Thanks to everyone who bought a copy of our book, posted about the book, and/or didn’t sic the Blog Ethics Police on us for plugging it. And special thanks to C.I., Arrianne, Julia (and previously, CaliforniaDrySherry, Actor216, and Misty3K) for their Amazon reviews.Because of your efforts, we beat John Podhoretz, which was a resounding victory for the forces of goodness, as it ensures that he will have to wear a shirt for the rest of the summer.
(BTW, his Amazon ranking for today is 236,793, while our is 7,293. Although I don’t know exactly how this translates into book sales, since, as has been noted, Amazon uses some arcane formula to compute their rankings, I suspect it means that four of you bought copies of our book, while Jonah Goldberg and Rich Lowry tried to trade their review copies of John’s book for manga and that body spray for men that’s supposed to make women throw themselves at you.
And, as promised, I will be reading and summarizing some of the columns on my list in lieu of eating bugs. To start with, here’s Janice Shaw Crouse’s Broken Icon of Feminist Invincibility, which I dedicate to Julia and C.I.
Summary: Feminists really aren’t superhuman, despite what that old Helen Reddy song would have you believe. This is proven by the fact that Helen Reddy had a bad husband and a bratty kid. Also, she was a working mother – and, as we all know, working mothers have created drug-resistant strains of bacteria, thus dooming us all.
Excerpts:
Adults, as well as children, believe myths. One of the feminist myths about women is their invincibility—brought to center stage by Helen Reddy’s newly released biography, “The Woman I Am” (2006). She is, of course, the artist who recorded the 1972 feminist anthem “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar.”
See, although Ms. Reddy sang about being invincible, it turns out that she actually wasn’t. She lied to us in song!
A prototypically dramatic PR blurb for her memoir states: “[A]t the height of her career, Helen’s world was shattered by the death of both her parents and, simultaneously, the news that she had a rare and incurable disease.” This account is calculated to engender a sympathetic response and to tease an impulse to rush out and buy the book to learn the full details of the tragedy.
The facts, as is often the case, are quite a bit different.
Janice apparently has uncovered information that indicates that Helen’s disease wasn’t all that rare, and that her parents actually faked their own deaths for the insurance money.
No, wait — what Janice really is implying is that the facts in the case are that Helen was a career-minded tramp, and so isn’t deserving of any sympathetic responses.
Reddy was born in 1941 to an Australian show-business couple and began her career as a performer by the tender age of 4. In her late teens Reddy was briefly married to an older musician, with whom she had a daughter, Traci. In 1966 she moved to America as a single mother with 3-year-old Traci in tow.
In short order Reddy met, moved in with, and eventually married Jeff Wald, an agent. […] In fact her marriage to husband No. 2 began to unravel in the early 1980s, egged on by his cocaine habit and aggressiveness. Reddy and Wald had a son, Jordan, who became so unmanageable by age 10—not that much of a surprise considering his role models—
Young Jordan’s role models were reportedly the divorced Ronald Reagan, and career woman Phyllis Schlafly
–that Reddy called her estranged husband to come get him out of the house she was sharing with her “boyfriend.”
So much for the Roaring Woman’s “invincibility.”
I hope all of you who believed that everything sung by a pop star was literally true now feel really stupid.
The realities facing the average unmarried mom make her anything but invincible, no matter how energetic, gifted, famous or heroic she is. What does the average unmarried mother—without the income from several hit Gold records—face in trying to provide for herself and her children?
Whatever it is, it’s not nearly enough! For while life is certainly hard for the uneducated, shiftless little floozies and their bastards, we shouldn’t feel any compassion towards them — after all, they could have had Janice’s life of ease and privilege, if only they had been better people.
Now, on to how working mothers have unleashed the Andromeda Strain upon humanity.
When, not if, a child comes down with some infection—not a particularly rare event in the life of a small child, particularly those being exposed to many other children in the typical child-care or pre-school setting—even those women whose health care and child care are fully funded by the government have a problem. The average low-income, working, unmarried mother with a sick child often has no option but to take time off from work.
Doctors have witnessed a flood of working mothers demanding antibiotics for their children in order to get them readmitted to day care as quickly as possible. Dr. Michael Blum, medical officer in the Food and Drug Administration’s division of anti-infective drug products, says, “Resistance [has] increased to a number of commonly used antibiotics, possibly related to overuse of antibiotics. In the 1990s, we’ve come to a point for certain infections that we don’t have agents available.”
Thus the average low-income unmarried mother is highly vulnerable when facing a sick child.
The bitches! It’s just like Dr. Blum said: working mothers and their selfish demands have ruined antibiotics for the rest of us!
And it’s not like these poor, slutty women are even good workers, as evidenced by the fact many of aren’t even employed, possibly because they choose to stay home and care for their children – which should be an option reserved only for middle-class, married women!
And that vulnerability tends to make unmarried mothers in general less reliable workers in comparison to women without children or to married women with a spouse who is willing and able to help juggle family responsibilities. The unemployment rates of women with children under 6 years of age broken down by marital status clearly reflect this fact. From 1980 to 2005, the unemployment rate of single (never-married) mothers of children under 6 has been almost four times higher than that of married mothers; similarly the unemployment rate of divorced, separated and widowed mothers has been a little over twice that of mothers who are married.
I’m not sure how the unemployment rates clearly reflect the fact that unmarried women make less reliable workers, but Janice, a former Bush speechwriter, has a Ph.D. in Communication Theory, so I’m sure she’s right in her claim.
Despite the Hollywood myths and the feminist rhetoric, being a mother of small children is a vulnerable time for women, and the presence and support of a husband is vital to the welfare of both the mother and her children.
And that’s why the lyrics to Helen Reddy’s song should be changed to read as follows:
Oh yes, I’m a ditz, but I don’t need a brain.
‘Cause I paid the price, and captured me a man.
If I have to, I can do very little.
I am weak. I am vincible. I am married woman!
Maybe Janice will sing it for us some time.
I’m so glad that conservatives like Janice have taken on the vital task of busting the myth that pop songs are God’s honest truth. I look forward to future Janice columns in which she proves that Jennifer Lopez is not just Jenny from the block and Michael Jackson is the father of Billie Jean’s child.
But Janice’s true crowning glory will be the column that proves conclusively that working mothers are the fiends responsible for those icky sponge mops that nearly destroyed her marriage. Oh, the depravity of those women who aren’t Janice!
Left by sophronia on July 29th, 2006