Plenty has been written about the unfair way women politicians get portrayed on the campaign trail.
If a man raises his voice, he is invariably described as muscular or strident. If a women does the same, readers are usually told she is shrieking or screeching in an unseemly manner.
But even Hillary Clinton could not have complained about the headlines she generated after a speech on Monday evening in Nevada when she literally barked like a dog.
Speaking in Reno, ahead of the Democratic caucus this Saturday, the former secretary of state outlined a colourful story designed to attack the Republicans that ended with her barking like a small dog.
CNN reported that Ms Clinton was in the middle of a passage in which she was claimed Republicans were saying things that are not true, when she remembered a radio ad that she said ran in rural Arkansas while her husband, Bill Clinton, was running for office.
“[Republicans] actually, with a straight face, say that the great recession was caused by too much regulation on Wall Street. They actually say that,” Ms Clinton said.
“One of my favorite political ads of all time was a radio ad in rural Arkansas where the announcer said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if somebody running for office said something, we could have an immediate reaction to whether it was true or not. Well, we have trained this dog. Well, the dog, if it is not true, he is going to bark’,” Ms Clinton said.
She added: “I want to figure out how we can do that with Republicans. We need to get that dog and follow them around and every time they say these things like,’Oh, the Great Recession was caused by too much regulation - arh, arh, arh, arh’,” she added to laughter.
“I think,” Ms Clinton concluded, “we could cut right through a lot of their claims.”
