women cried 5.3 times per month on average, nearly four times more often than men's average rate of 1.4 incidences monthly.
I should have written about this yesterday, I suppose, but I didn't even hear about it until yesterday afternoon, and I didn't take it that seriously -- until I saw that all the Op-Eds this morning were about it. I mean, I didn't see how this was news. Maybe it's because I can't recall a single time where I thought I was going to cry and had any control over stopping it. Either I cry or I don't. I am constantly surprised by the treatment of tears as a voluntary act.
Hillary Clinton's tears (Youtube) are being widely credited for her 2-point win in New Hampshire (CNN). Polls in the days just previous had favored Obama by 4 to 7 percentage points. Gloria Steinem, in a letter in the New York Times praises Clinton's "courage to break the no-tears rule". Fred Hallmon, in a letter to the Boston Metro, calls it "emotional blackmail" and quips that "there's no crying in politics" (a headline shared by dozens of bloggers over the past two days). Blogger Kelvin Wade points out a couple of examples of men in politics crying: presidential candidate Ed Muskie's tears in 1972 (which didn't work for him) and Bill Clinton's "trembling bitten lower lip" (which did).
Carrie Lane (2007) suggests two theories for why women may have evolved to cry more easily than men. The most commonly cited figure for differences between male and female crying frequency is Frey et al (1983), who found that women cried 5.3 times per month on average, nearly four times more often than men's average rate of 1.4 incidences monthly.
I should have written about this yesterday, I suppose, but I didn't even hear about it until yesterday afternoon, and I didn't take it that seriously -- until I saw that all the Op-Eds this morning were about it. I mean, I didn't see how this was news. Maybe it's because I can't recall a single time where I thought I was going to cry and had any control over stopping it. Either I cry or I don't. I am constantly surprised by the treatment of tears as a voluntary act.