Opposition Tories and MPs within Labour's own ranks have been making political capital out of the Home Secretary's admission that she would not feel safe walking the streets of London at night.
Jacqui Smith does not discriminate on the basis of class and she is nothing if not consistent. So, although she won't set foot in Hackney, where the bad/poor people live, neither will she take a moonlight stroll in Kensington or Chelsea, where the posh/nice people live.
The Tories and some MPs say this is a damning indictment of the Government's failure to tackle lawlessness. They also claim that Ms Smith's reluctance, metaphorically, to take Ralph McTell's hand and be led through the streets of London unfairly stigmatises those areas of the capital inhabited by chirpy Pearly Kings, chimney sweeps and that nice Mary Poppins.
Ms Smith concedes she used to walk around her constituency in Redditch, although quite what she found there to merit an excursion remains a mystery (suggestions on a postcard, please).
The facts are that the Home Secretary's reluctance to expose herself to a street attack is completely unremarkable, and completely understandable.
Putting aside her elevated status, which puts her in the crosshairs of global terrorists, everyone knows that it is not a terribly good idea for lone women to walk out at night.
This is not a new concept and has existed since, oh, I don't know, way before Jack the Ripper.
A woman who chooses to walk along seemingly deserted inner-city streets, or rural lanes, is not asking for it. They are, however, putting themselves in jeopardy.
It's appalling, but it is a fact of life. The same goes for chaps, too. There is a body of statistical data that suggests a lone man is more likely to get attacked than a lone woman.
And for this reason there are many parts of our own city of Birmingham where I would not walk alone at night.
These areas, unsurprisingly, include those neighbourhoods favoured by armed criminality, as well as districts quaintly titled "entertainment hotspots," where entertainment is a byword for binge-drinking, petty theft, robbery and alcohol-fuelled violence.
If Ms Smith had proclaimed that she regularly takes off on her own for night-time rambles across Wimbledon Common, and, furthermore, that she would encourage lone women to follow her example, she rightly would be castigated as a nutter.
The inescapable truth, here, is that some people - both men and women - have a problem not only with a female home secretary, but with women per se in positions of authority.
For these people, there is a credibility issue that is wrapped up in their own prejudices.
The same flak, inevitably, is going Hillary Clinton's way in the race to win the Democratic nomination in the US presidential race.
Some critics think Hillary is too feminine, some don't think she is feminine enough.
When she blubbed during the Iowa caucus, in a very visible sign of good old-fashioned conviction politics, some interpreted the tears as an insight into female frailty. Do we really want a weeping girl with her finger on the button of the United States' nuclear arsenal?
Now it appears that Hillary has pulled out of a photo-shoot with US Vogue because her campaign team fear she might come across as being too feminine. Personally, I see no reason why stylistic elegance and political authority have to be mutually exclusive. A woman can have a neat hairstyle, don lipstick, wear a skirt - or a trouser suit - hell, she can even look sexy - and still be taken seriously. And Hillary, it must be said, scrubs up well.
Being taken seriously doesn't mean acting pseudo-tough and walking the dark streets alone. Crimes of violence may indeed have increased under Labour, but violent criminals existed long before Ms Smith took up her post.
The real shock is that Ms Smith popped out (with her police minder) for a doner kebab in Peckham - at tea time! Presumably she wasn't even lagered up. Now, that's positively heroic.