Commander in Chief
I've got three words for people who think the idea of a woman as President is so bizarre that it would make compelling drama: Margaret fucking Thatcher.
Still, "First Gentleman" would make a fine sitcom, and I have to confess that, in watching the pilot, the sequences with Geena Davis' character's husband amused me -- especially with the constant references to Hillary Clinton's tenure as First Lady.
First Lady. What a fucking stupid office. No Constitutional provision for it, of course, and only the irrational sub-humans' need for monarchy can explain it. Sigh.
Still, "First Gentleman" would make a fine sitcom, and I have to confess that, in watching the pilot, the sequences with Geena Davis' character's husband amused me -- especially with the constant references to Hillary Clinton's tenure as First Lady.
First Lady. What a fucking stupid office. No Constitutional provision for it, of course, and only the irrational sub-humans' need for monarchy can explain it. Sigh.
posted by heavynettle at 21:22
4 Comments:
Yeah, but Margaret Thatcher was ugly; I mean, really, really ugly, which made men more comfortable with her in the board room even if she was ripping them a new one, a skill at which I believe she excelled.
My gut reaction is that the new TV show will have the opposite effect it's creators and star presumably have--to prepare the public for President H. Clinton in '08. I expect the show, if it's still on the air, will hurt HILLARY! the same way that The Right Stuff unintentionally scuttled John Glenn by making him look like a Hollywood tool, even though he was merely a cornfed midwesterner with not a single contact in the Hollywood establishment.
But you make a good point--Is America so backward and parochial that we linger not only behind the feminized countries of Scandanavia but also behind the supremely macho UK (The Pet Shop Boys are an anomoly who'd never make it out of a Liverpool pub alive) but also behind Islamic nations like Pakistan and Turkey, where female politicians have not only proven they can rule, but also that they can continue to hold on to power while maintaining the age old male political traditions of corruption and incompetence! Jesus, the dang C.A.R. had a female PM. Do American males linger behind even a nation not yet evolved to the standard of the middle ages?
Perhaps. But perhaps we have help. The majority of Americans, and American voters, are women. Yet the one place where "identity politics" seems not to be a save bet is in gender. Even American women must be less likely to vote for other women than for men. (OK, maybe fewer women run for office, just as fewer women remain active in the white collar work force even though they already constitute the majority of college graduates.)
But I think maybe American women may just be better at smelling bullshit when it comes from one of their own. I dunno. I have no hard data on women's voting patterns, and only anecdotal stories about good and bad women managers (mostly bad, but to be fair, most managers fail.)
Ironically, one of the best mass media presentations of a woman in a leadership role was done by America's sweetheart of the 90s, Meg Ryan, in her role as an American soldier leading troops under fire during the first gulf war in "Courage Under Fire." She even cried at one point, which some of her men interpreted as weakness, before shooting her.
When/If I vote against Hillary in '08 it will be not because she's a woman but rather because she is a woman who's only claim to national prominence was riding her husband's coattails all the way to power before discovering Grrrrl Power! at the top of the mountain.
I think the problem with predicting women's voting patterns is that there is no "women", any more than there is any "black voters" or "religious right": there are only individuals, and our media and pundits are obsessed with the fantasy that some superficial characteristic cuts across all socioeconomic and general experiential divisions. Failing to vote one's race, religion, or sex is a sign of enlightenment, not a danger signal: it means seeing similarity of interests that is not visible in the skin or the firm, supple, gently curving chest area.
There is the intuitive understanding that women aren't trusted as leaders by middle American white (or Black) Christian (or Hasidic Jewish) males (or females, for that matter), basically by sub-humans, but -- oops! three more little words: Ann fucking Richards.
Why any given woman might not choose to enter politics is perhaps the result of distinctly female issues, or just individual choices of the same kind that keep the majority of white males out of politics.
I won't vote for Hillary either, but that's because I'm still hoping for that LP win. . . .
Anyway, my point about the First Lady is that, somewhere along the line, the social conservatives got a hold of the President's wife and said she had to be a certain something. I was going to try and suss out the point(s) when the role of First Lady changed, but really, reading about the First Ladies just bored the crap out of me. I have to think, though, that the same subhuman tendencies that made the first Congress approve the posts of Congressional chaplains; that made Northern legislators approve, and Lincoln sign, a law that put "In God We Trust" on some of our coins; that made Eisenhower -- oh, fuck, where do I begin? The subhumans have been trying to destroy my country from the very beginning, and the First Lady is just another sign of how close they have come to succeeding so many times.
I think the whole First Lady thing has probably waned considerably since American women first started running for--and winning--political office.
That said, politically, it takes 100% of your resources to win the presidency. If showing off your wife's prize-winning pie endears you to an additional 1% of the public by making them think you have a deep, enduring respect for women in "traditional" roles (full-time home-makers as opposed to other traditional roles like hooker or garment factory slave), then as a candidate you'll do it.
Whether the academic study of first ladies & their roles (see Smithsonian, etc.) is a useful proxy for presenting women's roles throughout American history is an interesting question if only because the wives of presidents can hardly remain exemplary of the "common woman" when they are thrust into such a prominent role, if only by association. Contrast the roles of Woodrow Wilson's wife, who secretly ran the country by some accounts after his stroke, with that of the wife of William McKinley, a woman who was a mental and physical invalid as a result of birthing trauma and whose function at McKinley's side throughout his political career served mainly to reflect positively on him in the public eye as a man dedicated to marriage vows and piety. Some think Harding's wife actually killed him. It goes on and on. I agree that the sub-human need for hero or heroine worship is sad and crippling, but at the same time I find myself judging people, including presidents, based on the behavior of their immediate family, and not just their wives. Look at the damage Billy Carter did to his brother, for instance, or think to yourself how much less hypocrasy you might accuse the White House's current occupant of if one or both of his children--or even his neices or nephews--had joined the military to show support for his foreign adventures.
I even judge you on your spouse. Like me, you married above yourself intellectually, which only shows what a secure, thouroughly modern and progressive male you are. Bush married above himself, too, but in his case, well, it was inevitable wasn't it?
I understand the notion of judging a person's chosen interpersonal relationships, but that's different from judging a person's spouse against a mythologized social norm (that is, the First Lady). I have very few opinions about Hillary Clinton, but I have to respect her for eschewing the patina and openly doing what First Ladies have done in various ways from the beginning: advising their husbands.
What I wonder, though, as part of this whole Commander in Chief, is not really what'll happen when a woman gets elected president, but whether we'll ever have a second bachelor president (the last one we had, not counting Cleveland, who married in office, was Buchanon, 1857-1861). That has more to do with the whole homosexual thing, but it might raise other questions. (Michael Douglas played a widow in The American President, politically a lousy movie, but could a President who had never been married ever make it to the primaries?)
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