To: Mrs. Obama
Never mind that your husband is running for president, your 9-5 job is more important! Because you are a WOMYN (or whatever the current feminista term of petulant self-assertion is). God forbid that you and your husband should work as a team or that you should put your personal and familial interests, as you see them, ahead of rote ideological prescriptions from some busybody you’ve never met. And never mind that taking a break from your current job to help your famous husband campaign is, in the real world, more likely to boost your career prospects than harm them. You are oppressed, dammit. Now go out and fulfill your destiny as an avatar!
Of course, the ugly truth is that it is very difficult for anybody to reach the pinnacle of any major profession without forcing some compromises on their spouses. How many spouses of those in the upper echelons of the corporate world must take hits to their own careers as they follow their spouse from location to location. Ditto for the military. Moving up to the top of the food chain requires being able to pounce on every opportunity. People who try to give equal support to two careers usually cannot manage to pull that off.
Capital-F feminists usually seem to take the practical difficulties of life as evidence of arbitrary cultural conspiracies. They seem to believe that if everybody just screws their faces up and wishes real hard they can change everything.
Sure.
BTW, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a candidate’s spouse NOT taking part in the campaign. For example, Judith Dean didn’t participate in her husband’s presidential campaign and made clear that she would continue her independent professional existence if he were elected. I think that’s fine. What I am arguing against is the politicization of what should be personal decisions. That’s what annoys me about doctrinaire feminists: they want to politicize everything. One’s private choices in professional and family arrangements, as well as all kinds of other issues including piddling matters of attire and grooming, are transformed into tiresome occasions for public criticism by a “community” of dreary control-freaks. It’s an attempt to impose a tyrannical conformity on women by people who are threatened by independent thinking.
“Capital-F feminists usually seem to take the practical difficulties of life as evidence of arbitrary cultural conspiracies. They seem to believe that if everybody just screws their faces up and wishes real hard they can change everything.”
“What I am arguing against is the politicization of what should be personal decisions.”
I agree whole-heartedly. But then, we’re talking about people who believe that the natural world is unfair and that they can cobble together a fantasy utopian world which is just oh so cosmically fair – if only we wouldn’t get in their way with our yearning for stuff like freedom. I agree with you but I am not surprised by them.
The bigger question I have is, why does a hospital pay $215k to a VP to look after community affairs? *That’s* why healthcare costs are going through the roof – overpaid bureaucrats.
In-Cog, I think the answer becomes more clear if you rephrase your question as, “Why does a hospital affiliated with a major university, and no doubt heavily dependent on both the goodwill and federal-govt lobbying efforts of local public officials, hire the wife of one of those officials?”
I think the answer becomes more clear if you rephrase your question as, “Why does a hospital affiliated with a major university, and no doubt heavily dependent on both the goodwill and federal-govt lobbying efforts of local public officials, hire the wife of one of those officials?”
Which puts paid to the notion that Michelle Obama is an independent woman who got to her position solely through hard work and determination. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I don’t know much about her. I’m happy to accept that she may be an exceptionally talented person. My point is that the fact that she is the wife of a prominent politician makes her attractive to institutional employers like the U. of C. hospital system.
Now I wonder who this reminds me of? Woman barrister (lawyer who appears in court) becomes Queen’s Counsel when her husband is leader of opposition and clearly electable. Same lady becomes District Judge when her husband becomes Prime Minister. She spends a great deal of time following her husband round the world, having told the electorate that she would be an independent, professional woman intent solely on her career and her family. Husband uses his majority in the Lower House to push through and extremely controversial Human Rights Act and barrister wife with chums sets up chambers dedicated to cases that come up under that piece of legislation. Any guesses as to who I might be talking about? OK, the thread is about Michelle Obama but, frankly, it is worth looking at other examples.
There does seem to be a lot of this kind of thing going around.
Thanks, Helen. One thing that Americans don’t really hear much about is what a with or without Iraq, Tony Blair was a disaster for Britain. You’ll need another Thatcher to undo his handywork.
Methinks – I think what has been unpicked with such fierce hatred can never be woven back again. Britain has been severely damaged by Tony and Cherie Blair and their one-worlder policies. I don’t know how Cherie Blair compares with Michelle Obama, but she has taken a meat cleaver to civil rights in Britain.
I don’t know enough about Michelle Obama, but if she’s as arrogant and self-righteous and Messianic as her husband, maybe you don’t want her helping him become president.
“I don’t know enough about Michelle Obama, but if she’s as arrogant and self-righteous and Messianic as her husband, maybe you don’t want her helping him become president.”
Yes, we’ve had one like that in the White House before. Her name was Hillary.
Good luck to you in Britain.
Methinks – No. You haven’t had anything like the feral class and race warrior Cherie Blair in the White House. For one thing, Hillary – as utterly, utterly ghastly as she is – was elected. Cherie stood, decades ago, and was decisively rejected.
Second, Hillary has performed well for her constituents. She is one scary steamroller, but she has these two points.
Cherie Blair is a cheap 1970s class warrior with all the usual appurtenances – hatred of her country, one-worlder, is so fat she takes up two seats on the Euro-gravy train and two snout-places at the trough, opportunistic to grab money, even if it demeans the office of the prime minister. Believe me, Hillary’s a monster, but she will never be as destructive as Cherie (trailer trash name, and that was 50 years ago, decades before they began to give trailer trash names in Britain) Blair, who is greed and vulgarity on stilts.