How condescending is this photo? It’s not the fabled (and fake) American-flag-wearin’, gun-totin’  bikini photo that surfaced on the Internet shortly after Palin reached national fame, but it’s about as close as Newsweek could get to the real thing.

I am generally in agreement with Palin supporters when they accuse the media of hurling sexism toward the former Governor. David Letterman’s joke about Palin’s underage daughter fucking Alex Rodriguez? Inappropriate. Ridiculing Bristol Palin for getting knocked up, while laughing it up with Levi? Sexist.

And I tend to agree with Palin’s response here, too: Yesterday, Palin took to Facebook to denounce the cover’s sexism. “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now,” she wrote. “If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention—even if out of context.”

Is the Newsweek cover sexist? Yes. But let’s put the photo back into context for a minute: Sarah Palin’s entire existence is sexist.

Let’s try to imagine, for a moment, the thought process that went into creating this Newsweek cover image : “We need to convey that Palin sucks really bad! Let’s take some photo of Palin lookin’ sexy, slap it on the cover of Newsweek, and then use her sexuality in attempt to draw attention to all the terrible things this woman has brought upon us.”

Hey! That sounds kind of like what John McCain did when he chose Palin as his VP: Found an attractive lady, slapped her on to his campaign, and used her image as a sexy lady in order to distract people from her scant qualifications, her total lack of concern for women’s issues, and her complete suckiness as a candidate.

Sarah Palin’s very existence as a national figure depends upon people being sexist. It’s not just the bad things that have happened to her that are a result of sexism—the mud-slinging about her daughters, the circulated upskirt photos, the intense scrutiny over her appearance and her clothes. But sexism tends to help individual women, too, and it has certainly helped Palin. Sexism allows women to earn insane amounts of money for simply taking their clothes off, and it allows women to earn an insane amount of political power for simply being a hot conservative lady with no particular skill at public speaking, reading comprehension, telling the truth, or articulating a single political view that makes any sense, ever.

At that point, can we really get bent out of shape every time we see the media reflecting the reality that Palin is a product of sexism in their coverage of her? We have crossed the Rubicon, people. Everything about Palin is sexist. When it comes to sexism, I’m a big advocate of hating the game, and not the player. But the game works both ways. And I am sick and tired of only having to care about it when that sexism means something bad for Sarah Palin.

Bad news, parents: YOUR BABY IS PROBABLY A RACIST, and that means that you’ve got a whoooole lot of explaining to do. According to a Newsweek cover story, studies show that children as young as six months old “judge people based on skin color.” And children as old as six years old will refuse to accept the possibility of a black Santa—but will eventually concede that “black Santa could fill in for White Santa if he was hurt.” White people: Why are your widdle babies so racist?

a)  My kid isn’t racist: We watch Sesame Street, and there are some very, very diverse Muppets on that program.

b) SHHHH! Don’t say the R-A-C-E word around Jimmy! Everybody’s equal, Jimmy. I’ll explain that vague sentiment when you’re older.

c)  Mall Santas.

d) As Sady of Tiger Beatdown and Amanda of the Sexist discussed in this week’s edition of Sexist Beatdown: Uhh, maybe Newsweek is kind of exaggerating about the whole racist baby thing, since the real problem appears to be progressive hippie parents scared shitless about even raising the issue of race with their children. Okay, also mall Santas.

AMANDA: hey, racist baby.

SADY: hey there!

AMANDA: are you ready to discuss how modern equality-minded parents have all taken to blaming their latent racism on their impressionable young children?

SADY: ha, yes. the babies, they are all RACISTS! sort of. first of all, i think the very RACIST BABY tagline is kind of hilariously off, in that the actual “children as young as 6 months old discriminate on the basis of skin color” thing is, apparently, literally wrong. what children as young as 6 months old do is look longer at photos of people who are not the same race as their parents, according to the article. but, you know, that is not SENSATIONAL. so let’s just imply with our headline that six-month-old white babies are already full of societally determined anger and hate.

AMANDA: but, importantly, it is also The Longer Gaze at People Who Are Not the Race of Their Parents That Shall Not Be Named. since the main parenting tactic unearthed in this story is: as long as I never mention race or racism, my child will come out unracist. to the point that some ostensibly nonracist parents DROPPED OUT OF THE STUDY when they found out they would be forced to discuss race with their children. “not under my roof.”

SADY: yeah, exactly. and the result, apparently, IS that the four and five-year-olds end up with pretty fucked-up ideas about race.

AMANDA: and also, hilariously, report that they think their parents are racists, too

SADY: right. “do your parents like black people?” and 14% are like, “nope!” which makes sense, if the kids are getting shushed every time they ask about the existence of race. (1) They get the sense that race is a forbidden topic, and maybe therefore a Bad one, and may project their parents’ fears of race discussion onto people of different races, concluding that THEY’RE what the parents are scared of. (Behold my extrapolation of in-no-way-expert conclusions!) (2) If you don’t have someone TALKING about race, and pointing out the existence of racism and why it’s bad, you’re just left to soak up all the messed-up cultural stereotypes and racism like a little kindergarten-enrolled sponge.

AMANDA: yeah, and I think this points to a lot of the assumptions that these parents have about their children for no apparent reason. like Chris Brown’s mom expressing shock that her child attacked his girlfriend, when that kind of thing was in the home and probably not addressed in any significant way. or parents insisting that their child would never rape someone, even though they failed to bring up in sex in any conversation. and I think this also goes back to the fear that, like, if you talk to boys about preventing rape, you somehow magically turn them rapists through the expectations you’ve laid out.

SADY: right. well, i think a lot of it is also the nature-vs.-culture thing, and this messed-up expectation we have that kids are inherently pure of all culture. like: if you never MENTION injustices, your kids won’t be aware of them, and then they will somehow progress into childhood without ever noticing that people are treated differently and drawing their own conclusions about that! whereas the fact is that a large part of childhood is not only learning what your parents and teachers explicitly, verbally teach you, but getting socialized and learning to reflect the norms around you.

AMANDA: and it’s such an obvious cop-out when you just state it like that. “I thought if I never MENTIONED why Santa was always white, my children would never shun the black Santa that entered their classroom.” It doesn’t make any sense! and so the burden of talking about this shit lies on the groups who are going to be most affected by it, which is why minority families talked about discrimination with their kids, and why girls get a shitload of advice on how not to get themselves raped.

SADY: right. exactly. it’s about the comfort of privilege. like: kids who experience discrimination, on any level, are going to naturally bring it up with their parents, and parents are going to be more responsive to that. like, i think i was four years old when i first asked my parents why some people said certain things were not for girls, and why boys wouldn’t let me do those things. (the things in question were pretending to be the Ninja Turtles* and/or soccer, but still, I THINK MY POINT HOLDS.) but if you ARE privileged, and you never directly experience discrimination, and all you have are these vague messages that certain aspects of your life (like, say, your race) are Not To Be Talked About, you’re of course going to grow up completely blind to your own privilege and also unreflectively participating in it.

AMANDA: yeah, and another interesting thing that separates race from gender is that, if you’re a girl, and you play the best fucking Raphael on the block, boys on your street may have the opportunity to recognize that and understand that girls can play Ninja Turtles. but if you think that Hispanic kids can’t play Ninja Turtles – stay with me here – and you don’t have any Hispanic kids on your block, you may grow up always assuming that Hispanic kids are shitty at impersonating superhero mutant sewer denizens. and that injustice cannot stand. so while gender becomes problematic through constantly reinforced roles, the problem with race is that there’s sometimes just a vacuum.

SADY: right. the article does, to some level, address what happens in diverse schools. because the thought was, if kids are not raised in these mono-racial environments, they’ll associate across races more and be less likely to make judgments based on race. but, nope! what happens, more often than not, is that even within a diverse environment like a school, kids only hang out with or form relationships with people of their own races. and that’s complicated; i mean, i imagine that there are white kids having all-white friend groups because their parents are uncomfortable with dealing with non-white people and they’re consequently uncomfortable with it as well. but i imagine there are also kids of color who are like, “oh, God, i do not want to deal with the white kids that are clueless and/or hurtful about race, i cannot educate anyone in the lunch room today, i just want to have my peanut butter sandwich and chocolate milk in peace.”

AMANDA: and the interesting thing is that kids are pretty ready to accept it—to the point that when they watch a multicultural Sesame Street episode, they do not notice the message enough for it to change their habits. Santa, apparently, is untouchable, though.**

SADY: ha, yes. “even the little girl the most adamant that the Real Santa must be white came around to accept the possibility that a black Santa could fill in for White Santa if he was hurt.”

AMANDA: Christmas is even more racist than babies are

SADY: I’m dreaming of a non-exclusively-white Christmas, myself.

* Incorrect! There were no Ninja Turtles when Sady was four. There were, however, Ghostbusters. And Sady was not allowed to play. NOT EVEN AS JEANINE.

** Upon further reflection, I can totally understand why some white kids would not accept a black Santa. To adults, Santa is just whoever puts on the suit, and there’s no reason a black dude can’t put on the suit. To children, Santa is one real dude who becomes very important to their well-being each December. And for their whole lives, they’d seen that dude reproduced in malls, on television, and in storybooks as the same rosy-cheeked white dude. At that point, it’s against that kid’s best interest to accept that Santa could be black. Because if Santa could be black, that means there is more than one dude being Santa. And if there’s more than one dude being Santa, that means that Santa isn’t really real. And once you acknowledge to yourself and your immediate family that Santa isn’t really real, there’s always the fear that the presents will stop mysteriously dropping through the chimney. The only way to circumvent the racism of Christmas, in my opinion, is to introduce black Santa to children at a very early age,

Photo by soulchristmas

Iran is uprisen, Michael Jackson is dead, and U.S. governors are taking impromptu trips to Argentina via the Appalachian Trail to cry over “two magnificent parts” of cross-continental pen-pals.

And so, inevitably, we turn to the caveman. Tell us, Newsweek’s Sharon Begley, how might we blame ancient cave-people for all bad things that happen?

In her latest Newsweek piece, Begley asks whether we can blame bad human behavior like raping and murdering on our caveman ancestors. The answer is yes, we can—though we will remain rapists and murderers. We will, however, be rapists and murderers with degrees in “evolutionary psychology,” or as I like to call it: “another excuse for rapin’ that ain’t gonna hold up in court.”

Rapists exist today, you see, because many, many moons ago, a cave-man met several cave-women whom he liked very, very, much. The cave-women didn’t particularly care for him, however, so he cave-raped them, all of them, thus increasing the likelihood of his cave-rape genes surviving in modern man. We call these men “evolutionarily fit.”

The cave-men who only got cave-boners for consensual cave-sex, however, spread their cave-seed to fewer cave-women, thus passing fewer consensual sex genes unto modern man. We call these men “pussies.”

This evolutionary psychology business is a win-win for rapists: They can blame old Ooog for their non-consensual trysts, while taking comfort in the fact that their rapiness is just the natural result of evolutionary victory. Begley’s piece reveals evolutionary psychology to be a racket. But that’s not gonna stop Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I from taking a trip down Paleolithic lane—a simpler time, when rape was just natural, man, and caves weren’t equipped with wireless Internet connections for women to bitch about why rape is so terrible and we should, like, try to figure out how to make it stop. Lets go!

SADY: hello!

AMANDA: hi!

SADY: i am very excited to discuss caveman times with you today. scientifically, of course! with caveman science! evolutionary psychology has always been my favorite bullshit science because it just sounds like some creepy guy going, “i’m just WIRED this way” over and over and over.

AMANDA: allow me to suppress my rape gene in order to converse with you for several minutes about all of our rape genes. ahem, yes, evolutionary psychology. it’s interesting how in these debates there seems to be a tendency for people to figure out what IS and then justify why what already IS is inevitable (and/or good). people rape? must be because people were so rapey in the past, and now there’s just nothing we can do about it. evo psych makes everything so easy!

SADY: right: although, what IS, is predicated very much on stereotypes. like, one part of the article i found fascinating is the idea that rape is actually disastrous in a small community: the “rape” gene is actually a “get beat up and not given food by your fellow tribespeople and also someone might kill your rape baby which defeats the whole procreative rape-gene-spreading thing” gene. or, the idea that male jealousy is somehow intrinsically different from female jealousy and that is why dudes kill “unfaithful” mates. basically, boiling everything down to reproduction entirely misses the point of everything else people have to do to survive. not being known as a dangerous killer or other threat, in a community as small as these very primitive ones we’re talking about, is a good survival tactic. well, “primitive” is a bad word for it, since they’re using data from contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures to test these points.

AMANDA: sure, and one thing the article doesn’t talk about is in nowaday-land, how many women are actually stopping reproductive function entirely by sticking devices in their vaginas and medicine in their bodies. that’s just one example where science can help defeat science when our evolutionary history doesn’t really fit our needs right now.

SADY: right? exactly! but the whole appeal of the field is that it calls back to One True Natural Human Experience, before the dag-blasted condoms came to take it all away. and it seems – by sheer magical coincidence! – to be a version of True Humanity in which women ought to be sexy, men ought to be powerful, and violence against women makes you happier and more successful. it’s kind of ricockulous to project all that back onto Caveman Times, when the fact is that those attitudes are clearly part of our culture NOW, but if you want to run with Fred Flintstone as archetype of undiluted manliness, go on ahead.

AMANDA: and that’s why men rape, because at one point, not every man raped, and those men died out because they were PUSSIES.

SADY: CORRECT. Also, men of ye olden days KILLED their stepchildren. do you hear me, timmy? there was none of this “time-out” crap back when men were men!

AMANDA: it’s difficult for me to see “rapist” as a characteristic born unto man in any real sense
is “rapist” the magical quality that helps you understand that “no” means “yes”?
or is “rapist” the magical quality that helps you not care, specifically, whether another person wants to have sex with you or not?

SADY: “rapist” is all of that, and more! but, more importantly, “rapist,” in this theory, is the MAGICAL GENETIC GETAWAY CAR that allows you to say YOU didn’t do it. it was your pesky genes! clamoring for evolutionary dominance! whereas, as the article notes, being a rapist in a small community where that’s not tolerated actually has more repercussions than being a rapist in a LARGE community where it’s hard to bring rapists to justice. i mean. i think whether you’re a rapist might have a lot to do with how rape is received within your culture.

AMANDA: what is this “culture”? that’s an interesting point, especially when we’re talking about “date rape” or the dreaded (aiee) “grey rape” scenarios—people tend to dislike these terms because they make some forms of rape seem less “serious” than others. but they also, i think, are an attempt to push ACTUAL RAPISTS into thinking of their behavior as rape. when, in the past, many people haven’t considered pass-out scenarios as rape at all. so if you can’t even think of something as rape, you don’t have to think of yourself as a rapist, and that’s really convenient!

SADY: right. because “no” was the criteria, not the absence of “yes.”

AMANDA: yes but Sady, we were BORN with the “no means no” gene. that’s the only way we are able to define rape, as a result.

SADY: oh, right! i mean: how many other “genes” are we born with? is there a bukkake “gene?” is there a blow-job “gene?” is the fact that i find the naked picture of sascha baron cohen on the cover of GQ at once attractive and offensive attributable to a “gene?”
because i’d really like an explanation of that which in no way reflects upon my psyche.

AMANDA: it’s natural. can we go back to the beginning for one second? what do you make of the headline of this piece: “Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?” a little bit of a one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other trick going on there, Newsweek!

SADY: I like the equation of the last item on the list to the first two! Raping. Murdering. CASUAL SEX. All evil! I also like the fact that these “genetic” explanations for sex do nothing to explain people having sex for fun and profit. it’s all procreation, all the time!

AMANDA: how did these fornicators not get weeded out?

SADY: yeah, but. you will notice. the slant of these theories is that male sexuality is a positive, ALWAYS, and female sexuality, if it even exists, is a negative. and there’s some beeswax about how ladies have to be “picky” to ensure that they only mate with “the best genetic material,” because apparently our vaginas are all hitler, but dudes just have to stick it into ladies as often as possible. no concerns about genetic fitness affect them! so, the headline should really read, Why Do Dudes Rape, Murder, And Sleep Around, Because Ladies Are All Waiting For Their Genetic Prince Charming And Therefore Don’t Do Any Of The Above, Except Sometimes They Do?

AMANDA: right. and the answer is, as this story suggests, a lot of these scientists are themselves just kind of fucking weirdos.

SADY: right. i liked the part where the scientists responded to critiques of their work with accusations of MARXISM. “i believe your data to be faulty.” “COMMUNIST!” that is what science is all about, right there.

AMANDA: also, that some of these quotes were taken from a scientist bbq.

SADY: oh, lord. why didn’t they film the scientist bbq? THAT, i would pay to see.

The Oct. 13 issue of Newsweek features an up-close-and-personal photo of Governor Sarah Palin on the cover. The photograph (above), by Nigel Parry, is a tight shot of Palin’s face. In person, the image is more striking: the wrinkles are deeper, the stray hairs darker, the pores more defined.

Fox News yesterday had a field day with this one. (video below)

“Have you seen the latest cover of Newsweek,” asked the anchor, the disgust evident on her face, before introducing her two pundits: “Republican Media Consultant” Andrea Tantaros (hated it) and Julia Piscitelli of American University (thinks you guys might be exaggerating a little bit).

Tantaros called the cover a “gross slap in the face,” objecting to the fact that the photo appeared “un-retouched.” Said Tantaros, “it highlights every imperfection that every human being has, but we’re talking unwanted facial hair, pores, wrinkles.” The anchor chimed in, saying, “When they put you up close and personal on a magazine, even the gorgeous super models in the world, they retouch you to get rid of the normal flaws that human beings have. That’s what they do in the magazine business. They didn’t do it for Governor Palin.”

The cover was particularly grating to Tantaros when compared to Newsweek’s cover shots of Barack Obama. “After Newsweek has done so many favorable covers of Barack Obama that make him look presidential, that are clearly retouched. He looks flawless,” she says, adding: “He looks perfect, Julia. He looks perfect.”

“This is reality,” countered Piscitelli, after noting there was no evidence that an Obama cover had been retouched, either. “Demanding that political figures get retouching like super-models on the cover of news magazines is going a little far. What’s wrong with showing women the way they actually look, especially a woman as beautiful as Sarah Palin?”

I agree with Piscitelli that it’s absurd to ask news publications to adhere to standards set by fashion magazines. Photoshopping women’s bodies and faces—a process that takes even the most beautiful women in the world and distorts them to flawless, often anatomically impossible Barbie dolls—is out-of-control in women’s magazines; we don’t need Newsweek reinforcing an absurd standard of beauty on politicians, too.

But Tantaros raises an interesting point when she describes Obama’s photos as “flawless” and “perfect” (even though my guess is that Obama wasn’t Photoshopped, either). Obama and Palin are two of politics’ most beautiful people, but the playing field for political playboys and girls is uneven: When women show flaws, they’s called unattractive; when men do, they’re called “rugged.” (And when they’ve got spit on their mouth, they’re called “Internet Gold.”) So even without a delicate post-shot softening, Obama is a lot closer to “perfect” from the get-go. It’s not because Obama is implicitly more attractive (though he is, for the record, extremely, achingly attractive). It’s because he’s a dude.

Still, let’s take a moment to remember why the standards of beauty for women are so absurdly, unnaturally high in the first place. Oh, right, it has something to do with Photoshop (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C).

There is one point where Tantaros and I agree. Tantaros objects to the headline “She’s One of the Folks (And that’s the problem),” saying it’s an “insult [to] the folks of America [to] call that a ‘problem.’” I think Newsweek did well in putting a real Palin shot on the cover. But by pairing that “real” photo with the assertion that Palin’s “realness” makes her unqualified to be president (true), Newsweek also implies that Palin’s physical realness is a “problem” (problematic).

To recap: Showing real women, flaws and all—good thing; using a woman’s physical flaws to illustrate flaws of character, politics, and experience—bad thing.

MORE: Sarah Palin’s Entire Existence is Sexist..

More on Nigel Parry: Parry also shot Palin for Newsweek during the Republican National Convention, alongside McCain. For the July 16 issue of Newsweek, Parry shot Barack Obama (the photo is in black-and-white and not-so-close-up). Check out Parry’s other work here.