Yes, I can imagine: we’ll have playpens and parenting classes and crafts classes in the new Clinton White House, maybe even a special prayer room for the Muslims and breaks five times a day for them. This will bring peace to the world by setting an example, for all the terrorists will supposedly drop their weapons in awe of this “village.” Hillary’s answer to the Iraq question was that she wanted the country to have a “conversation” again. What—like the one they have on The View?
News flash: there are fanatics who want to annihilate us and Hillary Rodham Clinton is talking about crafts and “conversations.”
The other guest was Kaye Ballard. Her newsworthy item was that she had slept twice with the late Marlon Brando. The question “Was he good?” posed by I forget who was not answered. Ballard just said she loved Brando but then talked about her four dogs: “They’re my life,” she said.
See?
Probably many of the women watching the View are stay-at-home moms. But I question what kind of men they have for husbands, or “partners”; they’re probably English professors who have “Peace is Patriotic” bumper stickers on their Volvos. They’re probably the ones who work under department heads who have imposed the popular pedagogical policy of the “maternal presence” in the classroom. These male teachers try to be “facilitators” and nurture spoiled college students who are text-messaging insults about them as they drone on about the “other” and feelings. They write conference papers agreeing with their colleagues that the whole canon of dead white male authors should be eliminated to make way for women writers who eschew linear (read logical) and therefore patriarchal thought. They probably sit down to pee.
Well, it stands to reason that a show like The View, with all women, would turn out the way it does. It’s not surprising. After all, this is what happens at a bridal or baby shower. Women get all gussied up and squeal and play silly games. They have gift bags. On The View, Rosie pulled up a handbag filled with Elizabeth Taylor’s brand of perfume, White Diamonds, as a “gift” for everyone.
Ever observe a table at a restaurant filled with women? Good Lord, it’s exhausting just watching the gesticulating and gabbing. Whenever I get invited to a “luncheon” I head for the hills.
Not that there is anything wrong with such gatherings and not that I have anything against other women. In fact I have a few female friends. But such squeal-a-thons (“I love what you’ve done to your hair!”) are not the proper places in which to make public political statements.
When women have been the minority among men they have proven themselves to be quite competent. Look at Jeane Kirkpatrick, Margaret Thatcher, and Condoleezza Rice. Did any of these women attend any of these on-air chat fests?
Men, on the other hand, are quite capable of holding forth intelligently among themselves, as commentators have done through the years. You don’t have men squealing “Oh, I love your tie!” as they set to embark on a discussion about the future of free world.
I know many women will disagree with me. They will be hurt. Maybe angry. There may be some tears. The lesbians will come to their defense. All the Rosie O’Donnell’s will give them big hugs, maybe even pull them on their laps as Rosie did with Danny DeVito.
So what.
I admit I’m not a typical woman.
When I was a graduate student, for $50, I participated in the Psychology Department’s study and took the Myers-Briggs personality test and came up, not surprisingly, as an INTP. My type is the absent-minded professor, which I learned was very rare among women.
The test pegged me. At a party (party being the situation that many of the questions were about), I study people to determine if they’ve read Truth and Method before talking to them. They have to pass my test, but then I don’t let them go until they plead starvation and head for the hors d’oeuvres.
No I’m not a typical woman. I read philosophy. I hate to shop. I don’t care what I’m wearing. Nothing in my house is coordinated. If I had been on The View I probably would have taken that old-lady-Elizabeth-Taylor-perfume out of the handbag that Rosie pulled up and dumped it on her head.
But I’ve read Aristotle, Saint Paul, and John Milton, and I think they have very good things to say.