'Post's' New Obama Slur: He's a Chick!

It's early days yet, but we may already have a contender for the worst piece of political journalism from 2008.

That would be today's op-ed in the New York Post on the "appealingly androgynous" Barack Obama.

Noting that Obama carried young and middle-aged female voters in Iowa, authors Lucy Berrington and Jeff Onore conclude, "It's not only Obama's policies and strategies that appeal to women. He is like a woman: slim, good looking, with long elegant fingers, appealingly dressed -- all terms more typically ascribed to female candidates."

There's more.

"Those shots of Barack and Michelle sitting with Oprah on stools had the feel of a smart, all-women talk panel: Obama fit right in for reasons beyond race."

And:

"Bill Clinton, who was famously dubbed America's first black president, provides a useful typecasting precedent. By the end of this year we might indeed have our first woman president - but not necessarily Hillary."

Set aside for a moment the general stupidity of calling the thoroughly masculine Obama "androgynous," and of saying that female candidates are "typically" described in terms of their finger length. (The last candidate I remember having long, elegant fingers was John Kerry -- who, come to think of it, was also slim and well-dressed.)

I'm more interested in the obscure motives behind this piece.

That it's published in Rupert Murdoch's Post suggests it is a smear -- perhaps to help out Hillary Clinton, whom Murdoch has supported at times, or perhaps to lay the groundwork for a theme that can be used to undermine Obama in the general election, in the manner that John Edwards was demeaned as the "Breck girl" and Kerry was labeled "French-looking."

But were the writers in on the attack, or did they think they were doing Obama a favor? In isolation, the article reads as effusive praise: "He embodies many of the positive characteristics we tend to regard as feminine: sensitive and empathetic, seeking to find common ground and minimize conflict, not taking power for granted."

It's hard to imagine, however, that Berrington and Onore are naive enough not to know how their words will be used by opposing campaigns and pundits, including Murdoch's own. (I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see Bill O'Reilly pick up the Obama-is-feminine thread on his show, especially now that he has a beef with the campaign.) In fact, this exact scenario unfolded last March: Josh Gerstein wrote a piece in the right-wing New York Sun labeling Edwards the "first woman president," putatively for his record as a champion on women; Rush Limbaugh immediately seized on the piece to ridicule Edwards.

What are the authors' politics? I don't know, since neither has a track record as a commentator. Berrington has worked as a lifestyle journalist, including for Murdoch's Times of London, while Onore, judging from his Google hits, appears to be an unsuccessful poet and musician.