It’s come up a lot: why do we (and I must say that I include myself in this ‘we’) constantly refer to Hillary Clinton as ‘Hillary’ in the same breath that we refer to the other, male candidates by their last names?
If this were the case with any other female politician, I wouldn’t think too hard about labelling it as sexism in reporting. However, with Hillary, there is the sticky issue of Bill. The fact is, we can’t just call her ‘Clinton’. It would just be too confusing. And the reason that we abbreviate the names of well-known people in the first place (politicians, writers, intellectuals, and celebrities alike) is both to make speaking about them more convenient in colloquial terms, and to bring them down a little bit closer to our level. Referring to someone by part of his or her name is an expression of familiarity.
