House of Eratosthenes

Uh oh. I’m about to get in trouble again, the way I always do…by noticing the wrong things. One Brent Budowsky jots down a thought, predicting a future groundswell…

I now predict that if Hillary choses not to run in 2016, which is certainly possible, liberals will begin a gigantic movement to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president…

Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. They haven’t got an awful lot in common, besides their positions on issues which are going to be on average dogmatic-intractable hardcore proggy left, and their proclivity for saying stupid things. Which is true of everyone in the lefty power structure. And about twenty or thirty percent of them are female. So Hillary and Liz must have something in common that makes them so valued besides being lefty, female, and saying dumb things. What could it be, I wonder?

It causes useless conflict when I opine about looks, and so I shall not. I have never understood the incendiary reactions, but looks are not the issue anyway. Perhaps, if Hillary and Liz got prettied up, maybe went on a makeover show, they’d lose their appeal. There’s no way of knowing for sure. But I’m sure they’d lose just as much appeal if they lost their voices.

Hillary I see Hillary was very popular at the beginning of that silly “hearing” last week, but she was much more popular at the end of it, which tells me something. The progressives are anxious to see, not quite so much certain personalities, as certain spectacles. They have an event in mind they want to have happen. They want to see an argument take form, a contentious confrontation, involving one of these witchy women. And then they want the witch to win the argument so they can say “don’t mess with her!” It’s true, Hillary “won” this argument by saying something exceptionally stupid, even by her standards. But I think the winning was the thing. Look at your friends the libs right now; they’re really jazzed about Hillary, as they haven’t been for years. During which time, Hillary’s said dumb things every time she’s opened her mouth. So that, too, tells me something. It must not be the crap coming out of her mouth, it must be this perception of winning.

And it seems to be, although perhaps I’m just imagining this, a racial thing. Maxine Waters and Carol Moseley Braun have served in Congress a combined total of 26 years if my math is right, and they’re both very good at being unappealing and unpleasant, habitually given to saying very silly, stupid things. So they should satisfy the criteria as well as Clinton and Warren, but it’s clear that they don’t. So. Female, ugly and unpleasant, saying idiotic things all the time, winning, and now we have white.

Oops, I said I shouldn’t mention looks. Okay, just the unpleasant. The appeal is not that men don’t want to see her naked. The appeal is that we don’t want to be in the same room with her. That is the much-sought-after attribute. She makes us want to leave the room. “I never left her presence without a sigh of relief,” I think is how Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII described his relationship with her. Like Barbra Streisand; we find out she’s giving a concert and our wives want to go (a bullet I’ve thankfully dodged), and we suddenly get food poisoning. Real and unfaked, albeit self-induced, food poisoning if that’s what it takes. Any wad of oxygen we’re burning, we don’t want this hollering ditz burning the same wad of oxygen. Ever. They come in, and if the option is available to us, we go out.

“Bitch,” I believe is the slang. A repellent woman, worst mother-in-law you can possibly imagine, with a voice that pierces. Sounds like an annoyed teacher dressing down an annoying and slow third-grade student who just broke something by being an idiot, or got on her last nerve in some other way, BUT ALL OF THE TIME. If it was possible for you to load a voice into your gun, there would be a law saying you couldn’t have this one. (And probably made by some woman who uses that voice, ironically enough.)

Yes, there are quite a few people running around who get angry and upset when I notice this. I’m told it is “sexist.” To me, the sexism is in this idea that women who are “qualified” for positions of power, somehow have to lack pulchritude. I’m the one who believes it is possible, maybe, for a woman to be gorgeous, helpful, soothing, wise and influential all at the same time, what’s sexist about that? But this is something we all need to notice, and it’s a problem we need to solve. These “winning witches” posses sub-random decision-making ability, which means on average, they make good decisions less often than a process for selecting from the same options, driven purely by random chance. You’re less well-off asking them what to do, then you are flipping a coin. We cannot habitually elevate such silly broads to the highest levels of authority attainable, for a period of time to be sustained as long as this weird fad staggers on, like a zombie, and expect not to endure negative consequences. People with power should be able to make decisions about things, at least as well as a roll of the dice. Isn’t that just obvious?

Fun Date Maybe this unfortunate trend will come to a stop if we call it racist. Can we do that?

I go out to a shopping mall or sidewalk event or coffee shop or whatever…maybe go down to midtown, where Sacramento is trying really hard, unfortunately, to look like San Francisco. So maybe I’m missing something because I have to be careful where I step. But here and there, I see a woman or two that might fit this mold. There’s not much occasion to hear how she talks unless she’s yelling at her kids or grandkids. But still, I don’t see it that often. Maybe two or three people out of every hundred. It’s a very, very distinctive look out here in the “real” world.

I tune in on the teevee or the YouTube and hear politicians talk, and it’s more like forty percent. And eighty percent of the ones talking. Awkward-looking, pantsuit-wearing, unappealing, shrill-harpy-voice, determined to steamroll right over anybody else who might wish to say something…and mean. And, way off the charts, in all these metrics. Way, way out there. They make the Wicked Witch of the West look like a fun date.

Someone, somewhere, not only doesn’t mind this, but has an appetite for this. An insatiable appetite. Wants to see more and more of the Winning Witch. Who are these people? And what’s the goal? They don’t want equal opportunity for women who can’t get dates. Again, look at Congress. Mission accomplished. It’s the women who men would want to nail between the sheets, who deserve and should be able to expect better representation. Women who actually wear womanly things, like skirts and dresses. So this is not about politicians being a better reflection of their constituencies.

Whoever these people are who want to see more of the Winning Witch, they have managed to have a lot of things go their way since the Year Of The Woman, 1992. Feminism itself had the wind knocked out of it, when the feminists started defending Bill Clinton and people everywhere figured out feminism had nothing to do with womens’ rights, and everything to do with electing democrats. I’d go so far as to say that effectively killed the movement we knew back then. But this “get more unpleasant and silly women into public office” movement, throughout that time, persevered without even slowing up any. So this isn’t even feminism. It isn’t even liberalism. This is more like a movement to get bad decision-makers into offices where they can do real damage. The ones straight men can’t stand. That do a lot of yelling.

I am reminded of Burt Prelutsky’s famous quote:

Frankly, I don’t know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I’m not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we’re number one. There’s no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on ‘Macbeth’. The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don’t know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words.

I don’t know when he said that. A long time before 2010, the date of this post. It’s clear to me, it isn’t just California that has the problem anymore…although one might argue we have the worst case of it.

I just think, when any faction among us wins as often as this one has been winning, it’s not too much to ask that they be honest with us about what it is they’re after. What do they want? I mean, really?

Update: On the racial angle: Neo-neocon reprints a perceptive comment…

I’ve always thought that subconsciously, Liberals are racists. Not that they hate people of other races – quite the contrary – they truly love them. But they do think that people of other races are inferior and therefore unable to make it on their own. So they do whatever they can to help them (with other people’s money, of course). The War on Poverty is a perfect example. So is affirmative action. And 0bama is another.

So the T-P media falls all over themselves trying to help him. They cover for him, attack his enemies, whatever it takes. They project their racism onto their opponents. And the more inferior they think the person is, the more they try to compensate. Hence the completely in-the-tank attitude over 0bama.

The subject is Obama, not the “Winning Witch” persona being consistently plain-looking and white. But, I’ve had this perception too, that the constant cries of “racism” represent not quite so much a scattershot way of making the opposition disappear, as psychological projection.

I wonder if this isn’t more of a gender-specific thing than you imagine. I can’t bear Hillary Clinton’s politics, but her persona is no more annoying to me than that of any other liberal I despise, such as John Kerry, Barack Obama, or Harry Reid, and in many cases less. If you’ll recall that half the voters are, like me, female, you may be warned against assuming that your response really has the numbers to back it up. As far as I can tell, most women don’t find Ms. Clinton personally unpleasant. I definitely don’t find Elizabeth Warren personally unpleasant. I think she’s smart and physically attractive, though a misguided wonk who should stick to academia.

And remember that, for a very long time, women have struggled with a suspicion that what’s forceful or assertive in a man appears bitchy or mean in a woman. So many women simply discount a man’s complaint that a powerful woman is a witch. We don’t really blame you for your reaction, exactly, but we do think you’re too primed to resent an older, plain, powerful woman who doesn’t respect you much. We deal with powerful men all the time who are older, plain, and don’t respect us much, whereas the experience is something of a novelty to men over the last few decades, and therefore resented more forcefully.

Also, it’s been a thorn in women’s sides for a long time that men have difficulty in looking past their looks to notice anything else about them. If they do notice something else, it tends to be whether they’re demure enough. Women who are judging a female politician don’t particularly want her to be either beautiful or demure, so someone like Hillary Clinton doesn’t start from a disadvantage with us on that score. If we can’t stand her, it’s because she’s a shifty liar with bad policies, like John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid. But women who don’t follow the substance closely (which is to say, women who are like most voters) may react to a powerful women putting down an impertinent man by cheering her on, without much reflecting on what a horrible politician they’re supporting in power.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 09:06
It’s almost like the Phil Mickelson thing: If a woman is “older, plain, powerful woman who doesn’t respect you much” then it is logical to expect she’s about to do something vindictive to us, and recoiling is a natural thing to do against something a man expects to try to hurt him.

As far as I can tell, most women don’t find Ms. Clinton personally unpleasant. I definitely don’t find Elizabeth Warren personally unpleasant. I think she’s smart and physically attractive, though a misguided wonk who should stick to academia.

It is true there are a lot of women who are uglier, although we’re certainly not allowed to comment on them specifically. Again, it isn’t quite so much the ugliness; it is more like, not allowed to be better-looking than some threshold. This is why I chose to embed the “power and pulchritude” link, I perceive that there IS such a ceiling, and it is curve-shaped. If Hillary Clinton looked like, say for example, Eva Longoria, I doubt that libs would be running around fist-pumping the air after her very, very silly testimony a week ago.
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 09:24
@ Texan99: I like you, Miss/Mrs. Texan. I don’t believe I’ve seen you around these parts before?
- bpenni | 01/27/2013 @ 12:26
bpenni: Why, thank you. No, I was just directed here by someone and quite liked the place.

mkf: As far as the good-looking threshold goes, I think the historical discrepancy between men and women’s level of concern for their own attractiveness may be shrinking. A woman with money and power and a life she enjoys may be interested in her appearance, but less so than if everything in her life depended on being attractive to men, particularly after a certain age. No highly experienced professional woman really gives much of a hoot whether she can look like Eva Longoria, any more than a successful man wastes much time wishing he were a young Brad Pitt. A powerful woman in public life just hopes her looks are respectable enough that we can change the subject and consider something else; Elizabeth Warren easily passes this test, while Hillary Clinton, unluckily for her, does not.

Frankly, if a woman’s looks are too good (or if she’s too dolled up or sexy) it’s almost as big a problem: the attention will stay stuck on her looks. I don’t think men get this idea very easily, because they’ve never lived in a world where the levers of power are held almost exclusively by people who can’t look at them without sizing them up as sexual conquests and then either pursuing them or disregarding them entirely. From the perspective of the powerful women, they’re just there to do a job, not get a date. The women voters, in turn, don’t penalize powerful women for being homely. They barely notice, just as they barely notice how homely most of the powerful men are. — Which is not to say that Brad Pitt wouldn’t have a terrific advantage if he ran for office.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 12:54
“It’s almost like the Phil Mickelson thing: If a woman is ‘older, plain, powerful woman who doesn’t respect you much’ then it is logical to expect she’s about to do something vindictive to us, and recoiling is a natural thing to do against something a man expects to try to hurt him.”

Sure, but you have to realize when women encounter an older, plain, powerful man who doesn’t respect them much, which happens basically all day every day, they are a bit on the defensive, too. I wouldn’t say they “recoil,” exactly, because, you know, you get so used to it. Men just aren’t very used to it yet. It still strikes them as some kind of offense against nature.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 12:59
I’m reminded of the phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right.” The two wrongs with what has been done here, would be:

1. Assessing the virtue of these public servants, and candidates for their office, according to their looks while telling everybody else not to do that, and
2. Doing it in the opposite direction (she can be as ugly as she please, but if she’s too pretty, she’s out).

I have noticed, with my experience working on high profile initiatives with the fellas on Mahogany Row, that among the gentlemen there is something going on not necessarily quite so much with looks, as with height. Didn’t notice it too much at the time, since I’m an even 6′ myself, but I never did see anyone 5’7″ or thereabouts, they were all my height and upward, some of them significantly up, like 6’4″. That’s no more proper than making a point of hiring all-pretty women, for a job that has nothing to do with being pretty. Or, all-ugly ones. But, making a point of hiring all-short men would be wrong too. Also, were such a policy to be put into effect, I have my suspicions that not only would they end up with all-short men, but they’d end up with all-short men making dreadful, awful decisions.

There is ignoring the superficial attribute, and then there is paying special attention to it to accommodate a perceived historical skew. Those are two different things.

It also should be pointed out, I think, that we do not have an over-saturation in our nation’s capitol of beautiful women, crying out for correction by way of increased opportunity for the ugly ones. If there is any situation at all, it is an under-representation of women in general, regardless of looks. Someone has decided that the candidates, or candidixes? — stepping in to fill the void, should not have as much currency if they look like, as an example, former Hooters girl Julia C. Hurley of Tennessee. This has saddled us with an unfortunate profile of daffy dames with consistently bad ideas, which has done very little to close up the opportunity gap for more deserving women with better ideas, nor has it done much to soothe any pre-existing divide between the sexes.

If it’s had any pronounced effect at all, it has been to make very high occupations available for a certain kind of female who is unpleasant, angry, and as noted above, given to say silly things frequently. Their ideas are far out of the mainstream, finding support among their constituents apparently only because their constituency pays scant attention, or no attention at all, or is excited and enthused about all the wrong things.

But then, what difference does it make… 😉
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 14:05
Ditto to what Buck said, by the way. We are extremely male-heavy over here you might have noticed, and I’ve often thought I should show moar-better attention & courtesy when one of the fairer sex comes along. Kinda like “women drink for free on Tuesdays” or something. I haven’t followed through on this because (as you can gather from my comments on the other matter) I’m pleased with the profile of the woman who does eventually find her way here, even if it doesn’t happen often, and I’m afraid if I fix what ain’t broke, that might change something in the order of the universe. Anyway, plum happy you managed to find your way.
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 14:15
“1. Assessing the virtue of these public servants, and candidates for their office, according to their looks while telling everybody else not to do that, and
2. Doing it in the opposite direction (she can be as ugly as she please, but if she’s too pretty, she’s out).”

I didn’t understand this. Who, in your view, is assessing people by their looks while telling others not to do so? All I was saying was that it’s easy to overestimate the voting public’s problem with an ugly woman if you fail to take into account that assessing powerful women by their looks is largely a male preoccupation, whereas half the electorate is female.

I don’t know of anyone who says, in effect, “she can be as ugly as she pleases, but if she’s too pretty, she’s out.” What I run into mostly is two groups. One group focuses intently on her looks: if she’s too ugly, we shouldn’t have to look at her while she’s talking; if she’s too pretty, we can’t concentrate on what she’s saying. There’s a surprisingly narrow middle ground between those two disqualifying ends of the spectrum. Another group of people are only minimally concerned with what she looks like, good or bad. The first group is dominated by men, the second by women. When it comes to assessing the looks of powerful men, though, most everyone falls into the second group. About 99% of men in public life fall into the middle ground of “looks so ordinary they barely come up in discussion.”
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 14:37
PS, thanks for the warm welcome and please don’t worry about special attention or courtesy, which would only confuse and distress me.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 14:47
Absolutely NO one is going to admit to disqualifying the pretty women, just as no one is going to admit to disqualifying the ugly ones. You have to judge based on their behavior.

So this is a conclusion I reach by observing behavior, and forming conclusions about what it all means, as I did throughout the post above. If I could pick one piece of evidence to show that the pretty women are being disqualified, it is this expectation that the Hillary-looking and the Elizabeth-Warren-looking women should be treated as if they have accomplished something completely amazing, when other than getting elected, they haven’t done any such thing nor have they managed to demonstrate anything about themselves outside of the mediocre. That and, when a woman comes along who manages to get the same thing done and really is pretty, this expectation that the rest of us should think highly of the accomplishment, comes to a screeching halt. When I talk with real feminists about what opportunities women have for public office, and Sarah Palin’s name comes up, it’s almost embarrassing the willful denial that takes place. Heck, it IS embarrassing. They don’t think she’s due for any acknowledgment or any compliments, in fact they think she’s doing harm. It isn’t just because of her politics. It’s because of her looks — but, they won’t admit that.

It’s not just Palin. You take the very high upper-crusters like Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi. Now, is it fair to describe them as merely “plain”? No, there’s something else going on. My wife was just talking about Clinton, mentioned that she had not see her face for many years up until that hearing. Clinton has not simply let herself go; she seems to be trying very, very hard not to be feminine, and she ends up looking like she’s trying to be Henry Kissinger.

I’m given the impression that we’re on a merry-go-round of celebrating that a woman has finally been appointed to the cabinet or elected to Congress, something that has already happened, so that these women are not “first” women. And since we’re celebrating a “first” event that isn’t actually happening and the whole thing is make-believe, somehow there is a whole big package of “can’t”s that are imposed on the exercise that no one is allowed to discuss, with the “can’t be pretty” thing being only the most obvious one. But it seems, further, that there is a linkage between the phenomenon I’m describing here, and the other issues. Like gun control. It’s something that becomes easier to perceive when you see a lot more examples of it — which we have here in California, as Prelutsky noted. We’re seeing quite a lot of it locally now that gun laws have become popular…every day, some “Winning Witch” type will appear before the cameras and say all the wrong things about gun regulation. So yes, there is a pattern here. If she’s pretty, she’s out, or at least she’s not part of the type being sought with the enthusiasm we see lined up behind Warren and Clinton.

I can’t think of any exceptions to this. Can you? You mentioned Elizabeth Warren is not bad looking; maybe not, but to me she certainly is making a good effort to not be feminine. There’s a problem when I can meet a brand-new female politician I’ve not seen before, see that she fits into the profile, and accurately predict she’s going to say silly, anti-gun things before she even speaks. The men don’t have that going on; the liberal ones all say silly things, all the time, but some are effeminate, some are butch, some are tall, some are short, some are fat and some are thin. Whereas, with the women, someone somewhere finds something highly appealing, and they’re not willing to talk about what exactly it is. We do know though that some of these accomplished and distinguished female politicians haven’t really accomplished much or distinguished themselves much. Prof. Warren just got herself elected to her first term; how many women in Congress have served longer? She’s going to be the next president maybe? That’s a bit skewed in & of itself, especially for someone who just got nailed phony-ing up her diversity credentials.
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 15:07
I’ve never really thought about whether Warren is un-feminine. Perhaps she is. I have to say that I’ve always liked her looks, and would be pleased to be as naturally attractive as she is. But then I am as rabid a feminist as you’re ever likely to come across (though also deeply conservative), and for whatever reason, I’ve never in my life been interested in what most men find feminine. I suppose you’d call me some kind of cross between an old hippy and a tomboy. So for me, a woman is ugly if she’s truly hideous, like Helen Thomas. Clinton is beginning to be a bit of a frumpy dog, and I do often wonder what in the world she thinks she’s doing with her hair. But women like Warren don’t seem unattractive to me simply because they’re not made up. I find made-up women a little bizarre; are they trying to pick up tricks, or write legislation? Pelosi is an interesting example. No, she’s not pretty, but she’s totally ordinary: in the same league as Joe Lieberman, say, or Jim DeMint, or 90% of Congressmen or cabinet members. I despise her, yes, but not for her looks: for her stupid, unscrupulous politics.

Sarah Palin is unusually beautiful, a real stunner. I’m crazy about her for other reasons, of course. I was very disappointed that ostensibly feminist women would stoop so far as to attack her for her beauty. They actually went for the loathsome “she’s too pretty to be smart” attack. I thought that was a mistake that only non-feminists would make.

If I understand you correctly, you see a trend in which liberal female politicians are almost going to some pains to be ugly. I don’t think they look at it that way. It’s a combination of a couple of things, I think. First, they don’t see their looks as relevant to their public service, and their electorate supports them to some degree, so there’s no filter that causes only pretty women to be elected as liberals. There may even be a filter that causes plainer women to adopt feminist or liberal politics; it’s a little less hostile to them than many brands of conservatism. (Rightly or wrongly, conservatism is associated with the idea that women should stick to pleasing men rather than achieving anything on their own. What plain women is going to take that sucker’s bet?) That means you get totally ordinary women running for office, and frankly the ordinary woman over 40 is not striking for her good looks, any more than the average man is. Second, liberal women generally are feminists, and many feminists reject traditional femininity. Even if they have considerable natural beauty, their looks may put you off. But I’m not sure they put most women off the same way, and certainly not liberal/feminist women. That’s partly because feminists embrace a different style, and partly because, as I was saying above, women tend more than men to focus on a politician’s actions rather than looks.

Still, it’s good to remember that, although most liberal women are rather feminist, not all feminists are liberal. Some, like myself, are fiercely conservative and find the liberal attitude toward women to be intolerably condescending, reeking of affirmative action claptrap. We want to be treated as fully human and not automatically excluded by our gender from any activity we’re qualified to perform. We also expect to be fully responsible for ourselves. But I find myself on conservative sites spending a good bit of time trying to provide conservative men with some information about how the world looks to a woman who is trying to be an independent and self-respecting human being. One of the cultural trends that makes life difficult for us is the preoccupation with our looks. We’d so like to be able to practice law, practice medicine, run businesses, or hold office without our appearance being such a central focus, just as men always have been able to do.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 16:30
Yeah, and I can appreciate that is a worthy goal. And I guess I’m providing a challenge to that, a headwind. Well, I have a conflict here in that I support you in your efforts, but I cannot help noticing what I’ve noticed. Truth is, probably the biggest obstacle our modern society has in overcoming stereotypes is that they work so well. Some woman comes along, has taken great pains to not make herself look good, like Hillary who has been called out now by both you and Mrs. Freeberg for all these witchy things she’s doing with her face, teeth and hair. Wears a pantsuit every single time she’s in front of the camera, to the point where it becomes unnatural-looking.

Maybe hyphenates her last name.

What’s her position on…abortion, teachers’ unions, global warming, the latest atheist lawsuit against Christmas lights, the war in Iraq, Obama’s appointment of NLRB officials during “recess,” intelligent design versus evolution, gun rights……..mega, mega yawn, do I really need to ask.

A lot of the reason my red flag is raised, has nothing to do with gender at all, actually. For some time I’ve been leery of this brow-beating that we should think of so-and-so as a “giant of a man,” messianic figure, without any tangible reasons stated as to why this individual should be considered to be the least bit out of the ordinary. This is just a subset of that, really. And I guess I’m picking up a vibe that you and I disagree about how pretty E. Warren is. To me, her look just screams “spinster,” and it seems to me that this is a big part of the reason why she’s being pushed out there as an up-and-coming democrat-party superstar. I can’t find anything else remarkable about her. She’s an academic type who has worked in litigation, wreaking havoc on businesses, producing losses where profits would have otherwise existed. She is a, as Michael Savage would say, red-diaper-doper-baby. So I disagree with what she has been working to do, but beyond that, as an enemy, she looks to me like someone terribly un-distinguished, unremarkable, not notably different from any of her allies, anywhere. I see all the footsoldiers across the “enemy lines” being told to treat her as some kind of a deity — by somebody — and they unquestioningly comply. Obviously, this comes across to me as a bit surreal.

And if she looked more like a Barbie doll, I don’t think it would be happening. It seems to me that being good-looking has become mutually-exclusive, in ways it truly does NOT need to be, from being sufficiently experienced and qualified. Palin’s actually a good example of this. How does Palin beat Elizabeth Warren in terms of practical experience — all sorts of ways. How does Warren beat Palin? To conclude that, you have to “feel” your way through the question instead of think your way through it…do what the mob says…go with the flow…turn off the brain. Inspecting the evidence, you don’t find reason to respect Prof. Warren, let alone to elevate her as some remarkable figure.

And yet, the one from Massachusetts might very well be the next President. The one from Alaska has been deemed “unqualified” by a bunch of loud opinionated people, who cannot logically support their conclusion without pointing to each other and saying something about “everybody knows it.”

In all sorts of ways, it just looks to me like a mass-production method for getting wrong decisions made, as fast as possible, in bulk.
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 16:57
Maybe so. As I say, I adore Sarah Palin. On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren was my bankruptcy law professor. She was one of the best professors I ever had, and I have the greatest respect for her analytical skills. Sadly, they have not preserved her from very stupid and harmful conclusions about public policy. But if I agreed with her public policy positions, as I might very well have done in my misguided youth, nothing about her looks would even remotely put me off.

In a battle of pure brains, I think Warren would beat Palin. It just goes to show you that it takes more than IQ to reach responsible political positions. (For one thing, few in academia seem able to withstand its corrupting effect on critical thinking skills, even if they are quite bright.) So I don’t think Warren is a mediocrity who’s being pushed for office for no reason. She’s an articulate spokesmen for leftist politics that I happen to disagree sharply with. In other words, it’s her politics that are mediocre, not her talents. I don’t know why it should be that very bright and talented people can have such dumb politics, but it’s beyond dispute. Hillary Clinton is pretty bright, for instance, but that doesn’t help. You can’t just be smart. You also have to have intellectual honesty, courage to face facts, honor, and common sense.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 17:18
Okay, well you are likely to know something I don’t. I grew up across the street from someone who became a representative in Washington State, a baby-boomer hippie hard-lefty type. She had some feminine appeal that she dropped like a hot potato when she started to become famous. Maybe it’s because I’m a straight man, but I find this really creepy, all these women pretending not to be women so that they can become powerful women.

Or maybe the problem is that I’m old, or have a good, working, long-term memory. Feminism used to be all about “having it all” — not having to choose between taking on the role of wife & mother, and wielding power. That’s from the 1970’s or so…whatever happened to it?? Nowadays, it seems that for a woman to be elevated to a position of power, she has to stop being feminine. And the rest of us are not even so privileged to know who or what is the authority figure sitting in judgment of this.

But seriously, if Elizabeth Warren really has anything to offer in terms of intellect or talent, above or beyond the average bear, I’d like to know what it is. I have not seen evidence of it so far. I’m impressed with Sarah Palin (and have not always been, truth be told) as I have come to know more about the decisions she made, the circumstances in which she made them, how she sees life and the challenges in it. A lot of this has required no small amount of good, old-fashioned courage. I cannot claim to have seen any evidence at all of this in the case of Prof. Warren.
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 17:32
Oh, dear. I’m pretty sure it’s not that the women are pretending not to be women, it’s that they don’t subscribe to your views of what femininity is. Do you worry much about whether women you don’t know, especially women you’re not interested in sexually, will consider your looks and image masculine enough? I know from my own experience that there’s only one guy whose opinion matters to me on that score. Not that I want to offend any other men with my style, but I just don’t really care. As far as I’m concerned, I’m female, so what I am defines what’s feminine. Other people’s opinions about it are interesting but not binding on me. Arrogant, I know.

About Warren, I can only say that a professor can’t teach me classes for two semesters without my acquiring a firm grasp of whether she’s got the smarts or not. I’m not saying she was Isaac Newton, but she was an organized and effective lecturer, certainly bright enough to hold her own among Senators and federal bureaucrats. Whatever’s wrong with her, it’s not lack of basic horsepower. This was a long time ago, of course, but back then she had some free-market principles. She was the first person to introduce me to the notion that protective regulations in the form of restrictions on lenders could hurt the poor people they were intended to help, by drying up credit. The years at Harvard have done her no good, I fear, but that’s no surprise.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 20:51
Well, I assume you’re familiar with her claim to fame lately…

I’m deeply suspicious of stuff like this. I see it as a war on the individual.
- mkfreeberg | 01/27/2013 @ 20:57
Oh, sure. But you’re never going to root that kind of nonsense out of public discourse by confining the field to people with high IQs. Smart people adopt foolish policies and social theories all the time. It’s a mistake to think that anyone who believes things like that must not be very smart. That’s not the problem at all. They may be naive, impractical, hypocritical, careless, childish, all kinds of things, and still be smart.
- Texan99 | 01/27/2013 @ 21:17
[…] Conventional wisdom has it that men grow distinguished, while women merely grow older, and at least one contemporary doctrine contends that this is an inevitable consequence of patriarchal privilege; I tend to believe that we guys simply give less of a damn. But this may be changing: […]
- dustbury.com » The interminable Cute Factor | 01/29/2013 @ 12:11

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The Winning WitchSunday, January 27th, 2013

The Winning Witch
Sunday, January 27th, 2013