Over at Concurring Opinions, law prof Kaimipono Wegner posted the above photo and wrote:
The New York Times front page is running a photo of Karl Rove. Alone? No — the photographer is careful to include the smiling woman at Rove’s side. Meanwhile, the lead pictures at Yahoo — taken from a different angle — again include the same woman, and she’s smiling some more. (Rove himself is smiling in a few of the pictures, and kind of glaring in a few of them).
So who is this woman who is awarded photo space on the NYT and Yahoo front pages? She must be someone important. Is she Rove’s chief lawyer? A family member? A close friend?
Nope — according to the caption at Yahoo, the woman in the photos is Rove’s executive assistant, Taylor Hughes. No further explanation is provided. Based on today’s pictures, I’d say that her job is apparently to stand near Rove and smile brightly whenever pictures are being taken. This is a probably good strategy, too, because Rove himself often looks pretty glum. I guess she really is important.
I’m trying to read this in a way that isn’t revoltingly sexist, but I’m struggling…
–Ann Bartow
Ann,
Sure, she could be smart and hardworking. She probably is. But does even the smartest, hardest-working legislative aide really belong on the front page of the NYT online? Ms. Hughes is getting equal space with Rove on some of the most prime online real-estate around.
I’ve never been a legislative aide myself, but my friends who have are clear — the legislative aide’s job is to get-out-of-the-picture. That doesn’t seem to be happening here.
There are certainly feminist questions about how the picture is presented. This is clearly a picture of two people, both of whom are fully pictured — yet the NYT caption doesn’t mention her name or even that she exists. It’s not clear — is she deliberately part of the picture? Or is she doing her best to be out-of-the-picture, and multiple photographers simply felt like including her?
And aren’t some questions raised by the presence of numerous Rove-and-Hughes pictures in the news — the lead pictures at NYT and Yahoo — most of these captioned solely as “Rove” (no mention of anyone else) or at best “Rove and an unidentified aide.”
There are 47 Rove photos here: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/sm/events/pl/061306karlrove/p:1 and Hughes is only in four or five of them. In three of the Yahoo photos (see e.g. this one) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060613/480/a08b8b472171496f96c2b84d5c8e5681 she is several steps behind Rove and not clearly visible. She may have been there to help him with something work-related. I don’t know what the duties of her position as “Executive Assistant” entail, but I suspect they exceed your assertion that
“… her job is apparently to stand near Rove and smile brightly whenever pictures are being taken.”
I think that is wrong and sexist. If your point was that she was probably only included in the photos because she is attractive, and therefore was being objectified by a sexist news media, I wish you had stated that more clearly. It sounds instead like you are suggesting that there is something improper in her relationship with Rove, e.g. your claim that he is usually glum but she is making him smile, and your assertions that she is receiving inappropriately positive special treatment.
So: You suggest that there are “some questions raised” by all this. What exactly are those questions? I do appreciate your wilingness to comment here to clarify.
She may be smart and hardworking AND be employed “to stand near Rove and smile brightly whenever pictures are being taken.”
A successful politician like Rove probably gets a hundred brilliantly qualified, amazingly hard working applicants for every position on his staff that he has open. In that situation, it is highly likely that the final decision between dozens of otherwise equally qualified candidates might come down to less tangible qualities such as good looks, family connections or hobbies.
What any person in such a situation faces is what is sometimes called a “decision decision” – a decision between multiple equally meritable options. There is either no rational way to differentiate between the options, or the cost of doing so (in terms of time, investment, etc.) is too high compared to the benefits. In that situation, you can either make your choice randomly, or choose on the basis of irrational factors. The important thing is not what choice you make, but that you make a choice.