When I saw the headline, “What’s wrong with this picture?” and noticed that it was from the “Southeastern Institute f…,” I didn’t have to open the email, or even see the picture, to know what the answer was.
When you see the full name of the Institute, you won’t wonder, either. Nor will you wonder if you look at the picture in question (at right). But knowing full well the point, I watched the video anyway, and was rewarded by seeing my old colleague Andy Haworth, who shot video for thestate.com when I was there (what does it say that the one person I knew in the video was the one male, eh?).
But ultimately, we get to the place where we knew we were going — the fact that there are no women in the S.C. Senate. And I’m totally with the makers of the video that this is weird, not to mention not good.
The problem is when you talk about what to do about it. My problem is with what one young woman says at the end: “When they do find the courage to run, make sure you vote for them.”
No can do. Not if you put it that way. I just can’t vote for anyone because of gender or race. Or political party, for that matter. Either someone is the better candidate (such as when Inez Tenenbaum was running for superintendent of education — or for the U.S. Senate) or not (such as when Nikki Haley was the only woman running for governor).
You vote for the woman in the first instance, and not in the second. And if you do anything else, you shouldn’t be voting. The Senate can be all male, or all female — I’m not going to suspend judgment to address the imbalance, either way. Let the best woman win, but otherwise not.
Besides, if you ask me what’s wrong with the SC Senate, gender wouldn’t be the first concern I’d mention. If you’d give me a Senate, and a House, that would truly reform our government and our tax system and institute policies that would make our state healthier, wealthier and wiser, I wouldn’t care if they were all little green hermaphrodites from Mars. Or Venus, if you prefer.
But when you start picking them based upon demographics, or party as Harvey Peeler would have it, then you’re going down that Nikki Haley road.
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OK, OK, OK — now I see that after she said “When they do find the courage to run, make sure you vote for them,” the young woman added, “… if they do possess the qualities that it takes to be a leader…”
So I almost agree. As long as the other person doesn’t possess those qualities to a greater degree.
By the way, the video was produced at Columbia College.
I could now make a joke about, “… where you could look around at the student body and ask, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’…”
… except that I think single-sex education is a fine thing. For people other than me, that is…
I thought Columbia College became co-ed decades ago. It’s still predominately a woman’s college though. Then again, so is USC.
If the Senate were full of women — South Carolina would never vote to go to war!
Just think what would have happened if a bunch of women had been in the Legislature in 1860 — where would we be now? Probably speaking English, and suffering Northern oppression…
And do you realize, there’s only ONE guy in that picture in a bow tie?
We need more people in the Legislature who look like me.
8 black guys out of the 46. That’s not too far out of line with the population percentage. Let’s try to look at something positive in that picture. After all even 1 black guy would have been unthinkable between about 1880 and 1970.
I’m pretty certain that Columbia College is still all women, with the exception of their evening school. Their mascot is the Fighting Koalas.
Columbia College evening classes are coed.
We don’t know a thing about how more women in the legislature would be in the event it actually happened. Women are all different, just as men are. Nikki Haley, Hillary Clinton, Christie Todd Whitman, Olympia Snowe, Barbara Boxer….QED.
What we can also infer, res ipsa loquitur, is that something is off when more than half of the electorate is not represented. (A barrel doesn’t fall from a warehouse window absent someone’s negligence). What that is is less clear. In a part-time legislature, you’d almost expect more stay-at-home moms, say, to give it a chance– fewer women are the breadwinner or higher earner in couples even to this day. Is it day care?
I know I simply do not have the stamina to run a campaign. Is it that men have more support at home than women?
Unfortunately, the SC legislature does not lend itself to people that actually need to work for a living. You either need to be:
1) Independently wealthy
2) Have an employer who wants to have a legislator on the payroll
3) Be a “consultant” and do lots of lucrative municipal studies
4) Be an attorney and cash in on your legislative notoriety
5) Own a business or confederate gift shop that doesn’t require your attention
6) Are retired already
I’d bet that covers 95% of them or two standard deviations, generally below the mean.
Come up with some that don’t fit my categories? Anyone up to the challenge?
If the Senate were full of women — South Carolina would never vote to go to war!
And maybe that flag would never have gone up.