A little bit too focused.
I would call the situation somewhat grim. President Bush says we need to deploy more troops to Iraq, and that the success of the mission depends on it. A lot of people are saying this isn’t going to do the trick. There is some powerful evidence that both are correct, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if both are correct, something bad is about to happen.
And via Boortz, we learn that Miss Perky Perky had some comments about her press gathering. It makes me wonder how many people completely depend on her to find out what’s going on in the world, whether they realize it or not; and among those who do, what all they’re missing.
Last Wednesday, President Bush gave his address to the country about “the new way forward” for Iraq, and lots of journalists—including me, of course—were in Washington to cover it. But before the Big Speech, there was the little-known Big Meeting.
:
As I was looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the “principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt. Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.
The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been…but still not as good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden (forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO’s.
That meeting was a reality check for me—and not just about Iraq. It was a reminder that all of us still have an obligation to ask: Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too? [emphasis mine]
Okay, one…at…a…time:
All of us have an obligation to ask — all of whom, exactly? People who vote for the President? Or people who hire and promote news executives? It would seem the second of those is more germane to the complaint, but it’s the first one that is more compatible with a sweeping pronouncement of “all of us.” Does Ms. Couric really mean to imply that by voting in a guy she doesn’t like, we “all” gave some kind of license for the gals to be crowded out away from “the table”?
Obligation? To who? What is the worst that happens if we don’t ask this? The Perkolator will frown upon us disapprovingly, with her lower lip stuck out? What’s the best that happens if we do ask? As Katie points out, we already started asking this 40 years ago. We don’t see starship captains on TV anymore whacking a “Yeoman” on her miniskirted ass when she brings him 23rd-century coffee. And if you’re in a position to hire or promote one candidate over another, and you exclude someone just because she doesn’t have a penis, all it takes is for someone to prove it and your career is at an end.
From that position, where exactly are we supposed to go?
Sixteen out of a hundred senators, and Katie’s unhappy. It’s clear we can only make her happy by means of a seventeenth senator…and some more and some more. I’m going to go way out on a limb here: If I get to pick how these new lady senators do their voting, and it seems I should be able to do this because Couric doesn’t even begin to address the issue — I will be much, much happier with the 35 new female senators than Couric herself. So her statement of what, exactly, has cheesed her off here, is a bit imprecise.
We’ve all done imprecise jobs of articulating what’s causing us distress. What’s remarkable is that just speaking for myself, if I’m noticing something’s still broken after forty years of fixing stuff, I’m going to put lots, and lots, and lots of effort into noticing just where we might have gone wrong. I might not succeed. But I’ll put in the effort. If we go forty-five or fifty years without fixing it, I’ll put in even more effort next time.
Couric doesn’t even try. Skirts are missing at the table. No fair. Whine whine whine.
And then. What are we to do about this, exactly? Why the silence on this aspect of it…when it ought to be the whole point, if the whining is worth doing in the first place? I see one of the commentors, “joycewest,” took the time and energy to research Rwanda’s situation in Parliament. One third of it must be female by law. Huh. The Perkolator went out of her way to cite Rwanda; I wonder how many other countries with legislative chambers she passed over to get to that one. Does she want a similar quota here? She says we have “an obligation to ask” something and she must realize, simply asking it is obviously not going to solve anything, especially since we have already been asking it.
Speaking of the “obligation”…what about choice? Aren’t we suffering a little bit of scope creep here, if the feminist movement was supposed to be about womens’ choice? Maybe, just maybe, Katie’s the only lady in the room because she’s one out of just a few who would make the decision to be there in the first place. Doesn’t she approve of the choices other women might have made, not to be there?
Let’s face it, it’s at least possible some women would make decisions different from the decisions Katie would make if she were they. It is possible…not only that, but among all the artificial means of keeping “skirts” away from the table, that’s the only one that can take place in this country that is legal.
Finally, I see this is an exercise in CALWWNTY. Does Katie Couric really intend to sound the call for yet-another march in the womens’ movement, now entering the fifth decade of progressive feminism? Is this really something she herself would find inspiring, if someone else was blowing the bugle and bellowing those magic, insulting words…Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet?
Really?
As Tom Cruise might say…Katie, Katie, Katie, you’re glib. We’ve opened up choices for career-minded women. We’ve outlawed discrimination against them, and we’ve even rearranged our cultural norms and taboos. Most remarkable of all, our society has made the new choice for women about whether to work a career, or stay home, into a real choice. And from the ladies who’ve made decisions differently than the one you made for yourself — you have profited handsomely. Come to think of it, among the folks who define some level of personal income as “obscene,” I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t qualify you yourself for that; provided, of course, they were only told what you make, and not who you are.
Well hey, some of us understand that when you send a woman into an important meeting like that, there are women who will pick up on the big stuff. There are these Islamomaniacs, you see? They’d just as soon stone you to death for letting an inch or two of tantalizing knee show above those fashionable tall boots of yours during the morning news show — and by the way, they want to kill Americans. They will go out of their way to do it. Will die to do it. As many Americans as possible. Some of us understand there are women who will keep track of the big picture. Some of us realize there are women who will maintain this sense of perspective, at least as well as any man.
But if you want to remind us that there are exceptions, well go ahead. Twist my arm. But I fail to see how that advances the womens’ movement any further.
