Fortunately for Palin, her credibility is such a small target that Annie Oakley probably couldn’t hit it at 20 paces.
Fortunately for the rest of us, Palin herself, working at point-blank range, routinely pokes new holes in it.
A politician’s state of disrobe should not be an issue. In my ideal world nobody would care if a politicians showed up to a debate stark naked, insofar as it did not reflect on his/her sanity and he had his issues straight. Europeans have managed to elect people that have been photographed/filmed in far less than Palin.
The point is, those pants are appropriate for running, bikinis are appropriate for the beach and naked is appropriate for a shower. That doesn’t mean that she should complain if a photo photo of her naked for Showers Monthly Mag is then used in another publication for whatever reason. She should be smart enough to refrain from purposely creating images that could be misused or be damaging to her.
If Obama had posed for all those swimming trunks pictures and he is then put in a cover of Liberal Haters Quarterly as an example of how empty-headed and vacuous he supposedly is it would be his own damn fault.
I’ll break it down for those people who still don’t understand.
- The article in Newsweek is clearly a negative article about her.
- They coupled the article about her with the cover picture.
- Standard common sense logic says that they would pair a negative article with a picture that they believe portraits her in a negative light, not a positive one. Therefore, they believe the cover picture portraits her in a negative light.
- Since they removed all of the original context from the photo, the first and strongest impression one gets from the photo is “Palin is a woman who appears attractive”.
- In conclusion, Newsweek believes that being an attractive woman is a negative thing, and is therefore sexist.
It’s not a whole lot different than writing a negative article about Obama and finding a picture of him deep in a shadow so that he appears very black. Just as that would be race-baiting, this is sex-baiting, if you will. It loudly proclaims “Here is an attractive woman who disagrees with you! Attack her! Attack her!”. It’s bugle call for people like **Diogenes **who might have enlightened attitude towards woman who agree with him, but feel the need to attack and marginalize women who show enough independence to disagree with him and break from the mold of how he feels women should act and behave.
I wouldn’t take it that far, but if she looked like Maggie Thatcher, the wingnuts would be a lot less interested in her. She has been more than happy to use her sex appeal to market herself politically, so AFAIAC it’s quite reasonable for a discussion of her political appeal to include pix that show her selling herself in that way.
I don’t think she has a damned thing to complain about.
I agree with your analysis. If Palin were a man, I strongly suspect that Newsweek would have not lampooned him in this manner. They would have used some other device, like a caricaturized portrait. A male politician in running clothes does not scream “this is a bimbo so you should not listen to him”. For some reason when an attractive woman poses in running clothes, all her credibility goes out the window and she gets accused of selling sex.
Perhaps you’ll explain to us what the context of the picture had to do with running - her beauty-queen posing in a political office surrounded by political accouterments etc? The picture was of her in a political context, done for a political reason.
And maybe you could explain both how ‘negative’ and ‘sexist’ are the same thing?
So what if the article was negative - of course it was - truth has a liberal bias. She is a vacuous, stupid, airhead with only a coincidental relationship with the truth using her appearance as a political tool.
She is a shit, useless, vacuous waste of space promoting herself through lies and waggling her ass. She is so stupid she posed for that picture. If Palin wants to do cheesecake poses in the running equivalent of a french maid’s uniform then she deserves whatever she gets.
And you lot whining away just makes things both worse and funnier.
How do you think she would be acting if she wasn’t using her sex appeal? What does “using her sex appeal” even mean?
This is an honest question. As an attractive woman who doesn’t go out of my way to uglify or desexualize myself in the workplace, I’d hate to be accused of using my sex appeal simply because I’m not walking around with a bag over my head.
Do you stand around posing like that for pictures in your office and then make them available in the media?
So people who hate men can’t be sexist?
Not an acceptable stance for a supposed “newsmagazine.”
Maybe if she was standing with her legs splayed open, you’d have a point. But her pose does not seem provocative to me. It looks stiff and pageantry-like, though.
What kind of question is this? People who hate men are sexist by definition, but what does that have to do with Newsweek.
Do you think the editorial staff of Newsweek supports or endorses a view that women are inferior to men, yes or no?
Do you think their motive in choosing this picture was to promote a message that women are inferior to me, yes or no?
It was an opinion piece, not a news piece.
It does, doesn’t it. It’s also kind of odd because she’s got a Blackberry in her hand. Does she go running with a Blackberry in her hand? It’s also really weird because she appears to be inside and to have a flag draped over the back of a chair, which she is leaning against.
Do you think that she has a flag draped over the backs of chairs in her house, and that she kind of casually leans against them?
It’s also kind of weird because in all the other pictures of her actually, you know, outside, stretching and posed in activities that are remotely like jogging, she’s wearing clothing that is less skimpy and tight. Hmmm…
So, if I were writing a story about how Sarah Palin is exposing herself in the media left and right in a manner that suggests there’s relatively little chance of her actually ever being elected president but that seems to appeal to a particular base, and I wanted a picture that encapsulated that, where might I find one.
It’s kind of like Bob Roberts incarnate, or at least as close as we’ll hopefully get in real life. Here’s a pic if you don’t remember: Bob Roberts (1992). Here’s the wikipedia introduction of the description of the movie:
Bolding mine to highlight the mavericky irony.
You bet your ass I’d use that picture to represent Sarah Palin - she’s clearly chosen even skimpier clothes to pose in than her other fake posed jogging pictures while disrespecting an American flag in a manner that she probably thought was reflective of patriotism.
It’s too bad so many liberal women can’t get past their own issues to recognize reality imitating art. Get the fuck over yourselves and open your eyes. Or would she actually literally have to wrap herself in the flag naked before you’d start to think twice about it.
Nothing - but you said one must be a mysogynist to be sexist.
Okay, so it’s a newsmagazine, but the cover photo and the main headline are all about an opinion piece. In other words, it’s the main focus of the issue.
Objective and unbiased indeed.
Honestly, if there were some kind of himbo politician out there who fit some of the same cirtcumstances, Newseek wouldn’t do the same thing. It’s not that hard to imagine. He never ran for anything, but remember JFK Jr. and the kind of super hunk status that he had? Imagine if he’d been selected as a Hail Mary choice for a running mate by a desperate Democratic Presidential candidate, only to subsequently be exposed as a vacuous, uneducated, incurious, inexprienced, self-obsessed narcissist and pathological liar, trading shamelessly on his looks, but who nevertheless possessed some kind of native, populist appeal to a sizeable part of the liberal electorate. If he had posed in speedos for a fitness magazine cover, you think Newseek wouldn’t use it? Of copurse they would.
This cover choice was specifically about Palin, not about any kind of larger, “sexist” agenda. That’s just absurd.
It’s not that hard to imagine.
I’m not understanding these questions. That’s correct. So what? I don’t understand what kind of hair you’re trying to split.
ETA, wait, so you’re saying that hatred of women is not the only kind of sexism? Ok. So what? What does THAT have to do with the accusations against Newseek? Do you think that the editorial staff is trying to promote a view that women are inferior to men? Yes or no?
It’s not the main focus of the issue. It’s a one page opinion piece.
And? A blackberry in her hands means…?? I’m trying to figure out the subtext you’re trying to get me to see. Don’t politicians have blackberrys? The blackberry therefore is part of her politician uniform. But look, she’s also wearing workout clothes! That establishes her as a runner. Gee, that makes her a politician and a runner.
What else do you see?
Again, help me see the picture that you’re trying to paint. A flag draped on the back of chair is supposed to indicate ______. You fill in the blank.
You’re paying way too much attention to what she’s wearing, don’t you think? Because if someone held a shotgut to my head and asked me describe the clothes she works out in, I’d have to take the bullet. Ask yourself why these details register in your awareness so much. It’s not necessarily because she’s making you.
Funny, I was just thinking it’s too bad that so many liberal men are letting partisanship infect them with punkass cattiness. “She’s winks at townhall meetings is proof that she’s trying to get into America’s pants!” Yall jumped the shark with that bit, I’m sorry. Bush winked so damn much in his 8 years I thought he was showing CNS signs. So come off it.