Sexism is no joke, though a few weeks ago I wrote here about the sexist coverage of Hillary Clinton that masqueraded as humor. Now an incident at a golf club in Phoenix, to which Senator John McCain of Arizona does not belong, but his son Andrew does, goes directly to the deep hatred underlying the elbow-in-the-ribs anti-women comments.
Saturday's New York Times reported that when a married couple, who had been members of the Phoenix Country Club for thirty years, petitioned the board of the club to change its restrictions in the men's grill room so they could eat together, all hell broke loose, or as loose as hell ever breaks in a tony golf club. Members defaced the husband's locker, heckled him on the greens, and called his seventy-two-year-old wife a whore. They also began hopping off their carts to urinate on a pecan tree on the couple's property which abuts the golf course. The club insisted the members could not be identified, despite film of them caught in the act.
Other women members suffered e-abuse. Anonymous messages on their computers told them, "You and your type needs to go." No one ever said bigots knew their grammar.
The club now says it will upgrade the meager non-alcoholic women's grill to make it comparable to the men's. I'm not equating being deprived of a gin and tonic after nineteen holes with being cheated out of an education, but surely the separate-but-equal fig leaf on discrimination went out in 1954. There is much talk of intransigent Hillary supporters voting for McCain to spite Obama. Though McCain is not a member of the club, as I said above, he has often spoken there, and when asked about the discrimination, his campaign refused to comment. Do we have to know any more about McCain's commitment to gender equality?
Some forms of sexism, however, are less obvious, and therefore more insidious. Last winter, when the New York Times broke a non-story about McCain and an alleged affair with a lobbyist, the Fox News ribbon on Sixth Avenue in New York City ran a line about a "blond lobbyist" again and again. If a woman candidate were accused of an extra-marital affair, would we ever hear what color the man's hair was, or if he had any at all?
Offensive as this was, coming from Fox News it was not news. This morning I heard sexist speak from a more surprising source. Driving around on errands on Saturday mornings, I am addicted to the Tavis Smiley Show on NPR. His passion for social justice and liberal causes is unquestionable. Why, then, in a segment on health care, did he address the two men as Dr. and the one woman by her first name? I admit I did not hear the whole segment. As I said, I was doing errands. Perhaps the woman requested that he call her by her first name at the beginning of the show. If that's the case, I apologize to Mr. Smiley. But I hope others take note. My primary care physician is a woman. She calls me Ms. Feldman. My dentist is a man. He calls me Ellen, while referring to himself as Dr. every chance he gets. You don't have to defile a pecan tree to dis a woman.