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The fact that Myers feels the need to insist that she's not humorless should clue you into the fact that what follows is . . . well, humorless:An incredibly talented young aide, to an impossibly idealistic new president, gets caught doing something indefensibly stupid and undeniably sexist. Everyone is uncomfortable. But should anyone be held accountable? Apparently not.
The incident I’m talking about, of course, is the photo of Jon Favreau, Barack Obama's 27-year-old wunderkind speechwriter, with his hand on a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton’s chest. . . .
I can't stop thinking about this picture, and I confess I find it really upsetting. And, no, it's not because I don't have a sense of humor.
What's bugging me is his intention. He isn't putting his hand on her "chest," as most of the articles and conversations about the picture have euphemistically referred to it. Rather, his hand -- cupped just so -- is clearly intended to signal that he's groping her breast. And why? Surely, not to signal he finds her attractive. Au contraire. It's an act of deliberate humiliation. Of disempowerment. Of denigration.Oh, puh-leeze. Look, to start with, no one named "Dee Dee" is allowed to take themselves so seriously. Second, groping a cardboard cutout's boob doesn't "signal" anything, except maybe that the person doing it is drunk. Third, I greatly admire Andrew Breitbart and enjoyed his Monday column about this, but he was trying to make a point about double standards: What would have happened if the offending staffer were a Republican?
And it disgusts me.
The question was asked as a hypothetical, to make a point. I'm not sure that Breitbart was advocating that Jon Favreau actually suffer that fate. And certainly, I don't.
I cannot be accused of sympathy toward Obama, but I'm tired of seeing careers in Washington destroyed by one ginned-up "incident." Fifty or sixty years from now, when Favreau dies, his Washington Post obituary will include a paragraph about the cardboard-cutout groping incident, and I'm sure he can live with that. But to try to get him fired over that? No. And not just no, but hell, no.
As a conservative, I am grateful to Jonathan Favreau for (unintentionally) exposing the partisan double standards of media outrage about "sexism" -- the scare-quotes signifying that I don't think Favreau is any more "sexist" than anyone else. And if someone out there has a Facebook photo of a Hillary Clinton staffer acting disrespectfully toward a cardboard cutout of Obama, please publish it, so that we can discuss "racism" in the same context.
This all goes back, as Breitbart said in his column, to when "righteous feminists . . . tried to destroy Clarence Thomas - for nothing." The worst that was alleged against Thomas was that he had made a couple of off-color jokes at the office, which somehow became transmogrified by feminist witch-hunters into sexual harassment of the "hostile environment" variety. It was insane and unjust and I hope that Jonathan Favreau, at least, can now understand why it was insane and unjust.
As for you, Ms. Myers: Spare us your phony belated outrage. You were a joke as White House press secretary, and the only reason anyone pretends to take you seriously now is because your husband is an editor at Vanity Fair.
UPDATE: Linked at Hot Air. Thanks! Over at Q&O, McQ coughs up a lung laughing at the irony of a former staffer for Bill Clinton being offended by sexual harassment. I'm sure Kathleen Willey is laughing, too.
UPDATE II: James Joyner:
If Obama wants to fire this guy for being a dumbass and embarrassing himself and his boss, that’s fine by me. If he doesn’t, though, it’s not a signal that he’s indifferent to sexism but rather that he doesn’t think groping a cardboard cutout is a hanging offense.Unless the cardboard cutout files a lawsuit, or unless Favreau is caught on an FBI wiretap declaring that a Senate seat is a "f---ing valuable thing," I'm pretty sure Favreau will keep his job, on the "No Drama Obama" principle. On the other hand, it's nice to note how the Obama administration is already delivering juicy scandals more than a month before he's even inaugurated. As I told a friend last night at my son Jefferson's birthday party: "This is gonna be a good four years for me."
what's funny about it to me is the guy is being described as a key speechwriter for Obama.. I wish had a dollar for everytime someone said that Obama writes all his own speeches, but Sarah Palin has someone write hers. (that's besides the point)
ReplyDeleteWhen you see how Obama treated Hillery on the campaign trail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNO58WdUptU
it's no wonder his subordinates will do the same.
This is the first and probably last time in my life that I agree with Dee Dee Myers. I think there is something very disturbing about the photo -- not only with the fake groping but even more so with the beer bottle and hair grabbing. It's creepy and not a little intimidating. I'm just speaking as a woman here. Sorry if that sounds puritanical. I'd feel the same way if that was a conservative man doing that to the Hillary cardboard cutout. I don't think this photo should disbar the guy from a job, but it certainly doesn't make me like him or respect the person who would hire him. If it "haunts" him for the rest of his life -- good! Maybe that will make him and other young men be a little more respectful of women or at the very least a little smarter.
ReplyDeleteI think conservatives are too quick to laugh off the sexual harassment codes. It's easy for conservatives to do so because most of the conservatives I know (at least the social conservatives) don't behave in the manner for which these laws were made. Try working with Hollywood lefties or even New York liberals for any extended period of time and you'll see a crude sexism that will shock you. They also happen to be way more racist than any conservative I've ever met.
I'm actually quite glad a liberal Democrat is taking another liberal Democrat to task over the issue of sexism. It's about time they policed their own bad behavior. Like I said, if you were to spend a few days around the liberals in Hollywood, you would see that they are masters at projecting their bad behavior onto conservatives. They are perhaps the most sexist, racist, greedy, selfish, violent, uninformed, and, frankly, stupid people I've ever met.
The idea that this is the same as the Clarence Thomas case is ridiculous. That was a classic "He Said, She Said" situation. If there had been a photo of Clarence Thomas doing something like this to Anita Hill, trust me, we would not have a Justice Thomas. But I don't believe for a minute that Justice Thomas would have done something like this. A joke about pubic hair is not the same as this picture.
it's very selective though.. after all.. Dee Dee Myers worked for Bill 'I exposed myself to Paula and who knows how many others' Clinton..
ReplyDeleteand it's a cardboard cut out..
if there are drunk guys and a camera and a life sized cardboard cut out...
there will be pictures of them groping or something else..
Not so fast, bro!
ReplyDeleteWho took the foto?
Why post it on the net?
Will somebody, anybody, ask Obama what he thinks of the foto and will he reply, disdainfully, "you're having fun with this, aren't you?" as he did to more substantive questions about Hill?
"Most Black men will climb over 10 black foxes to get to one white dog" (Eldridge Cleaver: "Soul on Ice")
Is Favreau really Obama's alter ego, and if so is he trying to live up to Cleaver's dictum on behalf of his boss?