Sugarman:

You're right, Chris Matthews is a misogynist." misogynist means one who hates women. he doesn't HATE women. he might think "boys are better than girls".

I am familiar with that definition of misogyny, and while I would agree your assessment of Matthews may be on the mark, that still puts it in the range for misogyny in common parlance (incidentally, in classical times "misogyny" was code for "faggot", something Ann Coulter would agree both you and I are, since we support that America hating B. Hussein).

Matthews is plugged into the winners/losers, everyman/faggy wimp zeitgeist of the right wing that Greenwald has typed countless words about: he enforces gender stereotypes which have no place in political debate. While he may not be as intentionally offensive as Ann Coulter, his embrace of gender iconography purporting to of equal or greater importance than issues, voting records, etc is endemic in media, and personified by Matthews, Coulter and others.

And we are a country eat this slop, and the media serves up this tripe (no offense to menudo).

Joan Walsh and AKA Smith are correct to note the existence of this problem in the media, but using gender-baiting ideas has not only been used against Clinton, but also Edwards, Kerry, Gore, and anyone the right wants to paint as limp wristed (or in Clinton's case, castrating and dykey).

What Joan fails to notices is that the gender specific rhetoric tapered off as soon as Clinton's campaign hit rough waters. Why? Because the right wing wants Clinton to run against McCain -- its his only chance of winning. Why? Because people hate Clinton. For whatever reasons. Most of them are sexist.

Remember the accusations of Clinton's lesbian tryst in college, early in the campaign? That's the sort of thing we've been hearing about Obama ever since Iowa: he's a muslim, he's a black panther, he's not patriotic, his wife hates America, etc, etc, etc, etc. Fox News was tame enough with Clinton that she buddied up with them. This is not a coincidence -- the Right-wing stopped attacking Clinton because they wanted her to win.

If anything, the media went easy on Clinton.

Coming back to my specific objections to Joan, first, why pick on Olbermann? I think if anything, Olbermann was deadly accurate in his criticism of Clinton, but I do not think it was motivated by anything other than his genuine sense of fairness and his objection to specific actions and missteps made by the Clinton campaign, not gender.

Olbermann is a blowhard, and possibly too clever by half, but he's "one of the good guys."

So why not use the bully pulpit of the masthead at this esteemed publication to go after some real dogs? Because I assure you, Olbermann's producer problem sure as hell wasn't news until you made it news Joan. That's what an editor does. You could have buried the lede, and you didn't.

I think it was a regrettable choice.

Apparently he was mean to a Fox anchor, who was a woman, and he sexistly pointed out that she was a beauty contest winner.

I'm convinced, let's storm MSNBC headquarters and demand Olbermann's head!

Is this:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080616/cm_huffpost/107236

I don't know if I agree with the methods and conclusions, but this is much more substantial than Joan's thin, cutesy indictment of MSNBC:

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/541430/

Newswise — Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination effectively ended Tuesday night when Barack Obama earned the last handful of delegates necessary for a win. Research by Erika Falk, a communications expert at The Johns Hopkins University, shows that the media treated the two candidates differently from the start.

After analyzing the first month of campaign coverage in the nation's top six circulating newspapers (USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Denver Post and Chicago Tribune, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation), Falk found that Clinton:

• Was more likely than Obama to have her legislative title dropped and be referred to by her first name or by her gender.

• Was mentioned in just 65 percent of the number of articles as Obama: Eighty-four stories mentioned Obama whereas just 55 mentioned Clinton. Only nine stories mentioned Clinton without mentioning Obama whereas 38 stories mentioned Obama without mentioning Clinton.

• Had fewer paragraphs written about her than Obama did – 631 paragraphs were written about her compared to 934 about Obama.

• Was less likely to see her name in a headline than Obama: Fifty-nine stories had headlines containing "Obama" compared to just 36 with "Clinton."

"It is also true that if Clinton and Obama results are examined in historical context, it appears that Clinton did have more issue coverage than women who preceded her, but still had less issue coverage than a typical man," Falk said.

Falk, the author of "Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns" (University of Illinois Press, January 2008) and associate program chair of the master of arts in communication in contemporary society program at Johns Hopkins, is available to speak with reporters about the media's treatment of Clinton.

Or click my name..