Brushfire of Freedom
The Irritable Pundit
Hi all,
Maureen Dowd wrote a barn-burner of a column the other day (New York Times Column) where she simply made up, whole cloth, words that didn't exist to prove a totally unrelated point. In this example, Maureen relates how someone she wants to accuse of racism didn't make a racist comment. So she just inserted it, then claimed her fantasy version proves it. "Fair or not", she said that is what she heard.
Which really got me thinking that I've been working way too hard up to now. It will be much easier if I get to just make things up! Truthfully, this could be all sorts of fun.
Like the latest Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times "Blue Is the New Black". Go read it. No, I'm serious. if you don't read it you will not get what is about to happen. Read it, I'll wait.
All done? Good! Before we get started, pound yourself in the face with a ball-peen hammer to knock the stupid out. All better? Great! Now let's give this newest Dowd column an Irritable Pundit rewrite using Maureen's own standard for journalistic excellence!
...
"Blue Is the New Black"
Women are getting unhappier, I told my pseudo-friend Carl.
“How can you tell?” he deadpanned. “It’s always been whine-whine-whine. Hey, you are paying for lunch right?”
Why are we sadder? I persisted. I mean sure, I've pushed every eligible man away from me by being a screechy needy harpy all of my life until I am finally an unattractive old spinster. And yeah, I have no redeeming qualities and a paper-thin sensitivity to criticism. But should that matter?
“Because you care,” he replied with a mock sneer. “You have feelings.”
Oh, that. He was right of course, I do care. I care too much about myself to give another human being even an ounce of concern. Is that wrong?
In the early ’70s, breaking out of the domestic cocoon and deciding that you needed a man like a fish needs a bicycle, leaving their mothers’ circumscribed lives behind, young women felt exhilarated, slutty and bold.
But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women? Or could it simply be that listening to us tell them how to run their lives turned out to be a mistake? That convincing them to go it alone, even as Gloria Steinem changed her tune and desperately snagged a man while she could still produce a tiny droplet of estrogen, was wrong somehow? Well maybe Steinem put her fins on the pedals, but the rest of us held strong!
According to the General Social Survey, a left-wing think tank study involving pulling numbers directly from colon polyps, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.
Before the ’70s, there was a gender gap in America in which women felt greater well-being. Now there’s a gender gap in which men feel better about their lives. It was fine when men were unhappy of course.
As Arianna Huffington, another extremely depressed and winey woman, points out in a blog post headlined “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling”: “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.” The fact that the "unhappy married with children thing" seems to only be true in progressive marriages surely doesn't have any meaning at all, other than conservative women must lie or be beaten.
(The one exception is black women in America, who are a bit happier than they were in 1972, but still not as happy as black men -- besides they hit back, Eddie Murphy said so.)
Marcus Buckingham, a former Gallup researcher who has a new book out called “Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently,” says that men and women passed each other midpoint on the graph of life.
“Though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy, especially when they grow old, alone and childless” Buckingham writes in his new blog on The Huffington Post, pointing out that this darker view covers feelings about marriage, money and material goods. “Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older, especially if they have a good woman and grandchildren running around the yard.”
Buckingham and other experts dispute the idea that the variance in happiness is caused by women carrying a bigger burden of work at home, the “second shift.” They say that while women still do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring, the trend lines are moving toward more parity, which should make them less stressed. Especially as men still carry the great bulk of responsibility as primary earners. Most women realize when they have a good one paying the lion's share of the bills, and the extra effort around the house is even more appreciated for that reason.
When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage. You know, like men.
“Choice is inherently stressful,” Buckingham said in an interview. “And women are being driven to distraction.” The fact that men handle those things and stay happy certainly does not mean that men are better at handling choice and issues, just that there is obviously some sort of unfair advantage that men possess, which must be litigated away.
One area of extreme distraction is kids. “Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” said Betsey Stevenson, a childless assistant professor desperate to justify her own barren existence, at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called “The Paradox of Declining Liberal Female Happiness.” “It’s true whether you’re wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early. Although I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn’t had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness, I still beat that data like an Iraqi soldier until it showed the trends my brittle ego insisted upon.”
The more important things that are crowded into their lives, the less attention liberal women are able to give to each thing, being the delicate little easily tweaked flowers we are. Why this isn't true to conservative women who handle a host of things while simultaneously appreciating and enjoying their friends, family, husbands, community and worship proves yet again that some sort of conservative male dominated patriarchy must be forcing them to lie. Otherwise, liberal women like me would be shown to be shallow self-obsessed narcissists.
Add this to the fact that women are hormonally more complicated and biologically more vulnerable at least one week of each month. Women are much harder on themselves than men, or at least in general. Of course, liberal women are definitely harder on men, which is why they would rather chew off their own arm than be caught by one of us.
Liberal women tend to attach to other people more strongly, trying to fill a vacuum of need that would deplete the ocean, and beat themselves up more when they lose attachments, which of course happens anytime we open our mouths. We take things more personally at work (Frank Rich stole my eyeliner and I was in tears for a week!) and pop far more antidepressants in an attempt to forget that Sarah Palin, a successful, conservative and infuriatingly sexy mother, has a mature, grizzled, handsome and strapping husband who adores her, supports her, and keeps her bed blisteringly hot in the evenings. BLISTERINGLY HOT!
Oh my. I need another pill.
“Liberal women without husbands have lives that become increasingly empty,” Buckingham said. “They’re doing more bitching and feeling less attractive as they age, which of course is true.”
Another daunting thing: America is more youth and looks obsessed than ever, with an array of expensive cosmetic procedures that allow women to be their own Frankenstein Barbies. yet no amount of surgery has allowed me to catch anyone's eye other than a gay design assistant looking for a beard. This needs to go to the Supreme Court! I am sure Sonya and Ruth understand this issue very well, being childless spinsters themselves.
Men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate — and Restylane — their 20s into their 60s. It isn't fair! Why is Todd Palin getting more hot while all I'm getting is hot flashes as my hormones shut down? You just KNOW his chest is covered in gross hair. Lots of gross, manly hair. Masculine hair that would tickle my chest as his manly Alaskan arms grabbed me...Ummm... damnit. These batteries are dead.
Buckingham says that greater appreciation of their spouses has made real men happier. And that while they are relieved of bearing sole responsibility for their family finances, and no longer have the pressure of having women totally dependent on them, increased disruption in their lives from their wives careers does make life more difficult. Still, a fulfilled wife is a happier wife and modern men easily make the sacrifice for the woman they love. In fact, the most successful marriages have men that allow their wives that self-empowerment while having women that allow their men to act like...men. Of course, this again generally only happens in conservative circles.
Conservative men also tend to fare better romantically as time wears on, being self-contained, non-graspy and actually having something to offer a partner. There are more widows than widowers as men die younger due to stress and their own bodies raging hormonal cocktails, but pointing out the long-term negative health effects of men's chemistry is not as much fun as whining about a woman's less-damaging but annoying monthly cycles. I mean, what the fun in admitting we have the better end of that deal? Really, what is an extra 5 or 10 years worth anyway? And men have an easier time getting younger mates, as they actually have something to offer. This needs a congressional hearing!
Stevenson, desperately trying to justify a loveless existence, looks on the bright side of the dark trend, suggesting that happiness is beside the point. Who cares? We’re happy to have our newfound abundance of choices, she said, even if those choices end up making us unhappier. That statement betraying the sort of twisted nonsensical claptrap that passes for logic in today's feminist academic circles.
A paradox, indeed. Now I'm going to head to my lonely bed with a box of Bon Bons, a fresh pack of D cells for another tear-streaked night of dreaming for the things I foolishly spurned as a young girl.
Oh! Oh Todd!
...
Hey this whole writing thing is so much easier now! Thanks Maureen! I know you didn't actually say those things of course, but fair or not, that is what I heard.
Contact The Irritable Pundit Brushfire Home
Copyright 2009. The published content is the sole property of the author. Any copy, use, or redistribution of any portion of the material without the written consent of the owner is a violation of international copyright laws.