Wait, Nikki Haley is a woman?
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s first woman governor called a woman reporter in Charleston a “little girl” over an article detailing at least $127,000 in taxpayer dollars spent by the governor and other state officials on a European economic development trip.
In a syndicated radio talk show interview Thursday, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley was asked about last Sunday’s article by Renee Dudley in The Post and Courier of Charleston: (http://bit.ly/oMjHxE).
“And all I will tell you is: God bless that little girl at The Post and Courier. I mean her job is to try and create conflict. My job is to create jobs. In the end I’m going to have jobs to show for it,” Haley said on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
On Friday, Haley redoubled the criticism, but said she regretted the personal remark.
“The story painted a grossly inaccurate picture and was unprofessionally done, but my ‘little girl’ comment was inappropriate and I regret that,” Haley said. “Everyone can have a bad day. I’ll forgive her bad story, if she’ll forgive my poor choice of words.”
That’s off the mark, too, said Drucilla Barker, director and professor of women’s studies at the University of South Carolina. “Oh, my God. I find that almost as offensive as calling her a little girl. It was an easy way to demean a reporter and take away her credibility. Little girls are sent from the room so adults can speak,” Barker said.
“That reporter doesn’t need Nikki Haley’s forgiveness,” Barker said. “She should apologize for using the words ‘little girl.’”
Rick Nelson, the newspaper’s content editor, declined comment on the issue.
Melanie Balog, a columnist for the paper, called Haley’s criticism “catty.”
“No, I’m talking about how you stooped to a condescending, catty low Thursday in talking about another woman,” Balog wrote. “The governor of the great state of South Carolina called another woman a little girl?”
Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association, said it was “a poor choice of words and its’ a sexist personal attack rather than a response to the story. I think it’s ironic coming from the first woman governor to call an award-winning journalist a little girl.”