In front of the entire congressional press corps last night, Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, insinuated that Kellyanne Conway, a married mother of four and counselor to President Trump, was a prostitute.
It was good old-fashioned locker room talk with just one exception — Richmond isn’t a Republican. He sits on the left side of the aisle and, perhaps as a result, there hasn’t been any censure from Democrat leadership and little condemnation in the press.
Referring to a picture of the White House counselor sitting on her knees on a couch in the Oval Office, the Democrat quipped that Conway “really looked kind of familiar in that position there.” The joke was met mostly with crickets. To their credit, some of the politicians and pundits attending the rubber chicken dinner offered up a few boos. But that was it.
A dozen hours later, news of the misogyny hasn’t died down. It just never even materialized because no one really cares when you make a sexist joke about Republican women.
That’s the rule now, and this isn’t the first time Conway has been targeted. A few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live got off with a slap on the wrist for spoofing that Conway was a psychotic stalker like Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction.” But these types of jokes aren’t really sexist if they’re targeted at Republicans.
Flip the script, though, and hysteria ensues. We’ve watched this skit again and again.
On the campaign trail, President Trump was rightly condemned for his unwanted advances on women. That controversy earned wall-to-wall coverage on the commentary and news side with investigative stories and think pieces. The New York Times rightly questioned if Trump was qualified for office, whether the country should elect a “groper in chief.”
Rewind further to the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991. Even unconfirmed allegations of off-color jokes from Thomas were enough to trigger Senate Democrats. A certain Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware made sure the controversy was national news. Years later, the vice president would defend his attacks against Thomas’ reputation because, “one of the things that emerged was the issue of sexual harassment.”
But the Left has been uninterested in coming to the aid of the Republican women so far. No one from the New York Times has questioned whether Richmond is qualified for office. No one from Democrat leadership has started soul-searching about why men are so comfortable reducing powerful women to sex objects. It’s a clear and damning double standard.
At stake is the Democratic Party’s reputation as the party fighting for all women. Either the Left seriously cares about smashing glass ceilings and misogyny, or liberals only care about sexism when it can be politically-weaponized.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
