Well, what do you know, a fast and facile accusation of sexism is being tossed at ''Newsweek'' magazine for its latest cover photo showing Sarah Palin in her jogging outit, a photo for which she posed for a different magazine, Runners World.
With no judgment on the propriety of using that photo from the running magazine, I take issue with the constant flinging of -ism terms about a woman who is proud, and should be proud, of her ability to run.

PHOTOGRAPHER/SOURCE

Caption text here.

Ipso facto, don't even take a breath, those editors at Newsweek must be sexist, right?
I think not. I think we toss 'the term sexism and other "'ism'' labels around too readily.
And no, you can not therefore conclude that I am a sexist, though many will. If in doubt, fling one of the accusations around.
As a runner who has been out in the rain, the hail and the rest of it, I say congratulations to Paliln for sending a message of fitness and health.

The other week I received a scolding message from former congressional candidate Darcy Burner, chiding me for a sexist sentence in a column right after the election.
The column began thusly: "King County executive candidate Susan Hutchison must be home militantly NOT flossing her noticeably white teeth.'' Here is the column.
Burner wrote me two over-the-top emails about this. Apparently, if you are not as feminist as she is, you deserve a swift lecture. And more important, by implication, I guess men don't floss or have white teeth.
Come on.
Feminists and liberals and right-wingers and those on either end of the political spectrum should save their rants of "sexism" and other "isms" for true cases of such behavior.
The problem with ultra liberals and right wingers is others have to be 100 percent in agreement with their views and the application of them.
The better approach, in my humble opinion, is to save those allegations for the real thing, the real sexist. You diminish the meaning of the term by calling everyone who doesn't agree with you to the nth degree such names.