Worse than Ben Lyons - The RNC

Keepin' it real. Real sexist.After John McCain announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate in the presidential campaign, the Republican Party was shocked--shocked!--to discover that sexism still existed in the United States. Every criticism of her was turned into an attack on all women--although some of them were--and she was held up as a fighter against the "old boys club" of the Republican Party in Alaska. An odd compliment, coming from the old boys club in Washington, DC.

But now that the campaign is over, they can go back to their old ways. In spite of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's promise that their attacks on Obama and the Democrats would be "classy", there is no evidence that they will be.

Case in point: the RNC released a video this week attacking Nancy Pelosi's accusation that she was lied to by the CIA. Personally, I could believe both that the CIA lies (even to Congress) and that Pelosi and other Democrats don't want to admit that they actually knew that the Bush administration was torturing people.

But the RNC has descended into pure sexism in their attacks on Pelosi. They released this video which begins with the James Bond theme and Nancy Pelosi in the cross hairs, tending to her hair. The video ends with the image to the left, basically equating Pelosi with the Goldfinger character "Pussy Galore".

According to Politico.com, this is only one of a series of sexist attacks on Pelosi:

Earlier this week, Pittsburgh radio host Jim Quinn referred to the speaker on his program as “this bitch”; last week, syndicated radio host Neal Boortz opined “how fun it is to watch that hag out there twisting in the wind.”

There has also been a steady stream of taunts about the speaker’s appearance, and whether it’s been surgically enhanced. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “I think if Speaker Pelosi were still capable of human facial expression, we’d see she’d be embarrassed.”

This is exactly the sort of backroom frat-boy humor that occurs in any old boys club, where making crude comments about women and their bodies is considered just plain fun. Although unlike most old boys clubs, the RNC is incapable of telling the difference between their offensive backroom banter and what is acceptable as public discourse.

Stay classy, Michael Steele.