RUSH: The TIME Magazine cover with the 26-year-old mother and the three-year-old baby — well, three-year-old boy. She was breastfeeding in this TIME Magazine cover. And, by the way, we here at the EIB Network were the first with the parody covers of TIME Magazine. We had the boy breastfeeding off the breast of the Statue of Liberty. And now there have been others. Obama breastfeeding from George Clooney is a very popular one out there. Obama as the young boy. But here, you have to hear this sound bite. This is Melinda Henneberger. Now, Melinda Henneberger I think used to be at Newsweek, maybe it was TIME, one of the two. Does it really matter?
She was on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday. She’s a columnist for the Washington Post now. I think she’s gone back and forth at the Huffing and Puffington Post. During the roundtable of Face the Nation yesterday, Bob Schieffer asked Melinda Henneberger, who, Melinda Henneberger is a classic inside-the-Beltway feminist, classic professional feminist. You know what that means. So Schieffer said, “I just want to ask you all about something because it’s what everybody’s talking about. The cover of TIME Magazine, the young mother breastfeeding her three-year-old boy. Melinda, what do you think of that?”
HENNEBERGER: It’s not a Mother’s Day gift to most of us to have another message that says, “You’re not mom enough if you don’t look like this terrific-looking woman.” And the story’s not even about breastfeeding. It’s about a 72-year-old doctor, and I’m sure that they were right, that this woman looks far better than he, but the story is about this doctor who has many more views on how to be the right kind of mom versus the wrong kind of mom, and I think the timing of it was odd.
RUSH: It’s not working with these feminist women. See, TIME Magazine blew it. You know why it’s not working with the feminist women? Because the woman on the cover of TIME Magazine was too pretty. I call your attention once again to Undeniable Truth of Life Number 24. Dare I speak it again? Brian’s nodding his head yes. Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream. Here is Melinda Henneberger, who’s somewhat trying to be funny here, but in all comedy, there is a grain of truth, and she’s quite upset. And, believe me, she speaks for the Maureen Dowds of the world and the Gloria Borgers, the whole crowd.
The TIME Magazine cover, you’re not mom enough if you don’t look like this terrific-looking woman. She’s upset that the woman on the cover of TIME was too pretty, was too attractive. Not the concept, but that she was too pretty. Embarrassed all these other women by having a woman on the cover that’s too pretty. Should have had somebody not as pretty on the cover and then it would have been more effective. I’m dead serious. Now, who is it among us that makes these kinds of judgments? We get criticized for being sexists and bigots, misogynists or whatever, but you listen to these women talk about each other and themselves, and it’s hilarious. Then she goes on to attack the whole story. And this was a story designed to appeal to women on behalf of Obama and the War on Women, and the thing apparently has totally backfired.