Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

— Desmond Tutu

In November, the director of the Miss Universe Thailand publicly called Miss Mexico “dumb” (some reports say “dumbhead”) during a pre-competition briefing when she, quite literally, stood up to his personal attack. Outraged, many of her fellow contestants walked out in solidarity, even after he threatened to bar them from the competition. These beauty pageant contestants showed more courage than the White House press corps, which has rarely stood by its colleagues when confronted with similar abuse.

Donald Trump, America’s bully-in-chief, who once owned the Miss Universe pageant, has a long history of insulting and demeaning women when he is not physically assaulting them. That November, when asked about the release of his pedophile ex-BFF Jeffrey Epstein’s files, Trump told Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet, piggy.”

Some things never change. The 79-year-old man-child in the gilded Oval Office remains the same insecure misogynist he was in 1996, when he called then-Miss Universe Alicia Machado “Miss Piggy” and, alluding to her Latino heritage, “Miss Housekeeping,” among other demeaning epithets. Now, as president, he has continued the pattern, habitually dismissing women journalists, especially women of color, as “dumb,” “stupid,” and most recently labeling New York Times reporter Katie Rogers “ugly, both inside and out.”

Yet unlike Miss Universe contestants, the White House press corps has not stood by its colleagues. When Trump banned the Associated Press from the press pool for refusing to comply with his executive order to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, the press corps should have walked out en masse. When he refuses to answer a reporter’s question, their colleagues, living up to their name sake, should press the question again – relentlessly – until it is finally answered. Instead, the press corps carries on as usual, apparently content to receive crumbs of information, however detached from reality.

Why? Perhaps because reporters believe it is their duty to stay no matter what. Perhaps they fear that if they leave, only sycophantic stenographers from right-wing outlets will remain. Perhaps it is because their corporate patrons invest in lavish, gilded ballrooms but not........

© CounterPunch