Posted on 04/27/2005 10:16:13 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
For all their professional advances, there are still a few things that women simply can’t do as well as men.
One of the more fatuous beliefs that has been foisted off by self-proclaimed feminists and other politically correct lamebrains is that children don’t really need fathers. I used to say that American women, thanks to increased salaries and well-stocked sperm banks, had reached a point where they only needed men to open ketchup bottles and get stuff down from high shelves. Ladies, I was joking!
I had no idea that so many women took the line to heart. Thanks to my good joke and Gloria Steinem’s bad one -- that crack about fish needing bicycles -- women have become increasingly wacky. What is really surprising, considering that thirty years of feminist propaganda has promoted the natural superiority of females, is how masculine, in the worst sense of the word, women have become.
Surely I am not the only person who has noticed that these days young women are just as likely as men to smoke, to get bombed on booze and cuss in public, and perhaps even likelier to drive like maniacs and to flip you off for daring to share the road with them.
In the business world, far too many women salivate at the thought of being regarded as cold and ruthless. They are every bit as likely to torment and humiliate their employees, and to promote an atmosphere of fear and anger, especially among their female underlings. Call these women cut-throat and they think you’re trying to sweet talk them.
Perhaps it’s simply a case of Stockholm syndrome gone amuck. As you probably know, that’s a situation in which hostages come to identify, not with their rescuers, but with their captors. Women, in their own defense, might possibly claim that they’d been powerless for so long that it was inevitable that they’d take on the very characteristics they’ve despised. But that’s a load of hooey. I say, if you’re going to behave like an idiot and a bully, don’t make excuses for your boorishness. God knows men don’t!
Inasmuch as more and more women are eager to hand off their offspring to a nanny, a granny or a nursery school, you have to wonder why most of them even bother giving birth. All they seem to have to show for the experience are stretch marks.
In a society that is determined to accept the nutty notion that two gay men or a pair of lesbians are just as likely -- they really mean likelier -- to raise a normal, healthy child as a married man and woman, how could anybody dare suggest that a single woman isn’t equally capable? Well, she isn’t. This is especially true when the child is a boy. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how much she cares, no matter how many broken nails she’s willing to sacrifice in order to play catch with the kid, the bottom line is she’s a woman. And just because so many of the morons in Hollywood have turned single motherhood into just another fad, sort of like collagen lips and plastic bosoms, doesn’t make it a good idea.
It simply makes sense that a boy needs a man in his life to act as a role model, to show him not only how to curb his temper and to temper his testosterone, but also how to avoid being feminized into something resembling a well-dressed eunuch.
The point I am looking to make I saw made perfectly in a segment of a TV magazine show some years ago. It seems that in Africa, on a game preserve, the rangers were discovering the mutilated carcasses of several rhinos. They couldn’t determine who was responsible for the carnage, and they couldn’t imagine a motive.
After conducting an investigation, they found to their amazement that a band of teenage elephants was killing the rhinos for no other reason than that they felt like it. It was their version of drive-by shootings. Like our own urban gangs, the young rogues even had a leader.
The rangers thought long and hard about the problem. The first thing they realized was that the teenagers were free to make up their own evil rules of behavior because, like the blood-thirsty kids in Lord of the Flies, there were no adults in their world. All the bull elephants had been slaughtered by poachers for their ivory.
Then, because they didn’t have to answer to politicians or social workers, the rangers did two essential things. First, having determined he was incorrigible, they killed the leader of the pack. Next, they flew in several bull elephants. In no time at all, order was restored. The big guys let it be known that if there was any more rhino-stomping, there would be hell to pay. Their message was short and sweet; namely that elephants don’t behave that way.
So, for all their professional advances, there are still a few things that women simply can’t do as well as men. Some of those things, such as throwing a football forty yards in a perfect spiral or crushing a beer can on their forehead, aren’t all that essential. Important, I’ll grant you, but not absolutely essential to society at large.
However, when it comes to rearing male children, we’d all probably be better off if the ladies simply dropped the kids off in the woods for wolves to raise.
Burt Prelutsky has written for Dragnet, McMillan & Wife, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn, and Diagnosis Murder. He wrote a humor column for the Los Angeles Times and was the movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. His most recent book is Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco (A Hollywood Rightwinger Comes Out of the Closet).
What was a conservative doing writing for MASH?
There were several article about 2 years ago about how the BB/BS programs in some areas (read that "very liberal cities") absolutely REFUSED to disqualify a person based on their sexual preferences. The wouldn't allow a man to be a BB to a young girl because of possible sexual problems but they saw no problem with allowing a homosexual pair up with a child of the same sex.
It's kind of subtle but I've been on both ends of this now.
One thing that happens to young men as they mature is they discover they can do a lot of things that mom and their older sisters can't do. Like open jars or pin an older sister on the floor so she's completely helpless.
Dad's job is to make sure that the son understands that being physically powerful doesn't mean that you don't try to get your way by bullying everyone, showing by example, the proper way to behave.
And then there's that subtle and unspoken influence. Mainly that dad is still bigger and meaner than the son and the son needs to think carefully about what he says to dad's girlfriend and other children.
Let's not put all the blame on the ladies. There are too many men who are very happy to knock up women and then take no responsibility for the offspring.
There was some comedy skit a few years back about a planet populated with only women. The women had killed off all the men because they were assumed to be useless. Then came an epidemic. Well, the cure was in a jar but no one on the planet could get it open ...
Geez...tell me about it. We had a visit last night at 10 pm from a State Policeperson, asking us if we knew where a certain 8 year-old lived. He is our across-the-street neighbor. His parents split up a year ago, and the little lad has been let free to roam ever since Dad walked out.
Well, last night he was out throwing LARGE ROCKS at passing vehicles. His companions were two 13 year-olds.
I told the State Cop that I hope she puts the fear of God in both him and the dingbat mother.
I would do this for my son, too--if my ex-husband had even the slightest interest in taking our son. Alas, he does not.
I think some studies have shown that kids who have a father but not a mother make out a lot better in the long run than kids who have a mother but not a father. Something about the father providing better discipline, I imagine. So don't worry too much.
I'm waiting for the "dads make miserable moms" piece to follow.....
done right, its a 24/7 job with no let up....
blessed be those who through no fault of their own are raising children by themselves.....
"What was a conservative doing writing for MASH?"
Surely you've heard by now that there's a whole host of "Closet Conservatives" working in Hollywood? I guess if you want to make a living to support your family, you just shut up about your political views in certain situations.
I just finished reading, "What Hollywood Believes" by Ray Comfort. It's personal religious beliefs of the lefties in Hollywood. Absolutley fascinating, because nearly each and every one interviewed pretty much put themeselves front and center as "god" in their narrow, "me first" world view. *Rolleyes*
Absolutely!
I did read that somewhere and from some single moms I have seen I think it may be true. Not all of course. You sound like you are doing a very good job in the circumstances.
Keep up the good work! :)
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