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Read other letters about this article
I think you were trying to respond to me, not to Godot. (I'm the one who sent you the link to the cover photo from Spy magazine.)
You wrote:
"Personally, I don't give a whit what Spy Magazine publishes. I don't read that magazine. I read this magazine. And when you consider the righteous indignity that Joan Walsh displayed on behalf of Hillary Clinton, I expect something different. But we'll see what happens. Chances are we'll all be sorely disappointed yet again."
I see your point, and I don't mean to argue with you. I was just pointing out that a doctored photo of Hillary has already been published (perhaps one of many), in case you weren't aware of it.
You asked the editors of Salon if they would have wagged their finger at a photo like that. I cannot speak for them, and I don't know how they would answer that question. If Hillary was amused by that doctored photo (it was rumored that she liked it), I don't know if that would make any difference to Joan Walsh. But I think it's interesting that Salon has hired at least two notable people who contributed to Spy Magazine: Joe Conason and Camille Paglia. As Camille once pointed out in a column here at Salon, "My Spy debut had been piquantly flagged on the infamous February 1993 cover of a cheerful Hillary Clinton clad in dominatrix gear and wielding a riding crop in the Oval Office." I can't tell whether Camille was proud of that fact or whether she was being wryly self-effacing. In any case, it had no effect on her career here at Salon.
TIME magazine once had a funny photo of Ross Perot on the cover that might have been considered disrespectful since it made fun of the fact that he has a large nose. (I don't know how to describe it, but think of the image that often accompanies the phrase "Kilroy was here".) I honestly don't know if that's as bad as sexism, but I think most people are accustomed to seeing caricatures of politicians and celebrities in the media. Perot himself made a joke about his large ears in the middle of a Presidential debate. He also looked forward to seeing Dana Carvey's impression of him on Saturday Night Live. Obviously, he expected caricatures of politicians to be part of the game, even one as serious as Presidential politics.
I haven't made up my own mind whether a depiction of a woman as a dominatrix is inherently sexist, because I can't tell whether it's really about her gender rather than her individual personality. I think it's more likely to be misogynistic than sexist (if there's any distinction). My feeling is that it's not as bad as a depiction of Obama as a stereotypical (and implicitly despised) Muslim, since that is obviously an offense against an entire group of people, not just one individual. But I'm willing to listen to other people's arguments. In any case, depicting Palin as a dominatrix is disrespectful to a degree. Humor is like that sometimes. (By definition, humor is not supposed to be serious.) In this case, I'm not sure if it crossed the line, and I'm not sure if humor was out of place to begin with. I'm still mulling it over. Again, I'm willing to listen to other people's arguments. I didn't expect so many protests here at Salon.
