FSB Author Article
Hillary's Larger Right To Be Seen
By Eric Best
Editors of the Hasidic weekly Der Tzitung photoshopped the US Secretary
of State and another woman out of the scene in which Mrs. Clinton,
seated near President Obama, was watching the progress of the
assassination of Osama Bin Laden.
This was quickly noticed and reported -- the vanishment of the U.S.
Secretary of State, even virtually, being something to note. Der
Tzitung's editors issued an apology and explanation. They meant no
disrespect to Mrs. Clinton or the President, they said, but images of
women in their publication are expressly forbidden -- to "protect their
modesty."
Well now, White House policy expressly forbids the alteration of any
official news photo, so the "modesty defense" would appear to fall
short here. The editors did not need to run the photo at all -- that
would have defended Mrs. Clinton's modesty, if indeed it was
threatened.
But to alter the photo and thereby to change the face of history is
not fairly an issue of modesty. It is a not-so-subtle repression of
women, in another garb. It also has that Orwellian 1984 feel of Newspeak, in
which the photos of the news really aren't.
We can all look back to when women were not permitted to vote. Or to
garner a fair share of property or wealth gained during marriage. Or to
serve in combat military units. Laws have been passed, legal actions
brought. Still women fight for equal rights and equal pay for equal
work. Arguably they are further ahead in the United States than in much
of the rest of the world.
One might argue that this is a tempest in a teapot and we have
better things to do than to worry about the photographic exclusion of
women --
even as important as Hillary Clinton -- in sectarian weeklies that few
see and perhaps more could care less about.
I would contend, however, that this is gender discrimination dressed
up as something else. Keeping images of women in the news out of the
news
implies that women don't make or matter to the news. And that is simply
wrong. And I would add that if you address the little things, the big
things may begin to take care of themselves. (This was the apparent
lesson of subway cleanup efforts in New York City, well described in Malcolm
Gladwell's "The Tipping Point," wherein the battle against graffiti
and turnstile-jumping began a trend toward a much cleaner and safer
underground.)
Maybe the White House feels it has enough on its hands these days
not to react to an item like this. Maybe Hillary doesn't mind, and
maybe
the orthodox Jewish vote matters more. I would hope the White House
enforcement arm for accuracy in media (do they have one?) would react
to this in some official way, to say hey, you;re not allowed to do
that, and we would like a retraction in the form of the accurate
photograph published in the same place of prominence as the doctored
one.
Oh, and by the way -- there are better ways to respect and protect
women's modesty than by distorting their accurate role in history.
© 2011 Eric Best
Author Bio
Eric Best is an author, speaker, and strategy consultant to
individuals and corporations. Educated at Hamilton College, Harvard and
Stanford Universities, his background as a journalist (Lowell Sun,
USA Today, San Francisco Examiner),
futurist (Global Business Network, Morgan Stanley), and solo ocean
sailor (SF-Hawaii and back, '89 and '93) inform his insights. The
father of three, he lives and maintains offices in Brooklyn, NY, where
he currently consults for a global financial firm and is working on two
new books.
For more information please visit http://ericbestonline.com
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