Will A Woman Ever Be President?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

I present this article because it’s just plain funny. :laughing:

I ask the question because, as a woman, I can’t help but wonder if we are forever doomed to play “vice” president. :confused:

HILLARY’S BIMBO ERUPTION

by Bill Maher

Friday, February 23, 2007

Los Angeles Times, Opinion

Hillary Clinton will never be president as long as women keep acting crazy.

I know it’s not fair, but there are too many misogynists out there who are looking for any excuse to not vote for a woman, such as “women are ruled by their hormones,” as opposed to what a president should be ruled by – the oil and gas lobby. A woman might get really bad PMS and do something rash, like start a war with the wrong country.

Well, whenever I hear a guy talk like that, I sock him right in the jaw, because I firmly believe that women are in every way the equal of men … a belief, by the way, shared by my very capable girlfriend, Tiffany Torpedoes.

As you all know, last week Britney Spears shaved off her hair. But all I could think was that between now and 2008, every time a prominent woman goes bat-crazy, it’s just going to give ammunition to the 34% of Americans who say the country isn’t ready for a woman as president. And Paula Abdul, I’m sorry, you’re not helping. Astronaut lady, with the diapers – Huggies, we have a problem. And by the way, where were you no 9/11 when they told President Bush the country was under attack and he peed his pants for seven minutes?

I’m not saying Mariah Carey could cost Hillary this election, I’m just saying that until November 2008, we’re gonna have to sweep up the usual suspects. Just till after the election. After that, you can go back to acting out all you want. But until then, Courtney Love has to be chained to a rehab radiator. Tara Reid? Honey, walking ain’t your best thing, so don’t want to see any of that. Ditto talking.

Lindsay Lohan: “Drink Canada Dry” is a slogan, not a dare. And Anna Nicole Smith needs to be buried. Every minute she’s above ground is a sobering reminder that it takes more than a sham marriage to a demented 89 year-old to make a girl happy. It also takes drugs. Paris Hilton, I know you’re really a sweet girl, but you’ll have to be euthanized. You’re the ringleader; we’ve got to cut the head off. And above all, no one, no one, marries Tom Cruise.

I know, it’s not fair, men don’t have to answer for every time Tom Sizemore gets high and tries to fake a drug test by using a prosthetic penis. Every single article about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mentions her wardrobe, but I did a Goggle search on her predecessor, Dennis Hastert, and out of 1.29 million stories, not one mentions where he buys his husky-man suits.

And I don’t care what Glamour magazine says, every woman has body issues. What if Hillary comes back from a G8 summit having gained 10 pounds from the Wiener schnitzel? That’ll trigger a round of purging and then binging, and before you know it, we’re invading Vienna for the sausage.

Of course, maybe I’m drawing an entirely wrong conclusion from Britney’s troubles. Maybe it doesn’t reflect on Hillary at all. When you look at Britney, head shaved, half-naked, drunk, crying, puking, walking into walls, crazy as a loon, remember: this is the woman, back in 2003, who said, “I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes.”

So Brit, honey, if you’re reading, for Hillary’s sake … and your own … for the next 18 months, you above all, must make yourself scarce. May I suggest a visit to the local Army recruiting office? You’ve already got the hairstyle, and they’re so desperate they might actually take you. Give Hillary a chance to be the Jackie Robinson of gender politics in our lifetime, because that’s something I’d like to see.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Bill Maher has no problem pulling his lever for a woman.”

(Bill Maher is host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”)

2

God I hope so.

My vote goes to this juggernaut:

homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/

3

A corrupt woman ruled by the oil, arms and pharmaceutical industries is no different to a corrupt man ruled by the same. Gender is simply a side debate for the purposes of people who seek to write articles such as this one.

4

My God…SIATD didn’t express his hatred for Rosa this time.

Something is terribly wrong here.

5

I don’t hate her. I just think she’s wrong about a lot of things. She’s also right about a lot of things. I may have, on past occassion, hated your habit of bringing her into every decent political discussion that you have and find your heroising (heroinising?) of her a tad contradictory with your stated belief in the egalite of humans, but so be it.

6

Okay, but there are a lot of them writing these articles … articles that are read by the population at large … who then go to vote.

I think it’s biased too … then again, being a woman, I’m going to be biased against this kind of bias … … .

But it is kind of weird that we hear all of this looney tunes stuff about women … but not so much at all about men – in that regard the good humor man Mr. Maher has a valid point.

Is it because (:sigh:) women on the whole strangely suffer more in this manner than men … because the media knows that women are more into entertainment “news” and thus more interested in and about themselves … or because it is a male plot to keep women in their place and from thus becoming too powerful?

Inquiring minds want to know.

7

Given that there have been females elected to equivalent positions in other first world countries (and even some not-so-first world countries) I am inclined to think that there will eventually be a woman president. Unless there is some sort of American exceptionalism going on here, which I very much doubt.

That said, I think that America has been very good about perfecting the art of death through frivolity. And women have been well targeted by this (women shouldn’t vote, because fashion dictates long sleeves, and they could easily hide extra ballots in them!). An uphill battle.

8

Eventually it will happen. But hopefully not in '08. C’mon- after 16 years of “keeping it in the family”, isn’t it time for a President with a different last name than Bush or Clinton?

9

Who people vote for is irrelevant if both candidates are mouthpieces for the same group of elites.

What bias?

I think this is untrue - politicians, regardless of who they are, will have their demographic identity used against them by amoral journalists. Men, women, black, brown, white, whatever…

No, because they don’t.

Women are encouraged more than men to make decisions (such as voting) on the basis of people and personality rather than policy and principle, but I’m not sure what the end result it, i.e. whether women act like this.

Why assume that it’s a male plot? Could there not be a female plot to keep (the vast majority of) women ‘in their place’ and stop them becoming too powerful?

If anything, women have a broader range of available stereotypes to imitate than men do.

10

(I can’t believe I’m about to take this position in the discussion. :blush: )

Well, that’s not what we hear.

If you’re a woman, unless you’re old, hairy and tough male-like in both appearance and demeanor, a la Golda Meir and the like, you’re not going to be taken seriously in media appearance addicted America.

Women who reach the Presidential age of 35 still suffer from periodic mood swings … which men find scary and fear such instability being at the nation’s helm.

Women also can suffer worse than periodic mood swings in the phenonenon of PMS … which men find even scarier (note the milk industry commercials where the aliens suffering from their queen’s PMS attacks travel all the way to Earth in search of the magic elixer milk that can supposedly cure her). Don’t even go there.

Women also are known to be more feeling oriented (accurate based on both general public annecdote and psychological batteries) than men … which men fear will make a “compassionate” woman President less likely to attack in defense of a nuclear threat … or fly into a sudden uncontrolled rage and be more apt to irrationally start a nuclear war.

As a result of our biology, women often operate at emotional extremes, spending less time in the more “balanced” emotional state enjoyed by men.

And it’s not just men who understandably fear these matters – we women are keenly aware of our own White House handicaps … which, like men, many women will most definitely consider when they cast their ballot.

Because of the aforementioned reasons among others, women find themselves famous for the reasons presented by the quoted author in the initial post of this thread … and such mockery is not seen as compatible with being the President of the U.S. Now given the buffoonery of recent Presidents, I realize that what “should be” is a bit irrelevant … but people won’t consciously place in the White House anyone or class of people who appear to be subject to bat-craziness, not with the potential nuclear consquences that could result.

Women also go through menopause, right about the time they’re more likely electable (anywhere from age 45 through 55 on average), and for many women that hormonal imbalance can devastate their sensibilities, even tire them out to the degree of sleep-compelling exhaustion at 10:00 AM. The drugs we have to deal with that, during that time and forever afterwards, are often substandard, and many require a special concoction that has to be mixed at the pharmacy, if we’re lucky enough to find a doctor who can devise it. Heaven forbid if Madam President carelessly runs out of her drug … at a G8 summit.

The media captures all of this “bad” press.

The media presents it all in any form from laughing entertainment throughout the day to myriad pharmaceutical aids on the nightly news.

The message gets through: women are handicapped and thus a liability in the White House.

Men, as a class, simply don’t have these problems or anything comparable that makes them a liability in this manner.

Women, by virtue of media presentation of their real issues, appear doomed to the “vice” presidency indefinitely.

11

I can.

By ‘we’ you mean ‘I’, I take it?

Depends on what you mean by ‘taken seriously’. I’d argue that plenty of bimbos with surgically enhanced assets are taken more seriously than any politicians (male or female).

Men also suffer from periodic mood swings, they’re just less documented.

I don’t find PMS scary, but I’m considerably larger than most women and as such could restrain them if it became necessary. I’m not familiar with the adverts you reference, I live on t’other side of the bath.

Psychological batteries? What the hell are they? As I see it, women are more prone to momentary emotional outbursts but men are more prone to extended ones. That’s one of the reasons why men suffer from extreme mental illnesses more than women, from what I’ve read.

Well, no one has ever been both a man and a woman (outside of ancient mythology, which isn’t the most reliable source of information about the human condition, however appealing the narratives might be) so I don’t see how a direct comparison can be made. And if you ask men and women about such things they almost invariably (as you are now) repeat the phrases and logics that they’ve heard, rather than try to describe their own individual experience.

Going back to what I said before, it’s not like the President actually makes the decision to go to war or pursue any other dramatic policy anyway, so it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference who people vote for. But I take your point, there are some out there who wouldn’t vote for a woman president largely on the basis that there is a popular stereotype of women as emotional, irrational, capricious and so on.

I dunno, they elected the lying philandering Bill Clinton and the lying warmonger Bush, and the lying conspirator Nixon and the champagne socialist Kennedy and…

I don’t think that a lot of people vote by thinking (and feeling, if you insist) through things in a careful, strategic manner. Most vote according to party affiliation in the US because there are only two parties with a chance of winning.

Again, the President is a figurehead, not a determiner of policy in the broad and direct way that they are portrayed as being. Same with the PM over here.

There is no ‘the media’, particularly when it comes to politics. There are different media organs. On the topic of a female president some will say ‘its about time’, some will say ‘its long overdue’, some will not give a damn either way, some will say ‘its the end of civilisation as we know it’ and so on.

This is A message, I grant you. But to call it THE message is naive in the extreme. Look at what’s happening with Wimbledon - female tennis players now have ‘equal pay’ and all sorts of liberals, feminists, spineless men desperately trying to get a career in media are fawning over the decision, calling it a ‘historic day’ and all the rest of it. The fact that women’s matches last on average about half as long (and therefore equal pay is for unequal work, which is unfair) has been almost entirely overlooked. If I were of your mindset, I’d be tempted to say ‘the message gets through loud and clear: women can feel free to abuse the notion of equality to get unequal, advantageous treatment’.

Sure they do - the same hormonal allegation (‘thinks with his balls’, ‘one though on his mind’ ‘it’s all testosterone’) exists, though it’s probably less widely used.

And with that sort of defeatist, blame the media attitude women will deserve nothing more than vice presidential status. The best women are fully capable of ignoring all that crap, working on their strengths and weaknesses, and achieving their goals. It generally helps if they have someone to love them. Our culture does tend to drive women into even fiercer competition than it does men, and loving relationships is a good way to combat this in terms of day to day personal life.

In terms of the whole political paradigm, you’re probably better off talking to detrop.

12

Yes, and stop using the terms man and woman so much. You’re a person. If you feel laid down because of your sex, then stop think in terms of sex.