In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Is America ready for a woman president?

Jill

God I love Samantha Bee. And Samantha Jones.

And good Lord is Lashawn Barber a nutbag. If men radiate confidence and women aren’t qualified to lead, then why, exactly, does she think she’s qualified to lead and influence public opinion with her newspaper column?

41 thoughts on Is America ready for a woman president?

  1. And shoot! Why would we want someone with emotions and a caring attitude who feels he should be kind to others as a President?

    No, no. This time we must elect an automaton who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself who will piss off the world and is just chock-a-block full of machismo!

    Wait. We already did. Never mind.

  2. when was the last time a president left a meeting to feed a baby with his balls?

    bwahahahahahahaha!
    Samantha Bee rules.

  5. Yes, THANK YOU djf. That’s one of my (major) pet peeves also. I just used “woman president” because that was the show’s terminology. But it drives me nuts.

  10. [NERD ALERT]

    I don’t know about that; I’ve seen “woman doctor” and “woman writer” and so on quite often, in books and articles, so apparently it can be used correctly like that, as a whatchamacallit…noun adjunct.

  11. That was great. And I love Kim Cattrall’s cameo. And the bit where she’s got three cigarettes in her hand. And the licking the cosmo off the laptop. Good times all around.

  12. The sad thing is, if we elect a female president and she does badly, people will say, “That proves women can’t be president. We won’t vote for one of those again.” Never mind the men who have been awful presidents.

  13. A Pang, just because a phrase is used in otherwise respectable publications doesn’t mean it’s correct. Most people refer to “the media” in the singular but it’s still wrong. I think William Safire did a piece on “woman speaker” after the last election.

  14. I don’t know. I watched that clip and found LaShawn Barber to be oddly convincing . . . I’m pretty sure she’s weak and unqualified to lead.

  15. God I thought that was funny… Lashawn Barber is insane. That’s like saying that we shouldn’t elect a Black man because they are “crime challenged” or some such muck. Grrrrrr!! And you’re right, if we elect a female president and she screws up it’ll be years before we’ll get another. And by “screw up” I don’t mean start a endless war, shoot a friend, stain an aid’s dress, throw up at a state dinner etc., I mean “dresses wrong or breaths funny”. Cause you know anything she’s gonna do is going to be ripped apart.

  16. I find myself inexplicably optimistic. And as an editor, I too cringe at “woman president,” but also know it to be acceptable grammatically.

    Anyway, I’m optimistic about the whole “first woman as president” scenario even if something does go wrong, which it undoubtedly will. It’s not possible to be president without making mistakes and/or enemies. I just don’t think it will be considered that remarkable. Even the “is America ready?” surveys seem oddly quaint.
    And I love Doug’s comment. Barber does indeed prove–or at least illustrate–her point!

  18. It’s gratifying to see Barber humiliate herself in what she knew would be–and presumably prepared for being–the target of Bee’s satire. The fact that she knew it was coming, saw it coming, watched as it came closer and still failed to dodge it speaks volumes. I mean, did she not even read what she’d written?

  19. Kim Cattrall’s my hero! And that was pretty funny. Damn, I miss Sex and the City *is a bad feminist, according to some*

  21. I don’t know. I watched that clip and found LaShawn Barber to be oddly convincing . . . I’m pretty sure she’s weak and unqualified to lead.

    Heh. Never saw that coming.

  22. Most people refer to “the media” in the singular but it’s still wrong.
    Out of (genuine, not snarky) curiosity, at what point does common usage make a term grammatically acceptable? Though I think the noun adjunct point is correct.

    Also, I love that Samantha Bee managed to mock
    a) the “woman president” question
    b) Lashawn Barber, and
    c) Mystery
    all in one segment. Love!

  26. Out of (genuine, not snarky) curiosity, at what point does common usage make a term grammatically acceptable?

    Isabel, that question is one that has a lot of debate in the linguistic community.

    There is a school of prescriptivists, who want to keep every grammar rule ever, even if usage has changed to the point that no one naturally uses said grammar… that was, at least a long time ago, based off of Latin, a language which does not resemble English in the slightest. In this school of thought, there are set grammar rules that should never change, ever, if it can be helped, and tend to be people bemoaning such things as “all right” becoming “alright.” A strict prescriptionist’s answer to your question is “never.”

    The other side of the coin are descriptivists, who follow the basic thought that correct grammar is the patterns used by native speakers, regardless of what the formal rules are. Their answer would be “when it sounds natural to native speakers.”

    My favorite linguistics teacher told us that whenever a change has appeared in common dialectal usage, with set patterns of occurence, then it is, well, correct, and will sound that way to speakers of that dialect.

    However, formal language does (and should!) change slower. So, formal written language is subject to many more rules, natural and unnatural, than spoken language.

    In the end, there is no clean answer to your question, as it’s something language purists and language users have been arguing about for years. The fact that language changes is the only constant.

  27. A Pang, just because a phrase is used in otherwise respectable publications doesn’t mean it’s correct. Most people refer to “the media” in the singular but it’s still wrong. I think William Safire did a piece on “woman speaker” after the last election.

    Is any clarity lost by treating the word “media” as a collective singular, other than to native speakers of Latin? There is no benefit to ensuring the singular/plural agreement of word roots that couldn’t be accomplished more simply by feeding Bill Safire a couple of Xanax every morning.

    Grammatical prescriptivism, when not strictly tethered to a desire for clarity, is merely a mechanism for more strictly maintaining class divisions… and I really don’t have a lot of tolerance for it.

    — ACS

  31. “Women have attraction switches, and I know what they are.”

    AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAA! *pounds desk*

    Man, I’ve never seen that guy before and it’s HILARIOUS.

    *cough* Right, where was I? I have to admit that I agree with the last part – is a female president ready for a country that actually questions her ability to lead just on her gender? Dealing with voters is hard enough for male presidents, and now she’ll have to worry about every display of emotion, every outfit, every word, every single little facet of her life. There’ll be entire groups of people ready to dogpile her at the slightest hint of weakness. It’d make the Monica Lewinsky scandal look like a bit of hazing.

  32. Am I a bad person because I find Mystery attractive? That is…. until he opens his mouth. I would just like to ogle him, but no, he keeps opening his mouth and saying the stuipidest most offensive crap imaginable. /sigh

    I love this sketch.

  33. Am I a bad person because I find Mystery attractive? That is…. until he opens his mouth. I would just like to ogle him, but no, he keeps opening his mouth and saying the stuipidest most offensive crap imaginable.

    And yet his whole schtick is supposedly teaching guys who *aren’t* innately attractive what to say to become more attractive. Go fig.

  35. As a member of Geeks Against Cruelty to Computers, I was really upset by the amount of fluids those poor laptops were subjected to. Don’t the Daily Show staff know any better?

    However, I did learn that Mystery has a future in comedy, and he doesn’t have to do anything new at all, just stay his own sweet – sorry – creepy self.

  36. But Lashawn Barber is exceptional, unlike all those other women.

    Grammatical prescriptivism, when not strictly tethered to a desire for clarity, is merely a mechanism for more strictly maintaining class divisions… and I really don’t have a lot of tolerance for it.

    Hey, instead of a philosophical debate about the limits of grammatical prescriptivism, we could all probably agree that it’s fucked-up to make special linguistic note of when a job is held by a woman.

  37. It would have been awesome if they could have gotten Mystery to use his magical male mojo to try to convince La Shawn Barber that she should run for President.

  40. Certain Americans think that an event only matters when it takes place in America. Terrorism wasn’t a reality before 9/11, ‘the day that changed eveything’. Except other nations had been dealing with it for years. Likewise, other nations, as Bee pointed out, have had female leaders, and guess what, they haven’t collapsed. I don’t think anyone would consider Margaret Thatcher a shrinking violet. And I wonder what La Shawn thinks about Condi. A double handicap of being black and female! Like her. I’m sure that’ll be her next column.

    That being said, I don’t want Hillary in there, her femaleness has nothing to do with it. Her judgement does.

  41. Oh, and as seriously creepy as Mystery is (wait, I have to step away and laugh hysterically…ok, I’m back), as seriously creepy as he is, at least his ‘secrets’ are being broadcast to the very audience that’ll be the target of these tactics. Because from what I understand, this is some kind of a reality show, and reality TV tends to be watched by women.

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