Posted on 04/10/2008 5:58:56 AM PDT by FreeManDC
Dee Dee Myers has just come out with her amusing tale, Why Women Should Rule the World. You may recall Mrs. Myers was the first female White House press secretary, appointed during the first two tumultuous years of the Clinton administration.
Simply put, Myers is a female supremacist. "Women tend to be better communicators, better listeners, better at forming consensus," she argues. That entitles women to run the world because they do everything better than those power-hungry men, Myers believes.
As the unsmiling Myers goes about promoting her book, one wonders what led her to pen a tome filled with crude gender stereotypes and doubtful claims.
After Myers left the hurly-burly of the White House in 1994, Myers married a handsome (and well-paid) magazine executive. They moved into a tony Washington DC home and had two children together.
But 14 years after leaving her heady White House post, Myers' career has stalled out. She has only managed to land a few part-time consulting jobs, like advising the now-defunct NBC series, The West Wing.
Hardly an inspiring role model for the female global domination wannabes.
If you go out and get Myers' book, don't expect to find a watertight argument.
According to Myers, women create a nurturing, idyllic work environment — well, with a few exceptions. In a 2000 Frontline interview, Myers made these remarks about her White House encounters with a devious Hillary Clinton:
"Hillary tended to kind of campaign against people behind their back, and that was certainly my experience."
Women are the peaceful gender, as well. To prove the point, Myers highlights on page 125 how Queen Elizabeth I arranged to have Mary Queen of Scots beheaded, Indira Gandhi pushed for a sharp increase in nuclear arms, and Margaret Thatcher went to war in the Falklands.
Women never abuse their power, either. That's true for every woman in the world except Indira Gandhi who "used emergency provisions to grant herself extraordinary powers and quash dissent," Myers admits.
Women are gentle consensus-builders, as well. Myers recounts the story of Alexis Herman, former Secretary of Labor, who tried her hand at resolving a labor strike. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Herman grabbed one of the negotiators by the lapels and issued this threat: "Don't f_ck with me."
Perhaps we should be grateful that Mrs. Meyers does not make the claim that women are the logical sex. And some of her factual statements raise eyebrows, as well.
Myers says back in 1998 the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition brokered the historic Good Friday Agreement, a claim that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton also stands by.
Unfortunately, no one else saw it that way. As Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan noted, "It was a nice thing to see [Hillary Clinton] there, with the women's groups. It helped, I suppose, but it was ancillary to the main thing." The Women's Coalition disbanded in 2006 after its candidates lost in two straight elections, an inconvenient truth that escapes Meyer's notice.
There's this chestnut on page 56: "until recently, all the research into [heart] disease was conducted on men." But somehow that doesn't square with the FDA analysis that found, "women have been included in drug development studies at least since the early 1980s in approximate proportion to the prevalence of disease in them." [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0412roberts.html]
And as we all know, women are victims of the gender wage gap. Want proof? When the 31-year-old Myers worked at the White House, she was paid a measly $100,000. But there was another deputy assistant, he was paid $10,000 more.
True, he was far more experienced and qualified. He took a big pay cut to come work for President Clinton. But that didn't matter — Dee Dee was entitled to that extra 800 bucks in her paycheck.
Go call the lawyers!
Lest you suspect that Myers is totally unsympathetic to men, she proffers this reassurance on page 128: "That's not to say women should replace men altogether." And yes, she does thank her husband in the Acknowledgements.
See, not all men are that bad.
Dee Dee Myers comes across as a woman who hasn't figured out whether she wants to be a stay-at-home mom or go back to being a 60-hour-a-week workaholic. So every road bump in life is blamed on the heartless patriarchy. She publishes a book filled with odious stereotypes and half-truths, and then wonders why her colleagues don't take her seriously.
In the end, Myers' book becomes a feminist fairy tale that provokes sadness, not outrage. In its over-wrought quest to promote female empowerment, her work becomes a parody of the very movement she has chosen to embrace.
Stop wondering, Carey. If Dee Dee could think clearly, she wouldn’t have become a Democrat in the first place.
Who cares what a washed up drunk lib thinks?..............
Criminy, we have "Meyers", and we have "Meyer" (the correct version is "Myers").
Bad writing aside, it seems that Ms. Myers copied some of the exaggerative tendencies of Ms. Clinton (or maybe vice versa).
Puffery abounds.
“Simply put, Myers is a female supremacist”
Well let’s see her open a jar when the lid is stuck.
Anybody who thinks that if women ruled the world there would be no war or violence... has never worked in an all-female office.
And are women more likely to be cokeheads, fired from their jobs because they can’t pass a drug test that they know is required?
As the unsmiling Myers goes about promoting her book, one wonders what led her to pen a tome filled with crude gender stereotypes and doubtful claims.
Call me a cynic, but something tells me that family isn't exactly filled with joy and laughter. Like that old saying goes, "When mama ain't happy, ain't no body happy."
I believe she was servicing Vince in the White House basement... when his neck was broken by Buddy Young.
At least she found the tweezers.
Sorry, but I just don’t believe she married a man....
WTF? That's fine for a kindergarten but for WORK? Has she written this entire book as a satire, or does she really mean it?
Over her head from day one.
I know what you’re driving at but there is no way she got her job on her knees.
NOt fat enough, nor ugly enough for Bills likes.
The White House should have hired her as a secretary’s assistant’s assistaqnt or a file clerk’s assistant where she may have had the talent to succeed and feel fulfilled..
“Women tend to be better communicators, better listeners, better at forming consensus,”
...and global warming is established science. Heh. I know plenty of women who actually meet her description...but she is not in that group.
I have a friend who knows someone who was a supervisor of the security detail at the White House. Some of the stories I have heard. Like the one when the Clintons moved in Hillary tried to take over the Vice Presidents office.
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