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Obama Macho
Jae C. Hong / AP Photo
Any hope that Obama’s White House might curb Washington’s boy’s club traditions? Forget it. His press secretary is the worst offender.
I have a girl pet peeve: the macho prevalence of sports talk in White House briefing rooms and Washington green rooms.
It is an unwritten rule that at some point in the conversations that take place in those vestibules to power, the discussion will turn from brains to balls. At which point, the women in the room will fall silent.
In the Obama press operation, ball talk is a staple. Less than a month in and Gibb’s baseball quips are already part of briefing-room lore.
And in this baseball, basketball, and football loving White House, this insidiously sexist barrier to entry for female journalists is getting harder to overcome. Tim Russert did it, Chris Matthews does it, George Stephanopoulos, I’m told, does it, and, now on Pennsylvania Avenue, Robert Gibbs is the worst offender.
"Bottom of the fifth [inning], the sausage race is [at] the beginning of the next inning, so stay tuned, and the starting pitcher is in there, still throwing nice curveballs and [he's] still got a lot of heat on the fastball," was how the new White House press secretary described the progress of the economic stimulus bill at a recent briefing, presumably quite seriously expecting most of the correspondents in the room to understand what on earth he was saying. Most of the men that is.
Sports banter is a big part of Washington’s male political bonding.
Here’s how it works on TV shows. At about 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, the guests for a network talk show gather in the green room an hour before airtime for a sip of coffee and a slap of makeup. They chat. The conversation starts with the news topic of the day. It’s an animated discussion on the fiscal stimulus package/the latest machinations of the dastardly House of Representatives/the poppy crop in Afghanistan. Take your pick. OK, there’s a bit of the peacocks fanning their feathers about it, but it’s basically sober stuff. Until, some 20 minutes into the banter, the host, or one of the male guests, casually slips in the results of last night’s game. And that’s when the women quietly disappear into their notebooks.
I can talk politics with the best of them. I can even make reasonable sense of toxic mortgage assets. Give me Paris, Moscow, or Tokyo and I can usually muster an intelligent observation. But when the talk turns to innings, dunks and touchdowns, sorry, I’ve nothing remotely sensible to add.
At first, I thought I was alone. These are, after all, singularly American games and maybe, as a Brit, I just hadn’t grasped the local sports. I even made an effort to learn. I watched the Super Bowl with an expert, and gave yardlines and quarterbacks my undivided attention. For about 15 minutes. But I soon realized that understanding sports was just one more item to add to my “have to learn about” list, and one more thing which takes me away from all the other things competing for my attention—kids, spouse, job, house, dinner, unread New Yorker, un-bought Foreign Affairs, rest of life. Added to which American football, as I discovered in that brief tutorial, is fiendishly complicated and would actually take a great deal of time and energy to master. And, anyway, I’m now told it’s basketball that’s “in,” politically, so my brief flirtation with football was redundant.
A quick canvass of female political reporters has convinced me this is not a sports-averse issue, it is a more universal XX chromosome issue.
What’s even more daunting is when that preshow chitchat becomes on-show analysis. Then we women find ourselves having to feign comprehension and interest, live on air. “Policy discussions are a cakewalk compared to trying to seem knowledgeable about baseball on air sitting next to George Will,” confesses ABC’s Claire Shipman of her Sunday roundtables on This Week. “I usually just hide under the table when sports comes up.”
Of course, some women love sports and a handful of female political journalists are delighted to discuss Duke vs. UNC. But by and large, this is male terrain and when it filters into the political-discussion forum, with the frequency it does, it all feels very macho. When it comes top down from the White House podium, it’s particularly irksome.
Talk shows are one thing, and it doesn’t really matter too much what happens in green rooms. If women are smart and articulate on the show, they’ll get invited back. But now it’s coming from the administration down. In the Obama press operation, ball talk is a staple. Less than a month in and Gibb’s baseball quips are already part of briefing-room lore. Unless you don’t get the joke, in which case they’re a rather tedious distraction from the real job.
“Plenty of women are sports buffs,” says the Washington Post’s White House reporter, Anne Kornblut, who spends a lot of time at those Gibbs briefings “I’m just not one of them. So unless they’re talking about the Redskins, there’s a good chance I have no idea what they’re talking about. Fortunately, I don’t enjoy idle banter, so it doesn’t matter!”
Except that it sort of does matter. Because women feel excluded from these sports discussions, our normally confident voices are subdued. To turn the tables, imagine if these public conversations were liberally sprinkled with references to fashion, or yoga. It’s as if Dana Perino had compared getting out of Iraq to extracting yourself from pigeon pose, or tracking Osama to finding vintage Pucci on eBay. But she didn’t. She’s a woman and more inclusive than that.
Katty Kay covers US politics for the British Broadcasting Corporation and is Washington correspondent for BBC World News America. Kay is a regular contributor on Meet the Press, The Chris Matthews Show and a guest host for the Diane Rehm Show. She is the author, with Claire Shipman, of the upcoming book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.
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Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America. She is the author, along with Claire Shipman, of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Kay has covered Washington since 1996 and is a contributor on "Meet the Press", "Larry King Live", "The Chris Matthews Show" and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
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Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America. She is the author, along with Claire Shipman, of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Kay has covered Washington since 1996 and is a contributor on "Meet the Press", "Larry King Live", "The Chris Matthews Show" and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
Claire Shipman is the senior national correspondent for ABC News' Good Morning America and a regular on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Previously, Shipman was the White House correspondent for NBC news and a reporter for CNN in Moscow, where she earned multiple awards for her coverage of the demise of the Soviet Union. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
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Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America. She is the author, along with Claire Shipman, of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Kay has covered Washington since 1996 and is a contributor on "Meet the Press", "Larry King Live", "The Chris Matthews Show" and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
Claire Shipman is the senior national correspondent for ABC News' Good Morning America and a regular on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Previously, Shipman was the White House correspondent for NBC news and a reporter for CNN in Moscow, where she earned multiple awards for her coverage of the demise of the Soviet Union. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
solishu
So I get that Ms. Kay is annoyed, but what's her point? That the press secretary needs to go to gender sensitivity training because he relates current events to sports?
bobhall
I lost interest in sports, as a man, when it turned into an industrialized, capitalist activity in this country, so the sports talk is lost on me, too.
(Am missing your BBC News here in NYC Metro)
Maezeppa
Katty, four words of advice: learn to play ball.
McLovin
Seems like the only sexiest I see is a woman thinking women don't know sports. Grow up, stop whining, and open your eyes. Just because YOU don't understand sports doesn't mean it's sexiest. It may be rude, stupid, shortsighted, and wrong but it's not macho or sexiest. George Will is probably the least macho male on the planet despite knowing baseball inside out. This is why first person journalism is ruining the profession. Try writing about something you're not personally affected by -- or emotional about. I'm sorry if you think that's sexiest. Wasn't meant to be.
Sweetbabette
As long as the men in these offices don't ignore women who CAN talk about sports comfortably (which would include my group of girlfriends) this is not sexist in the least. Stop grasping for things to criticize.
mjryan
This article is ridiculous. I am a woman and, admittedly a sports fan, so I would be able to jump right into the conversation. However, even if I wasn't knowledgeable, I would make a point to understand the conversation, even if I couldn't or didn't want to contribute. It doesn't take that long to check the standings of the leagues, nor would it take very long to catch up on the news on ESPN. They cycle the same information around every 20 minutes. If you don't have the time or inclination to learn a bit about everything, choose one sport (that you like) and bone up on it. At least you'll be able to talk intelligently to American men 25% of the time. Whatever you do, don't pick soccer. You'll be made more fun of for that than complete ignorance, which men usually expect from women when it comes to sports, anyway. Until women dominate your chosen field and you can leave the men out of your conversation you either need to deal with the exclusion or join in. Whining about it makes you look silly.
BernieO
What bothers me most about the constant use of sports metaphors is that there is an implied message that what is being discussed is just a game, not people's lives. When George Will and the boys start in on their baseball blather I always feel like I am watching a bunch of adolescent boys joking around in a locker room, not professionals trying to analyze the critical issues of our day. It does not make me feel any better when the women join in.
I have friends with kids serving in Iraq, relatives and friends who are now out of jobs or cannot get health care. I find nothing trivial or entertaining about the problems we face and wish that journalists would drop the clubby atmosphere and get substantive.
dbleff
I find Ms. Kay's position utterly sexist. I'm a woman who is a committed football fan - I watch Steeler football from the first exhibition game through (this year at least) the Super Bowl. I also enjoy basketball and understand enough about other sports to "get" sports metaphors (although I still maintain that baseball is not a sport, but rather a pastime.) Exactly what metaphors would Ms. Kay be comfortable with: ballet, fashion, Sex and the City? This country is facing some of the biggest challenges in it's history, and she's whining cuz the boys won't play Barbies? Get a life! Watch a game!
xbainx
I have to say Kay really has no argument here. Did Sarah Palin not just come dangerously close to being vice president? This sort of whining is counter-productive. Ask the female soldiers in Iraq if talking football is their top problem.
edsaw4
This is an offensively sexist and desperate article. It seems that Ms. Kay is just looking for things to criticize because the arguments she brings up are ridiculous. While sports my marginalize some women, that is generally not the case and as far as issues in the White House are concerned, this is not one worth contemplating for a moment nonetheless write an article on.
Suffice it to say, just because Ms. Kay has failed miserably at understanding sports does not mean all women have.
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Doomba
I am a man with absolutely no interest in sports, I don't understand the rules of any sports.
But, sports metaphors are not hard to decipher. You don't have to be into sports to understand them. The fact that this writer can't and thinks no other woman can is weird. I'm sure she is intelligent, but this article makes her look like a moron.
Jomolungma
C'mon. I'm not condoning blatantly sexist comments, but people talk about what they are interested in talking about. There's no law against women watching or enjoying sports, just like there's no law against men watching and enjoying Sex in the City. If you're feeling left out, educate yourself. Or how about the next time the conversation lags, throw in a tidbit about something you enjoy and know a lot about. One of three things will happen: the men in the room will fall silent because they won't have anything to add, which lets you enjoy the power play for once; the men WILL join in and you'll have started a conversation about something you like; or the men will complain, at which point you can raise your sports argument and start a meaningful discussion on gender stereotyping and politics. All three seem like better options than sitting idly by and complaining.
KayeBee
Hmmm - this is fluff if I've ever seen it.FYI - I'm a 53 yr old woman, moderately interested in most sports - enough to grasp the lingo.Seems to me if you're going to play the game (journalism) you play with the hand your dealt - quit whining and get with the program! Personally, I think women make themselves look foolish when they complain about such things - Katty Kay just fell off my list of "must read"
liviapeacock
Doomba, I agree. Sports metaphors are all the same, and you can replace player A with player B interchangeably.
Katty, take some comfort in knowing that while you may smile, nod and just tune out of baseball banter, there are PLENTY of your counterparts on air with you who do that with the more substantive stuff. Ever watch Tammy Bruce? Case in point.
Thank you.
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