Hard News: Unreasonable people vote
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Smell it, you just wrote it, although it is a very bad summation of the point being made.
@Jeremy: If I ever engage in ideological slut-shaming, I fully expect to get slapped and hard - 'cause that's just how the PAS Women's XV rolls. And, boy, if B. Jones is going to call anyone an 'Uncle Tom' (however passive-aggressive s/he is about it) I'm the last person who is going to be applauding as I order a muffin basket.
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Craig's right. Thatcher was very much an outsider in her own party. She wasn't one of the chaps, at all.
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Just to lighten the mood:
Jon Stewart auto-tuned!
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Whoa, not trying to call anyone an Uncle Tom. All I was trying to say is that there's a concise word when you're talking about racism that means roughly what we're talking about here in the context of sexism - someone from the discriminated-against group who gets a dispensation from being discriminated against because they join in discriminating against the rest of the group. Pejoratives aside, it's a thing, and it can coexist in a weird sort of way with taking advantage of the anti-discrimination movement. See Sarah Palin.
I don't know a lot about Thatcher, and I can readily believe she had to fight a lot to get accepted into her role. But I still think it would have been easier for a staunch conservative Iron Lady slipping into a sort of Elizabethan exception role, than it would have been for one of the more feminist types in that era.
In short, conservatism for women can be a shortcut to joining the privilege club without the messy business of having to do something about the unfair distribution of privilege. Doesn't mean you get a permanent exemption (see sexist attacks against Sarah Palin, Thatcher etc), but it gets you past the manhating socialist feminist lesbian epithets.
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Maggie Thatcher worked in a male-dominated party in the seventies
And it took her over a decade to (narrowly) win selection for a winnable seat -- despite the unusually high profile she won as the youngest Conservative candidate in the 1950 election, where she actually did a pretty good job of cutting the incumbent's majority by over 6,000 in a safe Labour seat.
And if you ever think Thatcher was ever "one of the boys", I'd recommend John Campbell's rather astute two-volume biography. You don't have to like her politics to cringe at the bingo cards you could fill on every page. And its hard not to come to the conclusion that the contempt was entirely mutual.
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It's not so much absurd to dump on your own gender, as inevitable in a world where feminist successes are incomplete. Uncle Tom is the equivalent term in a racist society.
Yeah, cos dudes _never_ do that. I've never seen a column in which a man said another man was doing an awful job of something. OH WAIT.
I reserve the right, as a chick, to behave as as much of a twatcock as the next person. Not because I want to get on Bill O'Reilly, but because I'm entitled to my opinion, however idiotic it is. You can think I am wrong, but it'd be really nice if you didn't suggest that cos I am a woman, my voice is meant to be all 'maternal' and 'empathetic' and mother-earthy. It actually tends to be relatively enraged and full of profanity.
Craig can probably give you a good idea of how my voice sounds, actually...
If I ever engage in ideological slut-shaming, I fully expect to get slapped and hard - 'cause that's just how the PAS Women's XV rolls.
Honey, I've told you before, it doesn't count if we know you like it.
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Craig can probably give you a good idea of how my voice sounds, actually...
A pound of butter wrapped in velvet.
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Bridge building and other spanners...
The economy's going down a hole and the Republicans are fretting about condoms.
If it's all about gaming the system, of course they are gonna be fretting about rubbers - best of three (or five) anyone?
Broad generalisations...Put it this way, without feminism the only women who get into politics and public life are the ones who manage to contort themselves into the tiny window of acceptable public femaleness under patriarchy.
Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir, Indira Ghandi, Angela Merkel, Aung San Suu Kyi - where do they fit in that theory?
Or have I got the wrong end of the stick? -
But seriously James, if you're still here, are you not even a little bit concerned about the Tea Party pushing a complete fruitloop like Sharron Angle into your party's nomination?
She wants to abolish the US Dept of Education, withdraw the US from the United Nations, claimed (baselessly) that the 9/11 hijackers entered the US via Canada, encouraged the formation of armed militias "if we don't win at the ballot box", doesn't believe the Constitution requires separation of church and state, and recently appeared to indicate that she believes autism is an imaginary condition.
She refuses to talk to either local or national news media.
She has a record of using her position to assist the Church of Scientology, and introduce its "therapies" to Nevada prisons.
She's batfuck flaming crazy, and will probably beat Harry Reid and enter the Senate.
You're comfortable with that?
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I don't know a lot about Thatcher, and I can readily believe she had to fight a lot to get accepted into her role. But I still think it would have been easier for a staunch conservative Iron Lady slipping into a sort of Elizabethan exception role, than it would have been for one of the more feminist types in that era.
Well it is certainly easier for a conservative woman to become head of a conservative political party than a liberal woman.
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I think it's interesting to note that the fury the Tea Party brings to the, umm, party is similar, but completely opposite to what the protests and strikes in France are about.
Europe and the US really are very different places.
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Major cost cutting for the NZ Defence Force announced.
That's another difference between here and the US-even suggesting that defence spending needs to be reigned in over there would have you banished from public office for life. The military component of American culture has become an economic and ideological distortion, where people sign up for the benefits, both financial and social, that service grants them. It makes going to war far too easy as a result, and turns military service from a vocation into a kind of Department of Social Welfare with guns.
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@Petra:
Those vids are great. Do you have a library of them by any chance?
Please change them
Jeremy, please feel free to change your role models yourself:))
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But I still think it would have been easier for a staunch conservative Iron Lady slipping into a sort of Elizabethan exception role, than it would have been for one of the more feminist types in that era.
Oh, please... Thatcher became opposition leader a few months before Barbara Castle was sacked from Cabinet by James Callaghan. Castle later claimed he told her she had to go because he "wanted someone younger" in his Cabinet. She said the hardest thing she ever did in her life was biting back the urge to reply "Why not start with you, James?" (He was the oldest Prime Minister since Churchill.) I wouldn't confuse Made in Dagenham with a documentary, but the relentless bullshit women on both sides of the House had to swallow isn't actually exaggerated by much. If anything, it's probably toned down.
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I think it's interesting to note that the fury the Tea Party brings to the, umm, party is similar, but completely opposite to what the protests and strikes in France are about.
I think you've got that wrong. In Europe there are strikes and riots and the odd lynching. In America there are protest gatherings and political reorganisation in the opposition party. The fury is not similar.
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Maddow on Angle:
Is funny. If inevitably unnerving.
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3410,
I wouldn't confuse Made in Dagenham with a documentary
Who would?
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I think you've got that wrong. In Europe there are strikes and riots and the odd lynching. In America there are protest gatherings and political reorganisation in the opposition party. The fury is not similar.
I tend to agree, although not with your benign characterisation of the "political reorganisation". The Tea Party phenomenon is largely a revival of John Birch Society ideas -- the exotic conspiracy theories especially. It's certainly an essentially American kind of fury.
Rand Paul is now a regular on Alex Jones' radio show, and is happy to discuss the impending "New World Order" with his host. I find that pretty weird.
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There has always been this strand of madness in American politics. Not sure if it's really any greater now than before. They've never had any influence on American foreign policy and tend to think that they won't.
Not to sound too much like Chomsky but there is a political and bureaucratic establishment that tends to even things out. Not even Bush wanted to withdraw from the UN.
Maybe with the Tea Party they'll get more influence but I think that's unlikely. They're more likely to destroy childrens' teeth in some small communities than start WW3.
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How this fury expresses itself may vary, but I was more referring to the fact that they are at opposite ends of what they are angry about.
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It's important to remember that the Tea Party "movement" didn't start out with anything in the way of ideological coherency. It's only in the last year or so (after the health care bill passed) that we've seen a more refined message around lower taxes, increased curbs on immigration, opposition to universal health care, etc
Prior to that, it was very much a movement driven by incoherent anger about "taking back our country" (although they were always vague as to who exactly they were taking back their country from.) There were numerous comical interviews with Tea Partiers who couldn't articulate exactly what they were angry about. There were even attempts to show the Tea Party as being "non-partisan", with both Democrats and independents involved. It's tempting to reduce all this down to the bare bones: people were angry because a black man was elected president, but knew they couldn't say as much. I think it's much more complicated than that, but that was certainly the motivation for a significant minority of those involved.
The recent overt realignment of the Tea Party with the Republican party is ultimately a sign that it's winding down. It was supposed to be a "grass roots" movement, but increasingly noone believes that as the lines between the Tea Party and the Republican party blur. After all, once you start having senior Republicans speaking at Tea Party rallies on a regular basis, you can no longer maintain the pretense that it's an independent movement.
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However, one could confuse Dr Strangelove for a documentary..
Ripper: Mandrake?
Mandrake: Yes, Jack?
Ripper: Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?
Mandrake: Well, I can't say I have.
Ripper: Vodka, that's what they drink, isn't it? Never water?
Mandrake: Well, I-I believe that's what they drink, Jack, yes.
Ripper: On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason.
Mandrake: Oh, eh, yes. I, uhm, can't quite see what you're getting at, Jack.
Ripper: Water, that's what I'm getting at, water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven-tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, do you realize that seventy percent of you is water?
Mandrake: Uh, uh, Good Lord!
Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.
Mandrake: Yes. (he begins to chuckle nervously)
Ripper: Are you beginning to understand?
Mandrake: Yes. (more laughter)
Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol?
Mandrake: Well, it did occur to me, Jack, yes.
Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation. Fluoridation of water?
Mandrake: Uh? Yes, I-I have heard of that, Jack, yes. Yes.
Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?
Mandrake: No, no I don't know what it is, no.
Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face? -
I always think of that exchange when I catch one of my Facebook friends joining or hinting at joining an anti-fluoridation group.
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Boxer Rebellion redux, the dogs of war...
...even suggesting that defence spending needs to be reigned in over there would have you banished from public office for life....
It makes going to war far too easy as a result, and turns military service from a vocation into a kind of Department of Social Welfare with guns.
In a bid to end the constant border skirmishes in its ongoing war against the Reign of Terrier, the Department of Social Warfare has reined in its spending and will now unleash the previously undeployed, unemployed arrow whittlers, whose quarrelsome ways will ensure a hard rain, falling like bolts from the blue...
A veritable Volley of the Doles !! -
Yes, Jeremy: women can be grumpy right-wingers, too! Whatever will they do next?
Well in The South they make babies and load their husband's guns.
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