The London Daily Telegraph may be a Conservative Party-friendly newspaper, but it's certainly doing Republican candidate Michele Bachmann no favors on this side of the Pond with a very unflattering, sexually-suggestive photo of the Minnesota congresswoman eating a foot-long corndog at the Iowa State Fair that's making the rounds on the Internet.
The Telegraph's U.S. editor Toby Harnden snapped the photo, which he included in an August 13 blog post at the paper's website.
Mediaite's Frances Martel sees sexism in Harnden's selection of the photo:
...there’s the sexist subtext here: would the Telegraph have run a similar photo of a presidential candidate consuming an obvious phallic symbol if said candidate were male? Phallic symbols make for good comedy, sure, but the Telegraph is not Mad Magazine, and there appears to be no intent at humor here, only degradation. The image sends a clear message to any woman thinking about pursuing such high public office: we at the Telegraph are unable to look at you as anything but a sex object, no matter what your qualifications for office.
What say you? Sexist or just very poor taste?
