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

Tag: Barack Obama

What (white) Progressives Don’t Understand About Obama

A must-read:

Progressives have been urging the president to “man up” in the face of the Republicans. Some want him to be like John Wayne. On horseback. Slapping people left and right.

One progressive commentator played an excerpt from a Harry Truman speech during which Truman screamed about the Republican Party to great applause. He recommended this style to Mr. Obama. If President Obama behaved that way, he’d be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. His grade would go from a B- to a D.

Ishmael Reed is right — if Obama got mad, he would An Angry Black Man. He would be a “thug.” He hasn’t even gotten mad and he’s already portrayed by the right as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. There’s certainly a lot to get mad about, but Obama’s cooler-than-a-cucumber demeanor is part of what has gotten him so far. And the demands to “get mad,” in addition to erasing the political realities of what “getting mad” means when the person getting mad is part of a class that is widely perceived by white Americans as too loud and too dangerous, are kind of too little too late, aren’t they? Dems didn’t get it together for the midterms, and now some are going as far as suggesting that the party nominate a different presidential candidate in 2012. Which is quite frankly asinine. But sure, take your toys and go home.

Obama, the first female president?

Someone is wrong on the internet!

Cartoon via XKCD

You may have read this terrible op-ed by Kathleen Parker, a Washington Post opinion columnist, published a couple of days ago. It was burning up my Twitter feed all day. In it, Kathleen Parker argues that Barack Obama is our first female president. Yes, that is what she said. And she proceeds to make a terrible case that can be summed up as such: Obama is a terrible president because he is not manly enough. He is acting like a woman, and losing political points because of it.

I was annoyed enough that I couldn’t even formulate a coherent response for two days. Fortunately, some bloggers I know and love, such as Rachel Sklar and Mary C. Curtis, did a pretty good job of vocalizing why this column was so disgusting.

Now, I will try to add something of my own.

Parker’s case for Obama being “female” is as follows: he has a testosterone shortage, he “displays many tropes of femaleness,” and that he is like all women, who “tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.” She also adds that Obama is “is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan,” and that his speech on the oil spill “featured 13 percent passive-voice constructions.”

I think the reason I didn’t write about this before was just because I didn’t know where to start. I mean: there are so many problems! Kathleen Parker would say that this is because I am a female who is passive and meek and likes to “talk it out” rather than issue a straight-up takedown of someone. So now I will try to list just all the big glaring things she is WRONG about:

1) The overarching message that being a president is a role reserved only for men

2) The notion that there are a strict set of traits that are inherently female and inherently male

3) The idea that stepping out of traditional gender roles always has negative consequences

4) That Kathleen Parker is given a platform from which to broadcast her opinions, something few people are given, and she chooses to use it perpetuating 1950s-style gender stereotypes that we should have done away with by 2010

5) The minor aside that this is a poorly written piece filled with bad metaphors, hollow statements, very little research, broad generalizations, and almost no facts.

7) Her admission of the fact that, yes, women are often faced with sexism when running for political office, and her attitude that women should just man up if they want to make it in politics. Perhaps the only decent sentence in this entire piece is as follows:

Women, inarguably, still are punished for failing to adhere to gender norms by acting “too masculine” or “not feminine enough.”

But Parker then proceeds to ruin it by talking about how the only way to be a good politician is to be more “masculine.”

What mystifies me is that presumably serious publications such as the Washington Post give people like Kathleen Parker a platform from which to voice this kind of terrible crap, and then PEOPLE BELIEVE THEM. I have already seen plenty of white dudes read this and chuckle and scratch their heads as if actually considering it seriously. It is because of stuff like this that women continue to face struggles in being elected to office: at every possible opportunity, people like Kathleen Parker question whether women can make effective political leaders and posit that political leadership requires inherently “masculine” traits. She makes broad generalizations about how all women act, and then claims that these “feminine” traits are negative and are not suited for politics. Those damn females! They talk so much and they use passive voice constructions! Clearly this is why they cannot be president!

As an aside, Parker was recently offered a gig co-hosting a new CNN show with none other than the disgraced criminal and former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. This is where I shake my head and wonder what is going on with our media.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Nice work, O!

There are, of course, some skeptics on the right and on the left (and guess who I think has a bit more of a point). Yglesias rightly points out that Obama has a lot left to accomplish when it comes to promoting peace — brokering an Israel/Palestine peace deal, normalizing relations with Cuba and promoting international climate agreement. And PZ Meyers adds that Obama hasn’t done away with some of the worst leftovers from the Bush years.

On the right, they’re crying “affirmative action” — because, you know, all the qualified people on the entire planet are white. They’re also “stunned,” and suspect this may be the Nobel committee’s way of criticizing George W. Bush. But hey, at least they’re on the same page as the Taliban — how’s that for international diplomacy?

I’m not sure it’s a criticism of the Bush years as much as a reaction to the fact that George W. Bush destroyed our international reputation and earned us more than a few enemies. Obama has a lot to repair, and has made responsible statesmanship central to his presidency. That’s a good thing.

We absolutely should push Obama to do better — and he has a lot to improve — but the attacks on him for being awarded such a prestigious prize are disturbing. We have a sitting president who won a Nobel Peace Prize. That was unthinkable a year ago. I realize that a lot of people on the right are sore losers, but this is getting ridiculous. The Nobel conversations are already sounding like the flipside of the conservative reaction when Chicago didn’t get the Olympics — there, conservatives were giddy that America had lost something just because Obama wanted it; here, conservatives are devastated that an American leader won something, just because Obama is that leader.

I was in the Chicago area (in the suburbs, not the city) when the news of the Olympic rejection broke, and it was disconcerting to see that right so celebratory when most Chicago residents looked like this:

Chicago

Admittedly hilarious photos aside, right-wingers were just bad sports about the whole thing. It’s disappointing, but not surprising, to see them being jerks about Obama’s Nobel prize win.

To be clear, there are lots of reasons to criticize Obama winning the Nobel while Guantanamo is still open and the U.S. still tortures people. But “OMG he’s black and liberal and therefore obvs not qualified!!!” is not one of them.