PING
Posted on 01/31/2005 9:45:04 PM PST by concretebob
hate women.
Let me rephrase that: I hate "women" -- the ones who make a career of it, the feminists who like to blow things up and then cry as the pieces rain down, choking on the vapors. Such vapors filled the air, apparently, up at Harvard when big, bad Lawrence Summers -- Harvard's prez, who has just got to stop saying he's sorry -- declared in a meeting that the dearth of women in the hard sciences might have something to do, not so much with (yawn) male chauvinism, but with the innate differences between the sexes.
"I felt I was going to be sick," said Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at MIT who stormed out of the meeting. "My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," she informed reporters. "I couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." Why, had she not left the room, she "would've either blacked out or thrown up."
Clearly, what the hard sciences need to attract more qualified female candidates is a nice, comfy fainting couch. And let's send one over to the U.S. Senate, too, while we're at it. "She turned and attacked me," Sen. Barbara Boxer whimpered on CNN in her twisted reprise of the poisonous little temper tantrum she and other Democrats threw along the way to the Senate confirmation of Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State.
Having spray-painted Miss Rice a liar -- and dashed off a quick fundraising letter about it all on the side -- Mrs. Boxer was now depicting Miss Rice as a bully. Why? For a response that exhibited more polish, more civilization than the smearing senator deserved: "I would hope we can discuss what ... went on and what I said without impugning my credibility or my integrity."
That's ladylike. I like ladylike. Poise under fire, and not a whiff of vapors. This may well be beside the point. That is, sex should be irrelevant in Senate confirmation hearings, even as the media harp on the statistical exceptionalism of nominees who are not men, or not white (or not both). But there seems to be something worth pondering in the fact that both Condi Rice, the new face of American foreign policy, and Barbara Boxer, its most aggressive opponent this week (rather, its most aggressive domestic opponent since I don't mean al-Zarqawi) are women. Approaching the Iraqi election this weekend, surveying the challenges that lie ahead in encouraging democracy in the wider Islamic world -- a world where power is derived in many ways from a perverted sexual order based on the oppression of women -- this fact should mean something.
But -- Condi Rice aside -- it's not something to crow about. American feminism, the ideological movement the Barbara Boxers and Nancy Hopkinses out there call home, has ignored the plight of women under Islam: the burqa-bondage of sharia law under which a woman's testimony in a courtroom is worth half that of a man's; polygamy is legal and divorce is a man's prerogative; inheritance favors sons; and violence (even the hideously misnamed "honor" killings) against family women is a way of life. Why?
In the case of professor Hopkins, her privileged horizons end at the faculty lounge, a cozy place where outcries against the mean old patriarchy clatter with the teacups. In Mrs. Boxer's myopic case, the cause of democracy abroad, indeed, the national interest of the United States, is second to a vital, gnawing Democratic interest -- undermining George W. Bush. This is a strange cause in light of what his success would mean particularly for women.
Miss Rice was never in doubt of confirmation. So why more "no" votes (13) than any secretary of state has received in 180 years? The crude message big Dem cheeses (your Boxers, your Kennedys, your Kerrys) sent the White House was intercepted by the rest of the world, our inability to present a united front even on the eve of Iraqi elections unnerving friends and inspiring enemies.
"Give America's national security the benefit of the doubt," went centrist Sen. Joe Lieberman's pathetic appeal on Miss Rice's behalf to fellow Democrats. Little wonder Sen. Dianne Feinstein, another singular Democrat who could see through the scrim of party affiliation to reality's dangers, worried that Miss Rice's rough treatment would leave her "diminished in the eyes of the world." That leaves the United States diminished in the eyes of the world.
For liberty's sake, it is the Boxer Democrats who should be diminished in the eyes of the world -- and particularly the world's women. Will they notice?
©2005 Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
PING
A man would not have reacted that way.
How can you succeed in science if your cardio-repiratory system goes on the blink every time you experience a setback in the lab. ;-)
(Ducking for cover.)
Wonderful article...many thanks for the ping!
She gets it. Boxer does, too--she gets that trashing Rice is fine, who cares what others think? She's got to rise in the party!
You're welcome :)
I am embarrassed that Boxer is a senator for my own state. I remember walking through a mall in the Bay Area on election night 1992 after we had just inked a deal to buy a home and move to California. I remember hearing her victory statement in which she stated that her election was a victory for all California women and I remember thinking, was she elected senator of just women? She talked like that's what she believed. I was astounded at how dense she was and how I was embarrassed for all California women, including now myself.
To everyone in America, I am sincerely sorry for being from the state that imposed Ms. Boxer on this country and the world. She does not represent the state as a whole, nor the women of this state. She represents liberal, democratic women--period.
Oh thank you for this! Now I get all those same symptoms, can't breathe, etc. etc. every darn time I try to balance my checkbook! Now I know it's just because I'm a woman and thank God I'm "different" than all the guys out there who can do that checkbook thing with total calmness.(Smile)I have always hated MATH!!!
Condi hasnt even broke a sweat yet!
Hillary better watch her ass in '08. I know who I am voting for already.
One thing I must say, in regards to all of this: These women talk about the oppression of women in other countries(and we all know it IS real oppression, over there), and how bad it is. My sisters women's nmagazines seem to have an expose' on the subject, every few weeks or so, according to her.
BUT.. what do these women want to do about it? Do they propose to topple those dictatorship governments, and establish a free society for those people in those other countries? NO, they want to "send letters," and try to have a "peaceful negoation", to solve things! WHEN, IF EVER, are these women (and many men, too) going to realize ,that you do NOT change a dictatorship by sending flowers and Hallmark cards?
Diane West rocks.
I love her columns.
Thanks for the ping!
Denny Crane: "I want two things. First God and then Fox News."
Excellent post...thank you!
Why do people think a man deserves a prize if he spends one weekend taking care of his kids ... while if a woman takes care of them for an entire 9-month deployment, it just earns a shrug?
The point, in case you missed it (I'm only on my first cup of coffee) is that men and women are different, and only a feminist academic could be floored by the revelation.
Now, now.......Notice that I tagged on the ;-) and then dove for cover. :-)
It is funny, though, how the good Liberal professor makes her case to the Liberal media.
The professor could have stated that she can work as hard as any man and as well as any man in her chosen intellectual field and that her success proves it. I can hear such a statement coming out of Condi Rice in regards to her record in comparison to prior male National Security Advisers.
The good Liberal pofessor, however, whips out the ever popular Liberal Victim Card (Don't Leave Home Without it) and paints a picture of herself that is straight out of a Victorian pulp fiction novel. There she was:......A frail and vulnerable woman in severe physical distress from a case of the vapors secondary to an emotional reation and in dire need of a fainting couch.
Love your picture ...
Yes, the woman acted like a fool, and illustrated that she, at least, is not qualified for a responsibe position!
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