The shortest of leashes

What was that about a "pitbull?" Via Politico:

McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin (“Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?”) but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.

Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say "No."

We've long heard that the McCain camp's near-pathological aversion to Sarah Palin having any dealings with reporters (those who aren't appropriately deferential, anyway) was a response to the "sexist" treatment she received upon entering the race. Leaving aside the fact that the vast majority of questions--about experience, background, etc.--had nothing to do with gender, there was definitely a subset of people who stirred the pot with faux-concerned questions that all boiled down to "however will she balance the demands of the vice presidency with being a mother, and with a special-needs child, at that?"

Some of them, undoubtedly, were self-proclaimed progressives who, just as undoubtedly, thought they were so clever for hoisting (some) conservatives on their own anti-working mother petard.

Too clever by half.

It's a bullshit point that they'd scream bloody murder over if it was made about their candidate, and--no matter what far-right hypocrisy it may illustrate--they should be ashamed for attempting to inject it into the discourse. Nietzsche, anyone? To traffick in such dreck, for whatever the purpose, is to perpetuate textbook sexism: that line of reasoning would never be applied to a male candidate in a million years.

Which brings us back to this latest McCain campaign embarrassment.

Have you ever seen a staffer abruptly clear a room and someone actively prevent a male candidate from answering a reporter's question? It would be unthinkable. It would be a high insult; a tacit admission that the individual isn't trusted--or, worse, allowed--to speak for himself.

Yet the newly gender-conscious McCain organizaation thinks nothing of doing just that and completely infantilizing its own vice presidential pick.

Good luck courting those female voters and Clinton diehards, Johnny, I'm sure they just loved that.