It begins with her needling Obama's female boosters, saying they are driven more by a souped-up, orgasmic Beatlemania than by any rational thought. I for one am glad that at least my support for his candidacy comes from such a grounded, cerebral, self-respecting place.
The article devolves into a laughable "Who's-Who" of long-debunked cultural myths, gender roles, and selective pseudoscience all parading around in the service of a thesis that isn't worth a discarded tampon. (And isn't it just a shame how women become emotional werewolves once a month? What if all these Obama rallies get them "in sync" and Election Day falls within their cycle? OPRAH WILL RULE US ALL IN A SHADOW GOVERNMENT AT THE MERCY OF HER INSCRUTABLE HORMONES!)
Then there's this gem:
Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex.
Now, I'm no fan of my state's junior Senator. But to suggest that the Clinton campaign's ineptitude is a function of her gender is the same argument that was used a century ago to keep women from the polls. Back then, women held dominion over the domestic sphere, but their "childlike" brains were thought to lack the capacity for political thought. Constitutional issues aside, it's a wonder the suffragettes sought inclusion into such a sleazy, loathsome endeavor in the first place. Given the general reputation of politicians past and present, society's summary judgment to exclude women from government might have been a subconscious compliment. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, "women shouldn't care to belong to a club that wouldn't have them as members."
Yes, Clinton's current and former campaign managers are women. But her so-called brain trust, the bright lights who brought us such luminescent ideas as "let's go negative in Wisconsin," are male...to a man. And it sure doesn't seem like the cat-fighting has been restricted to the ladies. That phalanx of failure has resembled a circular firing squad of late. That's O.K. though. They're dudes. Dudes fight. It's in their nature. Plus their voices are deeper so their screeching has more gravitas.
She goes on:
I swear no man watches "Grey's Anatomy" unless his girlfriend forces him to.
(Yes, and no woman has ever sat through shitty entertainment to appease her man. NASCAR didn't get to be the best-attended sport in the country on the strength of testosterone alone.)
No man bakes cookies for his dog.
(Right, we're too busy kissing them on the mouth to shove baked goods down their gullets.)
No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of "The Friday Night Knitting Club."
(Exactly. We hide our feelings for 95% of our lives, fuck off from work to enjoy a fishing trip, choke back tears while watching Field of Dreams or a "first-beer-with-Dad" commercial, and then die ten years before our wives.)
And then she really pours it on:
Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal.
My favorite part is the "insignificant" amendment to the findings she tacks on to the end. Her calculus is this: women are prone to mechanical mistakes resulting in minor accidents and that equals stupidity. Men, on the other hand, choose to take foolhardy chances resulting in catastrophic crashes and that equals better driving.
Good news.
All of this would be funnier if her opinion didn't have such widespread, unthinking appeal.
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