Mark Penn is no Dummy
The ability to escalate female backlash in Hillary’s favor in the last two days of the New Hampshire campaign is pretty startling. The incident that kicked it off was two guys carrying a large sign saying “Iron My Shirt”(hard to sneak in to a closed campaign appearance). The New York Daily News smells another Mark Penn plant:
Clinton asked that the lights be turned on, apparently to see them better and declared. “Oh the remnants of sexism, alive and well tonight,” to applause.
She then talked about breaking glass ceilings, before joking as the pair were hustled out: “If there’s anybody in the audience who wants to learn to iron his own shirt, we can talk about that.”
We followed.to ask what the heck they were thinking.
Nick Gemelli, who is 21, and born at least a decade after “iron my shirts” was an anti-women’s rights slogan, didn’t have much of a rationale. “I just don’t think a woman should be President,” he said.
He couldn’t really say why, but he agreed that he was a health care voter, as the sticker on his carrying case implied. The “Hillary for President” sticker was a bit more of a puzzle.
If this was a brilliant Penn-Wolfson idea to raise the sexism issue, it sure worked. Gloria Steinem wrote an OP-Ed for them the next day and Google shows 72,000 references to “Hillary + Iron my shirt”. With the exception of the Daily News blogger, no one questioned the authenticity of the hecklers.