At Wednesday's press conference, President Obama called on only three women out of the 10 reporters from whom he took questions. The answer to every question asked by a woman made news, with Lynn Sweet's end-with-a-bang query on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., winning the night for news-making. Questions from male reporters yielded nothing new.
At town hall meetings, President Obama likes to alternate by gender the questions he takes: "Girl boy; girl, boy," as he says. Presidential press conferences are another matter. At last night's prime-time event, it wasn't until the evening was half-way through that the president got around to calling on a female reporter: one of three women whose questions he answered out of a total of 10 reporters he called on. And the reporters called on are white.
To be fair to Obama, this has more to do with the color and character of mainstream media than it does with anything else. When you've got a big night, as Obama did, you're going to make sure you take the questions of the reporters from the two big wire services (AP and Reuters), and the three broadcast news divisions (NBC, CBS and ABC). And all those outlets sent white guys to represent them. If the complexity of the topic at hand means that you only take 10 questions total, five are already taken by the aforementioned white guys.
But what made Wednesday night so interesting was that the men's questions were quite predictable, while the questions from Christi Parsons, Julianna Goldman and Lynn Sweet were anything but.
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For DECADES...any and all statistical information that pointed to male superiority was to be disregarded because it contradicted the mantra of "everyone is equal" that feminism was pushing on America.
Now, it's ok to claim that women are better this and women are better that? I'm sure it's still wrong to claim men are better at anything...
Four lines, and you meander into three separate topics, and manage to royally generalize each one into non-importance. Congratulations.
It's not the questions that require "balls" (so to speak). It's the follow up. I didn't see men OR women asking any probing follow up questions. As usual. And Sweet's question was a joke.
And just for the record, this type of article is just more partisan (sexual partisanship) crud, taking our eye off the real issues.
So why is ok for feminists to make statistically questionable unsubstantiated sexist generalizations?
Because feminists don't care about equality or anything close. They have a narrow agenda of advancing feminist (rather than female) causes.
They do not like men. They do not respect men. If given the chance, they will oppress men.
Thank you for being honest and not hiding behind the guise of equality like most feminist pieces do...
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Sweet's question was appropriate and fair.
Obama was the one who went off-script, speaking honestly and emotionally about a touchy issue.
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I'm sorry but asking about healthcare and the economy are good questions. How pathetic and un-feminist of you to raise this woman up as some model of journalistic integrity over her race-baiting tabloid shallow b.s.
Not to mention the fact that Sweet is with a paper that despises Obama and has been on his case since he came onto the scene. So add personal vendetta to Ms. Sweet's bona fides. Not very feminist or admirable.
Because she recently criticized him for having at least some knowledge in advance as to what particular questioners are going to ask, it looks like he's not going to call on her again for a while.
The off-topic question by Lynn Sweet to divert attention away from the health care issues seemed particularly preplanned, a Kabuki-theater type question.
So you want others to be impressed with the questioners because of their gender? Tell them to follow Helen Thomas' lead.