(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Right-Wing Media Uses the 'Hysterical Woman' Trope to Try and Delegitimize Biden Climate Advisor [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-07 Last week, within three days of each other, right-wing media outlets ran three remarkably similar hit pieces attacking Dr. Kim Cobb, a climate scientist who was appointed to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. In reality, no one is better suited than Dr. Cobb to advise President Biden on climate risks. She is an award-winning scientist , a Yale graduate, the author of nearly one hundred scientific publications, and a professor and director at Brown University. By every metric, she's a great choice for, as more honest coverage puts it, " evaluating America's spy programs ." According to the disinformation machine, however, Dr. Cobb is unfit for her new position because she experiences human emotions and was rightly worried that Donald Trump's presidency would be bad for the climate. In 2019, Dr. Cobb told Mother Jones that the 2016 election of the climate change-denying , racist , fascist , sexist , and transphobic nightmare Donald Trump caused her to experience a weeks-long bout of depression. “My most resounding thought was, how could my country do this?" Dr. Cobb recounted, “I had to face the fact that there was a veritable tidal wave of people who don’t care about climate change and who put personal interest above the body of scientific information that I had contributed to.” Dr. Cobb was one of many climate scientists who spoke up about the huge mental health toll of being a scientist in Trump’s anti - science America, and like many others, she didn’t let the devastating election stop her from defending climate science. Just one “month after being crushed by post-election depression in 2016,” Dr. Cobb was on her feet, “speaking at a Stand Up for Science rally, which protested Trump’s dismissal of climate change as a global threat.” As it turns out, Dr. Cobb certainly wasn’t wrong to be worried about what a Trump presidency would mean for the climate! Right-wing outlets are now trying to hold Dr. Cobb’s Mother Jones interview against her, playing into the misogynistic “ hysterical woman” trope to argue that Dr. Cobb is unfit for her new role. Collin Anderson at The Washington Free Beacon was the first out of the gate on February 1 , with a piece condescendingly claiming that “it's unclear whether Cobb will be able to stomach… sensitive and unsettling information” merely because she was distressed about Trump's election. Anderson also desperately tried to discredit Dr. Cobb by insinuating that she has problematic ties to Russia and China. Over at Townhall , Sarah Arnold followed suit the very next day, botching Anderson’s insults: “It’s unclear whether Cobb will have the strength to deal with such sensitive topics while serving on Biden’s board, which [where?] she will most likely have to probe high-profile national security threats and intelligence failures.” Arnold also waved the anti-woke flag, warning her readers that Dr. Cobb uses her voice to support POC and LGBTQIA+ scientists. To complete the trifecta, on February 3 the Washington Examiner’s Matt Lamb also weaponized Dr. Cobb’s experience with depression, using an unbelievably snide tone of false concern. “Mental health troubles are a real problem and should not be laughed off,” Lamb wrote, before immediately attacking Dr. Cobb’s mental health with full force in his piece headlined, "Trump’s election caused Biden's intelligence pick to have a “mental health crisis." Why are these outlets repeatedly attacking Dr. Cobb? Well, it’s probably because the morally bankrupt authors of these hit pieces are mere droplets in the “veritable tidal wave” of fossil-fueled climate change countermovement actors. Townhall is a former project of the fossil fuel-funded Heritage Foundation​​; The Washington Examiner is a frequent spreader of climate change disinformation; and, last but not least, The Washington Free Beacon is financially backed by fossil fuel investor Paul Singer . This is not the first attack like this on scientists—it's not even the first attack of the year ! And as much as we hope otherwise, it's also not going to be the last. Harassing scientists is a key tactic in the disinformation playbook , and the better the scientist, the more frequent and ferocious the attacks. We have full confidence that Dr. Cobb's climate expertise will be of tremendous value to the Biden administration, and we suspect that the level of emotional honesty and maturity expressed in her 2019 interview actually makes her an even more valuable advisor, especially compared to whatever hypothetical, emotionless, climate-denying expert that these right-wing outlets would support. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/7/2151614/-Right-Wing-Media-Uses-the-Hysterical-Woman-Trope-to-Try-and-Delegitimize-Biden-Climate-Advisor Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/