Daily Beast Female Elites Denounce Global Human Rights Violations While Ignoring U.S. Crimes

Promising solutions for international women’s rights problems, the Daily Beast’s ‘Women in the World’ conference ended up supporting the status quo for US foreign policy.

On the last day of the Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit in Manhattan, a weekend-long conference offering “stories and solutions” to some of the most serious human rights problems faced by women across the globe, “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl sat down with Barack Obama’s senior adviser and confidant, Valerie Jarrett, for a pleasant conversation. After some initial “hard news” questions on health care — no mention of Stupak or the public option — Stahl invited Jarrett to provide some biographical bullet points tracing her early career as a Chicago real estate lawyer (the job made her so “miserable” she would sit in her office and cry), to the Daley administration (she was “scared to death” of the mayor), to the White House, asking her at one point, as a single mom, “How do you do it?”

As a preface to a broader discussion of the White House and its policies, all this would be fine and good. Jarrett is a public figure, and, as some of the conference speakers eloquently demonstrated over the weekend, personal narrative has its value (especially given the tough reality for single moms). But before long, the interview devolved into something resembling a PR show. Stahl gave Jarrett ample room to wax poetic about the great privilege of working for Barack Obama, an “extraordinary” man full of “tenacity,” “empathy,” “inner strength,” and so on, without asking her a single substantive question about the policies his administration has adopted — policies with significant implications for the rest of the world. “Every day I pinch myself,” Jarrett mused.

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