Obama’s gone all radical extremist ideological gender feminist on their asses. TIME – avid fan of Christina Hoff Sommers – reports on his gender-feminist press conference today:
President Barack Obama’s traditional end-of-year press conference Friday was historic for reasons that had nothing to do with the substance of the president’s comments. All eight of the reporters who questioned Obama were women—and nearly all were print reporters—an apparent first for a formal White House news conference, a venue traditionally dominated by male television correspondents.
It makes news, yet all-male gatherings hardly ever make news.
“The fact is, there are many women from a variety of news organizations who day-in and day-out do the hard work of covering the President of the United States,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, after the event. “As the questioner list started to come together, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to highlight that fact at the President’s closely watched, end of the year news conference.”
And to irritate Fox News and Christina Hoff Sommers at the same time.
“It’s amazing for that to happen as that room is filled with a majority men,” said [April] Ryan, who shouted out a question to the president and was acknowledged over questions shouted by male reporters.
Makes a change, doesn’t it.
Well done, Mr. President! Also, anything that pisses off both Fox and Sommers is just an added fillip. Now I’m trying to think of who else it could piss off so we could have a truly delightful trifecta of pissed-offed-ness…
Canonicalkoi: Wait! There’s something that pisses off Fox News that Sommers is Ok with?
@cKoi- How about the transphobes?
Hopefully this is a sign (along with Immigration, Cuba etc.) that Obama and his administration are going to just tee off on a whole bunch of F-you’s to Republicans for the remainder of his term.
And the late Helen Thomas would have loved it.
press conference Friday was historic for reasons that had nothing to do with the substance of the president’s comments.
These days few, if any, of Obama’s comments have any substance. He is such a monumental disappointment.
And as for his decision to only field questions from women? Handing out privileges that are not earned but are based on belonging to a particular group is not progressive: it is a regression to tribalism.
The fact it pisses off Christina Hoff Sommers is meaningless, because Sommers herself has always been meaningless in my opinion.
@ #2 DX–Oooooh, you have an excellent point there! “Two minds with but a single thought” and all like that there. They really should count as one.
@ #3 Uncle Ebeneezer–anything that pisses off transphobes is fine by me.
canonicalkoi @1
The “ethics in journalism” gamergaters will not be pleased either.
Reverse sexism? We shouldn’t “see gender”? Am I getting this right?
Decker @ 5 – why on earth are you assuming the “privileges” are not “earned”?
Replicating the same old “no I haven’t been paying attention, why do you ask?” tropes at #5, I see. But then, we already knew Decker was a replicant.
@5 Decker:
You know what, the women who were answered earned their right to a question just as much as the men did by the virtue of being reporters inside the room. That’s pretty much the achievement you have to get in order to ask a question at a press conference.
And as was pointed out in the OP, whenever it’s all males on a panel or a press conference or whatever, very rarely are the majority of people jumping up and down saying that the men didn’t earn their right to a question (funny how it happens when it’s all females)…
The rightwingosphere is freaking out about this, so it must either be 1) the right thing, or 2) something Obama did.
(In this case, I’d say it’s both!)