MW: Be a Man!
Posted by: bluelyon on: June 30, 2010
Kathleen Parker’s latest is so awful I hardly know where to start.
If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president.
If Parker had written a piece like Ellie Smeal of Ms. did back in the day extolling the virtues of our “feminist president” (absent any evidence except his say-so, may I add), I would have been gagging, but no, it’s even worse. According to Parker, Obama acts too much like a woman. That’s why he’s an FAIL as a leader. Because he doesn’t live up to “cultural expectations.”
Nevertheless, we still do have certain cultural expectations, especially related to leadership. [bluelyon translation: they're supposed to act like men, except when they are women] When we ask questions about a politician’s beliefs, family or hobbies, we’re looking for familiarity, what we can cite as “normal” and therefore reassuring.
Generally speaking, men and women communicate differently. Women tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.
Got that? Men play “my dick’s bigger than yours” and we wimminz, well we wimminz just talk. And talk. And talk.
Obama is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan.
Furthermore, men take action!
No one expected him to don his wetsuit and dive into the gulf, but he did have the authority to intervene immediately and he didn’t. Instead, he deferred to BP, weighing, considering, even delivering jokes to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when he should have been on Air Force One to the Louisiana coast.
[...]
The masculine-coded context of the Oval Office poses special challenges, further exacerbated by a crisis that demands decisive action. It would appear that Obama tests Campbell’s argument that “nothing prevents” men from appropriating women’s style without negative consequences.Indeed, negative reaction to Obama’s speech suggests the opposite. Obama may prove to be our first male president who pays a political price for acting too much like a woman.
Honestly, I’m stuck. I have no idea what Parker is actually saying. So, acting like a woman is BAD when you are President, according to Parker. So, why the hell does she end her piece with this?
And, perhaps, next time will be a real woman’s turn.
Huh?
This is an open thread.
20 Responses to "MW: Be a Man!"
June 30, 2010 at 8:33 AM
Oh my, what a vile read. She begins by saying, “I say this in the nicest possible way. I don’t think that doing things a woman’s way is evidence of deficiency but, rather, suggests an evolutionary achievement.”, but then proceeds to criticize Obama for “passivity” and a lack of leadership. It’s as if Parker has achieved the amazing accomplishment of time travel and wrote this piece in 1966.
I will say this, however, it has made me think. What if Obama was a woman and had done all of the things he has done to date? Would his followers still praise his “coolness” and intellectual prowess and assume he is playing 11 dimensional chess? Silly question, I know. Women are always judged by a different set of standards.
June 30, 2010 at 9:54 AM
So Hillary was hated for “talking like a man”, Elena Kagan is criticized for her looks ( I guess that’s part of the definition of being female), I am just getting sick reading all this.
Janicen is right. We have all been pushed back to 1966. Without the economic prosperity.
June 30, 2010 at 1:39 PM
Kathleen Parker on Hillary Clinton in 2008:
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2008-05-07/news/parker07_1_hillary-clinton-identity-politics
June 30, 2010 at 2:58 PM
My first response was “who the hell is Kathleen Parker” so I did the Wiki
Kathleen Parker is an American syndicated columnist. Her columns are syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group. Parker is a consulting faculty member at the Buckley School of Public Speaking, and is a regular guest on television shows like The O’Reilly Factor and The Chris Matthews Show. Parker is a self-described conservative[1].
Parker is the author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care (New York: Random House, 2008). A columnist since 1987, she has worked for five newspapers, from Florida to California, and is the 1993 winner of the H.L. Mencken writing award presented by the Baltimore Sun. She has written for several magazines, including The Weekly Standard, Time, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan and Fortune Small Business. She also serves on the Board of Contributors for USA TODAY’s Forum Page, part of the newspaper’s Opinion section. She is also a contributor to the online magazine, The Daily Beast. The Week magazine named her one of the nation’s Top Five columnists in 2004 and 2005.
Parker grew up in Winter Haven, Florida, and attended Converse College before transferring to Florida State University where she majored in Spanish Literature. She also holds a Master’s degree in the subject from Florida State.
She is married to an attorney, has three sons, and currently resides in Camden, South Carolina.[2]
Parker made news during the 2008 U.S. presidential election when she called on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin, to step down from the party ticket, saying that a series of media interviews showed that Palin was “clearly out of her league.”[3][4][5] Parker received over 11,000 responses, most from conservatives criticizing her.[6]
In April, Kathleen Parker won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary with a selection of political opinion columns.[7]
On June 23, 2010, CNN announced that Parker and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer will host a prime time news program starting in the fall.[8]
By the way — Wiki means FAST in Hawaiian.
June 30, 2010 at 3:01 PM
Oh my…I wonder what she’d think of Angela Merkel; that she’s got balls?
June 30, 2010 at 3:06 PM
is the 1993 winner of the H.L. Mencken writing award
Mencken? Mencken the famous curmudgeon?
I might like reading his quotes and such but I wouldn’t want an award named after him.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/H._L._Mencken
June 30, 2010 at 3:44 PM
I can’t stand the news anymore. Maybe we should go back to musicals. And thanks, Chaat and HT for the Jeanette clips. See what I mean about Gable? And yest Kathleen Parker, we can like Gable and be feminists too.
June 30, 2010 at 4:49 PM
If you think the G.O.M. blowout is a mess and disaster, go read this at rolling stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/120130?RS_show_page=0
June 30, 2010 at 4:57 PM
Just came in from working in the garden all day to this – inane ramblings of a man loving, woman restricting piece of putrescence. I remember 1966 – being a girl then wasn’t any fun at all – and I was one of those labeled “gifted”. The guidance department ran a test to determine interests vis a vis career counseling – my answers indicated that I’d make one heckuva singing forest ranger – I advised them that Nelson Eddy already had that sewn up, and I’d like to be an archeologist – I still remember the looks of total consternation, mixed with pity I received – all men of course. Even in teaching, women were language, art, Home Ec and girls Physical education teachers only. Science – never, principal, you must be kidding. Pshaw, I despise women like the cretin who wrote that article. Now I think I’ll return to the garden – maybe there’s a bunch of weeds I can rip out by the roots.
June 30, 2010 at 4:59 PM
@12: We’ll do more movie-kinds things Sunday. We’ll need it by then.
June 30, 2010 at 5:21 PM
Chat, ROFLMAO. Oh if my sainted mother could see me now!!! You are psychic, that was her favorite song. Just so you all know I am not totally without culture, there is a superb clip of Bernadette Peters singing “As the Days Go By” on Youtube, also an magnificent Judi Dench in a concert performance of “A Little Night Music” must admit she even outdid Glynnis Johns.
I am going to have to learn to embed or whatever so I can post these myself someday. Meantime thanks for the help. And, all kiddig aside, Nelson Eddy’s early voice was pure velvet.
Will I be thrown off the site for sexism if I make the observation that there is something about Gable which one must be “d’un certain age” to appreciate? Makes one wonder what Scarlett was thinking when she let him get away, right?
June 30, 2010 at 7:16 PM
I’m going out for awhile, so I will leave you with this thought:
June 30, 2010 at 7:45 PM
Just to let you know, there’s a runoff election for the repub nominee for guv in AL and apparently the same ole crap still works:
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June 30, 2010 at 7:14 AM
Yeow.