Wednesday, May 19, 2010

MoDo rides again

I used to have much more to say about NYTimes op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd - part of my focus was on the fact that she was the only women op-ed columinst for the NYTimes out of 9 - but they got Gail Collins. And 2 women out of 9 is what passes for gender parity in a world still run by men.

So I slacked off the MoDo beat but could not help but notice her annoying ways today, when I saw her proclaim in her column:
Men, generally more favored by nature as they age, can be single at all ages.
Now you can understand why the old men who run things would favor the "it's nature" argument about the way our society runs, but you'd think MoDo would be less eager to promote such a view. But then again, I've always maintained that she got and keeps her job by sucking up to the old men who run the NYTimes, so it's not surprising that she would support their views.

That men are favored "by nature" as they age is such an obvious lie - unless you consider baldness to be a sign of nature's favor.

Viagra was not invented by "nature."

The fact that there was a double standard that said men could get with much younger women, but women could not get with much younger men is not the result of "nature" - it's the result of men running things to suit themselves. Only in the past 50 years have women even begun to get and keep their own money (and that's only in some parts of the world - in other parts of the world little girls are still sold in marriage to old men.)

Prior to the 1960s most women could not get work that paid well enough to support themselves, much less a husband too. Until the law changed the custom in which jobs were segregated by gender women had extremely limited career options. Limited career options was not the work of "nature."

The fact that women are increasingly LESS dependent on men and as a result of legal changes, and are choosing younger men more and more is not the result of an amazing 50-year evolutionary phenomenon - it's the economy, stupid!

MoDo is obsessed with women having it all - she thinks women can't have it all by "nature" which is why she always found Hillary Clinton to be so galling - Hillary was married to the POTUS - and IMO a pretty damn sexy guy - and yet still had a career as a lawyer - and now she's Secretary of State. This goes completely against MoDo's incredibly blinkered regressive unimaginative concept of how the world should be - or rather how things are in "nature."

But MoDo's new Kagan obsession proves that in MoDo's world, no woman can win. If you are like Hillary, she hates and envies you - if you are single like Kagan she has an op-ed pity party for your spinsterhood.