...That "boys will be boys" or to "lighten up" or any similar bullshit.
The man on the left is Jon Favreau who is President-elect Barack Obama's chief speechwriter and who has been recently appointed director of speechwriting for the White House.
The photo was posted on
Facebook (not by Favreau).
It's reported that Favreau has "reached out" to Clinton and offered an apology.
If this was a major corporation -- instead of the White House -- and a photo like this got out to the public, the people who had posed for this picture would be fired (go run it by your HR Dept. or the Corporate Communications people if you doubt that).
As is to be expected, you won't find any condemnation or even any mention of this at
Daily Kos*,
Talking Points Memo or any of the other big boy lefty blogs even though the story can be found at
The Huffington Post and
The Washington Post.
A spokesperson for Sen. Clinton has responded with humor: "Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application."
If she had responded any other way she would have been labeled (again) as a shrill, whiny bitch.
[sigh]
On a related note, Mackenzie Carpenter
blogs at
Early Returns about a recent poll on media sexism during campaign 2008:
According to a new poll out today, two-thirds of American women -- 64 percent, to be exact, from across the political spectrum -- think the media coverage of Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign was more negative than for other candidates running for office, while 31 percent felt that Hillary Clinton's coverage was more negative.
[snip]
Ms. Conway called the 64 percent figure "stunning," given that it cuts across all demographic groups. "It tells me that women were able to forge a consensus about Sarah Palin that doesn't otherwise exist about Sarah Palin," she said in a telephone news conference. "I think many women were saying, 'I just don't read the same stories about hair plugs and combovers, but we're obsessed with Hillary Clinton's hair.'"
The poll of 600 women found that 79 percent believed there was too much coverage of Ms. Palin's wardrobe, compared to 44 percent for Mrs. Clinton, while nearly half felt that there was too little reporting on the Alaska governor's policy positions. A plurality of women -- 49 percent -- thought Mrs. Clinton's views were adequately covered. The poll didn't address one key distinction, however -- that much media coverage over Ms. Palin's wardrobe focused on the fact that the Republican National Committee paid for it -- and that some RNC officials claimed to be unpleasantly surprised by the size of the bill.
What I found most interesting about the whole clothes controversy is that while the Republican party touted Palin as the patron saint of the Average Joe (the plumber), when they turned on her, they called her a "hillbilly." Elitist much?
That said, you didn't have to look hard to find many in the MSM who treated Sen. Clinton like the
evil witch hag who would not die or Gov. Palin like
their own personal blow-up doll -- and it was worse on umpteem blogs.
You know, there is a way to criticize a female opponent that doesn't involve calling her shrill, a bitch, witch, or a cunt; or reducing her to an inanimate object ("Caribou Barbie"); or posting Photoshopped naked pictures of her or illustrations of her masturbating with a rifle all over the Internet; or groping her photographic stand-in's breast in a picture while your buddy grabs her by the hair and shoves a beer bottle into her mouth.
But that would require actual thought instead of rank misogyny.
Pity.
*No, one single comment at Kos doesn't count.
(h/t to
Shakesville)
.
