Ever since Seth MacFarlane sang that silly song about seeing actresses’ boobs and everyone got mad, I’ve been of two minds about whether it’s worth our time, as women, to keep fighting this particular battle.
One the one hand, we seem to have time-traveled back to the Mad Men era. Across the land, from Hollywood to Fargo, nostalgia for twinsets, garish lipstick and back-alley abortions is in vogue.

On the other hand, I too want to laugh at boob jokes, and of course, I want to be able to welcome a compliment from a president of the United States.
But O got himself a Saturday Night Live skit and a million blog posts last week when, besides praising her brilliance, dedication and toughness, he added of California Attorney General Kamala Harris: “She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country ... it’s true ... come on.”
Whoops. As the play-by-play announcers on Obama’s favorite network, ESPN, would put it: out of bounds!

He knew it, too, and shortly afterward he apologized. That pissed other people off. Because why should he apologize for saying something so nice?

It’s not like he said, “She has a really nice ass!” But the way some feminists are reacting, he might as well have.

Before we jump on O, which I am sorry to say that I am about to do, let’s remember that he gave us two really great female Supreme Court appointees who are not by any standard definition “hot.” And by saying that, I’ve just implicated myself. I can’t help it. I am hardwired to. More on that below.

I wish we were at the point where we could welcome a flattering comment from a male public figure about how a female public figure looks.

After all, what’s the first thing a woman says when she meets another woman? That’s right: “You look great.” “Love those shoes.” “Where’d you get that sweater?”

There’s a whole industry devoted to how women look, and it keeps a large swath of our city employed. Women in the U.S. spend $250 billion a year on looking good.

Of course, O was being genuine in his flattery. He clearly values good looks, and he likes looking good himself. He works out, gets photographed shirtless, praises his wife Michelle all the time (that’s okay!) and doesn’t have his own body insecurities. When asked in 2008 whether he wears boxers or briefs, he replied, “I don’t answer those humiliating questions. But whichever it is, I look good in them!”

So how is telling a woman she looks good offensive? Because in a country where trafficked women’s bodies are for sale, where gang-rapes of teen girls and victim-blaming are on the rise, and where statehouses across the land are trying to return women to forced child-bearing, reminding women that how they look still matters is sexist.

It is offensive as long as women—historically valued chiefly for how we look—still have vastly less power than men and are egregiously underrepresented in all corporate boardrooms, in Congress, in academia, in the elite media and, yes, in the White House.

The other problem with the president drawing attention to a female officeholder’s looks is that women believe—and objective evidence backs them up—that being pretty actually helps women succeed.
The opposite is, quite unfairly, totally not true.

I realize cute males in politics like Gavin Newsom and centerfold ex-Senator Scott Brown get their fair share of attention. But the vast majority of powerful men are not hot. They never have to be. Whenever I run into Harvey Weinstein, for example, or look at pictures of Mitch McConnell, I try to imagine a woman looking that way and getting to where they are.
Impossible.

Sexism is subtly and pervasively sewn into the fabric of society. Because women participate in it all the time, it’s easy for men to complain that they don’t get why our president ought not to be commenting on how prominent public officials look.

There’s a name for what O did. Social psychologists call it “benevolent sexism.” Melanie Tannenbaum, writing in Scientific American last week, pointed out how benevolent sexism explained The New York Times’s obit of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill, which started off with a description of her cooking skills.
Benevolent sexism looks a lot nicer than hostile, open sexism, Ms. Tannenbaum writes. It justifies the power imbalance between men and women, as much as—or perhaps even more than—open misogyny.

Calling a woman a bitch, a ho, a stupid girl is actually not as insidious, because it’s out in the open. Benevolent sexism perpetuates ideas that diminish women’s already limited power without giving outright offense. And if you don’t like it, you are missing a good-humor chip.

“Although it is tempting to brush this experience off as an overreaction to compliments or a misunderstanding of benign intent, benevolent sexism is both real and insidiously dangerous,” Ms. Tannenbaum writes.

The costs of benevolent sexism can be seen in every boardroom and political body in America, where women are underrepresented because they are not considered powerful or serious enough to do the job.
The day might come—for our granddaughters, I wish, but probably beyond—when gender parity arrives. Then, how America’s female political leaders look and dress will matter as little as it does for our male leaders. And then, our president will be able to say whatever she wants.

editorial@observer.com

Elizabeth Warren: Leading the pack (Getty)

After the last big “Year of the Woman” in American politics – 1992 – galvanized by Anita Thomas publicly accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, it looked like women were on the road to gender parity in public office.

Twenty years later, we're still only 17 percent of officeholders,  while women are still at least 50 percent of the population. Hello there, Taxation without Representation?

In this regard, the US is way behind other countries. Many nations, from Spain and France to Rwanda and even Iraq, have tried to fix the rigged system with political parity laws, requiring parties to run female candidates by quota, or even reserving legislative seats for women. But the Q-word freaks Americans out, and mandated parity would never fly in the Land of the Free.

Women only seem to be players in American politics because of the marquee females in politics – HRC, Palin, Condi, Pelosi – whose notoriety proves the rule, and provides, as Rutgers Center for Women in Politics Director Debbie Walsh put it, “a veneer of accomplishment.”

This year, however, a record 18 women are running for the U.S. Senate (12 D, 6 R) and 163 running for the House (116 D, 47 R). So in a few days, we will know whether 2012 goes down in history asboth the year of the War on Women and another  “Year of the Woman” in American politics.

One reason is because partisan political women’s groups made a concerted effort to get women to run this year through the so-called 2012 Project, and financiers like former Clinton Ambassador Swanee Hunt’s Political Parity are passing around studies showing the women may be “more efficient” in office than men.

Before we start celebrating 2012’s milestones toward the Fem-ocracy, let’s remember that among the women running are also people like World Wrestling Federation millionaire Linda McMahon in Connecticut and Tea Party darling Kristi Noem from the great abortion-free state of North Dakota.

In the good news column, Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren shows a good chance of beating pin-up boy Republican Scott Brown for Senate. A Harvard economic professor and champion of the consumer protections against predatory lending, she’s had to put up with Brown’s jokes about how glad he is that she didn’t pose nude like he did to pay for law school. “Thank God,” for that, he joked on a radio program, prompting Nancy Pelosi to call him out.

Ms. Warren is currently up by 5 points.

When Mr. Brown tweaked Ms. Warren on body image, was he being sexist or just playing hardball? Politics is one dirty game – game being the operative word. Like every other spectator sport in America, it’s played by men and covered by men.  It is impossible to discuss politics without falling back on sports metaphors.  

Women who play it must expect to take hits in body and soul. In American politics, of course, women are being reduced to their essential body parts anyway.  Form is destiny. An entire campaign season has just been reduced to uterine function, as far as women’s interests are concerned.

In a few days, we will know whether 2012 goes down in history as both the year of the War on Women and another  “Year of the Woman” in American politics. Among notable races:

• Democrat Tammy Baldwin running in Wisconsin against Tommy Thompson. The Wisconsin race is a tossup, but Ms. Baldwin would be the first lesbian elected to the Senate.

• In crucial swing state Nevada, Shelley Berkley is running against incumbent Dean Heller, in a nail-biter hanging on Latino voters.

• Hawaii has a historic woman v. woman race for the open Senate seat, which is pretty rare. The Democrat, Mazie Hirono, is favored to win over Gov. Linda Lingle.  Studies have shown that when there is one female in high office, like governor or U.S. Senate, states often end up electing a second woman to similarly high office. (to wit: California’s two female Senators and House Speaker Pelosi)

• On the incumbent side, Claire McCaskill is the only woman vulnerable in the U.S. Senate, but she appears likely now to beat “legitimate rape” Todd Akin.

It isn’t easy to get women to run in the first place. Large sums of money have been thrown at recruitment and training of women by both parties over the years, but for the same reason women don’t get to be CEOs – the kiddies seem to be our responsibility! – women don’t have time or money to start campaigning.

And then when they do, look out. Siobhan “Sam” Bennett first ran for mayor in 2001 of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and, she has said, in her first debate in a room full of press and committee men, she was asked: “Just what are your measurements?”

It could be true that something about running Allentown, Pa., requires a Mayor with a certain waist to hip ratio, but Ms. Bennett never found out. Undeterred, she ran for office again. “When I ran for US Congress in 2008, the following quote was plucked from the internet and emblazoned for multiple days with a color photo of me across the front of our tribune paper, ‘Sammy Bennett is a phony political wh*** who gives good head and makes cheap political opportunists look like fuc**** Mother Theresa, even her p***y is made of plastic.”

Ms. Bennett survived all that to found Name It Change It, which works to identify and call out sexism directed at women of all political stripes. We'll find out on Wednesday whether our country is any closer to making her group defunct.

Maybe then, women like U.S. Senatorial candidates Kirsten Gillibrand and Wendy Long won't have to field inane questions about 50 Shades of Gray at their sole debate. So where is that whip, anyway?

Bloomberg. (Getty)

If you see Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the street on the No. 4 train in the next week or two, do offer him a cup of cocoa and an hour or two of your time, to listen. He is sad. Neither of the presidential candidates have had the courage, the will, the determination to stick it to their entire coalitions of supporters in exchange for the endorsement of the Mayor of New York City.

He gives each of them a checklist of competing priorities, and what do they do? They disagree with some of them. Mitt Romney will not endorse same-sex marriage; President Obama refuses to cease his domestic reconstruction of the Soviet Union. Neither will ban guns. What's a billionaire 22 times over left to do but throw change at people like Scott Brown and otherwise whine to the New York Times about how he can't get what he wants?

The fact that campaigns spend so much time calling upon the mayor at his 100-millionth-floor lair atop New York City, or inviting him to lunch at the White House, or golfing with him on the Vineyard, is bizarre, but wholly unsurprising. This, the prospect of a Michael Bloomberg endorsement, is the sort of thing—the pinnacle of things!—that wealthy donors, enbubbled advisors, and media dingbats would consider a "game-changer," pure electoral college jackpot. Remember how then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel used to spend more than 0% of his limited time lobbying for approval from David Brooks, a Bethesda newspaper columnist that no one—even David Brooks—ever listens to? The situation with Bloomberg is like that, exactly like that, especially in how the approval is never won.

How is Obama expected to reason with a man who, as he told the New York Times this weekend, believes Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren intends to "close the banks and get rid of corporate profits, and we’d all bring socialism back, or the U.S.S.R.?” Get rid of profits, add socialism, the U.S.S.R.—you know, some mix-and-match basket of those things. Of course, Mr. Obama is a touch to the right of Elizabeth Warren, so perhaps Mr. Bloomberg figures he'd compromise with a Democratic Senate for a more modest seizure of the means of production.

Even in the areas where Mr. Bloomberg agrees with the president—social issues—his stubborn side prevents him from offering credit. "Let’s get serious here," the mayor told the Times about Mr. Obama's announcement in support of same-sex marriage, "it was Joe Biden that forced that issue." This is how people who don't understand national politics think, despite their reputations as centrist political genius superhealers. While the White House has confessed that Vice President Joe Biden's words of support for same-sex marriage expedited Mr. Obama's planned rollout, there was, in fact, a planned rollout. Presidents don't change their platforms on major issues solely because the Veep runs his mouth on a teevee chat show. They do it because of ideological shifts within their coalitions.

Mr. Bloomberg doesn't like Mr. Obama because he's placed light restrictions on large banks that help New York City balance its budget when they inflate to ungodly proportions in fake-good times. That's his prerogative. What would it cost to procure the endorsement of this one man, who's most known nationally right now as the jerk who won't let hardworking folk purchase big-ass cups of soda pop? Too much, for very little.

Mr. Bloomberg sounds like a guy who really, really wants to endorse Mitt Romney, doesn't he? He likes that Mitt Romney is rich. He made a lot of money doing whatever in the financial sector—Mr. Bloomberg loves this. But Mr. Romney won't support gun control or action against climate change, because those are directly against what his coalition supports, so, yeah, no Bloomberg endorsement there, and who cares about this guy anyway?

The Mayor is, of course, welcome to not make an endorsement. But to whine about how neither candidate supports his full menu of policy preferences is insufferable. Not many voters out there are voting because their preferences are exactly in line with one candidate or the other. They prioritize, depending on what's most important to them at the time. It's part of being in a coalition.

As the Times notes, Mr. Bloomberg himself has made a "cleareyed assessment that he could not win" a presidential race. That's true, and it's not because he's short or Jewish or from New York City, as he likes to joke. It's because he's too egotistical to go about the business of national coalition-building, too stubborn to bother managing competing demands. His frustration now is that he can't get either of the candidates to squarely shoot their supporters in the eye—not with a real gun, mind you—which he views as statesmanship at its best. It's juvenile in its romanticism. Besides, of course, he’s always welcome to take a shot at the White House himself.

"It's a good day," said Sen. Scott Brown, one of the Republicans who voted for reform.

In a statement, Sen. Carl Levin, whose subcommittee grilled Goldman Sachs last month, complained about the unbridled greed that created unheeded risk, which created an atrocious financial crisis. "Wall Street may not have learned the lessons of that story," he said, "but we must pay attention. We must act. We must return the cop to the Wall Street beat, or once again suffer the consequence."

Still, it will take weeks to combine the Senate bill with the House's version. The Times has an excellent run-down of the differences between the two, although their cores are similar. And Reuters and the Wall Street Journal both have good features on financial reform's cast of characters. It turns out, for example, that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who won Sen. Brown's last-minute support, used to be a boxer.

Executive Producer David Friedman told the AP that he became interested in the young Ms. Brown when she sang on the show, after her stint as an American Idol contestant. Presumably, having her father become a huge political celebrity also helped.

The news might explain why the family was spending so much time before the Correspondents Dinner in the CBS cocktail room--where the Senator pounded a Bud Light, before giving us the slip--even though Mr. Brown was a guest of ABC's Jake Tapper.

Later in the night, a certain representative from HBO also appeared to be interested in Ms. Brown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVzzTY-KS70

Meanwhile over on The Rachel Maddow Show, the host is still denying that she's planning to run against Scott Brown for his Massachusetts Senate seat, despite protestations from the opposition. Wouldn't it be funny if all of Mr. Brown's cajoling actually caused Ms. Maddow to enter the race?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OyrCTSVEHo

And finally, Stephen Colbert reacted to the shocking news about Ricky Martin's sexual preference. Though, frankly, he still seemed a bit skeptical.

It's a business-themed show, so they'll ostensibly talk about cutting taxes, but perhaps Mr. Brown can also offer Mr. Kudlow some tips on how to campaign out of one's truck, and, more generally, how an unlikely candidate can win as a Republican in a heavily Democratic state.

"For a brief moment I thought, 'God, that could have been me,'" Mr. King told me this afternoon.

The Long Island congressman said he watched Democrats lose their filibuster-proof majority surrounded by disappointed colleagues from across the aisle.

"I was with a group of them when the numbers started coming in and—to a man—they were telling me they'd tell the leadership they could not even consider supporting the Senate bill," said Mr. King.

He said the win would "energize" Republicans. "I think it makes at least 40 or 50 Democratic seats now in play. Not only that, we have candidates coming forward to run against Democrats in pretty secure Democratic districts," he said, adding that would tie up campaign dollars that might have gone to help bolster candidates in less-secure districts.

Mr. Brown's win bodes well for Mr. King. He passed on a Senate run in the hopes that the G.O.P. could retake the House and re-install him as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

Which might make committee hearings like the one today—an inquiry into the White House "gatecrashers"—much less frustrating.

In the absence of White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers—who has not been subpoenaed by the committee's Democratic leadership, despite Mr. King's best efforts—the committee was left to question the gatecrashers themselves, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who responded to each inquiry by pleading the Fifth.

"They're almost incidental in this. To me, they're a symptom of what went wrong," said Mr. King, who did not ask the couple any questions. More important is how they got in, he said, and what might have happened.

"They could have been terrorists, they could have been psychopaths, they could have attacked the president, the vice president," he said. "At those events there are sharp instruments and if you're somebody who's skilled, you could lunge—I mean, they had their arm around Joe Biden. And also to be so close to the prime minister of India."

At 9:34 p.m. last night, Mr. Schumer issued a two-sentence statement that feels a lot like a post-mortem:

"The country is speaking to us, and we will hear them in the agenda we pursue over the next year. Our focus must be on jobs, the economy and delivering for the middle class."

Though Mr. Schumer didn't mention health care, the Times reports that Democratic leaders are meeting today, in an attempt to figure out what to do now.