The unmanning of Joe Wilson

The sexist subtext of the Plame scandal.

Published October 25, 2005 9:10PM (EDT)

So I finally got to the bottom of what's been bothering me about the way the White House smeared Joe Wilson, in a column today on the widening role of Dick Cheney in the scandal, and I had to run over to tell Broadsheet.

Did anyone else notice the sexist subtext of the Wilson attack? They couldn't really smear him as a partisan, since he worked for the first President Bush. So they attacked him as a wimp -- an unemployed guy whose wife got him a junket to Niger that he probably wasn't even qualified for!

OK, OK, I haven't seen Patrick Fitzgerald's notes yet, but that one aspect of the attack has always felt just so ... Cheney to me. We'll find out the truth soon enough.


By Joan Walsh



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