The New York Times > Reading Kerry's Mind

Reading Kerry's Mind

I'm generally no fan of William Safire's political musings, so it should be no surprise that this latest op-ed piece sends dark shivers down my spine... He's irritated me enough in the past for me to recognize his name...

This little column lists 10 things John Kerry can do to get back into the presidential race for November. Somw of these are decent ideas and address a few of the issues that have really turned me off Kerry from the beginning. However, the last couple of comments really offended me. First because he completely plays a misogynistic card by inferring that women are too stupid to understand politics and are being conned by the Republicans into thinking that Bush & Co. are fighting for their families safety. Secondly, he states that scaring women with trumped-up anti-abortion rhetoric is sufficient to sway their votes. Frankly, I give American women a little more credit than that... at least as much credit as I give American men.

Studies have shown that women will vote based on physical appearance alone, I know. But to propose an election strategy that attempts to position a candidate as a protector and defender of women's rights and issues by using the most demeaning and insulting tactics to women to do it reveals somethig very sinister about the state of the Democratic play-book. Something that has been worming its way through my thinking for a couple of years now. It may be that I needed to be part of the fight for long enough to see progress and then hear that there is no progress...

The Democratic rhetoric has always looked to portray them as protectors of blacks, women, gays... the disenfranchised, marginalized, and minor. I bought it for years, fighting the "man" to help the little guy. Well, after 20 years, I see a LOT of progress. But the Democratic politicians claim we haven't gotten anywhere. You'd think there were "white-only" restrooms in every restaurant the way they talk. Now, this isn't to say that we should all rest on our laurels and become complacent. It's just that give the people some credit for winning the battle against intolerance and oppression. Admit that it isn't the color of a person's skin that holds them back in life, for example.

So, the women's rights issue... Abortion. Unfortunately, William Safire may not remember that the abortion scare didn't really work in 2000 either. I remember litening to a friend of mine go off into a near-fugue-state crying about how if George Bush gets elected, he'd make abortions illegal. Well, he hasn't of course. Partial Birth Abortions are barbaric and I think that legistlation was dead-on. But it hasn't made abortions illegal. More importantly, is abortion a women's rights issue at all?

It seems to me that a woman's right to have an abortion helps men more than it does women. The laws in this country are heavily weighted in women's favor on support. If a woman has a baby, the father is obligated to provide child support. If she has an abortion, he's off the hook. I've heard plenty of anecdotal evidence about boy-friends who have threatened violence against women if they didn't have a surprise pregnancy aborted. I believe there is even a case of a man who killed a girl because she wouldn't have an abortion in the courts right now.

Now, everyone knows that it is usually the man who initiates sex. It is typically the man who fails to "take precautions" if precautions need to be taken. Men are very "persuasive" when it comes to getting sex and talking your way out of a trip to the convenience store for condoms at the critical moment is important when your on a roll. What does a man have to worry about? STDs? maybe, but women are more likely to contract HIV from unprotected sex than men. Women bear all the risk in this activity. When there is irresponsibility, it is the women who take all the responsibility afterwards... and have to live with the consequences.

So, who benefits from legal, and abundant abortions? Women? No. Irrespnsible, philandering men? ...YES! How has the pro-choice crowd dodged that bullet for so long? I'm not saying women shouldn't have the right to choose what's best for them, but to call this a women's rights issue is wishfull thinking. It is vastly more intricate than that.

This "strategy" to play on women's fears of oppression by ensuring that they stay oppressed, is nauseating. I mean if all these minorities finally achieved the equality and prosperity they've saught for all these years... what would the Democrats have for a political platform? They seem to have a vested interest in keeping people stupid, poor, and oppressed. I bought it when I was 15 because I'd never seen a "whites only" drinking fountain, in fact I assumed that in some parts of teh country we still had them... places like Kentucky where everyone was a racist and women were kept barefoot and pregnant. Imagine my surprise when I arrived here in 1989 and didn't find any of those things. There are about as many overt racists here as there are in rural Maryland. I didn't realize how far the world had come already and so I believed them when they said blacks are no better off now than when they were slaves...

Scared women, huh.... women ought to be scared. Scared that the far left in the United States thinks so little of your intelligence or capacity to make up your own mind that they will attempt to control you with fear for your freedoms. Just like an oppressive man to play on your fears to get what HE wants.