In an upcoming book, New York Times reporter Amy Chozick relays multiple examples of sexism she faced while covering the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign.
While Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling will not be available until April 24, a Washington Post review shares some of Chozick's revelations and even outs one of the accused male staffers by name.
The Post's Carlos Lozada relays that while Chozick refers to Clinton's female staffers by name in the book, she refers to Clinton's male press staffers anonymously as "The Guys," giving them nicknames like Brown Loafers Guy, Policy Guy, and Original Guy, the worst of the bunch.
"The Guys constantly mess with Chozick, magnifying her self-doubts," Lozada writes. "'I don’t care what you write because no one takes you seriously,' Outsider Guy says. They suggest that a Times colleague is leaking her story ideas to a competitor at Politico and that more-experienced reporters in her newsroom will steal away her assignment."
At times, the scorn from The Guys was overtly sexist. "They ask if there are any other Times reporters, preferably male, that they could talk to instead of her," Lozada relates.
Lozada goes on to call out the rhetoric from Original Guy as particularly sexist. "The undercurrent of sexism spills over when Chozick and Original Guy spar over whether a prior conversation can go on the record, and he randomly paraphrases a crude line from 'Thank You for Smoking,' a 2005 film in which a reporter sleeps with a lobbyist for information. 'I didn’t know I had to say it was off the record when I was inside you,' Original Guy smirks."
"The words hung there, so grossly gynecological," Chozick writes in the book.
But the Post book critic notes Chozick shows her hand when she reveals Original Guy was the Donald Trump stand-in in Clinton's debate prep, which at the time was reported to be longtime Clinton press staffer Phillipe Reines.
"Hmmm, wherever will Hillary find a manipulative, sometimes-charming, often hilarious, possible sociopath?" Chozick jokes about Reines' role as Trump.
Chozick also talks about a Clinton faith advisor who "exhibited generally creepy behavior" and how she "tried to ignore his rubbing up and down my back." Most likely this is a reference to Burns Strider, who Clinton refused to fire in 2008 despite multiple allegations of sexual harassment (a story that was broken by Chozick).