Another important reason to mau-mau the press about sexism: when you later gin up a B.S. controversy, enough journalists—you don’t need all of them—will feel obligated to report it as a legitimate, he-said-she-said, who-knows-the-real-truth story, even if they really see it to be a baldfacedly cynical campaign ploy.
[By the way: “mau-mauing the press about sexism” does not mean that all charges of sexism in coverage have been false. Just the opposite. In order for this strategy to work, it has to start from a legitimate example. Then you take that example—in this case, reporters asking if Palin can be a good mom and a good VP—and link it to examples of sexism that are only from “the media” in the broadest sense, like late-night comedy jokes. Then you go from there to the charge that any critical coverage is sexist. And hopefully you create an environment in which journalists see the whole thing as a minefield and go the he-said-she-said route.]
And the benefit of he-said-she-said stories in general: eventually the story becomes so complicated to sum up that people mainly remember the original accusation. For example, I was listening to NPR—yes, that hotbed of right-leaning soundbite journalism NPR—and the lipstick story was the second item in their headlines. But amid summing up the back and forth, even NPR didn’t manage to fit in what Obama originally said. (For the record, that McCain-Palin were was* putting “lipstick on a pig” by claiming the mantle of change.) It reported that Obama slammed McCain for claiming he had used “a sexist phrase,” and that McCain had used the phrase himself in reference to Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.
But what could that horrible, filthy arguably-sexist phrase have been? Were there accompanying hand gestures? Ah, what can my imagination come up with…?
Hi, honey! Did you hear Obama said something sexist about Sarah Palin?
That was on NPR. I’m guessing that other radio headlines aren’t working in much more nuance.
* UPDATE: Abby in the comments is right. Obama’s actual remarks referenced only McCain; he didn’t even use Palin’s name. See? It works on me too!