Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post thinks Mark Halperin’s “Something About Mary”-style Photoshop of Mary Landrieu is inappropriate. I agree. I’m a sucker for pop-culture references, but there’s a sexual connotation (even if it is more juvenile than degrading), and it shouldn’t be used to diminish a United States senator at Time Magazine. (So nobody gets caught up in calling me out for not calling out right-wingers, Beck and Limbaugh were inappropriate on Landrieu, too.) I’m not here to quarrel with the substance of Linkins’ criticism, however, but with its origin. The Huffington Post’s methods for getting traffic of late put it at a distinct disadvantage when trying to argue credibly about respectful treatment of women. Why, you might ask? After all, The Huffington Post is run by a stand-up, professional, liberal, feminist woman-Arianna Huffington. Surely, her site would be irreproachable on such matters. Judge for yourself. Below is the illustration Huffington Post writer Howie Klein used to illustrate a story about liberal folk hero Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) calling a female Fed official a “whore” on the radio. His story was headlined, “Alan Grayson calls a whore a whore– Beltway whores freak out & defend Enron lobbyist working at the Fed.” The photo is a composite of Fed official Linda Robertson and Ashlee Dupre, the well-known prostitute whose services were retained frequently by the former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York. The caption under the photo read, “Very different types of political whores.”
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