Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Hemmer and Other Hunks & Honeys of the News

MSNBC war correspondent Ashleigh Banfield is livid that she's being called an "infobabe." She considers it a declaration of war, and she's firing back at those who've been dropping the bombs.

Tunku Varadarajan, an editor at The Wall Street Journal, was among those who have fired salvos at Banfield. He wrote a piece for WSJ's Opinion Journal critiquing the work of several female television war correspondents in the context of their fashion style and sensibility. CNN icon Christiane Amanpour, Varadarajan said, is "second rate," a "diva" who is selling us a "lifestyle," wearing flak jackets and "other tough-girl raiment." He prefers Banfield, "the anti-Amanpour," whom he described as "a fine-boned lady with large, titanium glasses?rumored, the tabloids tell us, to have cost $400." He noted with glee that Banfield changed her hair color from blonde to brown before leaving for Pakistan because, according to USA Today, she wanted to "blend in."

Predictably, those observations and more caused consternation among female journalists?and among some male journalists as well. Columnist John Doyle of Canada's Globe and Mail dubbed it a "sexist, ranting commentary" that was "unnerving." (You've just got to love our more socially conscious brothers to the north.) CNN's Walter Isaacson wrote a letter to The WallStreet Journal defending Amanpour. And now an angry Banfield has weighed in, telling a reporter last week that Varadarajan's piece was "despicable." As journalists were being killed on the front lines, she said, it was "abysmal" to be talking about her or anyone else's hair.

But methinks the ladies?and the Canadian man?doth protest too much. Could television journalists, after all, deny that they and their colleagues of either gender are selling us their physical looks, their fashion sensibilities and their demeanors? Television news got on that lacquered slope long ago; to now claim that those things haven't any relevance to the reporting of news on tv would be to treat us even more like fourth-graders than they often do.

No, critiquing the female tv reporters was not Varadarajan's sin. What he did that was indeed "sexist," however, was leave out the men. Certainly there's a lot that needs to be said about the style and fashion sensibility (and often, the lack of both) of many a male tv journalist.

Varadarajan thinks Amanpour is selling us a lifestyle by wearing flak jackets? He must have forgotten Dan Rather's own forays into the Afghan desert during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan back in the 80s. Rather donned Central Asian accouterments so that, as he explained it, he could travel undercover. He was, after all, trying to give us a real feel for what the poor, starving souls over there were going through, all while we sat down to our steak dinners around the tv set.

These days Rather is more of a snooze when it comes to fashion. (How I long to see him again in an Afghan head wrap.) He's certainly not as dashing as ABC's Peter Jennings or MSNBC's Brian Williams (his overly tanned skin notwithstanding), both of whom at least wear suits that befit their super-inflated salaries.

Among the urban gay male set Williams in fact gets perhaps the highest honors for style. But truth be told, it is CNN's Bill Hemmer who is the hunk everyone wants to bed down. And watching his career has been quite a curious experience. After CNN had been trying him out as an anchor for some time?with his come-hither look that said, "I'm pleasant to watch, even if I don't seem so bright"?he mysteriously appeared to develop a sight problem. Suddenly, he was donning glasses?the instant intellectual. Some friends of mine are convinced he's wearing a rug. I have no idea, but if he is, he's got a good one (Sam Donaldson, please take note). These days, Hemmer is on the "War Alert" beat, a new CNN feature. During the morning news, which is mostly about the war to begin with, they break in with an alert about?you guessed it?the war. And there's Bill bringing us the latest war tidbits. Who else would you want delivering you a morning treat? Certainly not Morley Safer.

If there is one tv newsman about whom there has been at least some talk of style lately, it is CNN's nighttime anchor Aaron Brown. In a bizarrely effusive piece in the L.A. Times last month, television critic Howard Rosenberg described Brown as "bespectacled and bookish in appearance," something that Rosenberg believes makes Brown "the steadiest man on television." Rosenberg went on: "No one in the business is more unslick, no one more conversational, no one more serene or reflective while interviewing or relating a story."

Is this the same Aaron Brown I've been watching? The guy with the unusually deep auburn hair for a man his age (without even a wisp of gray), and the unusually white teeth? Unslick?

Ashleigh Banfield is clearly not the only one who's hitting the dye bottle. But if she gets headlines when she does it?"Banfield's a Brunette for Pakistan Coverage," blared the USA Today headline?she should ride the wave to the top rather than express outrage. Certainly she realizes that every headline gets her more notice?and brings her closer to getting Katie Couric's job at Today. (As we all know, Couric's tired of the grind, and Banfield's the only one getting any notice of any kind at NBC.)

Banfield should in fact look to Amanpour, who learned how to ride the criticism long ago, something that has made her invincible. That invincibility is why she's such a threat to a guy like Varadarajan, who is reduced to dyke-baiting, calling her a "she-man" (not that it would be a bad thing if she were a lesbian, but from all accounts she is happily married to former State Dept. spokesman Jamie Rubin). It's a tactic that's as old as the hills, used by many a man against a powerful woman, and in 2001 most people see through it. The only one it reflects badly on these days is The Wall Street Journal editor himself.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).