>>I wonder if they would have issued the statement if Chris Coons weren’t so ahead in the polls.

Or feared not enough people had seen the Gawker story yet and needed to publicize it more.

Why give them credit? It's not as if they were motivated because they are truly disgusted by the attack on O'Donnell. They only issued that statement after initially very publicly refusing to comment, and likely getting grief for that stance when reminded of the obvious hypocrisy. That and they're confident she's going to lose anyway. We're too quick to applaud these groups when they "do the right thing" in an effort to show how fair we are, but we're kidding ourselves. NOW routinely stands up for liberal women, not all women. They deserve no credit, because their statement completely lacks sincerity.

I fail to see how the Gawker article is "misogynistic" - gutter journalism, certainly, but not misogynistic. If the situation were reversed and they had a story about a male Republican senatorial candidate who three years ago as a 35-year old man attempted a drunken hook-up with a female tenant ten years his junior at an apartment owned by the candidate's aunt, there's no doubt that Gawker would run the story...and organizations like NOW would be denouncing the male candidate for attempting to "exploit" a "vulnerable" young woman. Even more so if the male candidate had been a prominent proponent of abstinence and made claim to special virtue in that area.

There's a double-standard here in that these women's groups are all feigning righteous indignation about the kind of story that routinely gets run about male politicians without any accusations of misandry.