Pelosi Sexism Alert: WashPost Offended by Bush's 'Disparaging' Decorator Remarks

Watch out. The media's sensitivities to alleged sexism toward Speaker Nancy Pelosi are already on display, with reporters calling out the male chauvinist pigs. In Monday's Washington Post, it came in a front-page Style section story by Linda Hales on interior decorating in Washington. President Bush is accused of insulting women everywhere by saying he'd sent the names of interior decorators to Pelosi. A decorator for Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg found the remark "demeaning" to women and to decorators. Hales wrote: "there's no question that spinning the midterm election like an HGTV makeover special seems disparaging to women. It's hard to imagine that the same joke would have been told if the speaker in question were Dennis Hastert."

Hales began:

On Election Day, it was curtains for the Republican agenda.

One day later, President Bush joked by invoking draperies and tripped over the tassels.

At his televised news conference Wednesday, Bush acknowledged that Democrats had taken control of the House of Representatives. Then, instead of directly recognizing Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the first Madam Speaker, he quipped that he had sent the woman who would be second in line for the presidency "the names of some Republican interior decorators who can help her pick out the new drapes in her new offices."

(Aides in Pelosi's office took the remark as simply a partisan punch line, saying Friday that the White House had not sent along any names of decorators.)

Some Washington decorators, however, aren't laughing.

Victor Shargai, who has furnished the interiors of offices in the Capitol and on the Hill, found Bush's joke "demeaning" -- to women and to decorators.

"I think the U.S. as a country is beyond it," Shargai said.

The president could be criticized for making a blatantly sexist remark, but it must be noted that when offices change hands, there is a tradition of altering the decor...

"People do things according to their financial stature," said Shargai, who consulted on office decor for Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). "Some people pay for what they want, some people use their small budget. There's a lot of red and blue and gold."

And there's no question that spinning the midterm election like an HGTV makeover special seems disparaging to women. It's hard to imagine that the same joke would have been told if the speaker in question were Dennis Hastert.

But history is more complex. Decorating used to be a gender-neutral brand of power politics. Bush might simply have been exercising the Napoleonic imperative.

So it's insulting to make a drapes joke to Pelosi, but not insulting to compare Bush to Napoleon, who was big on ordering silk to keep France in business.

To his credit, in Monday's Media Notes, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz asks whether the new Democratic leaders will get an extended honeymoon from the press. (Conservatives say "duh.") Look no further than the article right above his.

Kurtz also notices that CBS has unsurprisingly decided to peel back on its "freeSpeech" commentaries, especially the ones from famous commentators. (Mmm, want to bet some liberals inside CBS weren't happy with their airwaves turned over for a few seconds of  Limbaugh and Hannity?)

Finally, the Post notices the Elton John remarks in the Style section, but leaves out all the truly outrageous I-would-ban-religion/hateful-lemmings stuff. In the "Names and Faces" column compiled by Ashby Strassburger, there's only this line:

"I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays."

Does the weekend staff at the Post not know which lines in this interview are wildly controversial? Or are they just plucking out the lesser lines so the uninformed Post reader will say why would religious people be so upset about that?