During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, moderator Elaine Quijano found herself tasked with reeling in two candidates who immediately began interrupting each other and never stopped for a full 90 minutes. Oddly enough, Mike Pence attempted to gaslight America by denying several notorious positions of running mate Donald Trump, and another disturbing -ing occurred throughout the event.
Yes, the dreaded “mansplaining” stood in full effect.
Both Kaine and Pence repeatedly talked down to Quijano, who has never helmed a television debate before, but she’s a seasoned CBS Weekend News anchor. As a moderator, her performance was uneven, and she sometimes cut short answers in progress (before their time) to move onto other subjects. However, she was also faced with attempting to control two shameless interjectors, who refused to heed her requests to stop doing so. Folks on social media began to empathize with Quijano’s plight.
Things grew worse. In response to one of Quijano’s attempts to steer the conversation, Tim Kaine — the Internet’s dad! — uttered these dreadful words: “This is important, Elaine.”
People noticed.
Seinfeld‘s Elaine Benes provides a good reference point at times like these.
At that point, Twitter swallowed itself up with countless mentions of mansplaining from both women and men. Here are some of the many complaints that followed.