Home > Programs > Catholic Studies

What Happened to Sisterhood?
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday, June 19, 2009

ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: June 18, 2009

It took David Letterman a week and a few false starts, but the late-night comedian finally apologized for joking on national television about the statutory rape of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's 14-year-old daughter. Claiming that his crack about Palin's daughter being "knocked up" during a Yankees game by third baseman Alex Rodriguez was "misunderstood" because he intended to mock Palin's 18-year-old daughter rather than her younger one, Letterman ceded that "it's my fault that it was misunderstood."

That's not much of an admission, given that 14-year-old Willow Palin was the daughter who attended last week's Yankees game and viewers had every reason to assume Letterman was referencing her. Nor is it heartening that a 62-year-old, twice-married male celebrity -- who himself waited five years after becoming a father to marry his child's mother -- considers it acceptable to tell sex jokes about a politician's teenage daughter because she is 18 rather than 14.

It's hard to imagine Letterman making similar cracks about President Barack Obama's daughters, who are not much younger than Palin's, or about Obama's mother, who was an unmarried teenager when she conceived the future president.

For that matter, it's hard to imagine Obama himself coming in for such off-color criticism, since comics have largely exempted him from the barbs that are par for the presidential course. The Center for Media and Public Affairs recently tallied last year's political punch-lines and found that late-night comics mocked Republicans John McCain and George W. Bush far more than they ridiculed Obama, telling nearly twice as many jokes about McCain as about Obama. As for Palin, who only arrived on the national scene in late August, comics told more jokes about her in the last months of 2008 than they told about Hillary Clinton all year and nearly seven times as many jokes as they told about Palin's Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.

The entertainment industry's fondness for mocking conservatives is nothing new, but the raunchy tenor of its attacks on conservative women -- particularly when those women are attractive and openly religious -- is extreme even by Hollywood standards. From Letterman's reference to Palin's "slutty flight attendant look" to the incessant jokes during the 2000 presidential recount about Florida Republican Katherine Harris' makeup, attacks on conservative women typically focus far more on their appearance and alleged promiscuity than do attacks on men in the public eye.

Male chauvinism is largely to blame, but there is another culprit. The feminist establishment that loudly protests any sexist slight against its standard-bearers often goes mysteriously mute when the victim is a conservative woman or the perpetrator is a liberal man. In the 1990s, feminists raged against Clarence Thomas when Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment but yawned at Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern less than half his age and allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted several women subordinates.

When it comes to below-the-belt knocks against attractive women who defend traditional values, establishment feminists often lead the way. Former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt recently appeared on FOX News to discuss media treatment of beauty queen Carrie Prejean, who endured vicious insults about her appearance and intelligence after voicing her opposition to gay marriage. Rather than condemn the sexist taunts, Feldt offered one of her own, suggesting that Prejean needs "a heart transplant rather than the breast implants."

With feminist watchdogs like Feldt, it's unsurprising that comics like Letterman feel free to spin sex jokes about teenage girls and deride a female former vice presidential nominee as "slutty" even as they tiptoe around criticism of a sitting male president. No wonder so many American women refuse to identify with a feminist establishment that preaches sisterhood while aiding and abetting chauvinism.

-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.