The XX Factor: What women really think.

That Sexist Label

Welcome, Eve, and good call about Politico's top 10 blunders. The piece doesn't itself point out that the screw-ups it lists were sexist (though Fox does get dinged for taking two "racially tinged shots at Michelle Obama"). I'm with you in not complaining. Better to mount a broader critique of some of the coverage of Michelle and Hillary and Sarah Palin than to slap a sexist label on it. As we watched all of this unfold over the past year, what drew us in, I think, were the ambiguities and complexities, as well as the high drama. Maybe that, too, is a reason to take heart--as we got to know these women as public figures, we kept coming back for more because they only got more interesting.

Also, a quibble: I don't agree entirely with your list. The NYT's presentation of Vicki Iseman's affair-nonaffair with John McCain was an old-fashioned story without the goods—or at least, without the goods in print. I'm not sure it's more problematic than that. And the failure of the mainstream press to run with John Edwards and Rielle Hunter, after the National Enquirer nabbed them—well, nobody likes to get beat, and once the tabloids make a story their own, it's tainted from the point of view of major newspapers and TV. I'm not defending the laggards—as I said ad nauseam at the time, the Edwards story was wholly legit. But I'm not sure you can chalk up the way the press handled it to the pitfalls of covering women.