That’s Some Catch

Kerry Howley gets it right in responding to John Edwards affecting Manliness in response to Clinton briefly crying:

Add to this useful list of the worst jobs in the world: consultant to any candidate with breasts. Show emotion and you’re weak; show strength and you’re a collection of servos. Respond to attacks with emotion and you’re “angry.” Respond with equanimity and you’re cold and distant. Shy from war and you’re too feminine to lead; embrace it and you’re the establishment’s whore. And the worst thing you can do? Acknowledge, in any way, shape, or form, the existence of sexism in these United States.

Exactly.

This also reminds me that I forgot to link to Howley’s NYT op-ed this weekend, which was also good. Yes, sure, in ideal world it would be nice if all candidates for public office had accomplishments entirely innocent of social conditions, but this is nothing like the actual world about American politics. Leaving aside even the most obvious examples like Bush, I don’t recall anyone saying that John McCain shouldn’t be considered for public office because he owes his place in office to his military service, and hos service (and subsequent visibility of his heroism) were partially a product of the fact that his father was an admiral and his grandfather was an admiral. It’s not surprising that women have often taken advantage of dynasties to gain political power; it’s exactly the same way in that men have exploited social connections, except that many of the networks available to politicians have historically been closed to women.