I objected to Summer stuff - and here on Kos.  My reaction to the pie fight was just to make a snark. Frankly, I thought the ad silly, junior high level stuff - and wildly inappropriate for this site, but not worth making a big deal over. I did look at it, expected a real groaner of an anti-Repub site of some kind. Oh, I was wrong.

The reason this issue got so much more play from women than the Summers debacle, is that:

1. it's visual, with fake boobs in your face at eye level when you are reading diaries and comments. Summers obviously isn't visual. And,

2. this stuff is personal.

Now, Mr. Summers attitudes are very important to me, and likely more important period, IMO. However, I'm an academic, and that made the Sumner stuff salient to me, as I've had to live with those attitudes throughout my career. In short, personal.

The Pie Fight stuff is something a lot of women have to deal with   frequently, too. Plane flights by "Hooter's Air". Business meetings at strip joints. A breast-laden advertising culture. And while a few of us on Kos are female academics, many more of us have experienced the sometimes less-than-thrilling experience of being around guys who are boob-obsessed. Nothing wrong with having breasts, liking them, admiring them, etc. But when they go up on a political website, you can expect that they will become conflated with the political content.

And it is kind of interesting that women are expected to put up with this kind of thing, while many fewer men or women would put up with exactly the same sort of thing were the humor done at the expense of religion, ethnicity, or race.  It's interesting that a friend looking over my shoulder remarked that that's what we should expect from a young male of Latino-Greek background, referring to Markos. Now that is an ethnic slur (which I do not intend), but it illustrates the problem, I think.

What I do find troubling is Kos's comments. I frankly expect someone with his political savvy to be wiser. And also, when he goofs, as he has this time, I expect more grace in apologizing about an overreaction, without leaving up insulting coments. Frankly, Kos sounds like he needs to spend more time around women - relatives don't count here.

It's the attitude, Kos. Yours.