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About that Newsweek cover: Sexist but vital
Wed, 11/18/2009 - 09:34 — Ben
I like Jules Crittenden's take:
Mocking pols is not only a fine American journalistic tradition, it’s an important part of our nation’s political discourse. My own newspaper put an Elmer Fudd hat on Mitt Romney when he claimed to be a hunter, a party hat on Deval Patrick for living large, had steam coming out of Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s ears, and periodically culls the photo archives for pol shots that will illustrate the tone of the story. Hillary looking like she’s about to claw your eyeballs out and the other where she looks like she just sat on a whoopie cushion are perennial favorites. My newspaper has a Bozo lookalike on the front page today to represent teachers unions that are … behaving like Bozos. But political mockery has become a (selective) minefield largely thanks to the kind of people who are now unexpectedly leaping to Palin’s defense.
There’s a saying in my business. Tabloid journalism is like rough sex. You need to know when to hold back. There’s always a risk of a little good clean fun going badly wrong, though Newsweek may have been caught off guard by the friendly fire in this case.
In this case, Newsweek is trying to make Palin look like a vapid, chirpy cheerleader. Did anyone think Newsweek was playing down the middle in this fight in the first place? I’d put this in the category of “they spelled her name right.” She looks great. They might think they look clever. But Newsweek might want to rent “Legally Blonde” for a simple, easy-to-understand allegory on the dangers of underestimating perky. Also, look up all the B-movie cowboy hits on Reagan. Apparently a lot of lefty feminists just woke up to the fact that Sarah Palin has been unfairly disparaged. Nothing new about that. A whole lot of other professional women and moms out there, if they didn’t know it already, will be able to do the math pretty quickly when they see it on the newsstands. Keep it up, Newsweek. You might even get her elected.
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Comments
"Unfairly disparaged"
Wait, what? I agree that the Newsweek cover is in bad taste and somewhat sexist, but what are some other examples of her being "unfairly disparaged"? Sounds like Crittenden has been drinking too much of Palin's Victim whine.
Really?
You don't remember, for one, the numerous assertions by journalists (some oblique, others blatant) that Palin had an obligation to stay home and care for her family rather than run for national office? I saw that without Palin pointing it out to me.
I think you're letting the banging on the Palin's-a-whiner drum keep you on a one note march.
That is all.
Inaccurately disparaged is better
In similar parlance, many if not most of Palin's detractors, having suckled on SNL and The Daily Show for accurate, true facts about the ex-governor, are "misunderestimating" her.
Not unfairly, but inaccurately? Yup. Now that journalism has devolved to taking the easiest road, this is what we are left with: pundits and reporters too lazy to actually investigate, going with the first bit that comes to light and hammering that over and over.
That's also where Obama as non-citizen stuff comes from. Same place.
Dang it, if you're gonna disparage someone, at least get some solid facts lined up and do it properly.
(note: I am not saying disparaging Palin is impossible; that is not the point)
Inaccurate disparagement misses making an impact on her base entirely, if that is what one is after, and it becomes just so much preaching to the choir.
.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009
Examples?
Can you give some? Surely you're not talking about people disparaging her for what Tina Fey said ("I can see Russia from my house") instead of what Sarah Palin said ("You can see Russia from my state"). You're so old that you probably don't have enough hair that you should be splitting ones like this. :p
the desperation is amusing
Among likely voters, Rasmussen shows Palin at 51% favorable and Obama at 49%. Today, at -14 between highly unfavorable vs highly favorable, is the biggest discrepancy yet recorded. Oy vey, let the lib clown show continue. Please do continue your MSM ass-hattery, though I do not consider Newsweek to be MSM. I would also like to thank AP for assigning 11 fact-checkers to the Palin book. Perhaps they should assign a couple to Obama Dreams. BTW, there is a nice article in today's American Thinker:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/fact_check_this_associated_pre.ht...
Now I am hearing that teh president is going to be on FoxNews!? That is surely panic. I'm hearing that dear Sarah will be at Fort Hood on December 4th (and yes, she had planned to be there before the Jihadist attack).
Now, whether or not she should ever decide to test the presidential waters ... time will tell. Right now I am indifferent to the notion, and even if I weren't indifferent, I would not say so. Would I lie?
He's not losing any sleep.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/21/obama-compares-fox-news-talk-...
honest.
Yes, That's an Ass on My Head
John 2000 sez:
Oy vey, let the lib clown show continue. Please do continue your MSM ass-hattery, though I do not consider Newsweek to be MSM.
As if using the phrase "mainstream media" to denote some mythical liberal clown show or something isn't bad enough, now you can define what is and isn't MSM any way you want?
I didn't say 'mythical'
Pardon the shortage of adjectives. I should have said 'obvious'. Obviously, you consider Newsweek to be MSM; you are entitled to that opinion.
Re: Newsweek
Well, look, John, Newsweek was for decades a fairly straightforward news mag and only this year revamped into a journal of opinion along the lines of The New Republic. It's certainly firmly part of the elite media world. Whether you consider that "mainstream" or not may be simply a matter of semantics or it may simply reflect your own definition of the word.
I would note, however, that my local Ralph's displays Newsweek alongside Vanity Fair, Better Homes and Gardens, Vogue and the usual tabloids at the checkout counter. You really don't get any more mainstream than that.
If that's the gauge of mainstream
perhaps there is some truth there, though if it is at the checkout stands around here, I will have to look harder amid the clutter of noisy competing candidates. It's true I could find a copy at an actual magazine rack or a dentist's office. My thinking of mainstream more or less corresponds to this April 2009 Brent Bozell piece:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/16/the_decline_and_fal...
"Why are the captains of a magazine that's lost half its circulation telling the rest of us where the mainstream lies?"
Failing
Well, Newsweek may be failing -- although maybe we should clarify that with the phrase "faster than other print publications" -- but it's still mainstream. Newsweek has a ways to go before it qualifies as a fringe magazine. Let me know when it hits High Times numbers.
MSM
I don't tend to use phrases like "MSM" in quite the way others do. In fact the acronym version seems to have begun -- at least from where I'm sitting -- in places like Fox News as shorthand for "liberal biased mainstream media". I guess it's fine to believe that all the mainstream media in America leans left -- I happen to think it's insane, but it's okay by me if i disagree with crazy people -- but to then get to pick and choose exactly which publications and networks fall into the MSM category, that's not fine. That's wrong.
Newsweek is mainstream media. It's a magazine -- therefore media -- read by millions -- therefore mainstream. This is not debatable.
Re: MSM
"read by millions -- therefore mainstream. This is not debatable."
Read by millions -- and falling. (Also, reading that story reminded me of the rationale for the redesign: They want a more "elite readership.")
This is not debatable?
Would you be debating it if it were not debatable? That would be crazy.
Look, I don't like the acronym MSM that much myself, but I find it preferable to Drive-by-media. Perhaps FoxNews has popularized it. I have to chuckle/cringe a bit when they bat it about. But everyone is doin' it, doin' it, so it has become mainstream. Perhaps it is clever, as in the way some substituted choice for abortion, and now choice is challenged by life.
I have no problem with perceiving that the ganked cover of the latest edition of some dying magazine which I don't read was simply tacky and desperate. I received my copy of Atlantic in the mail yesterday with a request for renewal. Nope. I am still trying to decide on Vanity Fair. I think I'll renew, just for fun ... and some darn good articles, even when I disagree.
Palin: Still not Reagan
Ah, Crittenden pulls the old "Palin is another Reagan" canard.
As it happens, I read this post about the same time Dave Weigel tweeted a link to Reagan's 1975 interview with Reason Magazine. Ask yourself if you can imagine Sarah Palin coming up with something like this:
Read the whole thing. This is a man who gave some thought and study to political philosophy. He was good at the bumper-sticker stuff, don't get me wrong, but he didn't substitute the bumper-sticker stuff for actual thought. Liberals were wrong to believe the amiable dunce stereotype of Reagan, and they paid for it.
But not every lightweight who comes along is a secretly brilliant Reagan-in-waiting.
Sarah Palin still hasn't given an interview in which she seemed to possess this kind of depth of knowledge and contemplation of anything beyond how the media has victimized her and her family. I don't doubt that should could do it, but she hasn't yet. Liberals had evidence, if they wanted to find it, that Ronald Reagan was pretty crafty -- much smarter than an actor who was good at reading his lines and hitting his marks.
We have no similar evidence for Palin. (Possibly/probably ghostwritten WSJ op-eds don't really count.)
That said, I won't argue that Newsweek's sexist cover isn't "vital" -- although I'd argue it's more properly part of a vital tradition, and not vital in and of itself. But it's still sexist. It's worth noting that almost nobody is talking about the Christopher Hitchens essay it fronts.
Re: The old "Palin is another Reagan" canard
"Ah, Crittenden pulls the old 'Palin is another Reagan' canard."
Yeah. Obviously, I disagree with that, too. I've never liked these Reagan comparisons. Reagan was Reagan and we will never see another like him again.
"That said, I won't argue that Newsweek's sexist cover isn't 'vital' -- although I'd argue it's more properly part of a vital tradition..."
I'm having a terrible time with my headlines today. I think that's what I was trying to convey that Crittenden was conveying. He's pleased to see Newsweek get called out for violating a cherished bit of orthodoxy, but as a newsman, he isn't going to condemn the mockery of Palin or any other "mere" politician.
Me, neither.
Not a part of that tradition
No, this is not a part of that tradition, not even the tradition the guy described. In his examples, all of the mockery and defamation was obvious manipulation. Putting a hat on someone, or using an obvious stock gaffe shot is very different than NW's cover shot. I don't know if that fine print in the bottom right corner explains that the picture was originally for Runners World (and it will have its negative effect simply by being on the newsstands, without any disclaimer visible anyway), but that voluntary pose in those voluntary clothes (read that last phrase like Rizzo from Grease) gives the distinct impression that this was Palin's idea of an appropriate political mag cover shot. It's tabloid and low. It's not at all akin to the examples Crittenden gave.
I'm not in favor of Palin running for a spot on the ticket. But I'm also not in favor of non-satire magazines pulling bait and switch scams like this on their covers. Maybe it's my new gig as a photographer who spends hours a day editing his own work. I'm not a photojournalist, but there are certain responsibilities that an image handler has to the subject. This cover feels wrong deep in my bones. (See my comments on Cup o' Joel's coverage for a take on my emerging views as my understanding of the origin of the photo changes across three posts.)
Monkey Brad!
I like photographers, and have all kinds of respect for your opine on this one. Sometimes the "intangibles" are where the real story lies. Being a 7th-grade teacher, faced with multiple instances of "...what?!" per day, I know this to be the case.
.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009
Re: Not a part of that tradition
"No, this is not a part of that tradition, not even the tradition the guy described. In his examples, all of the mockery and defamation was obvious manipulation."
Disagree. Crittenden mentioned how the paper uses embarrassing candids of politicians for effect (e.g. "periodically cull(ing) the photo archives for pol shots that will illustrate the tone of the story. Hillary looking like she’s about to claw your eyeballs out and the other where she looks like she just sat on a whoopie cushion are perennial favorites.")
My friend Julie Ponzi has an interesting take on this at No Left Turns.
Another interesting wrinkle (also via Crittenden): Evidently, Newsweek used the image without permission. Ouch.
I'll see your disagree and raise you
The quote you cited gives examples that in no way lead a viewer to assume that the subject posed for that shot. Such photos are clearly intended to be understood and are understood to be illustrative of the author's/editor's view or implication. This cover shot does not do that. It gives the impression that the subject willingly posed in such a manner for the express intention of a serious news magazine's cover shot. That breaks with the tradition of using archive images to illustrate a point or give an impression.
Newsweek is less reporting or reflecting on Palin's lack of gravitas (as I just overheard the editor arguing on the radio this morning), as it is creating or shoring up the lack of gravitas.
Ponzi's wrong because the shot was appropriate for a Runners World story. It wasn't tawdry or slutty, or overly revealing. I think Ponzi is off base here. I think she's the one asking to have things both ways, and her special pleading is tiresome. We could argue further, but I fear losing too much time to the debate. I'm dreadfully behind in work. I will leave you with the opportunity for the last word after my parting quip.
To channel Morrissey, "Crittenden and Ponzi are on your side, but you lose because Prager is on mine."
** One last note: As for the permission to use the photo, I will change sides and offer this possible defense for Newsweek. The blame here may lie with the photographer or the stock agency, looking to make a quick buck and risk the consequences of violating Runners World's rights to the photo they presumably paid for the exclusive rights to for a year. We would be wrong to immediately assume that it was Newsweek who knowingly acted unethically regarding the rights. But I wouldn't put it past them.
Re: I'll see your disagree
Well, I'm happy to have the occasional disagreement with you, Brad. Especially on something that, in the larger scheme, isn't very important. I have the Palin book now but I've read no more than three pages of it. Like you, I'm dreadfully behind on paying work. I'm content simply to let maniacs like Andrew Sullivan immolate themselves over a politician who, if I were to bet money, has about 1,000 to 1 odds of ever occupying the Oval Office.
Odds
I'll take that bet. Is there a time limit on it?
Re: Odds
January 20, 2013. And the sentence probably should have read "...against ever occupying the Oval Office." But you realize, of course, 1) I have no money (and I'm running low on pogs) and 2) the dollar will probably be worthless by then anyway, assuming the world doesn't end on December 20, 2012.*
* That's the date the Mayans predicted the world would end following the Supreme Court's decision to stop the recount in Florida in a case that alien anthropologists will call "Nader v. Edwards."
Odds against
Yeah, that's how I read it. Still, $1 to win $1000, or even to win the right to say, "Ben owes me a grand." is worth it. I mean, I need to have some kind of compensation if she does win.
Re: The odds
I think Ben needs more clarification in his clarificationpalooza.
When he sets the odds against her occupying the Oval Office, does he mean through the traditional means of election? Or does he include the possibility of her leading an armed-to-the-teeth ragtag band of enraged Christian moose hunters in a march on Washington D.C. to liberate us once-and-for-all from the tyranny of health care?
We need details.
Clarification
She ends up as president of the United States by January 20, 2013. Doesn't matter how. I'm sure the Las Vegas handicappers would lay longer odds on the scenario you suggest, however.
The United States of WHAT
What if she leads a secession movement, and becomes the President of the United States of Redistan?
And why do I have dead horse all over my shoe?
The United States of WHATEVER
Re: Both ways
I don't think Julie is trying to have things both ways at all, and it isn't special pleading in the context of Palin's public utterances. However, you may be less familiar with Julie's writing than I am.
Hey; Anyone see the Inside Illustration of Palin as Barbie Doll?
... the cover pales in comparison, sexist-wise.
.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009
Re: Barbie doll
Saw it. Don't know that it pales in comparison so much as it adds to Newsweek's overall sexist gestalt wrt this particular round of Palin coverage.
Well only pales sexistly inso far as
...the schoolgirl outfit and red peek-a-boo bra go.
Other than that, I'd say the images are about even.
.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009
Ponzi
Ouch. Some of her commenters are kind of jerks. Don't defend Palin and suddenly you're a leftist? Wow.
Re: Ponzi
That's mild compared to the stuff that appears routinely at conservatives4palin.com.
Re: Re: Ponzi
You'll understand if I don't really want to summon the energy I'd need to go look at that site.
Re: Re: Re: Ponzi
Certainly. That's why I didn't link to it.
Hey...
I visited DemocraticUnderground.
Re: Hey
You're made of sterner stuff than I.
Reversal of fortune and vice-versa
You know, it always amused me in the 1990s to see "Question Authority" bumper stickers pop up at gun shows and other places where dangerous right-wingers like me would congregate. This was around the zenith (or the nadir) of the Clinton years. I was so amused, in fact, that I bought one. (I don't know where it is... it never ended up on a bumper, I can tell you that.)
But with all this Palin-sexism guff being bandied about, I'm starting to worry that I'll soon see ads for stuff like this on NRO and Malkin. Then I'd know for certain that Atrios was right.