The thinly veiled sexism oozing out of today’s Examiner column by veteran local politics observer Harry Jaffe is hard enough to take, but to whomever thought up this gem of a headline, be they copy editor or author, DCist salutes your willingness to go boldly where no human beings in the 21st century were thought to be capable of going anymore. Yes, if the recent Office of Tax and Revenue scandal has taught us anything, it’s that the greed of an entire gender is to blame. Women totally are always shopping, and these two women were both arrested for stealing and then shopping, ergo, all women love to steal and then shop. I know I do! I’m talking LOVE here.

The column itself isn’t entirely better, though we’re willing to believe that the larger point Jaffe wants to be making is that women are just as capable as men of being corrupt, which is certainly true enough, if mindnumbingly obvious. Unfortunately, Jaffe stumbles into the territory of that dreadful headline with this section:

The Walters and Bullock corruption cases raise a more serious set of questions:

» Why are women the masterminds of the two most high-profile, high-dollar corruption cases in D.C. history? Men were reduced to clerks in their schemes.

» Why are we so shocked at their particular practice of conspicuous consumption?

Really? These are the more serious questions that have come out of these two scandals? That you’ve become concerned that women may no longer be pure as the driven snow? That men may have been emasculated in the process? We have some other news that might shock you, Jaffe. Don’t tell anyone, but we have it on good authority that women are working and having sex before marriage. You know, between all the shopping.

Since Jaffe was the one to bring up what the “more serious questions” are that have come out of these two scandals, allow us to offer our own: It’s been reported that someone may have taught Harriette Walters how to steal from the tax office, as though it was a time honored tradition passed down from city employee to city employee. What is the root of this sense of entitlement and culture of corruption within the District government, and what can we do to weed it out once and for all?