One of my Facebook friends of the female persuasion posted the above notice today.
Ha-ha.
I responded:
OK. What’s a recipe book? And where do we keep it? Since my dinner’s in it, will I be able to find it by smell?
Ladies, never, ever think that you can manipulate us by being clever. Our sheer, unforced obtuseness, combined with the fact that evolution has developed helplessness in us to a stage you can’t even begin to fathom, will always defeat you.
Carl Evans over at USC brings this to my attention:
Friends,
Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-Amerian reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, will be speaking in Gambrell Hall this Wednesday, April 11, at 6:00 p.m. If you care about social justice and especially about issues facing women around the globe you will be interested in WuDunn’s talk.
WuDunn is the author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, co-written with her husband Nicholas Kristoff, a New York Times op-ed writer.
There is also a related colloquium at Columbia College this evening, April 9, from 6-7 p.m. Please read the attachment for additional details about both the lecture and the colloquium.
Regards,
Carl
Personally, I’m not familiar with her work, but I’m a great admirer of her husband’s, and I sense that she’s been a strong influence on him.
Because of his work, I would not expect this lecture to be a string of feminist cliches. I expect that her critique is reality-based, like Kristof’s, based on what she’s actually seen in the world.
That’s one of the things I really appreciate about Kristof. He’s the kind of liberal who routinely flies in the face of the left’s (and anyone else’s) orthodoxy, based on his first-hand knowledge of real conditions. For instance, he’s the guy who persuaded me of how indefensible the Democratic position was on the Colombia Free Trade agreement several years back.
As for the plight of women, there’s little room for argument over the outrages he exposes in the parts of the world where “war on women” wouldn’t actually be true and not absurd hyperbole. I wouldn’t be surprised if his wife has a similarly compelling message. Perhaps even more so.
Talking to Kara Gormley Meador yesterday, I momentarily drew a blank when she mentioned her run-in with John Graham Altman some years ago. She reminded me of the details, which made me go, “Oh, yeah.” Here’s a summary of the incident:
Excerpts from the exchange between WIS-TV reporter Kara Gormley and Rep. John Graham Altman, R-Charleston, over a S.C. House committee’s vote to make cockfighting a felony while tabling a bill that would toughen criminal domestic violence laws
Gormley: “Does that show that we are valuing a gamecock’s life over a woman’s life?”
Altman: “You’re really not very bright, and I realize you are not accustomed to this, but I’m accustomed to reporters having a better sense of depth of things, and your asking this question to me would indicate you can’t understand the answer. To ask the question is to demonstrate an enormous amount of ignorance. I’m not trying to be rude or hostile, I’m telling you.”
Gormley: “It’s rude when you tell someone they are not very bright.”
Altman: “You’re not very bright, and you’ll just have to live with that.”
So basically, when she talks about the lack of civility in politics, she’s speaking from personal experience.
She said that most of her original desire to run arose from a wish to raise the overall tone of politics. Only THIS much had to do with her personal encounters as a TV reporter with Jake Knotts.
As previously mentioned, I met Kara Gormley Meador over at Starbucks for coffee today, to talk about whether she is going to run for the state senate.
As you’ll recall, Ms. Meador had intended to oppose Jake Knotts in the GOP primary in District 23, but learned that she had been misinformed by officials who told her that she lived in that district, under the new lines. She thought she had done due diligence — she had even requested a new voter registration card, so she could have it in writing — but what she was told was wrong. Under the reapportionment, she will be in District 18, currently occupied by Ronnie Cromer.
So will she run against Sen. Cromer? She hasn’t decided. She said she even thought that maybe she would make up her mind while talking to me. I don’t know whether the talk with me helped, but in the end, for what it’s worth, I told her she should run — for something.
I say that not to endorse her over Mr. Cromer or anyone else. I just think she is a positive, energetic, knowledgeable young person who would be a positive force in our General Assembly.
Does that mean that I agree with her on everything? Hardly. As she wrote on this blog recently:
I’d like to try and propagate real individual income tax relief.
I’d like to dismantle or revamp the House and Senate ethics committee. As they stand, neither body has any teeth to penalize legislators when they act in an unethical or illegal manner.
I am for complete transparency.
I don’t believe our legislators should offer certain companies back room deals that include huge incentives and tax breaks to try and lure them to our state, while folks who have been doing business here for years get nothing.
I have a lot of thoughts when it comes to education. We need to analyze administrative costs and see where we can scale back or consolidate and make sure we pay our teachers a fair wage.
I believe in school choice to include the creation of more charter schools; and to allow children in rural public schools to have the same choices offered to students in other districts in their counties. For example: students in Batesburg-Leesville have only one elementary school in the district, but students in Lexington One have the chance to attend any of the districts elementary school if there is availability. I think a student should be able to cross district lines– especially if they are located in the same county.
(there’s a lot more to this– if you are interested I’d be happy to tell you more)We need to cap government growth.
I feel that across the board cuts are a cop out. As a legislator in times like these, you need to make some tough cuts in order to pay the bills. I don’t use credit cards to pay for things I can’t afford. I don’t believe our legislators should spend money that way.
One way we could save money is by shortening the legislative session.I also believe legislators should have term limits.
Those of you who know me can see some significant disconnects with my own positions on issues. For instance, as an ardent believer in representative democracy, I would neither unduly limit the voters’ ability to elect whom they like (term limits) nor use a mathematical formula to supersede the representative’s powers to write a budget (“cap government growth”).
Further, I see inconsistencies in her vision. Today, she indicated that she believed enough waste could be found in state spending to both fully fund the essential functions of state government (which she correctly describes as currently underfunded) and return enough money to taxpayers to stimulate our economy.
In a state as tax-averse as this one, there’s just not enough money there to have your cake and eat it, too, barring a loaves-and-fishes miracle. (OK, enough with the clashing metaphors.)
But she’s smart, she’s energetic, and she seems to have no axes to grind. I think she’d quickly see that you can’t do it all, and make realistic assessments of what can and should be done. Her disgust with the pointless conflicts of modern politics, and the way they militate against a better future for South Carolina’s people.
She worries about spending time away from her kids, but she wants a better South Carolina for them. And she made a point that I particularly appreciated. She said that when she wants a better future for her kids, she actually means that she wants a better one for all of the state’s kids — unlike so many other who say that. I nodded at that, because it took me way too long to realize years ago that when Mark Sanford wanted a South Carolina in which his sons could stay and have a bright future, he wasn’t referring to the boys as a microcosm — he literally meant that he wanted a better future for his sons, period. That’s the libertarian way.
Kara says she knows she sounds like a Ms. Smith Goes to Columbia, and she does. But I like that.
While she feels the pull of her children, “God has given me one life,” and “I’m extremely driven, and I love people.” She was bowled over by the enthusiastic response she got on Facebook that one day that people thought she was opposing Knotts. She told me that some of the folks she heard from were people she had reported on over the years, some of them crime victims (a particular interest for her) who appreciated having their stories told.
She likes the idea of being a voice for those who think they have no voices. “Maybe I should get in to prove to somebody that they could get in, too.”
There’s one thing that she and I agree on, based on our years of observing politics. In the end, character is everything — far more important than ideology or specific policy proposals. My impression is that Kara has the character to be a positive force in politics, whatever her current notions of specific policy proposals.
So I’d like to see her run — for something.
Throughout the interview, I could see the light of enthusiasm in her eyes as she spoke of the possibility of making a difference.
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.
This just came in from Kara Gormley Meador, as a comment on the previous post about her:
Good morning folks. I checked with an attorney who is working on the redistricting suit. It sounds as if I am out of 23 for good. The suit underway is based on race. The attorney told me that gerrymandering is not illegal, unless there is a racial component. It is another sad truth about our elected officials; they can draw the lines in a way that helps keep them in office. Just one more reason I am for term limits for our legislators. I still have some decisions to make, like whether or not to run in District 18. It’s something that I am strongly considering.
If she runs in 18, that would mean opposing Ronnie Cromer. I can’t offer much of a read on her chances. She could have been a real threat to Jake Knotts, I think. Anyone have a read on 18?
And she’s right — the courts have long held that incumbency protection is allowed in redistricting. No, that doesn’t seem right, but that’s what the courts have said.
Speaking of Republican women and media…
There was a flurry of excitement earlier in the day when word was going around that Kara Gormley Meador, formerly of WIS, was preparing to run for the Senate against Jake Knotts. As Jack Kuenzie reported:
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) – The race for state Senate District 23 was thrown a major curveball Thursday with the announcement from a former WIS anchor and reporter that she intends to enter the race.
Kara Gormley Meador enters an already crowded field of contenders in the form of former Lexington County GOP chair Katrina Shealy and incumbent Sen. Jake Knotts.
Meador says she had been considering the decision for a while and planned on rolling out her campaign on March 1, but rumors began to spread that she was looking to make a run at the seat….
And when I say excitement, I mean excitement. Check this sampling of comments from her Facebook page:
See what I mean? Mitt Romney would kill for a tenth of that enthusiasm for his candidacy. That sort of enthusiasm makes the excitement about Obama in 2008 look like tepid dislike. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever run across that much enthusiasm for anybody. If anyone hurled it at me, I think I’d back away in fright. Fortunately, that’s not likely.
In any case, it was all for naught, as this was reported later in the day by a certain rival news organization:
The Lexington Election Commission says the recent redrawing of state Senate districts means former WIS anchor Kara Gormley Meador can not run for the state Senate seat held by Jake Knotts.
Instead, Meador will be in district 18, held by Sen. Ronnie Cromer. That race is already crowded, with former Lexington County Republican party chairman Rich Bolen saying he plans to run.
Filing for state Senate seats does not open until March…
So I guess Jake has escaped having a tidal wave of enthusiasm wash over him…
Have you ever seen a public, media campaign in SC for an appointive office? Neither have I. But we just had one.
An ex-colleague (as in, someone else who used to work at the newspaper) brought this to my attention. It came to him yesterday as a solicitation e-mail. It featured that “View Full Image or Donate Now” feature that I’ve seen on a number of GOP solicitations recently. When you carefully avoid the “Donate Now” and click on “View Full Image,” you go to this site, where you read:
Conservative women, we need your help in Columbia tomorrow.
Democratic Senators are attempting to stop the nomination of a strong, conservative woman to lead an important state agency.
Qualified women are too often discouraged from seeking public office by the entrenched “good old boy” interests. You can read more about this issue an op-ed by our founder, Karen Floyd, that was published in The State newspaper today. Scroll down for the complete text of Karen’s piece.
Don’t let it happen this time – Let’s stand with Catherine Templeton during her Senate screening hearing tomorrow.
If you care about making sure qualified women are encouraged to serve, STAND WITH US!
Set aside where Republican appeals to feminist sensibilities have gotten us in the past, and focus on what an unusual approach this is. I hadn’t seen it before, but perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention.
Anyway, whether this helped or not, those behind it got their way today:
A Senate committee approved the nominee to run South Carolina’s environment and health agency at a hearing today.
Catherine Templeton will be the next Department of Health and Environmental Control commissioner following the 13-0 vote, pending final approval by the Senate next week.
Democratic senators Brad Hutto, Joel Lourie and Clementa Pinckney abstained, raising questions about her experience…
All right, technically it wasn’t Newt himself who made the admission, but his “camp.” But until he leaps forward to call his campaign people liars, I’m taking it as an admission from Newt.
Here’s what CNN is reporting:
(CNN) – Newt Gingrich’s campaign admitted Wednesday night the former House speaker was inaccurate when he claimed his team offered several witnesses to ABC News to refute statements made by Gingrich’s second wife in a controversial interview aired last week.
CNN Chief National Correspondent John King reported the campaign said it only recommended Gingrich’s two daughters from his first marriage, who wrote a letter discouraging ABC to release the interview…
R.C. Hammond, the campaign’s press secretary, told CNN the only people the campaign offered to ABC were the speaker’s two daughters, Jackie Cushman and Kathy Gingrich Lubbers, who make regular appearances for their father on the campaign trail…
How satisfying it must have been for John King to report that story, eh?
By the way, in case you have trouble keeping the relationships straight, these are his daughters by his first marriage. The one making the allegations was his second wife.
Oh, and ABC reported what they had to say the same day as running the ex-wife interview, which was also the same day that Newt unfairly and untruthfully lambasted ABC.
OK, I pretty much said my intro in the headline. Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Former S.C. First Lady Jenny Sanford is not a Newt Gingrich fan…
(Mrs.) Sanford said voters need to consider at Gingrich’s personal history that includes three marriages with his last one ending after he was having an affair with his current wife, Callista. Gingrich’s poll numbers have spiked after a strong showing in Monday’s debate in Myrtle Beach.
“It does call into question his character on a personal side,” (Mrs.) Sanford said. “As a voter, I encourage people to look at both sides, the personal side, and if you’re going to overcome somebody’s moral failings or infidelities, you also have to see where they fit ideologically, and how much their rhetoric meets their reality and in my mind, Gingrich falls short on both fronts. So he wouldn’t get my vote.”
She said a candidates personal history has an impact on the job they can do in office.
“I think it comes down to the simple question of character,” she said.
And that’s something she knows about. Hear her.
Man-oh-man — has a woman scorned EVER had an opportunity like this?
Just as he’s picking up the Big Mo, she torpedoes him by the simple expedient of telling what she knows about what he’s really like.
And there’s no defense against that, if you’re Newt Gingrich. I mean, when it comes to temperament and character, how many strikes does this guy already have against him? And how many does he get?
I told you that last post wasn’t about Nikki Haley. Well, this one is. Or rather, about the national media and Nikki.
I was almost done with the previous post before I clicked on the link from HuffPost to the Marie Claire piece to which it refers…
… and found myself confronted by what may be the most swooning, fawning coverage of Nikki Haley I’ve seen from national media yet.
Or at least in a while.
Wow.
I take it this breathless approach is sort of the style of this mag, but still… I, for one, am taken aback.
Doug and Steven, if you’re counting, this post is not really about Nikki Haley. It’s about women. It’s about me having trouble figuring them out. Or having trouble figuring out how the world reacts to them. Or something…
HuffPost calls our attention to the following:
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), in an interview in Marie Claire published Wednesday, discussed what lessons she has learned.
She named her role models. “Mine are my mother, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Martina Navratilova, Gabby Giffords. And Joan Jett. I tell you, Joan Jett is my idol. I would just love to meet her!”
Joan Jett’s pretty cool, I guess. Although I have to confess that I continue to get her confused with Pat Benatar. (Hey, gimme a break. By that time, I was an adult with a wife and kids and very busy running a newsroom.) And I’m sure the phrase “my mother and Margaret Thatcher” would fall easily from many Tory lips.
But you know, I’ll never get this chick thing about admiring people just because they share one’s gender.
I mean, really — Hillary Clinton coming right after the Iron Lady. I can see that they have a lot in common, but then I’m not a Democrat or a Republican.
Think of it this way: If Romney or Santorum or any of the guys running for president were asked to name his role models, and he named six, and one of them was Bill Clinton and another was a Democratic member of Congress, don’t you think he’d get in trouble with his base?
But if a woman does that, we don’t bat an eye. Because the gender bond is just supposed to be so profound that such differences don’t matter. In a way, that’s really cool (I certainly admire people from across the political spectrum). And good for Gov. Haley for being broad-minded. But in another way, it’s… I don’t know… either we’re condescending to women by not expecting consistency (like the Jack Nicholson character saying that to create female characters, “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability“), or we’re being unfair to men. One or the other. Whatever it is, it ain’t equality.
Not being a feminist, I’ve got no objection, in principle, to double standards. Boys and girls are different, in important ways. But this is one difference that puzzles me.
I emailed Wesley yesterday to let him know I would be available if he needed me this week or next on Pub Politics (which would me my unparalleled eighth appearance on the show). He said he’s let me know if he needed me.
Since then, he’s been distracted by the demise of the candidacy for which he was working.
But that didn’t prevent him from lining up a show with considerably more appeal that I could bring:
Did you know that the human body produces its own supply of alcohol naturally on a continuous basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Did you know that the world’s oldest known recipe is for beer?
And did you know that the Huntsman Girls are going to be our special guests this week on Pub Politics? Meet Wes and Phil and the girls at Pearlz Oyster Bar in the Vista this Thursday, January 5 at our usual time, 6pm. We’ll chat politics and partying to celebrate Phil’s birthday.
The Huntsman girls – Mary Anne, Liddy, and Abby – the eldest three children of presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman are most notable for their recent viral YouTube videos. Mary Anne, 26, is a concert pianist and works on the fundraising side of her father’s campaign, Abby, 25, works in broadcasting and handles media with the campaign, and Liddy, 23, is a recent college grad recruiting young voters.
You can follow them on twitter @Jon2012Girls or check out their YouTube videos where they mock a Herman Cain ad or offer up their own rendition of a popular Justin Timberlake song.
OK, now that she’s made her exit speech, we are reminded of two things:
I base the latter on her hyperbolic explanation of why she ran. She explained that Obamacare “endangered the very survival of the United States of America.”
So, in our lifetime, that makes two existential threats to our country: The Soviet Union, and a health care plan that is a timid, pale shadow of that provided in practically every other advanced nation in the world.
You know, I’m thinking it would be great if the GOP would now concentrate on finding a nominee who knows what a real threat is. Because the most critical part of the job description is, after all, commander in chief. Maybe that process began in Iowa last night.
The painting to which the ex-candidate referred: "Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States," by Howard Chandler Christy.
I’m guessing there’s a little-known codicil attached to the First Amendment that says you’re only allowed to make a certain number of painfully trite and pandering campaign ads in a month, so Rick Perry had to get his wife to do one, because he had exceeded his quota.
That would help explain the painful-to-watch phenomenon above.
Set aside the script, which makes me think that the Perry campaign paid the writers extra not to put in anything touching on originality or genuinely revelatory of character: No, this sounds too much like a real person — go back and watch another hour’s worth of ads from the 19950s and try again!
The appearance of a political wife in this one reminds me of the question Kathleen Parker raised yesterday: “Callista Gingrich: A Laura or a Hillary?” My first reaction, when I saw that headline on Twitter, was to think “Neither; she’s a Stepford.” But that one’s been done to death, so I didn’t Tweet it.
My next thought was this: I’m always a bit suspicious of political wives when they step to the fore. Like, why are they doing this? Is it their own ambition (I guess Hillary is supposed to stand for that) or are we to think they’re just so doggoned loyal and supportive that they’ll put up with all this, and with a fixed smile (I’m guessing that’s Laura)?
I mean, the candidates themselves are, by definition, not psychologically normal. No regular guy puts himself through that. He either desires power, or other people’s approval, or self-flagellation, or regular sex (the Alpha Male phenomenon), way more than your average Joe does, or he’s got a screw loose, or he is just ordained by Almighty God to be the nation’s leader (which would be my excuse, were I to run).
But hey, at the end of it all, he gets to be president and call the shots (which LOTS of guys would go for, if they didn’t have to go through a campaign to get there). But to run for First Lady? Where’s the reward? You have to show up for all the ribbon-cuttings, but get no real power. So I wonder. About all of them. (As for the husbands of female candidates — there are too few, and they stay too far in the background, for me to have formed many impressions, much less to have leaped to any generalizations.)
Whenever I’ve mentioned — just for the sake of argument, baby, just for laughs, you know, heh-heh — the remote possibility of thinking about considering running for office, I don’t get the sense from my wife that she’d be up for ANY sort of involvement in such madness. Because she’s a normal, sane person, and doesn’t need anything that such an experience has to offer. Which makes me wonder about the women who DO actively get involved in such goings-on.
It puzzles me.
Yesterday, I heard heard a discussion on the radio about the apparently shocking news that, according to LinkedIn, 19 percent of women (nearly one out of every five!) have never had a workplace mentor.
Which, of course, means that more than 80 percent have had a mentor.
I found myself groping for a place to grab ahold of that and decide whether it meant anything at all. I mean, that sounded to me like a lot of women having mentors. How, for instance, does it compare to guys? I didn’t hear any number relating to that, but Nicole Williams of LinkedIn said this:
we found two different surveys that confirmed that, in fact, men are more likely to get workplace guidance than women. They’re more likely to have a mentor. They’re more likely to be asked to be a mentor. They’re more likely to have asked someone to be a mentor.
Yeah, OK, but I’d sort of like to see those surveys.
Because… and I may be way off-base here… I always thought that mentoring was kind of a, well, a chick thing. In my worklife, I’ve mostly only heard women even talking about it. And I’ve heard them talk about it a lot, and to place great importance on it. And I’ve seen female executives go out of their way to act as a mentor to women below them, and to encourage those women to turn about and do the same for another person of the female persuasion. And I chalked that up to women being more into doing things collaboratively, and helping each other out, while guys tend to be antisocial jerks who wouldn’t go out of their way to help another guy (a competitor!) if their lives depended on it. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but those are the trends I have noticed, anecdotally speaking.
There’s a feminist assumption underlying all the “mentor” talk I hear from women that goes like this: Guys have their Old Boy Network, so we have to come up with these constructs to counteract that. And so they do. And it’s very overt: Will you be my mentor? Yes, I will. Then there are meetings, and lectures, and goals set, etc.
But maybe guys are “mentoring” (another one of those maddening cases of turning a noun into a verb) each other like crazy without even knowing it, or at least without calling it that.
So I thought back, have I ever had a mentor? Not overtly, to the best of my knowledge. I was regularly encouraged by my boss at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, right out of college. I can think of two things in particular Reid Ashe said to me. Once he said, “You’re a superstar around here — you know that, don’t you?” Which was kind of a boost. And when I applied to replace John Parish as our state political writer in 1979, and didn’t get it, he created a new position for me (so I wouldn’t quit) in which I worked on special reporting assignments that I pretty much chose myself. Which was cool. The next year, he promoted me to be the editor over all the paper’s news reporters. And one time after that, when I wanted to try some experimental program or other, he told me I didn’t have to ask: “You have the authority to do anything you want to do — as long as you do the right thing.” Some would have found that intimidating, because of the implication that you’d better not foul up (in the sense of being given enough rope to hang yourself), but I was a pretty cocky kid, and I didn’t think anything I wanted to do could possibly be wrong, so I found it empowering. To use another one of those touchy-feely H.R. words.
So there’s no doubt he did a lot go encourage me early in my career. But was that being a mentor — or just having a boss who encouraged me and promoted me (which I don’t think is quite the same thing)? I don’t know. We didn’t call it that. We didn’t have regular meetings. He didn’t give me lectures, or goals. He was more like, “Keep up the good work!” Which I certainly found encouraging. But there was no formal relationship.
Anyway, I just got to wondering: How many of y’all, male and female, have had people you would call “mentors”?
When Herman Cain drops out of the race — which could happen as early as tomorrow — you won’t be able to say that his campaign didn’t try everything.
This effort was just unveiled today:
WOMEN for HERMAN CAIN
“Women For Cain” is an online national fellowship of women dedicated to helping elect Herman Cain as the next President of the United States.
Mr. Cain has been a strong advocate for women throughout his lifetime, defending and promoting the issues of quality health care, family, education, equality in the workplace and many other concerns so important to American women.
Gloria Cain is the National Chairperson for “Women for Cain” and is the very special woman who Mr. Cain devoted his life to many years ago. Mr. Cain and Gloria celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary earlier this year. The couple has two children and three grandchildren and a legacy of family, friends, and community and church involvement.
“Women For Cain” was formed to inspire a national women’s alliance in support of Herman Cain 2012 and Friends of Herman Cain. Please join our conversation to learn of volunteer opportunities and to be informed of issues and events surrounding the Herman Cain campaign.
Thank you for your support. We welcome your thoughts and encouragement for Mr. Cain. We also welcome your involvement in our effort to renew America with the common-sense solutions and principled leadership that Mr. Cain provides. Join us as we work to bring true opportunity and prosperity to all Americans.
All right, now, remember that you’re ladies! No elbowing each other as you rush to join!
Since we had a good discussion on the Intel ad, I thought I’d share something else from our Monday Riley Institute session in Charleston.
Our facilitator, Juan Johnson, decided to add something new, something experimental, in Monday’s session: humor as it relates to diversity. He didn’t get into any of my favorites, such as:
Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!!!
He set up a scenario: He said, suppose you’re at a party with a diverse bunch of co-workers, and somebody starts showing some videos he thinks are funny. In each one, the humor derived from differences of gender or race or religion or regional background.
We didn’t have much of a discussion, because no one thought any of the videos were offensive or would make us uncomfortable in a group. We all just laughed our heads off. (He should have tried something a little edgier, like this. OK, maybe without the language…)
The closest anyone came to discomfort was watching the one above. I said I always feel a little bad when someone is being made fun of for being eccentric when they can’t help it. But I laughed anyway. And someone else said she wouldn’t want to watch it with friends from Boston because it might reinforce their disdain for Southerners, but she was fine watching it with fellow South Carolinians.
But that’s not why I’m telling you this story. I’m telling you because, after we’d all watched it and laughed (I’d seen it before, but still found it funny), someone called over to Jack Bass to say, “Jack, you’re from North, aren’t you?”
Jack Bass is the author, professor and ex-journalist who wrote, among other books, “The Orangeburg Massacre.” I’d known him for a bunch of years before we were in this class together. But neither I nor anyone else in the room knew what he was about to say:
“I’m the brother in Oxford she’s talking about. That’s my sister.”
Suddenly, some of us did feel a little awkward for the first time in the discussion. But it rolled right off Jack; he had seen the video loads of times over the years. In a very Southern summation, he said of his sister, “That’s just Marsha being Marsha.”
Couple of things you have to know if you come to South Carolina from elsewhere. One, each and every one of us has a tendency to be… colorful.
And two: Always, always, ALWAYS assume, when you say something about a South Carolinian, that someone else in the room is a close relative.
OK, I gave you one good thing from The Washington Post today. Now I’ll show you something not so good — an amazingly facile headline, leading to a story to match:
A feminine face for the anti-abortion movement
When I spoke to one of the nation’s most prominent anti-abortion activists this week, she was in the car, rushing to meet her 10-year-old daughter at the school bus.
“It’s not a very neat exercise,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, when I asked how she manages her work-life balance. Dannenfelser is the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which has grown to 330,000 members since she and a group of friends founded it in her living room in 1991….
Recent news stories about the new vitality of the anti-abortion movement and its legislative achievements — more than a dozen states enacting record numbers of abortion restrictions this year alone — have glossed over one crucial fact. The most visible, entrepreneurial and passionate advocates for the rights of the unborn (as they would put it) are women. More to the point: They are youngish Christian working mothers with children at home.
Really? I mean, where is the novelty in this? Are you saying you didn’t think there were women who opposed abortion? Or are you saying they weren’t feminine enough? I mean, Helen Alvaré (the first person I think of when I try to think of someone prominently identified with the pro-life movement) always seemed plenty feminine to me.
At first, I thought it was a typo. I thought that the Tweet where I saw it had been imperfectly typed or copied, and that it was supposed to say, “A feminist face for the anti-abortion movement.” There wouldn’t have been much new about that, either (I find that there are a gazillion kinds of feminists, with all sorts of views), but I could see how a copy editor who had really been sheltered — the kind who had only ever talked about such issues with people who look at the world one way — might write a headline like that. And I know plenty of such people.
But feminine? To begin with, most of the really prominent, passionate, committed people on both sides of the abortion issue tend to be women. And it has been thus for as far back as I recall being aware of such things — to Roe v. Wade, and earlier. When I think of the issue, I don’t even think of men. (I realize fully that it is very different for pro-choice feminists, who think entirely in terms of opposition to abortion being some male plot to oppress them — the currently popular overwrought phrase being “war on women.”)
The writer of this story explains the headline thusly: “These women represent a major strategic shift in the abortion war, and not just because they are generally more likeable than the old, white fathers of the pro-life movement: Jerry Falwell, Henry Hyde, Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson…”
Say what? Who in the world cares what those guys thought? I mean, having Jerry Falwell or any of those other guys take a certain position has always been, to me (and I would think to most sensible people) a reason not to agree with that position. They weren’t advocates, in the sense of anyone who might go out there and change anyone else’s mind. Those guys were cartoons; they were not factors in the minds of serious people.
When I think back to when I was forming my own thoughts on this issue — which I roughly place at the point when I started college, a couple of years before Roe — I remember the main influences on me being very strong, committed women. Off the top of my head, I can only remember two guys with whom I discussed the issue at any length during that time in my life, and they were pro-choice (although a painful personal experience later in life changed the mind of one of them, while a similar experience confirmed the other in his original position.).
I remember one woman in particular, from a few years later than that, and she is the reason I’m writing this post — because I think she had some influence on why I have an instinctive aversion to the approach of Occupy Wall Street (how’s that for throwing you a curve?). This was back in Tennessee.
I can’t remember her name now, but I remember what she looked like. Partly because she was strikingly good-looking. No one would ever have doubted her gender, or her femininity — although it wasn’t the kind of prissy look that many associate with the word. She had a dramatically good figure, which was generally casually dressed in pants and a knit top, and dark hair with a few premature gray highlights. I’m thinking she was 30ish. She was very fit. I recall her mentioning going running at night, like around 10:30, and I questioned the wisdom of her doing that alone, but I only mentioned it once. I’m sure if her husband ever expressed concern over that practice, she was just as dismissive of him. She was very confident.
I knew her from the church folk choir. This was the early 80s, and I was a brand-new Catholic. I could strum chords on a guitar, and figured I could put that to use for my parish. She — I’d better make up a name for her, to make this easier to write. I’ll call her Beth; that seems to fit.
Anyway, she and one other woman sort of ran that group, and I mostly stood back and strummed. We were all friends, and we got along great. I was vaguely aware that Beth was involved with a pro-life group, and seemed to approach it in exactly the same way she had approached her deep opposition to the Vietnam War — in the street, at the fore, on the ramparts.
This was confirmed for me in the fall of 1982. My newspaper, The Jackson Sun, was sponsoring a debate in the U.S. Senate race between the incumbent Democrat, Jim Sasser, and Republican Robin Beard. We had rented the Jackson civic center for the purpose. As one of the editors in charge of the event, it fell to me to go out and tell the various demonstrators for various causes outside that they were welcome to come in, but only if they left their signs outside and didn’t disrupt.
Next thing I knew, “Beth” was in my face, quietly literally, loudly denouncing me as the Establishment oppressor trying to silence her authentic voice. She was immune to reason. I was shocked. I mean, I agreed with her completely on the issue, but I wasn’t going to say that, because that was not my role. I was there to foster rational debate, not this chanting in the street stuff. Sasser (the true object of her ire, which also seemed off-base, he was such a bland guy) deserved to be heard, and so did Beard, without unruly cheering sections.
She was a reasonable, intelligent, warm, personable woman the rest of the time. But put her on the street with a sign in her hand and she was — I don’t know, Madame Defarge or something.
I don’t remember how we resolved that — whether she and her folks eventually came in and behaved themselves, or stayed outside chanting. I just remember the extreme discomfort of that moment of unnecessarily emotional confrontation. I remember thinking, This is no way to express or advocate political ideas.
And I still think that today.
