Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Sporting White House

I take my hat off to Katty Kay. Writing at the Daily Beast she comes up with a novel criticism of the Obama administration: it’s too fond of  sports metaphors. Seriously. This, apparently, is “insidiously sexist” and consequently unfair to female political reporters trying to understand how the White House is approaching any given matter. I’d have thought that this injustice was scarcely limited to women, since presumably male reporters with no interest in baseball or basketball would be similarly disadvantaged. But perhaps not.

Still, this shouldn’t surprise anyone: after all it is the media that loves to cover politics as a “horse race” (reducing politics to the level of a sporting event irritates pols – or so they like to pretend) and in any case sport is an ideal frame for explaining all manner of things.

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