Gender Politics

Perhaps because that new Geena Davis show premieres tonight, I've been hearing a lot of talking heads on the pros and cons of the idea of a woman President. CNN right now is going over viewer mail on the questions of whether the country is ready for a woman in the highest office, and the responses that Jack Cafferty is reading are fairly typical of CNN viewers - a little sarcastic and mostly liberal. So yes, of course, the CNN pollsshow that America is ready for a woman President.

But, earlier today, I rode in a cab that was playing the Bill O'Reilly show. Ugh. The whole question was really just another excuse for O'Reilly to engage in one of his favorite sports, Hillary-bashing. But the callers he was getting were astounding to me. These were mostly *women* calling in, saying that there should never be a woman President. They were claiming all of these horrible things, that a woman could never be trusted with the decision-making required because women are too emotional, that women couldn't handle the difficult foreign policy and military choices (guess they've missed the identity of 2 of the last 3 secretaries of state), and that women would surround themselves with insufficient advisors who were just there for emotional support and not true policy advice. WHAT?

I was so angry I couldn't keep it in, so at one particularly vile moment when a female caller was saying that women only make emotional decisions, I yelled out from the back seat "Have none of these women ever held jobs? Working women at all levels need to make professional - not emotional - decisions every single day!" The cab driver and I then started talking about it, and he was just listening to the show to hear what the "other side thinks" (AS, could it be the same driver?). He agreed that it was probably just O'Reilly trying to attack Hillary again.

Current scuttlebutt is that Hillary and Condi might both be making a stab at it in 2008, and I woiuldn't be surprised if they are the only ones. Think what you want about either of them (you know I'm on Team Edwards, although I do firmly believe that the first female President in this country will be a Republican cuz that seems to be the only way the voters would accept it), but the reality of a viable female candidate is not that far away. I hope that this awful kind of rhetoric doesn't become the main theme of any female candidate's run.

Perhaps O'Reilly, the ultimate no-spin spinner, said it best when he wrapped up the show. Even after stirring his callers into a frenzy of anti-woman venom, he himself said "I would vote for a woman if she was the strongest candidate. If the best man for a job is a woman, she's got my vote."