Posted on 06/20/2005 12:19:49 PM PDT by QwertyKPH
HAVE PITY on Barbara Walters.
Barbara Walters is, after all, Barbara Walters. And Barbara Walters should not be made to suffer the gross indignity of flying while a common woman breast-feeds her baby.
Barbara, for those few of you left on the remote islands of Fiji who don't know who she is, is a world-famous Very Important Person.
She has, according to her official bio, "arguably interviewed more statesmen and stars than any other journalist in history. She is so well known that her name and a brief biography is [sic] listed in the American Heritage Dictionary."
Barbara Walters is the prolific profiler of Hollywood stars. She and she alone possesses the power to anoint the world's "most fascinating" celebrities and render the rest to the basement of dullard-dom.
Barbara Walters has interviewed "such world figures as Russia's Boris Yeltsin, China's Premier Jiang Zemin, Great Britain's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi and Iraq's President Saddam Hussein."
And every American president and first lady since Richard Nixon. And Fidel Castro. And, uh, Monica Lewinsky.
So when Barbara Walters gets on a plane accompanied by her hairdresser - what world-famous Very Important Person doesn't? - you can imagine the distress of being seated next to an ordinary mom who had the nerve to nurse her child in Barbara Walters' presence.
The nerve! (Or, rather, the newve.)
"It made me very nervous," Barbara complained last month on "The View," her ABC morning talk show hosted by a klatch of elitist women posing as your chatty best friends next door. (If, that is, your door happens to be located in Manhattan or the Hamptons or Beverly Hills.)
Barbara attacked the offensive nursing mom further: "She didn't cover the baby with a blanket. It made us uncomfortable."
How dare that hungry baby make Barbara Walters and her hairdresser feel "uncomfortable"? Selfish child. Don't you know who Barbara Walters is?
Alert viewers of "The View" note that Walters' co-hosts have previously expressed similar disdain for nursing women, with Star Jones Reynolds making faces when the subject arises.
As you may have heard, 200 women from across the country and from many different backgrounds held a highly-publicized "nurse-in" at "The View's" studios to protest Walters' breast-feeding bigotry.
I'm not the biggest fan of the radical "lactivists" - the whole La Leche scene is a bit much for me - but having breast-fed both my children (one for 13 months, the other for six), I sympathize with their outrage at Walters' remarks. Nursing a child takes time, dedication and selflessness.
No mother should be made to feel ashamed of that.
Which reminds me: When millions of parents complained about the outrageously inappropriate exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during a sexually explicit Super Bowl performance last year, they were immediately branded as "prudes" by elite liberals in the media.
Why aren't those same supposedly progressive commentators bashing the ridiculously priggish Barbara Walters and company now?
Barbara Walters, naturally, cannot comprehend what all the fuss is about: "Nobody here is against breast-feeding," she says with condescending bewilderment.
It's all a "misunderstanding." She is now reportedly blaming her hairdresser for the mess.
And she has comforted herself by retreating into her sycophantic coven. New mother and "View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was wildly applauded by Walters' coterie when she announced she was giving up nursing her newborn daughter and switching to bottle-feeding.
No doubt seeking approval from her critically acclaimed mentor (who are we to argue with a woman listed in the American Heritage Dictionary?), Hasselbeck confessed on the show that she was "uncomfortable breast-feeding in general."
Working around the nose-crinkling Barbara Walters and her squeamish hairdresser, who wouldn't be?
Maybe I need a personal hardresser before I can "feel uncomfortable" when a mother is nursing a child. Then again, I can't imagine being a snotty, elite prude either.
Lots of classical art has Jesus at Mary's breast. Why are some people so offended these days?
Don't worry. This thread is sure to invite the psychopaths on FR who are "disgusted" by breast feeding, view public breastfeeding as some sort of sin (you MIGHT see flesh you know) or compare it to urination or defecation.
Idiots all.
This breastfeeding in public is a liberal pet peeve. Thye always slam anyone who might complain about breast feeding in such an open manner.
I thought this would be about the breastfeeding snobs who practically equate bottle feeding with child abuse.
The government is spending dollars on ad campaigns to tout breastfeeding. I pass a bilboard all the time that states: "Babies were born to be breastfed".
The billboard and ad campaign is paid for by our tax dollars. Why?
You beat me to it - my thots exactly.
J
I worked in daycare and we had some instances with over-zealous women who were breastfeeding. For example imagine a woman coming into a room of 4 year olds and pulling her dress top down (with nothing on underneath) sitting next to her 4-year old son who is eating a snack so that he could nurse. I still cannot get the image out of my head. It also was not the tip of the iceberg.
That's perfectly understandable. It's a natural human function, of course it makes her nervous.
What did she think, Mom was going to ask her to provide dessert? You're not actually required to look, Barbara.
I was surprised by how many people were blatantly uncomfortable when I nursed my children. I tried to be as respectful as possible for anyone that was around; but wow! At times I felt like I was doing something horrid!
Interestingly enough, fruity tooty unron reagan took the opposite view.
michelle ROCKS....great read.
I think its mostly women that have a hangup about this.
My wife nursed our 8 kids in public I joked that everyone in Cedar Rapids had seen her tits. We just laughed. It's all good and natural.
Pretty amazing being that Barbara cannot understand that the letters "R" and "L" are actually different from the letter "W".
Sorry but I feel a little weird when women are still breast feeding their children after they are 1 year old with teeth.
Yep. I have yet to see a woman blatantly baring her breasts under the auspices of feeding her child. Most people are discrete.
It is not a liberal pet peeve. It is a pet peeve of those who understand how important and natural breast feeding is. I have never and never will be mistakened for a liberal. I guess my family (all who are very conservative) are some of those breast feeding snobs. Yes babies were born to be breastfed with mother's milk not milk from a cow. My wife breast fed in the 60s when you could not even find a doctor or government agency that said you should breast feed. It is so good to have finally reached the point where it is accepted as the right and natural thing to do.
There are so many responses I could make to that.... 8>)
Sorry, it is still natural to breast feed beyond the first year or breasts would not still be producing milk! Of course women should be discreet as all of the women in my family are (except around the family).
Tell that to the baby, let me know if you have any luck. Infants are remarkably inconsiderate. (/sarcasm for the humor-impaired)
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