House of Eratosthenes

Was Janet Yellen mansplained to by members of Congress who grilled the Federal Reserve chair this week in her semi-annual testimony to the House Financial Services Committee?

On the one hand, this seems an unfair charge. The men at the dais in these kinds of proceedings regularly treated Yellen’s predecessors, all of them male, in a similar manner — interrupting them, patronizing them, and generally making fools of themselves — while the economist in the chair would do his best not to explode.

On the other hand, it’s a tough week to ignore the role of gender dynamics in US political discourse. Just days after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was subject to 90 minutes of thinly veiled microaggressions from Republican challenger Donald Trump at their first debate — the interruptions, the remarks about her “temperament,” the questioning of her “stamina,” the criticism of her preparedness — another intelligent woman of great achievement was reprimanded by men of lesser knowledge in her area of expertise.

Thinly veiled what? And you just got done admitting, men who preceded Ms. Yellen in the post she holds, were subjected to “similar” treatment. Perhaps similar is not “identical”; perhaps there are micro-differences in the way the interrupting was done. Since the article does not delve into these, or even examine the question of their existence, it’s hard to say what exactly is being observed here.

Reading on…

This is not to say that Congress doesn’t have an important role to play as a check against the power of the US central bank. These hearings ought to be substantively tough. But do our elected officials have to act so rough in their treatment of the human being sitting across from them?

++blink++ What the fuckety fuck…

Now we have something of a clue. The author of the column is reacting emotionally, describing her feelings as she watched the proceedings. Maybe it was after this she did some research and discovered her objection could be based on feelings and nothing more than feelings, that a bit of careful thought reveals there is no sexism here…it was gracious of her to include this in her second paragraph.

But it was also rather unmanly of her to just shrug it off and continue onward with her screed, knowing full well now that it’s based on nothing.

So is it a joke? If not, then who reads this stuff? I was flailing about for answers, and clicked on the author’s name…

Heather Landy is global news editor at Quartz, based in New York. Previously, she was editor in chief of American Banker Magazine. Heather started her career at Bloomberg News, where she wrote about retailing, the steel industry and the corporate bond market (although not at the same time). She then spent five years on the business desk of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Her work in Texas earned a Gerald Loeb award for beat reporting and helped liven up her lectures as an adjunct instructor at TCU’s Schieffer School of Journalism. Heather also has served as a special correspondent to The Washington Post, covering Wall Street at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

Scary stuff, when you think about it. The 2008 financial crisis was caused by a bunch of political figures, “men of lesser knowledge” you might say, telling the banks how to do their banking and offering financial shielding, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, from consequences of bad decision-making. It’s a classic case of unproductive people telling the productive people how to do their producing. So the “special correspondent” who covered all this, I suppose, is now writing shell-shocked articles about “do they have to be so rough?” as our top regulator is overseen by our elected representatives, in an effort to keep such a debacle from happening again.

Because that top regulator is a girl. Oh, my. What a powerful argument for not having a woman in Ms. Yellen’s position. Not saying it is politically correct, not saying you can win an elective office pointing it out to anyone, not even saying I’d agree with it…just saying, it is powerful when you consider it logically. After all: How can we stop the 2008 financial crisis from happening again? Make a list of the ways! How long is it? I see only one, and when you take “hold elected and appointed officials accountable” off the list, there’s nothing left.

And it’s obvious Ms. Landy, and God only knows how many readers who agree with her, object to that one thing we can do to keep it from happening again, when a woman is in charge.

Skimming over her archive page, I came across a fascinating bit of literary time-wasting…

What it would mean to have a woman in the White House
:
What would she get done? The easy argument: Not much. Congressional Republicans have now spent eight years honing their talent at obstructing efforts of a Democrat-held White House. They could see fit to block any of her attempts to introduce reforms, including those that bring women more equal treatment in society and the workplace. But as a legislator, Clinton had a record of reaching across the aisle, especially to her female peers in the Senate, and frequently succeeded in finding bipartisan compromises. Who’s to say she couldn’t do the same from a perch at the White House?

Hillary Clinton got something done? Holy cats! I had to click open that link…whereupon, I found something by Margaret Carlson…

How the Senate’s Women Maintain Bipartisanship and Civility
Congress’s approval ratings may be in the basement, but civility and bipartisanship among its female members is as strong as ever. Margaret Carlson on how the Senate’s women do it.

When Olympia Snowe announced she was leaving the Senate, her Republican colleagues were hopping mad. Her reasons — that the place had become a dysfunctional partisan hell — only elevated their anger. How dare she depart at a time when they might win a Republican majority in the Senate if they kept her seat?

How me, me, me, and male. Now let’s switch to Snowe’s female colleagues, both Democrat and Republican, who were sad to see her go. Snowe will leave a gaping hole in Washington, in their lives, and in the women’s supper club, a group of bipartisan Senators who meet monthly at one another’s houses or in the Strom Thurmond Room in the Capitol. (No, the irony is not lost on them that he was the avatar of the members who would rather pinch a woman than listen to her.)

The club is not a secret, but it is “no boys allowed” and less about conquering new territory than about finding a heightened quality of life as they seek to heighten their constituents’ quality of life. It wasn’t organized as a caucus around a subject, but to restore some of the natural camaraderie that existed before so many members left their families behind and spent every free moment of their nights and weekends fundraising.

Okay, so Hillary Clinton didn’t get anything done after all, and probably wouldn’t get anything done as U.S. President, at least nothing good. Just as I thought before. Headline over-promised, article under-delivered.

I hate to say it, and I can’t completely mean it of course…in my work life and professional life, I frequently meet women who have skill, competence, an understanding of logic and a sense of fairness, women who are not like Heather Landy or Margaret Carlson — but, here we see another powerful argument for keeping women away from the hallways of power, as well as stopping them from writing articles other people might read — an argument worthy of the most blisteringly offensive chauvinist-pig Disney cartoon villain. It’s a “bad” argument only in the sense that it’s so unlikable, but again, it is powerful if you think about it logically. Only by clinging so fervently, so desperately, so emotionally, and in such a womanly way to her feelings of vengeful scorn, can a WOMAN write of “irony,” albeit in parentheses, and in the next paragraph include a sentence containing “it is ‘no boys allowed’ and…about finding a heightened quality of life as they seek to heighten their constituents’ quality of life.” How did an editor not catch this? Were there no male constituents in Maine in 2012? Or in any of the other states represented by other members of the hen-fest? I assume there must have been some…so, to what sort of brain-diseased female-monster does this seem proper? “Go away! We’re heightening your quality of life!”

When do we get to that part about women showing they can do a job just as well as a man? That they can think about actions and consequences in an equally mature way, produce results at least as favorable, pay-forward the spirit of inclusion from which they personally and professionally drew a benefit, provide a positive role model for the girls who are watching them, trying to figure out what sort of women they themselves want to grow up to be…really show us dudes how it’s done. Make us wonder why we took so long giving them the opportunity to participate, possibly putting them in charge, rather than giving us cause to look back on all this as some sort of historical mistake. Did something happen to that vision? It would seem so…

I have a great idea. How about we just stop paying attention to whether this-person or that-person is a man or a woman. Concentrate instead on avoiding disasters, and producing the best results possible. That would require some sense of maturity out of everyone involved, including the people who write about it…I dunno, maybe I’m asking too much here.

You really want to make America great again? Repeal the goddamn 19th Amendment. I’m serious as cancer about this.

Sorry, gals — if you can’t do the same job as the boys, under the same conditions as the boys, you don’t deserve to be in the room with the boys. This applies to every “room” from foxhole to Oval Office.

I’m going to propose a corollary to Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism. SLFJ states that the most heartfelt articles from female journalists are pleas to overturn society such that, come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter looking. The Severian Corollary is, “making herself feel better about herself” and “objective, real-world achievement” are the same thing when both subject and journalist are chicks. Thus, Hillary Clinton DID achieve something in the hen-parties – she made the other hens feel better about themselves, which is of course the exact same thing as staring down Vladimir Putin from a tank turret.
- Severian | 10/03/2016 @ 07:07

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“Woman of Great Achievement…Reprimanded by Men of Lesser Knowledge”Sunday, October 2nd, 2016

“Woman of Great Achievement…Reprimanded by Men of Lesser Knowledge”
Sunday, October 2nd, 2016