God help us. We don't need to see this.
Posted on Wed, Aug. 01, 2007
Column on Hillary Clinton’s cleavage prompts fundraising campaignBy HOWARD KURTZ
The Washington Post
A journalistic assessment of Hillary Clinton’s cleavage has become the most improbable presidential campaign controversy yet.
It started two weeks ago when Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post fashion critic, took note of the Democratic candidate’s relatively low neckline during a speech on the Senate floor.
“There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton,” her Style column began.
Clinton’s team shot back Friday when they rolled out a fundraising letter that called Givhan’s column “grossly inappropriate” and “insulting.”
Senior Clinton adviser Ann Lewis urged donors to “take a stand against this kind of coarseness and pettiness in American culture.”
Givhan said she disagreed “that there was anything in the column that was coarse, insulting or belittling. It was a piece about a public person’s appearance on the Senate floor that was surprising because of the location and because of the person. It’s disingenuous to think that revealing cleavage, any amount of it, in that kind of situation is a nonissue.
“It’s obviously not the most important thing in the campaign. It’s obviously not the most important thing Hillary Clinton has ever done, by any means.”
Stories about the physical appearance of candidates, from Al Gore’s earth-tones wardrobe to John Edwards’ $400 haircut to a bathing-suit shot of Barack Obama in a People spread on “Beach Babes,” have long been an entertaining sideshow.
But because no journalist has plunged into this particular territory, given the predominantly male nature of past White House contests, Givhan’s Style column has sparked plenty of reaction, much of it negative.
Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote Friday that Givhan “managed to make a media mountain out of a half-inch valley.”
Lewis said she was “appalled” by Givhan’s column but at first dismissed it as “an inside-the-Beltway story.”
“I didn’t realize the attention and the anger it was setting off nationally,” Lewis said. “Women either read it or heard about it. They were indignant on Hillary’s behalf and also on their own.”
Lewis says she has not discussed the matter with the New York senator.
Lewis’ fundraising letter begins: “Can you believe that the Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary’s cleavage? ... I’ve seen some off-topic press coverage — but talking about body parts? That is grossly inappropriate.
“Frankly, focusing on women’s bodies instead of their ideas is insulting. It’s insulting to every woman who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting. It’s insulting to our daughters — and our sons — who are constantly pressured by the media to grow up too fast.”
For candidates, using criticism — real or perceived — to raise money is catching on as a political maneuver. In last year’s Virginia Senate race, after Republican incumbent George Allen got into trouble for using the word “macaca,” his campaign sent a letter to supporters blaming the media, and particularly the Post, for creating a “feeding frenzy ... over something that did not warrant coverage in the first place.”
After conservative author Ann Coulter mocked Edwards in March, describing him with a slur used against gays, the former North Carolina senator featured the attacks in a fundraising pitch.
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http://www.kansascity.com/238/story/214291.html
