Obama won't sanction groping staffer Favreau

When Barack allows staff members to engage in such degrading behavior, he teaches all of us - including his daughters - that women can be treated this way. That degrading others is okay. That's bigotry.

I've chronicled the juvenile arrogance and snarky, entitled sexist comments from Barack Obama and his staff for almost two years now. I knew it wasn't going to stop. And now comes more.

A reader emailed me the Jon Favreau story. Revolting. He's the boy on the left in the picture above, who thinks it's funny to grope the former first lady in a grotesque, entitled sort of way. The pictures got out about the same time Barack named Jon his head speechwriter -- and where is Barack's moralizing now?  Where is the Barack who's always exploiting his daughters to claim his interest in women's opportunities? Eerie silence. We all know if that same picture had involved a black person Barack would be whining at the top of his smoke-filled lungs about how racist everybody is.

Recall the New Yorker Magazine cover a few months back that dared to poke fun at Michelle and Barack? Barack's staff and his blog-protectors went ballistic. Nary a sense of humor in the Obama camp. But those guys are all certain that women should laugh at this degradation from the young boy Barack has chosen to be his speechwriter. 

A reader sent this link from The Reclusive Leftist, which starkly describes what's wrong with that picture and Barack's refusal to acknowledge the depth of the degradation it furthers:

Sexism is a deeply learned behavior with a thousand manifestations. You can’t quarantine the big pieces of it — rape, legal discrimination — as if they exist in a vacuum apart from the rest of society’s values. From frat boy joke to date rape, from gangsta rap to domestic violence, from pink housework toys at Wal-Mart to the boss who won’t promote a woman into top management, from “Math is hard” Barbie to the physics lab where men harass their female colleagues relentlessly, from Girls Gone Wild videos to the jury that acquits a rapist because the victim was wearing a short skirt — it’s a system. A giant, all-encompassing, self-reinforcing system.

When Barack allows staff members to engage in such degrading behavior, he teaches all of us - including his daughters - that women can be treated this way. That degrading others is okay. That's bigotry. That's hateful behavior.

For anyone who thinks people should laugh this off, I would remind them of the policing Barack and his staff did of every tiny thing his opponents said and did during the campaign. Sen. Clinton mentioned Barack and RFK in the same sentence? She must want him assassinated. Bill Clinton mentioned Jesse Jackson and Barack in the same sentence? He must be racist. The New Yorker satirized the Obamas? They're racists. Someone in McCain's audience said Barack was a Muslim. THEY'RE RACISTS! Obama's speechwriter pretends to sexually assault Sen. Clinton? Oh come on, Barack says, get over it.

In the CNN clip shown on the Reclusive Leftist link above, Wolf Blitzer is practically laughing about this picture. He didn't acknowledge there was anything wrong with it and instead suggested it was "a sign of the times" that people get upset about things like this. A sign of the times? What does that even mean? Any respectable news anchor should have discredited the abhorrent behavior and been asking hard questions of why the President-elect team's concerns with equality don't extend to women.

That is a textbook example of a double standard. For reasons that confound me, women in our country are now choosing to live under that double standard. Women in the media shouldn't stand for this; women in politics should speak out; high profile women in business should demand that Barack fire the speechwriter. In short, women should take themselves seriously, and then expect that others do so.

At least one woman in the media dares to reprimand Barack.  A reader sent a link from Dee Dee Myers on this, in which Myers asks "At what point does sexist behavior get taken seriously? At what point do people get punished in ways that suggest this kind of behavior, this kind of thinking, is unacceptable? At what point do we insist there will be consequences?"  Myers continues,

Imagine how different the reaction would be if an important aide to John McCain had been caught in similar picture featuring Michelle Obama? Or if the picture had shown a cutout of Barack Obama and, say, a white hood? Why is it when ideology and race are eliminated, so is the outrage?

I’m not sure what the appropriate punishment should be for Jon Favreau, but I know it should be more than a groveling phone call to Senator Clinton. At a minimum, President-Elect Obama should take Favreau on his first—and, hopefully, his last—very public trip to the woodshed.

I won't hold my breath waiting for Barack to do the right thing.  And where is Michelle's outrage on this?  More eerie silence. During the campaign she complained loudly of the racism she saw everywhere -- but this bigotry is OK?  I'm working on a piece now on Michelle, how she's just like my former law school colleagues who survive at competitive schools by turning a blind eye to sexism, while sublimating their anger onto other women (witness Michelle's most unflattering cut downs of Sen. Clinton during the campaign). 

Barack's opponents, including myself, warned during the campaign that his morally superior talk was just that. For all of Barack's supporters who want to believe that Barack is really the post-bigotry, morally superior person he claims to be, this is an excellent opportunity to prove us wrong and call on your new leader to walk the walk.  You can support him and admit flaws in his behavior - it's the human condition, after all.

Comments

[Alison]

"You can support him and admit flaws in his behavior - it's the human condition, after all."

The disturbing thing about Obama's supporters is how difficult it is for them to do this. It's cultish. It makes me afraid. The wonderful American quality of complaining about and critiquing everything seems to have varnished when it comes to Obama.

I am presently trying to challenge all the "progressive" people I know who support Obama to do just that - stand up and complain. Sure, support him, I don't care. I honestly hope the best for his presidency. But silence on Jon Favreau? Silence on Rick Warren?

I've actually managed to push the Rick Warren thing and get a modicum of outrage from friends. But that get's into homophobia. It's much harder for people to respond to sexism.

[Tara]

Thank you for doing all that you are with this blog. You are among the few lone voices speaking the truth in this disturbing twister of hype radiating from the women hating, hero-worshiping, boys club (which scarily enough, includes many women). The more I research how Barack Obama (and his people) have behaved thus far, the sicker I feel... I feel betrayed by society, and by my fellow women, who I deeply believed were stronger than this. They have stars in their eyes, and just can’t see what is really going on right now. They have turned off their ability to question, and to feel deserving of respect, hopefully only temporarily. The rest of us just have to keep speaking the truth, no matter what the backlash. Also, have you seen the latest Ms. Magazine cover? That is the biggest betrayal yet. This is a very sad time for women, indeed.

[Alison]

Tara,

I recently read the Ms. Magazine article at the library. (I refuse to buy it). The article is an embarrassment. It asks that we trust their interpretation of Obama as a feminist while overlooking many of his anti-feminist choices, actions and behavior. They did bring up Rick Warren, but only from a LGBT perspective and did not even talk about Warren's support of domestic violence and wifely submission!

[mary]

No, Barack's "superman feminist" outfit must not be taken seriously. Surely, they could have put Hillary on the cover. For that's exactly what a feminist looks --and sounds-- like. Her response to Sen. Barbara Boxer's questions on the genderic holocaust in Afganistan, Pakistan, and other counties, where women are treated daily to burnings, lashings, eye-and-tongue-removal jobs for failing to be faithful to their fathers, husbands and brothers, was nothing short of phenomenal! She reiterated her l995 Bejing declaration: "women's rights are human rights". And, of course, outlined some policies to be implemented. And we all know how this woman WORKS the Talk!
Shame on MS Magazine. I just canceled my subscription to these moronic sycophants of the Obamyopic School of Feminism.