Posted on 08/18/2011 8:02:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Forty years ago, women in North America began a sustained and organized protest against entrenched interests that denied them equal opportunity in the workplace, equal pay and the right to be taken seriously as candidates for public office.
The backlash was immediate and furious: Women didn't deserve to be paid as much as men. Their natural talents confined them to teaching and nursing. They were not smart enough, well-informed enough or tough enough to run for public office.
If Michele Bachmann had emerged 40 years ago, it would have felt like the Old Boys who ran the world had a point.
Bigoted and uninformed, Bachmann could have served as Exhibit A for the inherent unsuitability of women for high, or even low, public office.
But if the last 40 years have proved anything, it's that women are supremely capable in the workplace, at school and in public office. So why among thousands upon thousands of educated, competent, knowledgeable women in the United States is Bachmann being taken seriously as a candidate for a presidential nomination?
Precisely because she represents a vision of 1950s America that is untouched by modern life, with its sexual and reproductive freedoms, the influx of minority populations right into the heartland of the U.S., and the need to adapt to an increasingly globalized world.
But Bachmann, 55, the mother of five children, has managed to appeal to both a rural constituency that views big-city American life with distrust verging on horror and people in the big cities who can help fund her run.
To moneyed fundraisers, she's the promise of deregulation and tax breaks, a standard-issue conservative Republican in the mould of George W. Bush.
To her rural Christian base, she's a social conservative, one of them.
They understand her when she acts on their behalf in ways that appear, on the surface, dumb.
In 2003, when the Minnesota state legislature had already passed a law making same-sex unions illegal, Bachmann nonetheless proposed an amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage.
It was a move that could be interpreted in a number of ways: she hadn't bothered to see what was already law; she didn't care; the real point was to call attention to herself as a fearless campaigner against any deviation from a Bible-based, 1950s suburban/rural American norm.
Two years later, Bachmann was claiming that God had called her to run for the Minnesota Senate. Two years after that, she suggested on television that the media should look at the views of people in Congress and find out, as she put it, "Are they pro-America or anti-America?"
It's relevant that this person who claims divine intervention and who calls into question the patriotism of her country's top elected officials is a woman.
It also mattered that it was Sarah Palin who as Republican vice-presidential candidate veered close to racism in the 2008 presidential campaign against Barack Obama.
These two women may appear to be serious candidates, but they aren't. They allow themselves a margin of error and lack of judgment that a serious candidate couldn't afford to.
They don't represent women.
They don't represent their potential constituents, other than a small, narrow sliver of fundamentalist Christians whose views would startle most of their neighbours if they knew about them.
Their job is to jam a stick in the wheel of progress. They oppose feminism, ignoring the obvious point that they themselves are out working, making money and influencing the public agenda, activities that it took a women's rights movement to open up for women.
Frustration with women like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin is leading to lapses in judgment like the bizarre photo of Bachmann on the cover of a recent issue of Newsweek.
Making her look like some form of alien life undermines legitimate complaints about her views and rightly allows her to claim she is a victim of sexist coverage. Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is also running for the Republican presidential nomination and whose views compete for extremism and idiocy with Bachmann's, gets off lightly by comparison.
Because there are still so few women in public life, Bachmann's campaign could end up undermining women's hard-fought gains — and not because other women don't care. Bachmann is against reproductive freedom, but most women aren't. Bachmann doesn't want the state to interfere in the private sector, but most women are quite willing to have the state order companies to pay them the same amount of money as their male colleagues. Michele Bachmann may not take other women seriously, but it would be a big mistake for them to return the favour.
Aw, hell.
You had me goin’ there until I saw the source.
Good one!
FU, Canadian leftie bitch.
Wait, the libs have recently been singing the praises of the 50s, when we had 78% marginal tax rates and everyone lived in union-headed households.
How'd that work out for CA? Voters passed a law banning gay marriage in 2000. Courts shot it down. Voters passed a state constitutional amendment which was shot down, on appeal. On this issue she was just anticipating what was sadly coming down the pike from judicial activists.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.