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Poring through Michael Calderone's "Top Ten Media Blunders of 2008" in the Politico, it was hard not to notice how many of his favorite Fourth Estate screw-ups had to do, in some obvious or oblique way, with sexism purportedly making its way into the press. You've got the whole Hillary-in-New-Hampshire episode, in which Hillary wept and the media's subsequent mockery mobilized women voters on her behalf (or so the mythology goes); you've got MSNBC's choice to hand its election coverage over to Chris "She-Devil" Matthews; you've got the "Obama's baby mama" Chyron on Fox; and you've got the David Shuster pimp-Chelsea Clinton thing—along with the questionable coverage of two alleged Big Macher mistresses, Vicki Iseman and Rielle Hunter.
You could make the case that all the media's stumbles over sexism should alarm women, but I wonder if the opposite isn't the case. It shows how sensitive we've become to the various pitfalls inherent in covering women. (And, well, maybe too sensitive, but that's another debate.)
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1) As usual, a woman's skinny blondness is admitted as evidence against her, once again deflecting suspicion from zaftig brunettes.
2) As noted by Emily Y., insinuations about said skinny blonde are better than a spa week for making an old soldier young again.
3) Thank you, New York Times, for reminding us that unless the mistress (or mister) steps to the microphone, the teller of the tale is the one who comes off looking like the villain.
4) There's something touching about a man whose young friend so closely resembles the missus; is this the ultimate backhanded compliment? (And is that why Cindy McCain looked so oddly but genuinely pleased standing beside her man yesterday as he denied doing anything wrong ever?)
5) Is that an earmark in your pocket...? The possible sex scandal also diverts attention from the fact that Iseman's firm specializes in getting earmarks for clients—and didn't I hear that McCain was against those?
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As our resident McCain supporter, I'd be remiss not to weigh in on the strange story in the New York Times about the affair that the presumptive GOP nominee may or may not have had with lobbyist Vicki Iseman (who, as Hanna points out, looks eerily like McCain's wife).
It's entirely fair to report on a candidate's affairs, I agree-throw the information out there and let the electorate decide what to do with it. Same with a candidate's drug use or other nebulous behavior. (Though some harder evidence in this case would be nice.) Such nuggets generally don't affect my support for a politician, but they're not altogether irrelevant. And this doesn't scare me from McCain. No candidate is perfect, and I'm more focused on his record. I don't agree with him on everything, but I agree with him on the issues that are important to me.
Emily B., you brought up the sleaziness of the favors McCain did for Iseman's clients. I think if you look that closely into the career of anyone who's been in the House or Senate for 24 years-even a "reform advocate" like McCain-you could find letters to a government agency or flights on private jets. That's probably one reason we haven't elected a senator or former senator to the White House since Nixon (and he was 16 years removed from a three-year Senate stint by that point). That might be an argument against an "experience" candidate, but if you compare it with Kirk Watson's struggle to name a single accomplishment by Barack Obama, I'd guess it's a wash.
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John McCain may be denouncing the New York Times' story about his possibly inappropriate relationship with a young, fetching lobbyist, but doesn't it subliminally help him? One of his big problems is that he's so old—he keeps trotting out his 96-year-old mother to prove that as far as his genes are concerned, he's still a pup. But doesn't an affair with a sexy blonde do more to testify to his vigor?
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I entirely agree, Anne and Hanna, that the affair/maybe-not-affair aspect of the Times' McCain story makes the piece seem weirdly bonkers. Still, what about this toward the end (for those who wade past the rehash middle):
A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.
In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain’s staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain’s staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.
Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman.
It's not sexy, it's not sex, and it ain't the makings of good TV. But doesn't it reek of the other kind of political sleaze? It seemed to undermine this, "Mr. McCain’s friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him." Assume for a second that McCain didn't have an affair with Vicki Iseman. Is there evidence that their relationship is still troubling, for the candidate who's supposed to be Mr. Lobbying Reform?
UPDATE: Here's the McCain campaign's response to those grafs.
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Hanna,
I read the Vicki Iseman-the-cute-lobbyist/John McCain-isn't-ethical piece, too, after no fewer than three people told me to—none particularly enthusiastic about McCain. All were apalled, not by the content of the story, but by the transparent thinness of the reporting. If the Times has evidence that McCain had an affair, they should come out with it. If they have evidence that he showed improper favoritism toward a lobbyist, they should come out with that, too. The fact that they do neither—most of the article rehashes old stories—must mean they don't have anything at all; perhaps they are hoping the blogosphere will produce it. The only "evidence" comes from two anonymous aides who claim they told Iseman to buzz off and stop distracting their boss—behavior which strikes me as quite normal and rather admirable. Sounds like they were doing their job.
Thanks to lack of evidence, the article reads not like an exposé but like an elaborate and extended piece of insinuation. Surely this must will damage the New York Times more than John McCain: Who will believe their reporting on him now?
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That New York Times story about McCain's "self-confidence on ethics" is one of the weirdest news stories I've ever read. This is not a story about McCain's coziness with lobbyists and whether his line about money corrupting politics is a lie. It's not a story about his post-Keating career. It's a story about his post-Cheating career. I guarantee you 99 percent of readers will skip over that fat historical midsection rehashing Keating to the end, where they get back to what John Weaver did or didn't tell Vicki Iseman at Union Station.
Why can't the Times just admit this? I understand the New Republic was ready to out them, but so what? Either they write the cheating story or they don't. They can't dress it up as a serious story about his policy positions or his general "ethics." As it is, it just looks like a lame story where they quote a bunch of anonymous old campaign sources but don't have any actual evidence of the affair themselves. And they make it much easier for McCain to just stomp on the story by blathering on about his integrity and honesty and his long record of getting money out of politics, blah, blah.
As for whether newspapers should report on affairs or not: I always say yes. It's not an absolute damnation, but it says something about a man, especially one who sells himself on his character and integrity. And if America doesn't care, well, then that says something, too—that the era of family values is officially over.
My only remaining question: Why did he bother? She looks exactly like Cindy.
Read more posts about John McCain and Vicki Iseman.