So you think women’s
political empowerment
began with Hillary Clinton?
I guess you never heard of
Eleanor Roosevelt,
or Frances Perkins,
or perhaps the influential
Jackie Kennedy,
or (heaven forbid!)
even Barbara Bush!
Or Betty Ford, President
Gerald Ford’s wife,
upsetting the
Catholic Church
with her pro-reproductive
choice comments, including
open support for abortion rights!
Or, for that matter,
on the opposite side
from that supposedly “leftist”
feminist political agenda
(women in political office
automatically means
advancement of progressive
and humane social policies
and political priorities, not
mere distaff office-holding;
or so it was said),
Britain’s Iron Lady,
Margaret Thatcher,
whom feminist icon
Gloria Steinem
gushingly called “a sister”
even while demurring,
“I don’t agree with her
politics.”[i]
Indeed not (we would hope),
for the Iron Lady built a
political career on pleasing
the stodgy old men of London’s
financial district while
vigorously
attacking the working-class
women
who depended on the British
social safety net, which she
enthusiastically shredded!.
Or the ascent to power
of Indian despot Indira Gandhi ,
with which another U.S. feminist
icon,
Betty Friedan, was excitedly
pleased.[ii]
But we need not stop there, in
what
to many people is merely
history, something that
occurred before they were born.
We may merely look at women’s
obvious political empowerment
in such “noted” personages
as in those women taken
seriously
by millions whether we (of both
sexes)
who style ourselves
“leftist,” “liberal,” or “progressive”
like it or not—Sarah Palin, Ann
Coulter,
Michele Bachmann, Condoleeza
Rice,
even Joni Ernst and Melania
Trump!
(Though it does confirm the
invidious judgment of nasty male
Karl Marx, who wrote,
“Hegel remarks somewhere that
all facts and personages of
world history
occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add:
the first time as tragedy, the
second as farce.”[iii])
Not to mention “liberal” women
and
Hillary Clinton supporters Nancy
Pelosi
and Madeleine Albright! (This latter who
gave then-Chief of Staff [mere
nasty male!]
Colin Powell “almost an
aneurism” by insisting,
“What’s the point of having this superb military…
But oh, the “glass ceiling” has
been broken, can’t you see? But didn’t
Carly Fiorina’s abortive
Presidential
candidacy break it as well? And isn’t
Jill Stein’s Presidential candidacy
doing
the same thing? Both showing
from opposite ends of the
political
spectrum that women Presidential
candidates
are indeed taken
seriously in 2016, even when
their names are not Hillary Clinton! Same as
Barack Obama showed for African American
Presidential candidates in 2008.
Can we ask,
Aren’t there enough glass
ceilings
to break, or that haven’t been broken
already? Because
a 74-year-old Jewish
male socialist, Bernie Sanders, broke
a
few of them too! Or need we enumerate:
first Jew, first avowed socialist,
to be taken
seriously as a major U.S
political party
Presidential candidate! Not to mention his being
a septuagenarian taken very seriously
by, and
attracting enthusiastic mass
support from,
Millennials young enough to be
his grandchildren!
And shouldn’t character count for
something?
After all, public opinion
consistently shows
Hillary Clinton leading by only a
few percentage points,
as regards basic
untrustworthiness, against an openly
quasi-fascistic, fraudulent and
bombastic Presidential
candidate, Donald Trump! Fact is, Clinton and Trump
are the two most disliked and most distrusted
major
Presidential candidates in
recent history! Their joint
bamboozlement in 2016 rivals
only that of the worst
days of the corrupt 19th
Century!
But that doesn’t address the
other issues in the race, nor Clinton’s political baggage elsewhere: her pro-corporate economic orientation, her
hawkish approach to foreign policy and warfare, that she is the overwhelmingly
favored recipient
of Wall Street largess, her
pandering to the African American vote on strictly symbolic cultural issues to
show she’s “one of them” (carries hot sauce in her purse; really!), or what
progressive stances her campaign does embody, she stole from Bernie Sanders!
So just what are you crowing
about, all you supposedly
progressive pro-Hillary
ahistorical feminists?
[i] I
believe it was in her 1983 book, Outrageous
Acts and Everyday Rebellions, as it is the only Gloria Steinem book I
personally own and have read; but I am relying on memory here. The index in the book is horribly inadequate.
[ii]
Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life:
Writings on the Women’s Movement, New York: Random House, 1976, pp.
265-287.
[iii]
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954, p.
15. Originally published in 1852.
[iv]
Michael Dobbs, “With Albright, Clinton Accepts New U.S. Role,” Washington Post, December 8, 1996,
quoting from Colin Powell’s memoirs. Michael Dobbs, “With Albright, Clinton
Accepts New U.S. Role,” Washington Post,
December 8, 1996, quoting from Colin Powell’s memoirs.
