Since there was quite a bit of discussion on earlier threads today about the First Lady, the way she & other female politicians are regarded by people on opposite sides of the political divide, and the way the media perceives the distinctions made between Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin, I couldn’t resist stealing some more excellent commentary from Tom Scocca. First, he did a guest post for XXFactor (Slate‘s ‘women’s issues’ subgroup) explaining that “Linda McMahon’s Gender Gap Is Nothing Special“:
Why don’t women want to vote for Linda McMahon in Connecticut? The Times suggests it’s the “harshness” of her campaign, the overkill levels of spending, and her association with pro wrestling’s “cartoonish and demeaning depictions of women.”…
__
The affiliation that’s hurting McMahon with women in the polls isn’t the WWE; it’s the GOP. This year’s surge of Republican enthusiasm is a male phenomenon. The simplest explanation for McMahon’s lack of female support is that female voters aren’t the ones who want to replace Democrats with Republicans.
__
In West Virginia, Republican John Raese leads Democrat Joe Manchin by 9 points among men but trails Manchin by 10 points among women. Time has Wisconsin Republican nominee Ron Johnson ahead of Russ Feingold by 15 points among men, but tied among women.
__
And in Washington state, where Democrat Patty Murray is running against Republican Dino Rossi, women favor Murray by 31 points, while men favor Rossi by 15. That’s a 46-point gender gap—McMahon’s gap is 27 points—with nobody making anybody bark like a dog.
Scocca followed up with a post on his own Slate blog:
Forty-six points! That is insane. Why do people who live in the same state and maybe sleep in the same house see the politically situation completely differently, depending on what kind of genitals they have? How did politics get so profoundly fractured along gender lines? Are men that much more emotionally wounded by the collapse of the economy? Where is Robert Bly when you need him? There’s a lot more going on here than the question of whether Linda McMahon makes Connecticut ladies uncomfortable. Maybe the Times could put a reporter or two on it.
No doubt some Very Serious Pundit — I’m guessing BoBo Brooks, but maybe Dean Broder will beat him to deadline — can explain to all of us DFHs that white suburban men are still the natural measure of all things significant…
morzer
Politics isn’t really fractured along gender lines simpliciter – the key dividing line is between profoundly misguided white males and the rest of us. How many black men has anyone found voting for the GOP recently? Not too many. Asian men? Latino men? Hmmm?
Speaking as a white man, I find the GOP fanboys profoundly embarrassing. They give the neighborhood a bad name and I am sure they are bad for property values.
MikeJ
Glad to see that gender gap in WA. If you only watched KING or read the Times, you’d think Rossi was up by 20.
Violet
@morzer:
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. It’s white men, not just men in general. Most pundits are white men. Maybe that has something to do with their myopic viewpoint?
John Bird
My honest opinion is that not enough has been done to discourage brinksmanship-style thinking among men, which fits neatly with the irrational rage that’s usually behind tearing down the government willy-nilly without bothering to consider what works and what doesn’t. Patriarchy has always encouraged this sort of thought among men because under patriarchy, men always win out after a period of disaster.
It’s not restricted to Republicans. Whenever someone on the left presents the idea to me that we should just all vote for the farthest-right candidate we can so that the country will (somehow) whiplash back to the left, it’s almost always a guy. It may be the same practical thing to support voting for a third party, but psychologically, it’s quite different – brinksmanship is destructive on its face. And the Tea Partiers I know – and I do know a few – are, like the people I mentioned on the left, all men prone to extreme self-destructive anger when they feel they are being attacked.
Women, I think, have a recent political history that makes them understand that gains are precarious and that they have a lot to lose with this strategy.
And yes, the same thinking applies to whites and non-whites in our country.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Fxd.
Davis X. Machina
My sister takes a back seat to no one in her Red Sox fandom, right down to her season ticket, but, e.g., how many die-in-the-last-ditch-and-bury-me-in-black-and-gold female Steeler fans do you know?
Is it tribalism? Because tribal appeals are the GOP’s stock in trade, and they have the male vote sewn up…
tkogrumpy
Maybe the times could put a reporter or two on it? Ah, I don’t think so they are both busy with other stories.
morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
Living fans? Or do zombies count?
Davis X. Machina
I’ve visited PIT during the season, and for my money the Venn diagram of ‘Steelers Fans’ and ‘Zombie Steelers Fans’ looks like this: O
James E. Powell
I do not think it is fair or accurate to lump all white suburban males into one voting bloc, as if we were all the same. A closer examination would, I think, reveal that there are several groups within the WSM demographic, only a few of which are steady GOP. The problem for Democrats is that they are fanatical GOP, and they vote at a very high rate.
jl
I agree with Morzer, this is probably mostly a problem with the white man. I don’t know why so many of those people have lost their minds, or think so stupidly, and feel so immaturely, and have become just so plain mean and stupid. I am one of them, so I should have some insight. I can spy undetected among them during their strange secret rituals, which mostly consist of preening, bragging and acting out fictional confrontations and wished for victories with their oppressors while drinking a a very ancient traditional watery alcoholic beverage that smells like horse piss. And mild bonding rituals that consist of repetitious and boring mutual confirmation of various white man folk wisdom.
But there are whole tribes of the white man that mystify me these days. They are exhibiting self destructive behavior on a mass scale.
J.W. Hamner
Obviously women are Kenyan anti-colonialist European socialists. Which is undoubtedly the reason why that stuck up cheerleader laughed at me when I asked her out in 9th grade.
Davis X. Machina
@James E. Powell: True enough, but an election is perhaps the ultimate example of when the behavior of an aggregate is more significant in effect than the behavior of any of its constituent parts.
Most men who vote are white men. Most white men who express a party preference are Republicans. That can’t be gainsaid.
Suck It Up!
@morzer:
Come on. Wouldn’t you love to wear a bad ass jacket with Young Guns written on the back?
dmsilev
@Davis X. Machina:
When my aunt died several years back, she was laid out at her wake wearing a Red Sox cap. Does that count?
dms
Martin
We denied women the right to vote for 131 years. African Americans 81 years. I wonder if we denied white males the right to vote for just 8 years how much different the country would look.
Paula
Well, in re Election 2008, they did stories on black voters, female voters, and black female voters … before they decided that the real story was about the inclinations of white male voters.
At the very least, they are consistent.
morzer
@jl:
It’s a sad thing, but many of my fellow white males make me suspect that I might have drawn a losing evolutionary ticket without being aware of it. I console myself with the fact that I know creationism is garbage, that I know the GOP are bad at managing the economy, and that the South deserved to lose the Civil War. Still, my kinship to these strange, unhappy creatures is occasionally worrying…..
morzer
@Suck It Up!:
Give me an hour to formulate a polite and cogent response, and I’ll get back to you.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I like the way you think!
Violet
@jl:
Because there’s a black man in the White House. White men have always ruled in this country. That is changing, has changed. No matter how dirt poor and uneducated a white man may be, the social contract in this country still meant that he was “better” than non-white men, and women of any color. Now that a black man is in the White House it’s obvious things are not as they were. The white man will not have power just because of who he is anymore. Not in the same way.
Can he articulate this? No. Would he admit it if he could? No. But it’s what at the emotional heart of the “I want my country back” and “MooslimKenyanSoshulist” cries. It’s a lament for what is being lost, what has been lost. And a fear of not being the top dog by default. And that is a gut level fear. Will those people you’ve always looked down upon and treated as lesser treat you the same way you treated them? That’s terrifying to contemplate. He’s afraid. He doesn’t like it. He’ll do just about anything to stop it.
Davis X. Machina
@dmsilev: So long as it’s an endearing idiosyncrasy and not something people don’t even notice or comment on, it tends to confirm my admittedly weak point….
Violet
@Martin:
The only white males who should be denied the vote are union members and government employees of course. They have too much at stake.
Suck It Up!
@morzer:
Here’s some inspiration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GXMqSLpOJQ
morzer
@Violet:
It’s the same pathology that has been in evidence since the early 1820’s, if not before. No to abolitionists, no to emancipation, and now no to a black president. The white southern male cult mentality of ignorance, arrogance and perpetual whining is a truly contemptible thing to behold.
General Stuck
well, all I can say is, if it ain’t the motion of the ocean, it could be a suuuurge in the wetsuit
morzer
@Suck It Up!:
Young Guns? More like Ageing White Whackjobs with Bad Hair and Small Brains!
Linda Featheringill
Ah yes. The white male. Especially the middle class white male, no matter how they earn their living [blue collar or white collar].
It has been my unscientific observation that this segment of the population is more concerned with economics than any other group of people. You might even say they are downright mercenary. They re really focused on the money. And that may be why they are middle class.
During a time of economic difficulty, there probably isn’t much that progressives, etc. could do to win them over.
Although if you could point out how many of these Republican candidates support outsourcing jobs, you might win some converts.
General Stuck
Well, if you ladies want to rule the world, I will not object. But will whole heartedly volunteer myself for reproductive duties
I don’t require much, just a couple of squares a day, and a key to the barn.
morzer
@General Stuck:
General Stuck Stands To Attention?
JAHILL10
@Violet: You hit it right there. That is your Tea Party in a nutshell and also btw the entire Republican Party. They can’t believe this has happened and that they are living through it. I chaulk up most of their magical thinking, “if I ignore the facts they will just go away” to this basic terror and disconnect from reality.
Guster
White Christian men. Of a certain age.
jl
It is not all white men, of course, just a critical mass of them making the rest look bad.
I suddenly remembered reading an article about scientific research that found evidence that the Y chromosome was slowly falling apart.
Maybe the damn thing is falling apart faster in bitter white men?
Maybe commenter Morzer is right, males are an evolutionary dead end.
I figure, why not kick back and relax then, the pressure’s off. Evolutionary dead end party! Mmmmm, donuts and beer.
MikeJ
@Martin: You seem to think African Americans were denied the right to vote for fewer years than women. That may be true if you only count the denial as starting with when we decided black people were human. There were several hundred years before that of white people voting and black people not voting. If you want to count when black people were allowed to vote, count from 1965.
Davis X. Machina
@General Stuck:
Fixed
Mike in NC
Not too many political signs in our development, as for one thing I suspect the HOA rules prohibit them, even if the rabid wingnuts try to ignore that. Case in point being the racist teabagger down the street with the “Pantano for Congress” sign on his lawn who fell asleep at the wheel of his Hummer last month and drove it into a ditch. He must really hate the gummint for requiring the airbags that saved his shitty worthless life.
General Stuck
@Davis X. Machina:
teehee. correct
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Violet:
Yup. Obama’s election is a sign that things have really changed in this respect, and these knuckleheads are realizing that they are not going to be in charge just because.
I still maintain this is a good thing in the long run; we’ve spent the last thirty years pretending that racism wasn’t a problem anymore, but Obama’s election basically ripped the Band-Aid off and shows that the wound is still just as nasty as it ever was.
Get these people out in the open, get them to speak their minds, and let the rest of the country see them for the small, petty, scared things they are; maybe then we’ll really be able to move forward.
GCM +1/2 (still working on the first one)
Violet
@General Stuck:
No way. That’s the male lion deal. Female lion does all the work, hunts, feeds the cubs, while the male lion lounges around. Then he gets to eat first. It’s a good gig if you can get it. Unfortunately it’s not on offer.
Art
Please, oh, please, oh, please…let women show up at the polls in unprecedented numbers for midterms.
I live in a very conservative county in WV (Wood). My wife is a registered Republican that voted for Obama. There is no way in hell she is going to vote Raese. The main reason: his wife refuses to campaign with him. To my wife, Mrs. Raese thinks she’s too good to rub elbows with West Virginians.
Seriously, can anyone find footage of Mr. and Mrs. Raese on the campaign trail, together (this year, that is)?
We went to the Parkersburg Homecoming Parade to see our son’s high school band march, and there was Raese in denim jeans and denim shirt, trying to look like Joe six-pack. My wife knocked me over with: “he doesn’t fake it very well. Who the hell wears denim shirts with denim jeans?”
God I love counting on women…they are so beautiful in mind, body, and spirit!
General Stuck
@Violet:
You drive a hard bargain. Okay, I will take out the garbage then.
Mark S.
I’m one of the good ones.
I can’t believe the Rangers have blown a 5-0 lead.
beergoggles
I think you forgot the Xtian part of the white, suburban men, cuz I just can’t picture all the white atheists voting republican.
Violet
@Art:
Your wife sounds cool.
@General Stuck:
Ha! No way. Taking out the garbage is an easy job. You need to step it up to a minimum of weekly lawn mowing, especially in the heat of July and August. Plus having a job so you can pay your own way.
General Stuck
@Violet: nag nag nag
MikeJ
@Art:
In what state? There may be footage of them in Florida.
She can’t even vote in WV, can she?
Martin
@MikeJ: No. How long for this to get in Manchin’s campaign ad?
“Even John Raese’s wife isn’t going to vote for him.”
Violet
@General Stuck:
You thought reproductive privileges were free?
morzer
@Violet:
Are you busting the glorious General down to gofer?
Wile E. Quixote
@MikeJ:
Have you noticed that Rossi’s yard sign’s don’t have the word “Republican” on them. And in the TV ads I’ve seen he never mentions his party affiliation. It’s almost if he’s ashamed or something.
Violet
@morzer:
Naw…just working on designing a win-win scenario for everyone. That’s the way we ladies who rule the world roll.
Barb (formerly gex)
@Violet: There’s inferiority complex and laziness all rolled into one. Why, now you have to work for your status and you just might not be good enough.
someguy
Of course white male Republican voters are emotionally wounded. The election of a black man to the white house was a stiff kick to their vaginas, just as they were trying to pee their pants over the existence of Muslims.
It’s a hard knock life, if you’re a white male Republican voter…
morzer
@Violet:
I suspect my wife would agree with you
**smiles**
Wile E. Quixote
@Art:
Gay guys who dress up as cowboys and hang around leather bars. I mean he is a Republican.
Barb (formerly gex)
@beergoggles: That’s where you find a lot of your libertarians though.
mapaghimagsik
The idea that “white men of a certain age are aggrieved” Kinda harkens back to the “muslim men attacked us on 9/11” line. – its too wide of a net
I do know several aggrieved white men, and an aggrieved Filipino man. I also know this cuban looking guy who yellls at foreign drivers that they should go “back where they came from”
Seems that people from many walks of life knew how the world worked and which sphincter to kiss. Now its all higgledy-piggledy and confusing. They can’t seem to figure out who to debase themselves to.
Silver Owl
Republicans treat women like animals. If they want something better then my guess is they need to get off the pot of “my manly ego is THE center of the fucking universe on all things” and get busy living in reality.
Babysitting whiny insecure man bitches that republicans cater to is a shit job no sane human being wants. No matter how many Gods promise cram dead asses into comfy lounge chairs for all eternity per, oh wait, more lazy MAN religious leaders.
Outside of the women gender gap, republicans have a gap with every one outside of insecure white dudes, that either are rich and insecure on all levels or want to be rich are insecure on all levels. lol
Martin
@Wile E. Quixote: They don’t have shame. Might not have been able to spell it, however.
Nick
@mapaghimagsik:
Maybe so, but its likely the white male vote will go 65%+ for Republicans this year. I’m not sure the Democrats are going to win white males anywhere this year. That’s much much more than the percentage of Muslims who are terrorists.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
Brick Oven Bill, is that you?
General Stuck
@Wile E. Quixote:
What, are you stalking me from thread to thread now?
Mnemosyne
@beergoggles:
They will if they’re libertarians.
beergoggles
@Barb (formerly gex): I thought it was just the ones on the wingnut welfare wagon?
beergoggles
@Mnemosyne: well I know a few gays who’ve admitted to voting republican so I guess anything is possible.. I just don’t see it in such large quantities though. The northeast is probably less religious than most places and is pretty solidly dem. I say that fully understanding that correlation does not imply causation.
on the downside, we’re gonna be losing seats up here after the last census.. obviously not enough breeders doing what they’re supposed to be doing..
WereBear (itouch)
first of all, I hope everyone appreciates just how freaking hard it is to do nuanced stuff like blockquoting on on iPod touch.
Most of all, remember that Hitler and Goebbels and everyone they lived died in the bunker. Why? Because that was the only way they could win. Nonsensical? Yes, thanks.
But the thankless task of always being right, always being all powerful, that our culture imposes on men, leads to such nihilistic endeavors. Only in a universe where everything is dead, and can’t speak up to the contrary, can such a conceit be maintained.
And so follows, the machismic impulse towards such.
Yutsano
@Martin: Dunno if I related this story here, but my brother met Rossi when he stayed at his hotel. As my brother put it, “Really nice guy. Dumb as a stump.” He then waxed eloquent about Rossi’s inability to grasp even basic concepts.
Wile E. Quixote
I read the article in The Times twice and do you know what words are never mentioned in it? “policy” or “policies”. Now, I realize that the US news media likes to turn everything into a horse race, and that the reporters for the Old Gray Lady (and if I were female I’d be offended about being compared to The Times) are absolute champs at this sort of thing, and that most reporters and editors are too lazy and ignorant to delve into policy differences (and yes, it’s possible to write interesting stories about policy differences that will grab and hold a reader’s attention, it’s just that doing so requires more talent than writing about elections the same way you’d write about a Texas beauty pageant, or in this case WWE wrestling) but does this lack strike anyone else as sexist (assuming that you clawed your way through that run-on sentence)?
The whole story is basically “women don’t like Linda McMahon because she’s a mean girl”. The idea that women might not like Linda McMahon because they’ve examined her background and associations, and the policies she advocates as a Republican and have formed a judgment that she’s FBI (Fucking Batshit Insane), unqualified and/or that her policies would be detrimental to their interests and the interests of the voters of the state of Connecticut never seems to have completely escaped Raymond Hernandez, if indeed he was ever capable of forming such an idea in the first place. Hell, I’m surprised that he didn’t have quotes from a woman saying that she was voting for Richard Blumenthal because she thought that he was a hunk.
TooManyJens
@someguy:
Winner, Most Anatomically Confusing Comment of 2010.
Wile E. Quixote
@Martin:
Good point, but they don’t even say “GOP”, and you’d think that they’d be able to spell that correctly without fucking it up.
beergoggles
@TooManyJens: you could change vaginas to manginas and be less confused.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
No, just pointing out that you’re a creepy dick.
Barb (formerly gex)
@beergoggles: Nope. They all want tax cuts. They have completely bought in to Atwater’s doublespeak and they are completely unaware. (The white male atheist libertarians that is.)
Barb (formerly gex)
@WereBear (itouch): That “our culture” imposes on men? That men impose on themselves, thank you very much. Try convincing men that feminism is in their interests. I have a hard time IRL finding men that don’t react viscerally with disgust at that word. You see it from 13 years old on. Men goad each other about their manliness.
General Stuck
jeebus, I gotta find another blog to comment on. Too many inmates in this asylum.
Martin
@Yutsano: Yeah, I think we already knew he was a Republican.
Wile E. Quixote
@Yutsano:
Among the many other reasons I want Dino Rossi to lose to Patty Murray is that I want to hear him referred to as a “three time loser” and see headlines referring to him that say “three strikes, and you’re out”*
*Some background for those who don’t live in Washington State. Rossi ran against Christine Gregoire in 2004 and lost by 42 votes.** Washington Republicans then spent the next four years whining about how the election had been stolen and put Rossi up for election again in 2008, only to see him lose to Gregoire 53% to 47%.***
**The Republicans did what they always do and demanded a recount and screamed fraud, claiming, among other things, that felons had illegally voted. The outcome of this is the very definition of irony.
***I heard more than one Republican point out that Rossi did well in Eastern Washington and that if Eastern Washington was a separate state he would have been elected. I generally responded to this by saying “Yes, that’s true, and if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle” and then musing upon how much money we’d save in Western Washington if we could stop sending all of our tax money over to the dry side of the state and saying that I wished that Eastern Washington would secede.
dcdl
Maybe there might be a slight change when more states go to vote by mail like in Oregon. I ‘help’ my husband vote and he signs where I tell him.
fraught
Slightly OT: I grew up in Connecticut and live in NY so it’s easy to keep track of what’s going on there just across the border. There’s something distinctly wrong about the match up of Connecticut and Linda McMahon. It’s about style, and the immobility of her face, her crasnesss, the subtle clues she sends out about not really belonging there. If this sounds like snobbishness, I guess it is. But I feel it every time I see her on the TV.
Wile E. Quixote
@Martin:
Yeah, but we won’t know for sure until he starts sending around jokes about horse cocks. Of course given that this was a major news story in Washington we won’t know if they really are jokes about horse cocks or policy statements designed to appeal to the Washington State horse-fuckee demographic.
Nellcote
Nationaly, the Dems haven’t won the wm vote since before Raygun. That was the point of the southern strategy wasn’t it?
rikyrah
it is women that I don’t think Sully and other Sarah Palin worriers don’t understand. I’ve said it before – it was WOMEN who sunk Sarah Palin before, and unless something radical happens between now and November 2012, it will be WOMEN who will sink her and the GOP- again.
Women simply HAVE HER NUMBER. They KNOW Sarah Palin. They have the knife wounds where they can show you how they were stabbed in the back from their own Sarah Palin.
Look at the women the GOP have thrust upon the nation: basically stupid, nonsensical ideologues that when challenged, can’t form coherent thoughts. women have their number. I’d love to see the breakdown by sex of O’Connell supporters in Delaware; I’m willing to bet money that she has a huge gender gap with women.
And a self-respecting woman, who’s actually had to work for what she’s gotten resents the hell out of the GOP for putting forth these ridiculous idiots.
I do have to qualify this as WHITE women…
women of color never would have given this GOP Female Crop the time of day. We’ve known this type of White woman our entire lives….so voting for one is out of the question.
hilzoy
Once upon a time, before NPR was on the internet and I could look things up after I heard them, I was driving to work and listening to All Things Considered, and they described a study in which they did MRIs (or some sort of brain imaging) of men and women, while they described various scenarios, some of which were designed to elicit emotions. The point was to see what parts of the brain lit up. In women, emotions lit up some advanced and relatively recently evolved part of the frontal lobe.
But men, interestingly, had a bimodal distribution. In about half, emotions lit up the same relatively recent part as in women. But in the other half, emotions lit up some ancient and very simple part of the brain, which I believe the NPR person described as being substantially the same as the analogous structure in reptiles.
(Tee hee)
If true, that would explain both the tea party and the total unfairness of generalizing to guys as a whole.
General Stuck
@hilzoy:
Oh noes!! I have been taking long looks at juicy insects lately.:)
morzer
@rikyrah:
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/delawareresults.pdf
The link goes ultimately to the latest SUSA poll for Delaware, released Oct 13. O’Donnell is getting kimbosliced by women. (See the third page, first chart for instructive details). The executive summary version:
Among women Coons is getting 58%, O’Donnell is getting 25% with 16% other/undecided.
rikyrah
Violet,
not only that, but it’s a hitting upside of the head of a profound realization. I read this on another blog and thought it was on point.
on some level, they look at the President, his wife, and the entire cadre of Black folks and others who aren’t White men, and they see the fallacy upon which they’ve based their entire lives. they want to ‘ take their country back’ to a place and time where anyone who wasn’t White was invisible and knew their place. Quite frankly, they want the world of MAD MEN back again. they believed the bullshit that obviously there was nobody qualified to work in corporate America who wasn’t White until that Civil Rights Movement came and ‘ took their America away’.
they believed all the bullshit they told themselves about how wonderful they were, and now they realize that it was all shit, cause they weren’t competing with anything but a piss-ant sized pool. and that if they seriously had to compete with Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Smart White Women…they wouldn’t have made it. that’s another thing that makes them choke and scream about ‘taking their country back’.
don’t fool me; don’t fool Black folk one bit in the least. we know what they mean, and hell no…we ain’t going back.
Nathanael
The reason is the painfully obvious one that there are still a bunch of sexist men who more or less want to go back to the days when women were property. Which the Republican Party also advocates.
Whereas this is much, much less popular among women, for obvious reasons.
Nathanael
@Nick: Where will Democrats win the white male vote?
Northeastern cities. The urban/rural divide remains huge.
rikyrah
ok, that’s hilarious.
I loved the one of him photoshopping Raese and family in Palm Beach.
arguingwithsignposts
@Violet:
Sounds like back to square one for the General.
Yutsano
@Wile E. Quixote: I shall never look at Emerald Downs the same way again.
Oh and even Ras has Rossi losing at this point. If the GOP wanted to take back the Senate here it’ll have to either be Cantwell or when Murray retires. And even then their bench is so thin here they’d have a tough time getting anywhere.
Silver Owl
Ironically enough if America was the uber freedom based nation it markets itself to be this whole thread would not even be here. lol Just saying.
Suffern ACE
@Wile E. Quixote: Perhaps that’s because there aren’t any policies being offered up to analyze. From what I can tell, the men don’t come off much better in the article. They like the wrestling connection and the successful business woman angle. Women, not so much. Johnson in Wisconsin – running as a millionaire businessman moralist. Rossi the millionaire real estate developer – men see the millionaire, women perhaps see the industry. Raese is the millionaire businessman…none of these candidates, except Rossi, has ever held office before and perhaps, just perhaps, women in those states are less into the idea that millionaire businessman as a qualification than men are.
Wile E. Quixote
@Yutsano:
Yeah, those guys really fucked up My Friend Flicka for me. Just like Mary Kay LeTourneau, another Washington resident who taught at Shorewood elementary, which is just around the corner from my house, competely fucked up Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher video.
YellowJournalism
@Yutsano: The guy will rarely go off-script, either. I swear when I was watching that debate the other night, I kept wanting to scream at my TV for him to answer the damn question as it was asked instead of repeating his damn stump speeches over and over. Then they interviewed two columnists, and one of them said the same thing, basically, about how he was all about his talking points and repetition of his speeches while Murray was able to directly address the issues and zingers thrown at her. One of the columnists also pointed out that Rossi kept talking about Murray being all for “the other Washington” and not Washington State, yet Rossi continuously failed to address specific issues in Washington State in his answers, which was something else that had bugged me. Yet, in typical post-debate fashion, they really couldn’t declare a winner in the debate, despite all the weaknesses they listed for Rossi. Even PBS sucks.
YellowJournalism
@Wile E. Quixote: Okay, I still have an Emerald Downs t-shirt packed away somewhere from when I was a kid. Now the thought of it seems kind of dirty and just plain wrong. Thanks.
patrick II
From The Unemployment Gender Gap During the Current
Recession: Ayşegűl Şahin,Federal Reserve Bank of New York;
Joseph Song:Federal Reserve Bank of New York;
Bart Hobijn:Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
From USA Today:
Things are not the same for men as they used to be. For good or for bad, the type and amount of work is changing. And while we guys should smile and adjust, it ain’t always easy.
Wile E. Quixote
@Violet:
So in other words these guys are like some drunk at a sports bar who says “Ya know, Mike Tyson isn’t that tough” and then wake up the next morning, severely hung over, to find Mike Tyson standing on their doorstep saying “Hi. I’m Mike Tyson and I heard you were saying something about me not being very tough.*”
*That’s a lot funnier if you imagine him saying that with that squeaky, lispy voice he has.
Wile E. Quixote
@YellowJournalism:
Oh sure, shoot the messenger why don’t you. Look, I live in Burien and not Enumclaw, OK. Sheesh.
Yutsano
@YellowJournalism: I’ve seen just about all the Rossi ads, positive and negative. Not ONCE does he say what the fuck he’ll do when he’s elected. All he does is scream, “SPENDING SPENDING SPENDING!!” ad infinutum. Patty’s positive ads show folks, “Oh yeah, by the way, I’VE DONE SHIT!!”. The Boeing contract decision reversal she raised an unholy stink about (suck on THAT Shelby!) is enough for me honestly. I kinda enjoy the fact that the GOP can’t find its ass with both hands in this state.
@Wile E. Quixote:
This explains much. :)
Wile E. Quixote
@YellowJournalism:
Every time I hear a conservative say “the other Washington” I reach for the safety catch on my Browning. Jesus, that phrase has been done to fucking death. The stupidity of the Rossi campaign is amazing. One of Rossi’s planks is bitching about Patty Murray and earmarks. Of course the fact that Washington State gets back 87 cents in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxes and that Murray is just doing what she can to see that we get some of that money back here in Washington instead of sending it to some festering shithole like South Carolina ($1.35 back in federal spending for every dollar paid in federal taxes) completely escapes these people.
YellowJournalism
@Yutsano:
That was basically their debate in a nutshell.
@Wile E. Quixote: This and your hilarious description in the impeachment thread about the amputee dressing up as a pirate make me forgive you for that horse link.
Good night, WA peeps.
Wile E. Quixote
@Yutsano:
Well I wanted to live in Kent, and was scoping out this really sweet double wide in a trailer park down there, but the HOA nixed my application because I didn’t drive a Camaro or own any Whitesnake albums.
Yutsano
@Wile E. Quixote: YJ would get this joke a bit more she being (like me) of the Wazzu persuasion, but I live right next to PurpleandPissTown. So I don’t exactly live in the nice district meself.
Wile E. Quixote
@YellowJournalism:
So everyone at the Halloween party I went to that year really liked the costume. A lot of the people there were friends of mine who helped me out after my accident or people who knew me and knew about what had happened and they thought it was great. Amusingly enough I had one woman come up to me and say “How do you fold your leg up behind you and hide it like that? You must be really limber.” Explaining that I wasn’t really that limber was a bit awkward.
Triassic Sands
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the Connecticut senate race, figuring it would be an easy win for Democrats and also because McMahon makes me sick to my stomach (as does the whole WWE thing). But after reading this post, I checked out the polls and I have to admit I’m more than a little disappointed that in Connecticut McMahon only trails by high single or low double digits. Someone as repulsive as McMahon ought to trail by twenty-five to thirty points — in a sane world. And I guess that’s where the disappointment comes in — McMahon behind by 9-11% means there are lots and lots of loons even in Connecticut. This country is in deep trouble.
Spaghetti Lee
Sometimes I think about how there’s really no good reason for me to be a liberal. I am not merely a white man, but a white, suburban, straight, middle-class Christian man. What’s the percentage in that group going Dem this year? 10%?
SRW1
@hilzoy:
Oh my gawd, maybe conservative males are blighted by dominant neanderthal genes.
asiangrrlMN
@Violet: Co-sign this. All the shit they were fed as kids were lies and fairy-tales, and they have to deal with it now. I was commenting to a friend a few days ago that I felt some sympathy for men because all their interactions seem to be based on competitiveness and defending their frail egos and being one-up. That must be so damn exhausting. And, yet, many of these men cannot see just how much they are destroying themselves.
However, the other part of me says, “Fuck you, you overprivileged bunch of assholes crying like WATB. Fuck you with my very rusty pitchfork.”
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
We should really encourage more reading of Laozi/Lao Tzu in schools. But I suppose the Christianists would howl and foam and have conniptions.
zuzu
@someguy:
I’m sorry, “stiff kick to their vaginas”?
Gosh, and we wonder why there’s a gender gap. Though, really, it’s nice to see liberal doodz perpetuating that whole “feminizing a man is the greatest insult EVAR!” bullshit. And that goes for @beergoggles “manginas” as well.
I might remind you that it’s the ones with vaginas who aren’t voting Republican.
dj spellchecka
i was just describing this election cycle to a friend as white men vs everybody else….
scocca doesn’t mention it, but there was only a 2 point gender gap among non-whites in 08…and i’m hard pressed to think the gop has made itself any more appealing to men of color is the last 20 months, so this is all about angry white men…..
tom asks “Is American politics irredeemably sexist?”
i suspect that the answer is that white women outside the south see republican politics as irredeemably sexist….and destructive…but that’s just me