I have created a new species designation for the female Democrats who play hypocritical gender politics on behalf of Barack Obama. They're genderhawks.
You remember the term "chickenhawk," don't you? During the Bush years, anti-war activists and journalists hurled the ad hominem epithet at anyone who supported military action against our enemies but hadn't personally served.
I say let's give 'em a dose of their own tactical medicine.
Genderhawks are feminist chickenhawks. They demand "equal pay" for women, practice militant identity politics based on chromosomes and purport to wage an all-out government war on gender inequity. Yet, they personally refuse to hold themselves and their lousy male bosses accountable for their own gender-based failures and delinquencies.
Meet genderhawk Jennifer Palmieri. The Clinton administration veteran faithfully defended a lecherous philanderer-in-chief against what his sexist operatives called "bimbo eruptions." Then she served as spokeswoman for adulterous crapweasel John Edwards. Now, she is Obama's communications flack and chief social media gender warrior. On Tuesday, which Team Obama and its feminist pals dubbed "Equal Pay Day," Palmieri took to Twitter to call out the sexist White House press corps:
"Love all these guys, but note that 6 of 7 news orgs in front row sent men to ask @presssec abt the problem of gender pay inequity," Palmieri tweeted.
Oooh. Get it? Palmieri was womansplaining, gender-shaming and upside-the-head-smacking the mainstream media for sending tone-deaf men to ask about women's issues. She really zapped and zinged 'em, didn't she?!
Well, only in her Beltway bubble-wrapped head.
Palmieri humiliated just one person: herself. In her faux-minist fog, she forgot that her own boss, the president, is a man . His vice president is a man . Their labor secretary is a man . In fact, 12 of 15 Obama cabinent members are dastardly men. And White House press secretary Jay Carney, sent by her male managers to answer questions about gender equity from the men Palmieri deemed insufficiently sensitive to women's issues, is a man .
Thankfully, sane journalists of both genders pushed back against Palmieri's identity politics run amok. Fox News reporter Ed Henry fired back: "WH sent man to podium, right?" Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Salena Zito retorted: "In your line of (thought) Jennifer, a woman should have taken the question for the White House not a man." National Review's Charles W. Cooke quizzed: "Would the answers have been different if the questions had been asked by women?"
Forced to respond, Palmieri grudgingly acknowledged that the press secretary carries XY chromosomes, but she rationalized that he's a man "who advocates for policies to reduce gender pay inequality and appreciates seriousness of problem." See, gals? Jay Carney feels your pain -- unlike those chauvinist pigs in the press corps asking pesky questions about bogus White House wage inequity stats! See, guys? If you pay lip service to caring, you can be honorary genderhawks, too.
Obama and his femme-a-gogue flock aren't fooling anyone. It's not just evil men and right-wingers raising questions about the Democrats' Equal Pay Day theater. Reporters bombarded Carney about a new American Enterprise Institute study that found that the salary for the median female White House staffer is 12 percent lower than for a male staffer. Carney meekly replied that at least the White House pay gap is not as bad as the national average.
Both the left-wing Daily Beast and the free-market Wall Street Journal opinion pages debunked the "77 cents on a dollar" myth, which inflates the gender gap by failing to account for education, occupation and marital status. When challenged on the White House promotion of junk science, Carney sneered at a Reuters reporter that he "would expect something a little more precise."
While Palmieri runs interference for Carney and Obama, the cloud of sexism charges hanging over the White House hasn't gone away. It's liberal media outlets including The New York Times and Time magazine that have noted the "boys' club" climate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, epitomized by the glaring absence of women in featured Oval Office photos of Obama's meetings with senior advisers. (Well, except for that one photo that showed a sliver of Valerie Jarrett's leg.)
And it was a top female aide, Anita Dunn, who very precisely told author Ron Suskind on tape that the Obama White House "actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women."
Meanwhile, Obama genderhawk Jennifer Palmieri thinks squawking about male reporters is the way to achieve feminist social justice. Whatever we're paying this unhinged, selective man-hating lady is way too much.