Erotica, High Heels, and Handbags: Is This How The Beltway Press Should Cover Powerful Women?

[demmiblue]

Source: Media Matters

Avril Haines' extraordinary professional rise hit a new plateau this week when President Obama appointed the 43-year-old White House national security attorney to become the CIA's deputy director, replacing longtime career officer Michael Morell.

Haines' CIA promotion came just two months after Obama had nominated her to take over as legal counsel for the State Department. Haines will become the highest-ranking women ever at the CIA, just as she would have become the first female legal counsel a the State Department, if Obama hadn't changed his mind about her promotion. Haines' appointment comes in the wake of last week's news that Susan Rice had been appointed Obama's new national security advisor, and that Samantha Power would replace Rice as the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations.

Yet as women continue to rise in the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill, some in the press still apply a shockingly different standard when covering accomplished women in Washington, D.C.

The day after the White House made the Haines appointment, the Daily Beast published a strange article revealing how the CIA's new number two, when she was 25-years-old, used to host erotic readings at the Baltimore book store and restaurant she co-owned. (Salon accused the Daily Beast of "slut-sham[ing]" Haines.)

Read more: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/14/erotica-high-heels-and-handbags-is-this-how-the/194471