Reardon: Media slapping women back into their place. Democrats silent.

[rodeodance]

Forum Name General Discussion: Primaries
Topic subject Reardon: Media slapping women back into their place. Democrats silent.
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4607345#4607345
4607345, Reardon: Media slapping women back into their place. Democrats silent.
Posted by pnwmom on Fri Feb-15-08 03:52 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-reardon/silence-is-assent-what-_b_86827.html

Who could have predicted how much the first presidential race in the 21st Century would damage women's progress? When Betty Friedan and I taught classes together in the mid 1990s, she'd moved beyond The Feminine Mystique to what she called "the second stage," a time when men and women would reconcile their differences so all might benefit.

Were she alive today, she'd be shocked and furious at the deplorable way in which Hillary Clinton's campaign is being used by the media as an excuse to slap women back into what my very much "steamed" 83-year-old mother-in-law, Connie, described yesterday as "our supposed place." Were Betty around now, she'd be shouting before even entering my car, asking me why my generation wasn't doing more. Why we're allowing this to happen?

Part of the problem is that Hillary is running against a very popular Barack Obama. To stand up against media demeaning of his opponent takes a level of sportsmanship by his supporters we're willing to teach our children in soccer and baseball but apparently unwilling to expect of ourselves. "I'm for Barack Obama, so I must be OK with despicable attacks on Hillary" is how too many people think. These, no doubt, are the same people who will expect a rush to Barack's side by Hillary supporters should he win the nomination. They'll be saying, "Put it behind us and let's move on. Get over it."

SNIP

Each rung of the ladder onerously constructed and climbed by women in the past and present is being damaged by the current Democratic presidential race. I knew things weren't perfect -- that we weren't in any sense solidly in the second stage. I just didn't think vile media attacks on Hillary that resonate for all women would go largely unchallenged by the Democratic Party -- that people supposedly on the side of equal regard for all would be, by their silence, little better than those on the attack.

If a vote for the Democratic Party means condoning incivility toward women and giving the most vile in the media and ones who take their lead from them free, unchallenged reign, then the Democratic Party is a shadow of its former self -- and may indeed be deservedly so in numbers before the vicious game they've condoned is over.