Right-wing media have unleashed a litany of sexist attacks on actress Sarah Jessica Parker and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, two supporters of President Obama's re-election campaign.
These attacks followed the announcement that the Obama campaign will be hosting a fundraiser in New York City featuring Parker and Wintour.
On June 4, the Daily Caller's front page headline featured a picture of Parker under the headline “Horse Race,” with a subhead that read “President Obama calls in the Hollywood cavalry for fundraising help”:
The headline linked to a post by Daily Caller writer Neil Munro. The post, titled “Sarah Jessica Parker sticks her nose into 2012 campaign” began with the line “Wealthy actress and socialite Sarah Jessica Parker is the celebrity horse that Barack Obama's 2012 campaign is betting on to win low-dollar donations, just two days after using Anna Wintour, the English-born editor of the fashion-industry nameplate, Vogue."
Mediaite's Jon Bershad reacted to the Daily Caller's post by explaining the reference to the word “horse”:
For those of you that don't read the kind of trashy, sub-Perez Hilton gossip columns that the Caller apparently now aspires to, “Horse Face” is a common nickname used by people who dislike Sarah Jessica Parker. So, basically, a national news site has decided that, since an actress likes a candidate they don't, they should take up a third of their front page mocking the size of her nose. It's as awful as if Media Matters did a huge expose counting the Koch Brothers' wrinkles.
The right-wing media leveled sexist attacks at Wintour as well. On the June 4 edition of Fox News' The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld said the ads showed “how the aging in-crowd sticks together even as they fall apart.” Gutfeld later said: “If Anna Wintour is the face of your campaign, your face -- your campaign may need a facelift.” After playing video of Wintour promoting the event, Gutfeld responded “I love Mick Jagger's new wig.”
A June 5 John Podhoretz column in the New York Post featured a picture of Wintour with the caption “Bizarre: A shot from the video starring horror-show Vogue editor Anna Wintour”:
Think Progress' Alyssa Rosenberg pointed out that “The Daily Caller, in its efforts to discredit some of President Obama's celebrity surrogates, has decided that the most effective way to push back against people like Sarah Jessica Parker is to imply they're ugly and synonymous with their roles.” Rosenberg further noted:
The whole thing is an ugly, substanceless slam disguised as a piece of reporting about the fact that, shockingly, some conservatives don't like the ad that Parker cut in support of the Obama campaign. Parker, by the text of this reasoning, is apparently incapable of supporting the Obama administration effectively because she is wealthy and is an actress. But the subtext is clear: Sarah Jessica Parker is ugly. And she was in that slutty television show, too. This kind of slagging of a successful woman is the last refuge of people with no legitimate arguments who are terrified they're losing. It's the rhetorical equivalent of shining a mirror in someone's eyes so you can run away while they're distracted.