today the washington post provided me with yet another gem. “We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” used a skinny political premise to achieve a degradation of women the magnitude of which i’m sure hasn’t been seen in print since 1921. There is the slight chance that this article is satire. i hope it is, though i doubt it, based on the detailed political anecdotes and disdainful tone. would you believe that women are attending political rallies enthusiastically?
high school is a microcosm of male-female comparisons and relations, mostly because everyone goes through so it is relatable, and also because high school is rife with stereotypes. but i know i was not the only girl in advanced english. there were only three boys in it, though. nor was i the only girl on the honor roll. there was actually, if you can even believe it, a TEAMful of girls on my soccer team. there were a bunch of teams! enough girls played soccer for literally a whole league to be formed! they also played lacrosse! and basketball! these sports all had female leagues too! just for girls!
I tried looking through this piece of idiotic rambling for the best quotes, but copy-pasting the entire article seems to be the best option. i have already e-mailed it to a few of my friends. in the interest of space…
the author, Charlotte Allen, claims:
“I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of female mental deficiencies. I can’t add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then what?). I don’t even know how many pairs of shoes I own.”
Allen, by way of explaining why women like Barack Obama, proceeds to embarass herself completely. first of all, who in the world would publicly claim to be unable to add 2 and 2 together? i think an idiot without self awareness would do it. maybe a three year old? she continues on to cite insiginificant studies to prop up her claim that women like Obama because, well, they’re women. and being a woman, of course, has its drawbacks, which include being dumber than men, worse drivers than men, having smaller brains, and not being able to spin an object in our brains to see it in 3-D. she tries to balance her article and make it objective by injecting little bits of female-deprecating humor, like the botox shots she claims is all women are interested in. women get in more accidents but they kill less people! women have better memories! women have superior verbal skills! Not only does she present her claims that men are superior to women without citing her sources or providing objective evidence, she does the same for the qualities she inadvertently credits to women.
did i mention she calls hillary clinton stupid? she does. did i mention she says:
“So I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts’ content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are … kind of dim.”
i am pissed she called me dim. hell, i am pissed she called my SISTER dim. my mom’s not dim. i am mad she relegates me to the role she assumes i will fill best- a wife and mother who is completely devoted to my husband’s and child’s well-being. i guess my final point, the thing that bothers me the most about this so-called article, is that everyone, sex aside, is different from everyone else. allen does not seem to think this is important. allen doesn’t seem to think it is important that women are recovering from CENTURIES worth of oppression. they have a lot of lost time! it doesn’t matter to this “woman” (i put the word in quotes because she seems to reject the idea of empowerment and gender-equality and thus i can’t call her a woman with a straight face) that females are making progress. everyone has faults and no one is perfect. you know what- maybe i am just not smart enough to understand charlotte allen. this article could be well thought out and too intricate for my delicate girl-mind. but then again she is a woman so i am probably giving her too much credit.
news is getting confused- the role that reporters and journalists play has become convoluted. on the washingtonpost.com yesterday, a journalist, Dan Balz, wrote a post on ‘the trail.’ balz seemed taken aback by the way the media has treated Barack Obama. he claims that it is high time to ask this candidate some important questions. his questions were all undeniably good questions for a reporter to ask a presidential candidate. they were specific policy questions that would reveal a candidates position and idealogy.
i think there is one step that is missing here- and in a lot of articles and newspapers countrywide- and that step is actually asking the questions. instead of decrying the lack of questioning -gasp- ask some questions. Balz’s post was counter-productive and a waste of time. posting drivel like “why aren’t journalists asking people questions” (which seems to me a huge part of writing a story) just makes readers more aware that you’re a lazy writer. what’s more is that HAVING the right questions and not actually asking them is a disservice to everyone. is he depending on the other (apparently also dumb) journalists to ask the questions he is asking them why they aren’t asking?
another problem i have with balz’s post, which extends to media and journalists in general, is the fact that it focused on obama. humbly, i believe that all politicians and people in power should be asked similar questions. that they should be tested in a public forum. i mean, this whiny post annoyed me in a lot of ways. complaining about questions not getting asked WHEN YOU ARE IN A POSITION TO ASK THEM is childish and like, what my mom did when she’d be mad at me for not doing her laundry. she knew where our washer and dryer were.
renting a car is much more difficult than it should be. there should be one giant database on the internet with all car rental agencies. you should be able to type in the dates, the car and where you are. then the nearest ones should pop up, offering the cheapest deals, and more options. why the internet has to be hard, i will never know. the single reason why i always fly jet blue is because of how easy their site is. new york to buffalo? kthx. these are my options? i’ll take this flight. okay payment? here you go. DONE. ALSO why they hell does it matter how OLD you are when you rent a car? they should have a goddamn database that can access your driving record. THEN they should decide whether or not to give you some sort of extra fee. does the youth of america STINK up your cars? why is there an automatic fee if you are like, three days away from turning 25? what will those three days do? do they charge different amounts for 22 verus 23 year old? all of these problems and more is why america stinks today.
in other news: i want to be a famous actress so i can wear pretty dresses and go to fashion shows. AS MY JORB.
never eat at the soup man. they gave me the tiniest sandwich and the most generic soup i have ever had.
happy valentine’s day.
this weekend was a crowning achievement. i think i know hold the record for the most episodes of gilmore girls watched within a 72 hour period. and even though i left the house twice for a grand total of twenty minutes, i feel drained, lethargic and achey. i walked to the bodega. the close one. i am trying to make myself sound lazy but i am just sick. my face is a wall that is blocking my breath, my glands are swollen, my joints ache, my throat tickles, my cough is disturbing my office-mates, and my sneezes are like mini earthquakes. in my body. so i’m hydrating. and i am not hungry.
the rest of the world was busy. obama won maine, the virgin islands, washington, louisiana and nebraska. bush was busy endorsing mccain. yahoo officially rejected microsoft’s offer and m and t sent me e-mails about how i lost 300$ last week. where did that 300$ go? is the prevailing mystery that is stumping everyone, especially me. i am getting really good at bringing lotion, chapstick and warm clothes that can pretend to be professional to work with me.
“starve a fever feed a cold.”
meanwhile i hope my nose does not become cherry red and annoyingly enough i am looking for meaning in life. work makes me feel meaningless.
today i am aimless!
the gap doesn’t have the plaid shirt anymore. which is very sad to me, i really wanted it. so i bought more stuff from the internet. i seriously covet this canvas tote from urban outfitters but it’s 60$! for a simple goddamn tote. but i do have it saved on my favorites and i look at it sometimes.
easter is in march this year. this seems wrong to me somehow. bryan was complaining about leapyears the other day. bryan complains about the dumbest things. he has it out for the van that sells juice in the summer, it is called “community juice” and he wants to fire bomb it.
today is the fattest day of the year.
122 million!
today i drank a cup of coffee in the morning. when i got to work i was talking a mile a minute, well many words a minute and people were looking at me. half an hour later, and still now, i crashed so hard. my body is dragging on the ground, i feel as though my elbows are attached to my sides and my neck wants to bend in half.
naturally i am finding it difficult to keep track of time, focus, and read. so i decided to shop online instead. i love internet sales. i think i ordered the last gray plaid button up at the gap. GOOD.
for some reason i love politics, i always wish i knew more. i minor-ed in poly-sci in college pretty much because i wanted to know more. i should have taken a better american history course. but i took poly-sci and now in most of my free time at work i read www.washingtonpost.com. i like listening to people debate politics so i love reading the comment pages of the news stories on news websites. BUT i cannot debate or explain my own political opinions. i get too emotional and i also am worried of being factually wrong, so rather than risk feeling dumb, i usually sit back and let other people talk politics while i listen and ask some questions.
right now i am interested in the 2008 presidential campaign. it is innately interesting, i want to know everything about it. which is pretty easy, it is all over the news. it is actually almost all that is in the news. i think people are obsessed over who is going to be the democratic nominee. the simple fact that the nominee will either be a black man or a woman is fascinating to most people, including myself. it is unfortunate though, when asked what are the differences between them, hillary and barack only say verions of: “what is more important is that we are both way different than the republicans!” i want them to debate, to clash to be productive. i am naive in wanting there to direct confrontation and conclusions drawn. i wish that they could have no representatives, that before this race i had never heard of them. because gilmore girls characters have been cracking hillary for president jokes for a few years now. which is weird watching an episode on dvd and lorelai goes “i’ll see you when hillary’s president!”
“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy …’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.”
this pretty much made up my mind, don’t know why.
