The liberal reporting on sleeveless dresses in the Capitol is monumentally false and stupid – Washington Examiner

Sloppy reporting is not new. There has always been corner-cutting in journalism.

There is a new genre of lazy reporting in the Trump era, however, that goes well beyond the sloppy, and straight into the aggressively ignorant.

A prime example of this sort of thing would be this week's news cycle claiming House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., is responsible somehow for the Speaker's lobby's decades-old dress code.

This flat-out embarrassing narrative begins with a CBS News report titled, "Are sleeveless dresses appropriate attire'? Congress doesn't think so." The article itself is fun, and it goes over the details of the Speaker's lobby dress code, which requires that men wear jackets and ties and that women dress "appropriately," meaning no sleeveless dresses or open-toe shoes.

The dress code is loosely defined, and enforcement depends on who's doing the enforcing. The code is not new, it applies specifically to the Speaker's lobby and it has been this way for many, many, many years.

But Trump derangement syndrome is a hell of a thing, and certain people in the press saw the CBS report as an opportunity to accuse Paul Ryan of imposing his sexist will on female congressional reporters (or something like that).

Just look at these headlines:

Look at the opening paragraph of the Vogue story:

Not content with wanting to dictate what women can do with their own bodies, Republicans in Congress are now trying to dictate what women can wear. According to multiple female reporters in Washington, D.C., it seems sleeveless clothes are no longer considered "appropriate attire" for women working at the Capitol.

Are you kidding me?

Luckily, a good number of journalists who actually know what they're talking about weighed in to point out that, no, Paul Ryan didn't impose some weird new dress code on female congressional reporters.

Unsurprisingly, certain journalists are having a difficult time letting this particular news cycle go, and they are scrounging desperately for a new anti-GOP angle.

"Alright. No, the Speaker's Lobby dress code isn't new. But is it a good policy? Is it sexist? Does Paul Ryan have no power to change it?" asked the Huffington Post's Matt Fuller.

"This is the dumbest news cycle of the year, and Capitol Hill reporters who think they're ACTUALLY right are still ACTUALLY getting it wrong. It just amazes me that reporters believe SPEAKER Paul Ryan has no authority to change the dress code of the SPEAKER'S Lobby," he added.

Sure. That's the real takeaway from this one-hundred percent bungled news cycle. A bogus narrative based on aggressively bad journalism and the real story here is that Ryan hasn't updated that one thing no one cared about until this week.

Okay.

It was bad enough when reporters suggested the House Speaker's logo was based on Nazi-era iconography, but this dress code bit is just ridiculous.

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The liberal reporting on sleeveless dresses in the Capitol is monumentally false and stupid - Washington Examiner