Gender and 2020

After seeming to deemphasize it—corruption and inequality were her original themes—Elizabeth Warren has now made gender a defiant linchpin of her argument for electability, in a year when some think electability is all . . . . and many fear a woman is not electable. (Whether or not Bernie Sanders is one of these I will leave to your speculation. I am quite sure he believes a woman would be capable of serving as president. I am not so sure he is immune to the widespread worry that America is not capable of electing one. But that’s a subtle distinction long since trampled by the wildebeests of propaganda.)

The picture is chaotic and infuriating, ruled by a nasty mix of timidity and calculation. Progressives think a centrist is not electable; centrists think a progressive is not electable. Significant numbers of each group seem prepared to make their prophecy self-fulfilling by staying home or casting a protest vote if a candidate from the other group wins the nomination. Many women who say they would welcome a female president are so sure that the majority of their fellow Americans wouldn’t that they are hedging their bets by supporting a (white) man. (And, they say they find Warren “strident” and “schoolmarmish,” then deny that anything sexist shapes that perception. Klobuchar is fine, one such friend protests to me; others point out that she’s a “bitch” to her staffers.) Many black voters have made a similar calculation about race. Mayor Pete’s popularity demonstrates that being male (and white) trumps sexual orientation—progress of one kind at the price of another. It’s a sign of panic and petulance that likely voters can neither agree on who the strongest candidate(s) might be nor simply support whomever they believe in.

I started out liking Warren; after the merciless exposure of an overlong campaign season, filled with mistakes and attacks, of course I like her a lot less. I still support her, precisely for what progressive purists (whipped up by a chorus of Furies left, right, and bot*) hate her for: she could compromise. She is hard enough on rampant inequality, plutocracy, and corporate malfeasance while yet not burning every bridge to business or to those who fear government tyranny. It’s a squeaker whether she could pull that off and not be simultaneously traduced as a “liar” and sellout by the left and a socialist Carrie Nation by the right. But no one else has any of both (except possibly Tulsi Gabbard, whose best shot at the presidency—still a long long long shot—is to be Bernie’s VP when he has his next heart attack, presuming him “electable”).

It’s a mess, one we seem hopelessly mired in when we can least afford it. The republic hangs by a thread.

The irony is, gender has never been Elizabeth Warren’s foremost characteristic to me.** I’ve been in situations over the years in which gender was so backgrounded that I forgot to notice it: karate classes in which I was the only female and only realized it as an afterthought; publishing meetings in which there was only one guy, ditto; most conversations with friends. Warren’s candidacy is another one of those for me. The best way I can put it is that she has had the life experiences of a woman but has undergone them as a human. She apparently can’t be bothered with feminine wiles or niceties; she doesn’t dress her intellect or her vehemence in softening sweetness or charm. Ironically this post-genderedness—such a relief—is held against her as a female candidate.

In so many ways—in so many meanings of “we” and “win”—we can’t win.

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*What is bots’ preferred pronoun?

**What is Warren’s foremost characteristic in my mind? It’s not just one: inspiring/ charisma, courage, a sense of destiny that at moments has seemed to possess her; maddening/ a boneheaded, tone-deaf tendency to stick to script too long and then shift with an artless clunk-screech of gears, giving the impression that she is both stubborn and opportunistic.

Not a happy fate . . .

. . . to love a poet.

T. S. Eliot rises up from the grave to shame the equally dead Emily Hale, whose estate just released fifteen years of letters HE wrote to HER. He never loved her; she would have killed his gift. 🙄

I can’t help thinking of the reverse case: Sharon Olds, one of my heroes, who wrote graphically and sometimes grotesquely (cue two insects devouring each other) of her primal sexual passion for and with her husband. While I found these poems breathtaking and brave, I admit to also wincing for the man in the picture, wondering: Was he down with this public exposure? Then, in late midlife, suddenly he dumped her for a quiet fellow doctor (first I’d heard he was a doctor). Her delayed response was another brave and shame-defying book, this one about her humiliation, shock, and grief, and, finally, generous celebration of his freedom. Stag’s Leap won the Pulitzer Prize . . .  and, ironically, the T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize.

Bette Howland’s Posthumous Second Act

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. . . . At last it had dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

~ Bette Howland

Howland was a protegé, no doubt lover, and lifelong friend of Saul Bellow, who had high regard for her work and untiringly promoted her (ironically culminating in a MacArthur “genius grant” that made her so self-conscious she could no longer finish anything). He also wrote about her mercilessly as a character, Dita Schwartz, in his novel More Die of Heartbreak.

“What would she have made of the furor over her rediscovered work? [Her son] Jacob suspects she would be irritated by the focus on gender, a perpetual theme in reviews and articles. ‘I can hear her voice saying, “I’m not just a woman writer, I’m a writer,’” he says. ‘She thought of herself as an American writer, and more specifically as a Chicago writer,’ working in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser, James T. Farrell, Richard Wright.

“And yet she was a woman writer, writing from her own distinct perspective—as a daughter, as a mother—and that fact shifts the Chicago literature canon, which is still ‘a boys’ club, a sausage fest,’ as [author and critic Bill] Savage puts it. Its beginning is often traced to Carl Sandburg’s poem ‘Chicago,’ Savage says, ‘where he actually personified the city as a working-class man.’ (Interestingly, the few women writers added to the canon in the more recent decades—Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros—are all women of color.)”

Second Acts

“I figure I’ve got another 25 years,” musician Jane Jarvis told The Indianapolis Star in 1999. “At least I’ve got 25 years booked out.”

©Brownie Harris

Beloved for playing the organ at Shea Stadium, gainfully employed programming for Muzak, Jarvis “retired” at 64—to start a second career as a jazz musician, her lifelong love. “She recorded her first album as a leader in 1985, the year she turned 70.”

Oh yeah.

The female “dozens”

Praise song, battle boast, and putdown all in one. Awkwafina (she IS a genius!) manages both to crush all rivals and to slay all remaining traces of penis envy once and for all.

UPDATE: Awkwafina wins a Golden Globe!

“If you close your eyes, you’ll say it’s a man playing.”

Dizzy Gillespie’s left-handed compliment to trumpeter Clora Bryant, who died August 23, 2019, at age 92.

(Misha Erwitt, The New York Times)

Had she not “[run] into gender-based limitations on how famous she could become,” who knows, we might be knowing and saying her name in the same breath as his. “Clora,” like “Dizzy.” But “even when jazz history became a subject of major academic concern in the late 1970s and 1980s, she was rarely celebrated at the level of her male counterparts, who had enjoyed greater support throughout their careers.”

Nevertheless, she persisted in a multifaceted career, becoming a jazz educator to young musicians and children in very old age when she no longer had the wind to play.

In her childhood, her single-parent family—headed by her untiringly supportive father, her mother having died when she was 3—also persevered in the face of the matter-of-fact brutality of racism. Her father supported her and her brothers on $7 a week. When he was “run out of Texas by a group of white people who accused him of stealing paint,” the family moved to L.A. and started over.

How many with far more opportunity have accomplished a fraction as much?

“Woman dies after being nearly sucked out of plane,” [UPDATED]

reads the headline in the Guardian‘s e-mail on yesterday’s Southwest Airlines engine failure. What it doesn’t say is,

“Woman pilot saves the other 148.”

I am divided on the fact that this is not lead news.

On the one hand, the matter-of-factness of it pleases me. Her femaleness should NOT be a big deal, any more than our previous president’s African Americanness should have been. Courage and competence are the proper focus.

Authorities said the crew did what they were trained to do.

“They’re in the simulator and practice emergency descents … and losing an engine … They did the job that professional airline pilots are trained to do,” National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt told reporters.

And maybe that was her choice. She hasn’t been available for comment.

On the other hand, it betrays an insidious old habit of getting all excited about women as victims, but not about women as heroes.

“She has nerves of steel,” said [a survivor]. “That lady, I applaud her. I’m going to send her a Christmas card, I’m going to tell you that, with a gift certificate for getting me on the ground. She was awesome.”

She “was among the first female fighter pilots in the US military, according to friends and the alumni group at her alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene University.”

So, I’ll say it #TammieJoShults is #TheNewSullySullivan.

UPDATE: The story I read was one of the most poker-faced about this aspect of the story. (Oh, those Brits.) The Guardian (which I rely on, don’t get me wrong) also published a photo of the victim but not of the hero. We’ll remedy that in a moment. But many other media are, in fact, focusing on the hero—and comparing her to Sullivan.

Ms Shults, originally from New Mexico, has previously revealed that she might never have become a pilot.

She was quoted on fighter plane blog F-16.net saying she tried to attend an aviation career day at high school but was told they did not accept girls. [“Nevertheless, she persisted.”]

Ms Shults, however, never lost the urge to fly and, after studying medicine in Kansas, applied to the US Air Force. It would not let her take the test to become a pilot, but the US Navy did.

She was one of the first female F-18 pilots and became an instructor before she left the Navy in 1993 and joined Southwest, according to the blog.

A Christian, who is married to a fellow pilot and has two children, Ms Shults said that sitting in the captain’s chair gave her “the opportunity to witness for Christ on almost every flight.”

Of course, the first photo I could find of her was taken a quarter century ago, when she looked the movie part:

Tammie Jo Shults in the early 1990s. (Courtesy Linda Maloney. Washington Post.)

She’s 56 now. We wouldn’t want to see THAT, would we? Yeah, we would.

(Tammie Jo Shults with husband, Dean, at MidAmerica Nazarene University. KEVIN GARBER, DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI RELATIONS AT MIDAMERICA NAZARENE UNIVERSITY. From Newsweek.)

UPDATE 2: Here’s a summary of the considerable challenges and skills involved.

Palin: The Undefeated

“I want to be the one to walk in the sun,” Cyndi Lauper explains in “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” a pop cultural artifact that mystically embodies the spirit of Sarah Palin’s fierce determination and authentic American voice that captured the hearts and minds of so many of us burgeoning Tea Partiers way back when. Or so we think.

Jedediah Bila: “Elitism is what’s eating away at our country”

Like many of her admirers, we first came upon leg-chair lovely Jedediah Bila early one morning in the “take-no-prisoners” parry and thrust of Greg Gutfeld’s “Red Eye” on Fox.

By Sissy Willis of sisu

“I always have thought that elitism — on the left and the right — is what’s eating away at our country,” writes “Hot Conservative American” columnist and commentator Jedediah Bila in her new book, Outnumbered: Chronicles of a Manhattan Conservative, an album of anecdotal moments in the making of a “conservative girl with a twist.”

“I followed my heart — as always — and have held dear the wise words of my former college professor to “sit down, trust it, and write” when I feel lost. It never disappoints me,” Jedediah explains the eureka moment in March of 2009 when “my focus on writing political commentary was born.”

It’s a fun and easy read — sweet and savory — and sticks to the ribs. We downloaded Outnumbered onto our desktop Kindle app yesterday morning and finished before cocktail hour, devouring tasty morsels amongst the usual multitaskings of a busy day. Arranged as a series of vignettes based upon everyday encounters with the politically correct multiculturalists of the upperclass milieu she moved in as a Spanish teacher at a Manhattan private school, Jedediah’s story is full of aphoristic quotable quotes suitable for promulgating on Twitter. A sampling:

Kids are supposed to go to school to learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

I learned that what people say about you has a lot more to do with them than with you.

It’s incredible how a mind prone to collectivism will quickly try to impose that same branding on you.

I treasure people who come to this country with big goals, loads of ambition and an inspiring work ethic.

“They felt the need to ‘remind’ me that Obama is a ‘genius,’ Palin is an ‘idiot,’ and anything and everything is George W. Bush’s fault,” Jedediah recalled sitting through lockstep faculty-lounge chatter in the aftermath of President Obama’s election.

Back to that quote in the title to our post:

I always have thought that elitism — on the left and the right — is what’s eating away at our country.

Jedediah’s insight resonates in a series of eureka moments of our own dating back, perhaps, to those early days in early spring of 2009 when we found our voice as an anti-statist Tea Party activist. As we wrote last year in “Gramsci’s long march through the institutions ends at the water’s edge“:

Then came Angelo Codevilla’s palate-cleansing revelation that neither statist democrats nor nominally limited-government republicans gave a darn about the electorate. It was the Ruling Class vs the Country Class. Enter stage right the Tea Party and Barbara Bush’s unmasking when she revealed her contempt for you and me. And now the cascade of outrageous intrusions on our Bill of Rights.

“I thought the academic elite were supposed to represent the pinnacle of sophistication?” notes Jedediah in mock surprise:

Oh, wait. That’s only when they agree with you.

William Staneski observed the phenomenon — a case of “epistemic closure‘ in the trendy parlance of the day — as it applies to another of our cultural institutions, the media — in an American Thinker piece awhile back:

It is said that a fish is not aware of the water in which it swims since it is totally immersed in it. This is the way cultural Marxism is taking over our world in its inexorable Gramscian march. We swim in it. It enters every pore of our existence. It is everywhere. We can’t escape it. Many people accept this world without even realizing it, just as the fish accepts the water in which it swims. They don’t realize it as the left creates new conventional wisdom and new intuitions about truth …

Curiously, whereas the conservative media know they are conservative, much of the liberal media believe themselves to be neutral.

Their constant support for Democratic views has nothing to do with bias, in their minds, but reflects the fact that Democrats just happen to be right about everything. The result is the same: for much of the media, the fact that Republicans keep winning can only be due to the backwardness of much of the country.

“Perhaps Mark Levin said it best when speaking of his dog Sprite in his touching book, Rescuing Sprite: ‘But the truth is, Sprite did more for us than we ever could have done for him.’ I feel exactly the same way about Emma,” Jedediah wrote at her blog a few months back about her precious Maltese Emma, featured in a portfolio of images in the final pages of Outnumbered. “She has taught me more about trust, loyalty, commitment, and honesty than I could ever have dreamt of teaching her.”

Crossposted at sisu, Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The supporting role of political spouse did not suit Ms. Taylor

“When a man loves a woman . . . Sen. John Warner has no shame, as his absurd marriage to Liz Taylor in 1976 (above) and his pathetic attempt at intimidating Lt. General David Petraeus yesterday attest,” we captioned this image of Liz and her sixth back in January of 2007. (©2005 TopFoto / AP)

By Sissy Willis of sisu

Chelsea, March 23, 2011. In recognition of the splendiferous, eminently quotable — “I have a woman’s body and a child’s emotions” — Elizabeth Taylor’s passing from this vale of tears this day, a republication of our January 2007 post confirming her sensible decision to divorce Husband #6 John Warner when she realized it was all about him:

Many regarded Ms. Taylor’s glamour as a chief reason for the relatively unknown Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, getting a Senate seat in 1978. The supporting role as political spouse did not suit Ms. Taylor, and she returned to a life where she was undoubtedly the main attraction.

Our four-year-old post resonates. Plus ça change:

Chelsea, January 24, 2007. “Addressing the crisis in leadership among American boys and young men” was the topic of pc-lite Esquire author Tom Chiarella’s brave new article last summer, “The Problem with Boys.” The soon-to-be commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, Lt. General David Petraeus, was one of the earnest author’s expert witnesses. We stumbled upon the thoughtful if somewhat annoyingly naive piece as we were getting up to speed on the man of the hour that Thomas P.M. Barnett in another Esquire article called “the closest thing the Army has to its own Lawrence of Arabia.” Chiarella skirts delicately around the edges of the insidious Marxist feminist anti-boys-will-be-boys movement of the last few decades that has turned Mother Nature’s “snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails” into carriers of a “disorder” that must be kept at bay by the administration of Ritalin and other inadequately tested drugs that kill the soul and may precipitate murderous acts [see Columbine]. Speaking of a young, rudderless friend named Gerald, Ciarella — seemingly channeling John “Stuck-in-Iraq” Kerry — writes:

He’s got no way to grab on to the culture of work. Nowhere to go, except Iraq maybe. They keep raising the bonus for enlistment; they keep tempting him to put himself in the mix. I always think he’s a bag of flesh to them, a bullet stopper.

Reading that military-culture-challenged bit of drivel, we gagged and nearly clicked away in disgust, but remembering that Lt. General Petraeus had brought us to the site, we read on and were duly rewarded with Chiarella’s reportage of the General’s take:

I tell him about the boys I know, about how I’m concerned that the Army may be the only option for a kid like Gerald. “That’s the problem,” he says. “It may not be an option for him. We have a profile we’re looking for; we need high school graduates who are physically fit and driven by the desire for self-improvement. We need men who are prepared to be better soldiers.

“I see the same things you do. The numbers are declining among boys,” he says, clearing his throat. “I always call them men.

“What boys need,” says Petraeus, “are role models, parental supervision, encouragement to pursue excellence in all that they do, especially in education, where we must do whatever is necessary to keep them in school.” Old stuff, but tried and true and often lost amidst today’s multiculti pc cacaphony:

They need direction to stay on the straight and narrow, a push to participate in athletics and extracurricular activities, help to pursue a healthy lifestyle, recognition that they must be accountable for their actions, and reinforcement of good performance.

We couldn’t help but think of those aging Peter-Pan boys — and girls — in the Senate who made such fools of themselves yesterday when they bypassed the opportunity to ask General Petraeus to educate them — and us — with his vast store of knowledge about the subject at hand, the “way forward” in Iraq. Instead they used the opportunity of Petraeus’s confirmation hearing to — what else? — grandstand at will. Our favorite exchange came after Sen. Lieberman asked Petraeus whether Senate resolutions condemning White House Iraq policy “would give the enemy some comfort”:

Petraeus agreed they would, saying, “That’s correct, sir.”

Liz Taylor’s ex, Sen. John Warner, went ballistic, warning Petraeus not to step on prima donnas’ toes:

We’re not a division here today of patriots who support the troops and those who are making statements and working on resolutions that could be translated as aiding and abetting the enemy. We’re trying to exercise the fundamental responsibilities of our democracy and how this nation has two co-equal branches of the government, each bearing its own responsibilities.

I hope that this colloquy has not entrapped you into some responses that you might later regret. I wonder if you would just give me the assurance that you’ll go back and examine the transcript as to what you replied with respect to certain of these questions and review it, because we want you to succeed.

We expect intimidation from the left and from campaign finance “reform” types like John McCain. How disappointing to see John Warner going wobbly when the going gets tough. As Gen. Petraeus told Esquire author Tom Chiarella, “We have a profile we’re looking for.” Would that our fellow citizens who vote these people into office had such standards.

Crossposted at sisu,  Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.