Hypocritical Media Bashing of Mrs. Fred Thompson

A very peculiar thing is happening with a normally feminist media that has the potential to have a huge impact on the 2008 presidential campaign.

As press outlets go out of their way to advance the presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton, and laud the first female Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, attacks on Jeri Thompson, the wife of soon-to-be candidate Fred Thompson, are quite in vogue.

It appears that feminism only applies to Democrats.

This hypocritical dichotomy was pointed out in the Waterbury Connecticut Republican American Newspaper Thursday:

The mainstream media's bias is usually less blatant than this. In "Will Her Face Determine His Fortune?" the Sunday New York Times "profiled" Jeri Thompson, the "trophy wife" of Fred D. Thompson, "the grandfatherly actor and former Republican senator from Tennessee whose second wife is almost a quarter-century his junior." (He's 64, she's 40.)

After noting her "youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair" and pointing out "her most dramatic (campaign) statements have been sartorial, like gold-lame wedge sandals on a campaign stop, or a plunging neckline for a Washington dinner," the Times got surrogates to cast aspersions on her character and intelligence, including one who compared her to a stripper. Said one left-wing analyst: "I think women have an innate 'ick' reaction when they see a wife so much younger and vital than her husband."

An innate “ick” reaction? Is that how people feel when they see a man with a younger woman? If such is the case, why are so many women seeking older companions?

The Times’ piece didn’t delve into such a paradox, and instead continued on its disparaging quest (emphasis added): "One writer described the May-December marriage as 'gross,' while others said Mrs. Thompson was an outright liability.”

How delightful.

Yet, maybe more fascinating was that on the same day the Times ran its Jeri Thompson hit piece, the Hartford Courant ran a puff piece on Jackie Clegg Dodd, the wife of Democrat presidential candidate Chris Dodd who is 18 years younger than her spouse:

Chris Dodd first noticed Jackie Clegg on the Senate floor one day about 20 years ago.

She was young and attractive, but the congressional aide was not about to get close with a U.S. senator.

"I was a staff person," she said. "I was rather deferential."

But Dodd had asked her boss, Utah Sen. Jake Garn, about her, and when Garn organized a charity ski event in Park City, Clegg, coincidentally, was designated as Dodd's ski instructor.

Was the Courant at all disgusted by the disparity in their ages? Hardly.

In fact, though her current age of 45 was mentioned, him being 63 was totally ignored. And, for the record, this means that when he first sought her out, he was 43, and she was 25.

Yet, this didn't seem to be a concern for the Courant as it gushed all over Mrs. Dodd:

Outwardly, Chris Dodd's wife of eight years may not seem the ideal match for her bon vivant husband. She looks so sophisticated, so cool, the portrait of the strait-laced businesswoman-cum-proper political spouse in her powder blue suit with the gleaming Dodd 2008 jewelry prominent near her left shoulder.

But the calm, even serene appearance masks a complex woman who can be both soft and hard-edged, sometimes both at once. She can get sarcastic with a smile, and can surprise with a zinger or a quip even as her voice doesn't rise a note. Or she can, on a moment's notice, riff at length on the infrastructure of Zagreb, Croatia, or on the virtues of her husband's national service plan.

Jackie, say her friends, is more organized, more detail-oriented than Chris. Though Chris is highly regarded as a Senate power broker - he's chairman of the banking committee and a master of crafting legislation - his motto has long been to get along with everybody and have a good word for them. And as his wife says of her husband around the house, "He can make cleaning up a utility room fun."

Their age difference doesn’t seem to be a problem, does it?

I guess it’s only verboten for a Republican man to marry a younger woman.

How disgraceful.