"Women and Caucuses" & Still More "False" Claims of Sexism in the Media: Gosh, Why Do These Women Take Everything So Seriously, Anyway?

Melissa McEwan is the lead blogger at Shakespeare's Sister, a pretty heavily trafficked left-leaning site. At one point, Readers will perhaps remember, she was one of two ladies in charge of John Edwards's internet presidential bid.

Sunday, she made these provocative observations in a post entitled, "Women and Caucuses."

From the post:

Put this in the context of the series of posts Kate and I have written recently (e.g. Damned if You Do, Stealth Vote Salon, and I Am Not Ashamed), along with the associated comments threads and women bloggers who have linked approvingly to those posts, all of which speak to the very real, if near-totally ignored, phenomenon of women who are hesitant for various reasons to openly support Hillary, and the reality of caucuses requiring public support that the privacy of a voting booth does not—and only someone deeply engaged in willful ignorance could deny that sexism is playing some role in Obama's caucus wins.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the structural problem of caucuses requiring more time and offering less flexibility. With women still the primary caregivers (of child care and elder care) in the vast majority of American homes, caucuses favor the young, and disfavor older women with familial responsibilities, who comprise a large portion of Hillary's base of supporters.

But even more interesting, given the recent spate of denials of sexism in the media on this very blog as well as by such austere guardians of media fairness such as Hannity and Colmes, is the link she provides to a post subtitled "Hillary Sexism Watch: Part Nonillion and One in an Ongoing Series"

One example McEwan gets into is of course the Schuster comment. The second, an Upper Deck baseball card. Some nice range, there.

And then the Great Uniter, Barack Obama himself:

Someone speaking about Obama being the underdog, outsider candidate—which, by the way, once someone gets Democratic monument Ted Kennedy's and former nominee John Kerry's endorsements, is a meme that needs to die—says: "You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out." Certainly this was a reference to Hillary, whom the Obama campaign has been long painting (and not without reason) as the establishment candidate. Had the non-sexist equivalent, as pointed out by Homunq here, been used—"You challenge the status quo and suddenly the gloves come off"—there would have been no problem, but "claws come out" is as sure a sexist dog whistle as is catfight.

The big problem is that the someone who said this is Barack Obama.

Ahh, Melissa McEwan. Yet another "hysterical" citizen, hallucinating sexism where there is clearly none.