For those of you who thought yesterday’s NY Times piece about the “boys club” playing basketball at the White House was ridiculous, that just shows why you don’t have the chops to be a WH reporter for a major network:
We asked Terry O’Neill, the new president of the National Organization for Women, what she thought of those Democratic women and others quietly complaining about a “boy’s club” atmosphere at the White House, as exemplified by the president playing basketball earlier this month with 11 members of Congress and four Cabinet Secretaries — all men.
As the New York Times and cable news chatter looked at whether the Obama White House is too fratty yesterday, President Obama brought along a woman golf partner for the first time in his 24 golf outings as president, domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes.
Is this much ado about nothing?
Jake Tapper, on the job. I’m beginning to understand why he thinks Fox news is his “sister news organization.” I wonder what Neil Cavuto thinks about this?
Just shoot me now.
*** Update ***
This is excellent news for John McCain. Also, too.
ricky
Dude (if I may call you that without ticking off the feminazi’s)
if Obama is going to call on of our sister networks out for PMSing all the time, you can bet we are going to get all
fashion polic on his ass.
Cain
Uh.. yeah, whatever. I didn’t see any indians in there either. I demand a token Indian in the basketball court and golf too! Otherwise.. I WILL BE OFFENDED!
meh.
cain
ellaesther
Oh, honey. If we shot you every time you asked to be shot, you would have been dead many times over now. And where would we get our pictures of Tunch and Lily?
Though I will admit that when I first heard someone talking about this “issue,” I honestly — really — thought it was a joke. I should have learned by now, from all those times that we failed to shoot you, to never be surprised by moronoitude in high places. Also, too.
jeffreyw
Lackin substance, style will do for now.
lovethebomb
A lesbian friend informs me that women who play golf (herself included) are usually dykes. So no real change here.
danimal
Has anyone considered that “Jake Tapper” may, in fact, be a spoof; a liberal blogger type determined to embarrass the MSM with inane reports for as long as he can get away with it?
jeffreyw
Just wait until Bama draws a chargin foul on some sweet, petite lass during one of these pick up games, hell will break loose. I bet the Secret Service has a plan ready to go.
justawriter
Plus it is well known that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Nixon wouldn’t let the girls play on their team either.
This has been a public service announcement of the He-Man Woman Haters Club.
Zifnab
They should ask Lily Ledbetter. She might not have received equal pay for equal work after over a decade of service at Goodyear, but at least under the Republican Administration, she still got invited out to play company sports.
Jamie Leigh Jones. Also.
I don’t know how the Democrats expect to keep the women’s vote.
ricky
@ricky:
I don’t know what is happning to my lttrs but I will call out th Polycis and fix it.
Warren Terra
fixt.
Legalize
I just bet that Obama watches sporting events with his buddies and drinks beer – BEER I SAY! – while eating the fried wings of flightless birds! When will the media finally call Obama out for such un-American activities?!
Morbo
CBS News is on the job, too. Knoller must be upset that Tapper keeps upstaging him.
geg6
WTF is with this silliness? I mean, really?
If Hilary had won, would they be complaining that she doesn’t take men out with her when she has a girls’ day out for shopping, waxing, and cosmos?
Men need men time, just as women need women time. I can’t believe this is an issue.
But if Tapper’s involved, well…that explains it.
Ash
That stupid article was in itself laughably sexist.
1) Assuming all women abhor sports, and
2) Assuming that only masucline manly-men like Rahm are capable of stringing together expletives, and
3) Making all the ladies out to be whiners
Warren Terra
OT: this is the first time I’ve posted from my computer (Windows XP, Google Chrome) in a while and the edit function, which had been working for me last time I checked, is nowhere to be seen. Am I just unlucky, or has something actually changed?
jeffreyw
Heard Axelrod has already floated plans for a coed shower room at the White house, but FLOTUS said it might look uppity so they tabled that idea. Honest, I heard that. Somewhere.
Colette
Just as a practical matter, how the hell would the White House routinely find women who could play hoops at the same level as Obama, let alone Reggie Love? With the disclaimer that anecdote=/=data, I see pickup games at my YMCA in Oakland all the time. The guys are about what you’d expect for that kind of venue: a mix of ages and abilities that would hardly intimidate the average playground baller. Once in a while a woman who used to play for Cal joins the games – and she gets hammered. They have a guy in his 60s guard her, and she can barely get off a shot. I think it would be a nifty PR move for Obama to get some of the women from Georgetown’s or GWU’s teams once in a while to play, but it’s pretty hard to believe there’s more than a tiny handful of congresswomen or female Cabinet secretaries who could hang with the guys.
Of course, I guess your viewpoint depends on whether the purpose of these games is primarily exercise or politics.
Existenz
So, have any reporters investigated how many times Bush brought a woman golfing with him? And how many women went duck-hunting with Dick Cheney?
This is just a stupid non-story.
Makewi
Obama’s sexism is well documented so this isn’t surprising.
Colette
@Colette: And all that said, I now feel dumber for even having engaged a brain cell or two on such an idiotic topic. Vive la difference.
The Grand Panjandrum
I just hope she doesn’t dunk on him.
@Warren Terra: I lost it the other day, and I am still on the same setup I’ve been using for a year.
Existenz
I think a better story would be looking into why Senate Republicans are blocking the confirmation vote of Dawn Johnsen and other women nominated by Obama.
Dawn Johnsen has been in limbo for SEVEN MONTHS because the GOP doesn’t like her pro-choice stance. That’s much more sexist and “old boys club” than who somebody shoots hoops with.
martha
The article was embarrassing–and they wonder why people have stopped reading newspapers. When we want to read that crap we read Gawker for cripes’ sake. Or stand in the longest line at the checkout counter on purpose so we can read all of Rupert’s rags.
martha
@lovethebomb: Uh, not always.
Face
There’s more concern trolling in the MM nowadays than I can ever remember. I’m sure they’ll find a way to crop or photoshop a pick of him leaning down and thus staring at her chest or something. Can’t wait to see how Fox slams him for this.
ricky
@geg6:
Hillary waxes?
Punchy
I’m confused. Was the woman there to wash his clubs, or cook him a snack for the back 9?
Warren Terra
We could barely get a few members of the mainstream media to show an interest in how many members of the Supreme Court hunted fowl with Dick, a genuinely troubling conflict of interest issue (well, it would be if anyone thought Scalia troubled to check anything but the partisan labels on issues before he made up his mind). Asking them to care about invented non-issues with regards to his fowling when they didn’t care about the real issues would be a bit much.
On the other hand, when that lawyer apologized to Cheney for getting shot in the face, the press were all over that, so at least they sometimes noticed something.
Legalize
Fortunately, Obama is way up in the terror-plots-foiled in the first 9 months of office category.
ricky
@Existenz:
I think it is far more important to ask why Cheney did not shoot any old women in the face when he took them hunting.
Napoleon
@Colette:
Oh come on. Are you saying you can’t see Janet Napoletano driving the lane or putting a hard foul on Arnie Duncan?
slag
In the last co-ed basketball game I watched, the girl on the team was probably the best one. And it was a great team.
That said, I’m going to be honest and admit that I do see a distinct frat boy quality to the admin’s extracurricular activities and find it irritating as always. But the fact of the matter is that this is one of those pervasive cultural problems. And it would be worthy of a national conversation only if we were fully prepared to admit as much. Which we clearly are not. Wasn’t Tapper last seen complaining about Obama’s girly bowling score? Or was that someone from his “sister news organization”.
Ash Can
Speaking as a female and unabashed feminist, I’d like to say that this is a non-issue, Terry O’Neill needs to find a better hobby, and Jake Tapper is most likely just pissed off that he doesn’t get invited to the prez’s pickup games himself.
New day, new time-waster for Tapper. He does get something right now and then, but those instances are so rare that it’s just not worth the time and effort to read his junk blog.
Dee Loralei
O/T Harry Reid says :http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_10/020628.php Public Option will be in final Senate bill!
Ash
@martha:
Or Jezebel. That site continues to make me embarrassed to be a woman on a daily basis.
geg6
@Makewi:
It is? Please, enlighten me.
Any man who signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would be difficult to smear as a sexist.
gwangung
This is all Obama’s fault.
Napoleon
@martha:
I know a bunch of women who golf, whole leagues of them, and not one of them a lesbian.
slag
@Makewi:
As is your ignorance, but your unabashed willingness to persist in it continues to surprise the hell out of me.
Corey
@ricky: Hilarious that a “progressive” commentariat would use the word “feminazi”.
Call me PUMA if you want but if serious things are getting done at these basketball games, as seems to be the case, then there really should be some kind of effort made to include women. That said it’s a dumb thing to fixate on.
jl
Unless I read it wrong, Tapper went out of his way to ask a rep of a woman’s organization if she thought there was a problem with the boys’ basketball sessions. She said yes, which is her right. Then when she said yes, he bashed her.
So, why did he ask?
So, OK, the O-man included a woman golfing with the boys.
I say, to please both Tapper and the womens’ organizations: bring on the co-ed mud wrestling, right next to fountain.
I actually think they should have some co-ed sports, if they are going to go frat-boy sports league at the WH. Maybe volleyball.
Yeah, I like that idea, volleyball. What’s wrong with volleyball? (IMHO everything is wrong with golf)
Skepticat
@lovethebomb: Perhaps the women with whom your friend plays golf, decidedly not women golfers in general.
ricky
Has any body asked Jake Tapper why he never climbs on the bandwagon of a story broken by female reporters at the New York Times?
kay
I would just like to say, as a working gal, that I don’t want to play basketball with co-workers.
I don’t. I think that’s a slippery slope to softball jerseys with silly “team” names on them, and all-but-mandated Sunday games. I have proof. This happens to well-intentioned people.
You have to remain vigilant, or you end up resentful, wearing a stupid jersey.
Dork
@Punchy: She certainly wasn’t driving the cart, seeing as they never got lost and didn’t take 6 hours to finish the course.
Zifnab
@geg6:
Fix’d.
But… but… but… the W is for Women!
geg6
@jl:
Word.
jl
OK, mudwrestling it is. Easier to make secret deals that way. You can’t whisper secret deals and insider knowledge in volleyball. Probably that is why volleyball is on the outs among the powerbrokers who want to frat-boy it up with sports.
I want volleyball on the WH lawn, as a good government measure.
tamied
I believe you have all missed the relevant background here. It’s Michelle who is keeping all the women from her hubby. Any gal that gets too close to her man will get their asses kicked!
\snark
Tom Q
I’m glad someone brought up this piece of dreck article. I honestly could barely believe it when I read it yesterday morning. A non-issue, inflated to a “some people say” by a writer with no evidence. Unless, of course, liking sports is now a disqualifying characteristic.
Almost every on-the-record quote in it was from someone who worked/campaigned for Hillary, which made me wonder if it had originated as a PUMA talking point.
ricky
@Corey:
Don’t play basketball much, do you? Or satire.
jl
@tamied: OK then, co-ed extreme fighting, in the mud, next to the fountain. Michelle will win. It will be awsome.
joes527
Oh what I would pay to see Michele Bachmann included in the basketball game.
Just Some Fuckhead
If President Obama cared about women, he’d put the basketball away and have a catfight with Elie and geg6.
OT, can anyone point me to the history of military retirees getting free health care for life? Want to brush up on my knowledge of this area since the military retirees in my life are wailing that the new HCR scales back their benefits.
Sue
What I want to know is, since O does everything “The Chicago Way”, when’s he going to get a 16-inch softball game going, no mitts. Then we’ll be able to tell the men&women from the boys&girls, mostly by their mangled fingers.
Until this happens, no one has ANY credibility in my view.
slag
@kay:
Same with potlucks. Once you start down the potluck path, you’re quickly on to mandated birthday cake-baking and baby shower card-signage. There’s no end to that madness.
geg6
@Just Some Fuckhead:
He’d lose rather pitifully, my guess.
geg6
@Just Some Fuckhead:
http://www4.va.gov/healtheligibility/
http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/permalink/meta-crs-10761:1
I think these would be helpful.
Shawn in WhowMe
Pickup basketball, the national pastime of the black male community, is a “frat boy” activity now? Jeezus Christ.
Makewi
@geg6:
He signed it, “here you go sweetie, B H Obama”
geg6
@Makewi:
Seriously. Do you EVER back up any of the bullshit you sling? Inquiring minds want to know.
Da Bomb
This is a slap in the to all of the slaps in the faces to women everywhere! Too.
Zifnab
@geg6: $5 million a job!
Da Bomb
@Dabomb- Edit function, not working! Gah!
This is a slap in the face to all of the slaps in the face to women and everywhere! Too.
Joel
If they’re going to concern troll, whither the NAACP?
Da Bomb
@slag: Pot lucks are the antichrist!
Demo Woman
Congress should have a bonding experience on the Appalachian Trail. They have time off over Thanksgiving.
Makewi
@geg6:
Are you telling me that you really never heard of the sweetie brouhaha?
geg6
@Makewi:
Sweetie, I really don’t give a damn about stupid shit like this. And you’re talking to a woman old enough to have burned a bra or two and who marched for the ERA.
Obama can call me sweetie all he wants as long as he keeps signing bills like Lily Ledbetter’s.
licensed to kill time
@geg6:
I wanna burn a brouhaha.
The Saff
@geg6: I’m with you there.
Seems as if the silly season is now 24x7x365.
RememberNovember
The MSM- Rocky Horror
“Incest is best put your sister to the test!”
they don’t call him Jake “keg and booty” Tapper fer nuthin!
RememberNovember
@Makewi:
so document it.
Just like Bush giving innapropriate massages to female chancellors?
tcha.
oh what’s that siren?
It’s the
Waaaaaaaaaaambulance!
I think we have a DOA.
Makewi
@geg6:
So you have heard of it, you just want to ignore it. I figured as much. Typical of today’s gender warriors, willing to throw a few daughters on the patriarchal fires if the politics are right. Guess you just got tired of actually fighting, and now want a good pat on the head.
mistersnrub
Tapper reinforces the point that television “journalists” are not that at all. They are famewhores and actors. He is merely following the David Gregory playbook: play up your sham antagonistic relationship with the administration, get a reputation for asking “tough” questions, profit!
Jon Stewart needs to end a few careers.
IndyLib
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Here’s a good place to start.
Makewi
@RememberNovember:
Typical. Still want to talk about Bush. Hey, did you know we elected a new misogynist last November. It was in all the papers, I’m sure you heard something about it.
geg6
@Makewi:
Calling someone sweetie (which I do myself from time to time…I’m old so sue me) is equivalent to fucking them out of equal pay?
Wow, I had no idea. So I’m selling my nieces down the river or throwing them into the flames for not being as upset about trivia as I am about actual real discrimination.
Gotcha.
slag
@Da Bomb:
I’m not willing to go that far yet. But I will say that, if there is an antichrist, it will probably show up on earth in the form of some type of baked casserole dish.
SenyorDave
So, have any reporters investigated how many times Bush brought a woman golfing with him? And how many women went duck-hunting with Dick Cheney?
Cheney, being the perfectly chivalrous gentleman that he is, would not allow any women on his trips since he only shoots male duck hunters in the face.
Makewi
@geg6:
Just keep redefining things so that what was once an outrage is acceptable so long as it comes with the pat on the head from daddy.
Da Bomb
@slag: Or maybe even as Potato Salad.
kay
@slag:
Is Jake Tapper this stupid? We want equal pay for equal work, idiot, and equal opportunity to get the work.
We don’t want to play basketball.
It’s about the money, with us. Jesus. Twenty five years and he’s still wandering around in the dark. “Is it….basketball?”. NO, It’s MONEY.
I don’t know that women can state this any plainer.
kay
@slag:
Why don’t the White House press corps start a gender-neutral basketball team and stop bothering us with this nonsense?
They’ll find out what everyone finds when launching these “team” efforts. They actually don’t want to spend every waking moment with the people they work with.
But, by all means, get one going. No one will pick Jake Tapper for their team, because he’s a prissy scold.
Just Some Fuckhead
@IndyLib: Thanks.
slag
@kay: Exactly. Tapper and every other Heather in this country wants us to be reading more into the sturdiness of Obama’s wrist when he goes in for the jumpshot rather than into the administration’s policy record.
Does the boys’ club exist? Yes. Is it an artifact of our bizarre value system that persistently undermines social equality? Yes. But will any of that improve if Barack Obama gives up shooting hoops for shoe-shopping? No. Because if Obama did change his hobbies, the Heathers would simply move on to asking some Master Arbiter of Masculinity what Obama’s wimpy size 11 shoe indicates about the sizes of his other appendages.
Ash Can
@Sue: LOLZ! I love my hometown dearly, but 16″ sucks. Sixteen-inch is to men’s hands what high heels are to women’s ankles. And quite possibly worse.
@Makewi: There have been times when you have argued substantive points here. This is not one of those times.
LD50
@Makewi:
I will never understand wingnuts’ infantile obsession with symbols at the expense of substance.
gwangung
@LD50: I doubt if she’s being serious; she’s just attention whoring.
Otherwise, it’d just a mind numbingly stupid thing to say.
Makewi
@Ash Can:
Here’s a substantive point for you. NOW thinks this is a problem too.
Ash Can
@Makewi: No, the head of NOW thinks it’s a problem. Which leads to this question: What did Terry O’Neill have to say about Obama going golfing with Melody Barnes?
carolatl
“Sweetie” is not automatically a sexist term. Down here in the south, we call everyone “sweetie.” It’s a term of endearment I use frequently with my son and his 8-year-old (boy) friends.
Julia Grey
Is this much ado about nothing?
Jake, sweetie, everything you write is really about YOU.
So in answer to your question: yeah howdy.
Nothing. Much ado about.
Mayur
@Ash Can:
No there aren’t.
Ignore it and it’ll go away…
…um, scratch that. It’ll keep spawning its drivel here just to vex those of us who like reading the comments.
I mean really, Makewi. One (not necessarily sexist) word by the fucking head of state isn’t even on par with W’s hideously inappropriate Merkel massage, let alone anything that actually has to do with the politics of gender on any significant scale.
Go away. Adults are talking. At least BOB is entertaining sometimes.