5/21/2012

"Journalist" Wife of Romney Adviser Says Obama Is Condescending to Women:
So failed former CNN anchoress, Campbell Brown, writes in yesterday's New York Times that President Obama was being oh-so patronizing to women in his commencement address at Barnard College and in his campaign. And she actually says, "The Republican primaries probably did turn some women away." That's like saying that herpes sores probably prevented someone from getting laid. No, the sores are disgusting. No fucking for you.

Mostly, though, Brown is so wrong in so many ways that it makes sense that she married Dan Senor, who works for Mitt Romney's soon-to-be failed campaign for president. Senor was one of the worst Bush administration liars about "progress" in Iraq during the first couple of years of the war. Seriously, he could have been standing there with IED-blown soldier guts spattering his flak jacket, and he'd have said how splendiferous it was going. And his forehead is disturbingly huge.

So Brown can say with a straight face that Obama was being a condescending fuck when he said at Barnard, "I am convinced you are tougher" and "things will get better — they always do." Then Brown cites statistics about the number of recent college grads who are out of work - which is a whole lot. But the thing is that Obama didn't act like a cheerleader. What he said before those lines was "[A]s young people, in many ways you have it even tougher than we did. This recession has been more brutal, the job losses steeper. Politics seems nastier. Congress more gridlocked than ever. Some folks in the financial world have not exactly been model corporate citizens." Pretty honest. In the end, though, it was a goddamn graduation speech. Was he supposed to follow that up with, "Soooo, you're fucked"?

But beyond context being a wicked bitch, Brown attacks the Obama campaign for its "Life of Julia" interactive web feature (it's not an "ad," as Brown calls it, except that it's part of the Obama for President website). It's "a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help," Brown says. Yes, it must be a vile tracing of all the ways that you welfare moms and single gals can get free government birth control and abortions and food stamps and vagina checks. Except that when you actually read it, what it's really saying is "Hey, look at all the passive ways that government affects you every day of your lives and, oh, by the way, here's how Republicans want to take it away." Public schools, Medicare, health insurance up to age 26, all shit that ought to not be controversial. It's not about relying on government. Government is just there. Maybe you want to get rid of loan subsidies to help start small businesses, which is the only thing listed that is above and beyond trying to stay alive and get an education. It's not "an overwhelming factor in their daily existence."

No, no, this is Obama treating women like little objects that need to be coddled, unlike the hardy Brown women who face down hardship with nothing more than families to offer them soup and a clean bed. There's the cousin "started a small company with a little savings, renovating houses. A single mom, she saved enough to buy a home and provide child care for her son. When the economy went belly up, so did her company. She was forced to sell her home and move in with her parents. She has found another job, but doesn’t make enough to move out." Oh, no government involved there. Just good ol' family. But you just wanna call "Bullshit" on that tale (and another one). Because either Cousin Brown's family is super wealthy or the child is getting health care from CHIP.

"Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state," Brown concludes. They just want a fair chance because the economy matters most to them. In "The Life of Julia," one of the pats on the head/ward of the state things mentioned is "Because of steps like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Julia is one of millions of women across the country who knows she'll always be able to stand up for her right to equal pay."

Yeah, fuck that paternalistic bastard.