By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

Breitbart News ad features sexist image of Nancy Pelosi as Miley Cyrus

This has got to be a new low, even for the conservative media.

West Coast Politics Breitbart ad featuring Gov. Jerry Brown and Nancy Pelosi in Miley pose and

Breitbart News launched its California political coverage today with an ad campaign featuring some street art-style images, including this one of Nancy Pelosi in a Miley Cyrus-esque pose, as well as a confusing one about about Silicon Valley Girls starring Mark Zuckerburg with topless breasts (seriously, can someone explain?). As The Wire notes, the ads are all part of Breitbart’s attempt to cultivate an image of the right wing as cool and edgy. “But the new ads don’t seem dangerous and new; instead they play on old sexist tropes.” 

And while the GOP and right wing media certainly don’t have a monopoly on sexist political images, it’s telling that conservative attempts to be “cool” veer so quickly to the boringly sexist. As DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in statement declaring the ads “foul, offensive, and disrespectful to all women” and calling on Republicans to condemn them, “It’s no wonder the Republicans are having problems appealing to women.”

Maya DusenberyMaya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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