Is Obama Anti-Chick?
Why is Obama’s campaign leaving women bloggers out of the conversation?
During today’s Hillary Clinton noontime break-out session at Yearly Kos, Barack Obama held a quiet get-together with 13 or 14 top bloggers, according to two attendees, of whom Ali Savino (who is not a blogger per se but is deeply involved with the Center for Independent Media, which she co-founded, and the Townhouse blogger list-serv) was the only female. The Atlantic’s Matthew Yglesias was there, as were my colleague Ezra Klein and his roommate Brian Buetler, of the Media Consortium, The New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg, Huffington Post foreign policy blogger Alex Rossmiller, and others.
What gives? Has the Obama campaign just written off women bloggers? …
Obama aide Josh Orton says my sources were wrong and while he would not reveal who else was at “the secret blogger meeting” he says there were other women there. Seems an odd point for there to have been confusion on — one can usually figure these things out by looking. …
A third source wrote in to confirm my first one’s observation that there was only one female blogger at the meeting, and to inform me that the other woman in the room apparenty worked for Obama.
Presented with this information, the Obama campaign was suddenly unable to confirm that more than one female blogger attended the meeting, despite its earlier insistance that there were several there.
More importantly, why are they lying about it? I wouldn’t normally pick this fight on behalf of women, but considering some of the larger lefty blogs were founded by women, it seems a little obvious when you leave women out of the secret meetings.
The last thing Obama needs to do is make the primary into nothing more than a gender war. It might seem that way right now, but it doesn’t have to be. (Link stolen from techPresident.)
No obviously related posts.
the obama camp, according to garance, invited 8 female bloggers but only one attended.
But that’s the same source that tried to pretend like one of their own staffers was a female blogger. In other words, he lied once to promote his candidate, why should we believe his other words?
If he hadn’t already discredited himself, I would tend to believe that claim. But when he’s actively trying to pass off staff as some form of grassroots to achieve more gender equality, why shouldn’t we assume he’s lying any other time he’s talking about it?
Did you hear Mitt Romney’s comment on Obama? “In one week he went from saying he’s going to sit down for tea with our enemies, but then he’s gonna bomb our allies. He’s gone from Jane Fonda to Doctor Strangelove in one week.”
“Why is Obama’s campaign leaving women bloggers out of the conversation?”
The left-wing women bloggers are probably all cooing over Clinton. Or maybe there waiting for Oprah to tell them what to do.
Shooting himself in the foot, that guy. Instead of being all things to all people (which Hill seems to be attempting with a bit more success), he’s so all over the map no one can tell whether to support him.
Of 13 or 14 top Lefty bloggers, how many are female?
I’m not even sure what the original (pre-claiming-more-than-one-but-we-don’t-know-who) problem was supposed to be, at this rate.
If you want to meet with top bloggers, you want to meet with the top bloggers, regardless of their gender; adding women to make it look ‘balanced’ just ends up looking like a sop.
I agree, Sigivald. However, considering gender already is an issue in the primary, I think it’s relevant.
Not to mention, Huffington Post and Firedoglake were founded by women. John Edwards chose two big female progressive bloggers. It was a blog dedicated to feminism written by women that set off the whole Clinton & young girl boobs issue. The fact is that women do play a major role in the lefty blogosphere.