Women in Japan are used to being underutilized, condescended to and exploited. Must they play a role in former Georgia Republican congressman Newt Gingrich's cheap Washington partisanship, too?
The U.S. news media are gleefully running a video from Joe Biden's visit to Tokyo that supposedly depicts the U.S. vice president as an out-of-touch sexist. On Dec. 3, Biden and Caroline Kennedy, the first female U.S. ambassador to Japan, visited DeNA Co., a Japanese Internet company founded by a woman that does a better job than most of taking the female workforce seriously. There, Biden approached five women and asked: "Do your husbands like you working full time?"
The "gaffe" was treated as big news by The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, and became prime-time fodder for talk radio and CNN. In a "Crossfire" segment, Gingrich accused Biden of offending Japan and waging a "war on women" of the kind usually associated with his Republican Party. "How do you explain Biden's inability to stay in touch with reality?" Gingrich asked.