Clinton surrogate Ed Rendell said: "There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally."

The ex-governor and former DNC chairman was trying to explain why more women will vote for Clinton than for Trump. Later the same day he called his own comment "incredibly stupid and insensitive"... which is kind of a gaffe in itself, no? He's not saying it's untrue, just the kind of truth you shouldn't say. It's a Kinsley gaffe, right?

I found that via Scott Adams, who's "Evaluating the Political Chess Board" today and observed:

Clinton surrogate Ed Rendel [sic] said something that was probably harmless in person, and in the proper context, but taken out of context by outragists it sounded like he was saying Clinton supporters are mostly ugly women. That didn’t help.

Ha. I like the word "outragists." Nice coinage from Adams.

Anyway... this story reminded me of something I said 3 days ago after the NYT published its rather bad exposé "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private" — you know, the one where they interviewed 50+ women and came up with basically nothing but pumped it up embarrassingly? I was trying to imagine how the NYT would defend itself after its prime informant, Rowanne Brewer Lane, said the Times distorted her story, making it seem as though Trump had demeaned her when in fact she felt flattered. I said:

I can imagine the NYT defending itself by saying that often young women do not understand the way they are being manipulated and exploited. Within that explanation, to say "I was actually flattered" is to reveal your naivete. That's how the manipulation works. He got her into a bathing suit and then, presenting her to the crowd, said "That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?" How was she a "Trump girl"? Ah, but it felt flattering. Even now, she feels the relationship was very nice, very rewarding, but she doesn't know the import of her own words, the NYT will (I suspect) say. It will say, I predict, that her story was not distorted at all. The facts are all true. They are just viewed from a more sophisticated perspective.

Now, there's a big problem with that explanation. It's saying the woman doesn't understand the meaning of her own experience. That feels like a putdown — a putdown and a stereotype: Women are simpleminded and can be bought off with pretty clothes and flattery. There's a way to say that without provoking the ire of the great masses of women who matter when it comes to an election: Only the young and very pretty women are segmented off and treated so well they only have good feelings about it, and only they are being put down.

See how that connects back to Ed Rendell? The young and very pretty women who hope to be segmented off and treated well by rich/powerful men may — in Rendell's view — gravitate toward Trump because they think they have the kind of power that works within a Trump regime, but most women see themselves as losers in a competition like that and they're going to look to Hillary to save them from the depredations of the patriarchy. But poor Ed! He didn't know how to talk about that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, here's Camille Paglia enthusing about the power of the beauty of Rowanne Brewer Lane:

Small and blurry in the print edition, the Brewer-Trump photo in online digital format positively pops with you-are-there luminosity. Her midnight-blue evening dress opulently cradling her bare shoulders, Rowanne is all flowing, glossy hair, ample, cascading bosom, and radiant, lushly crimson Rita Hayworth smile. The hovering Trump, bedecked with the phallic tongue of a violet Celtic floral tie, is in Viking mode, looking like a triumphant dragon on the thrusting prow of a long boat. “To the victor belong the spoils!” I said to myself in admiration, as seductive images from Babylon to Paris flashed through my mind. Yes, here is all the sizzling glory of hormonal sex differentiation, which the grim commissars of campus gender studies will never wipe out!

I'm making a tag for Ed Rendell and going back and adding it to old posts, like this one from December 2008: "'Janet's perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family, perfect.' What Gov. Ed Rendell said about Gov. Janet Napolitano."

The woman in the featured anecdote in "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private" says the NYT distorted her story.

The article started off with the story of Donald Trump offering a bathing suit to a woman who had arrived at his pool party with no bathing suit. I thought it was a nothing story and putting it first telegraphed that the Times — for all its 50+ interviews — hadn't uncovered much of anything.

But now we have that woman, Rowanne Brewer Lane, outraged at the way the NYT told her story, which it called "a debasing face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a young woman he hardly knew." Brewer Lane says:

"Actually, it was very upsetting. I was not happy to read it at all," Brewer Lane said. "Well, because The New York Times told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across. They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it and honestly, and it absolutely was not."...

"They spun it to where it appeared negative. I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump, and I don't appreciate them making it look like that I was saying that it was a negative experience because it was not," Brewer Lane said....

"If anybody would ask me, how did you meet Donald Trump? You are going to get the story of how I was at a pool party at Mar-A-Lago with my agency and a lot of other people and it was a night party and I had a photo shoot that I had done all day and I had another photo shoot the next day, and I almost didn't go, but my agent asked me if I would please come up and just enjoy for a while and so I did, and I didn't wear a bathing suit. I didn't have a swimsuit," she said.

Read the opening line of the story, "Donald J. Trump had barely met Rowanne Brewer Lane when he asked her to change out of her clothes," Brewer Lane was asked whether that was true or false. False, she said.

"I came from a shoot like I said, and I started talking with Donald and chatting with him over the course of the first maybe 20 minutes I was there, and we seemed to get along in conversation nicely, and it just very normally and naturally evolved into a conversation. We started walking around the mansion. He started showing me the architecture. We were having a very nice conversation, and we got into a certain part of it and he asked me if I had a swimsuit. I said I didn't. I had not really planned on swimming. He asked me if I wanted one. I said OK, sure. And I change into one, and the part where I went back out to the pool party and he made a comment now that's a stunning Trump girl right there, I was actually flattered by. I didn't feel like it was a demeaning situation or comment at all, and that's what I told the Times, and they spun it completely differently."

Eagerness to portray women as exploited seems to have motivated the NYT to exploit women.

I can imagine the NYT defending itself by saying that often young women do not understand the way they are being manipulated and exploited. Within that explanation, to say "I was actually flattered" is to reveal your naivete. That's how the manipulation works. He got her into a bathing suit and then, presenting her to the crowd, said "That is a stunning Trump girl, isn’t it?" How was she a "Trump girl"? Ah, but it felt flattering. Even now, she feels the relationship was very nice, very rewarding, but she doesn't know the import of her own words, the NYT will (I suspect) say. It will say, I predict, that her story was not distorted at all. The facts are all true. They are just viewed from a more sophisticated perspective.

Now, there's a big problem with that explanation. It's saying the woman doesn't understand the meaning of her own experience. That feels like a putdown — a putdown and a stereotype: Women are simpleminded and can be bought off with pretty clothes and flattery. There's a way to say that without provoking the ire of the great masses of women who matter when it comes to an election: Only the young and very pretty women are segmented off and treated so well they only have good feelings about it, and only they are being put down.

It will be interesting to see how this story plays out. The press is trying so hard to get us to hate Trump over women that it has created great energy around this juicy topic. Stay tuned.