Ed Morrissey is normally a common-sensical sort of blogger, who doesn't indulge in hand-wringing and the-sky-is-falling messages. Not so this morning, though:
The Barack Obama campaign wanted to make sure that the reporters traveling along with the presidential candidate on his foreign tour presented themselves properly. His staff distributed a memo that dictated a dress code, reminding the women in the media entourage of the need to keep from offending the natives.
Morrissey then reproduces the memo and pretends to sense "a faint whiff of paternalism".
I don't think the Obama team meant any offence to the journalists, or wanted to suggest that they are not mature enough to know how to dress. Those journalists will be travelling with Obama, and you can bet if anything happened – say, a woman journalist dresses inappropriately and causes an incident – everyone would be pointing fingers at Obama and blaming him for that, not the one actually causing the incident.
Those double-standards among the media, and bloggers, are sickening. Politicians are always blamed for everything, even for things that are beyond their control. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
No doubt Morrissey would be the first one to cry bloody murder if a woman journalist travelling with Obama got into trouble in the Middle East for her "provocative" clothing. He'd probably write a post like "Why didn't the Obama team inform the journalists about the dress codes in the Middle East?"
No, sorry, but this latest smear piece by Morrissey was way over the top, not to mention void of any logic, common sense or reason. You want to attack Obama? Fine, there are plenty of actual issues you can address, but this "dress-code story" isn't one of them.
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