November 9, 2007

They all play the gender card... and Hillary's playing it well.

So says Susan Faludi. What counts as the gender card?
When facing George H.W. Bush, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis learned this lesson too late, after he failed to fly into a vigilante-style rage in response to the question: "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis' reply -- "No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life" -- whacked his approval ratings from 49% to 42% overnight and helped deny him the election.
So, the gender card is being played when a candidate doesn't realize he should play it? Or is Faludi patching over her sketchy argument by making it seem as though Bush I asked the "if Kitty Dukakis were raped"? (CNN news anchor Bernard Shaw asked the question in a debate. And no one wanted to see Dukakis "fly into a vigilante-style rage." We just wanted to see some human feeling and not a robotic incantation of his stand on the death penalty.)

The gender card was also played, Faludi argues, in the 2004 election, with Bush II's "Wolves" ad. Here's the ad — which I admit is absurd, but find the gender card:



Give up. Here's Faludi:
In "Wolves," set in a forest invaded by a pack of wolves (read: terrorists), a trembling female voice-over claimed that Kerry had voted for cuts in U.S. intelligence "so deep they would have weakened America's defenses -- and weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm." "Wolves" engaged the American terror dream, which the GOP was going to vanquish with a cowboy swagger.
Was that woman's voice "trembling"? (It is so easy to accuse Faludi of sexism for hearing a woman's voice and imagining it is trembling.) Really, where is the gender card? Both men and women are concerned about security. And there's nothing in the ad about cowboys. There isn't even an association between cowboys and wolves. Cowboys don't fight wolves.

Faludi also cites Bush II's ad "Ashley's Story." Let's take a look:



This ad is deeply sentimental (and incredibly effective), but again, how is it playing the gender card? It may be that woman are generally more responsive to this ad than men are, but there is gender difference everywhere. Trying to appeal to women with women's voices, images of children, or — God help us — tinkling piana music, is not playing the gender card. Candidates craft messages for various constituents, but it's not playing a card unless you are basing an argument on gender, such as saying, as Hillary Clinton does, that her being a woman is a reason to vote for her for President or that she is being attacked because she is a woman. That is unusual, and that doesn't happen all the time.

Now, let's look at Faludi's other point, that Hillary Clinton is playing the gender card well:
So far, the only person who has a lock on rescuing women is the one female candidate. Her approach departs from the old male version. In the old model, helpless women were saved from perilous danger by men; in the new, women are granted authority and agency to rescue themselves.
Soooo.... HC "has a lock on rescuing women" but "women are granted authority and agency to rescue themselves." So is Hillary rescuing us or not? Or is she the one granting the authority and agency to rescue ourselves. If so, what does it mean, and how is she doing it?

And what is "perilous danger"? The opposite of safe danger (or perilous safety)?

Oh, why did I assign myself the task of wading through this morass? Fortunately, I am going to grant myself the authority and agency to rescue myself from this Women's Studies rhetoric and note that Faludi doesn't bother with coherence. She simply swirls up an evocative, emotional verbal melange which, I would say if I indulged in Faludious reasoning, amounts to playing the gender card, since it stimulates the female mind more than the male.

But let's get a grip reason and slog to the end of the Faludi swamp:
Understanding the distinction [between the "old male... model" and the new Hillary model] is essential to an evaluation of current American politics.
Okay. Somehow, Hillary is going to represent individuals taking responsibility — authority and agency — for themselves, as distinguished from the "male model" of expecting someone to rescue us. That doesn't sound like what Hillary normally talks about, but Faludi sees this distinction "on vivid display." Where? Well, Bush signed the Afghan Women and Children Relief Act ant then failed to finance "women-run nongovernmental organizations in Afghanistan." Get it? And Bush "sought to roll back women's progress on many fronts, from reproductive rights to employment equity to military status." Vivid? Or murky? You decide.

And what's Hillary Clinton doing that distinctly different from the bad old "male modle"? Let's see if Faludi has something vivid here:
This year, as always, the presidential candidates must contend with the rescue formula, complicated by the fact that Bush has so devalued its currency. In this climate, Hillary Clinton can do what her male counterparts cannot. She is, indeed, reaching for the gender card, as her accusers claim. It's just different from the one they imagine. She is auditioning for the role of rescuer on a feminist frontier.

She returned to Wellesley to tell female undergraduates that she was there to free them; she was there to help them "roll up our sleeves" and "shatter that highest glass ceiling." As such, she latched onto a crucial element of presidential races past, and possibly to come -- that at the core of all American political rescue fantasies is a young woman in need.

In the general election, whoever the candidates may be, they will be tempted, perhaps required, to show just those bona fides. Clinton may be the only one who can do so without betraying the signature of a disgraced cowboy ethic.
What on earth does that mean? Is there anything there but the blunt fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman?

The argument seems to be that Bush is a man who ran for President by calling attention to his manliness, then, because he did a bad job, he gave manliness a bad name, so the cure is to have a woman President. If she's saying anything other than that, I can't strain it out of the godawful mud of her writing. And that argument is stupid and offensive. If there is some other argument to be found in there, please tell me what it is.

63 comments:

Tony Ryan said...

I could never figure out the appeal of Susan Faludi. Her style seems to be:
- First, decide the conclusion.
- Then, gather some examples that seem to support it.
- Finally, wrap it in "touch & go" writing that argues by assertion and sophmoric righteousness.
It's the kind of stuff that would have been awarded an immediate "F/rewrite" by my best professors. How this woman became famous churning out this stuff is disturbing. (btw, I knew a lot of practical professional women who, when Backlash came out, thought the book was awful while still acknowledging that a backlash against feminism was taking place. Just sayin.)

rhhardin said...

What game is the gender card played in?

Old maid, perhaps.

Some designs for the deck are needed. You'd have to be over 18.

Ron said...

Faludi's writing style makes the Christopher Hitchens ball waxing read like stock quotes from the WSJ! The more of her I read, the greater sense of unintended comedy I got.

paul a'barge said...

You go, girl!

The Drill SGT said...

Ann,

she's plugging her latest book just released and doing tie-in op-eds. This one seems to be a knee-jerk Hillary defense.

The book The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America.

appears to be more psycho-babble.

The book was called a "tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned work that gives feminism a bad name" by the New York Times principal book reviewer Michiko Kakutani

P_J said...

NPR had a review of The Terror Dreamso fawning it was hard to listen to.

Faludi can only see 9/11 and a war on murderous jihadism through the lens of feminism -- as though feminist progress was attacked, and not America. She's so wrapped up in culture wars that she can't see a real war right in front of her. But as the saying goes, "To a seven-year-old boy with a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail."

angieoh! said...

Greatest Althouse line ever:

"I am going to grant myself the authority and agency to rescue myself from this Women's Studies rhetoric and note that Faludi doesn't bother with coherence"

Yay! Thank you Professor for taking apart all this gender nonsense.

bwebster said...

Oh, why did I assign myself the task of wading through this morass?

Great post, but I burst out laughing when I hit that line, because I was thinking pretty much the same thing (on your behalf) at about that point. Well done, though. ..bruce..

Swifty Quick said...

Very good post. Candidates have a fairly broad canvas upon which to present themselves, and if Hillary believes that in going down the gender card road she'll pick up more support than she loses, more power to her. It's her run at it to win or lose.

I disagree with your characterization of the wolves ad as "absurd." In addition to its apparent message it was also a TOTH to Ronald Reagan and his "bear in the woods" ad. Russia's common symbolic representation is as a bear, and in that context I found wolves as a metaphor for Islamic terrorism to be interesting and new.

halojones-fan said...

Faludi's point seems to be that the only acceptable gender card is the "anti-gender" card: "I'm a woman, but I'm just as tough as a man!"

former law student said...

Untangling her argument, I get this:

Women are always in peril.
Pledging to save women is playing the gender card.
Bush jr and sr played the gender card effectively; Dukakis did not. (Although I would have paired his fatuous tank photo-op with jr's "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier photo-op.)
By pledging to save the careers of ug chicks; HRC is playing the gender card, without [some incoherent defect of the menzz feminist babble]

P_J said...

I doubt Faludi wears perfume (I'm sure it's another expression of patriarchal dominance), but if she does I bet it's Enjoli.

rhhardin said...

Russia's common symbolic representation is as a bear, and in that context I found wolves as a metaphor for Islamic terrorism to be interesting and new.

Coleridge had fox.

``A new religion had fanaticised whole nations. Men bred up in the habits of a wild and roaming freedom, had been brought together by its influence, and taught to unite the energies of a savage life with all the harmony and calculable coincidencies of a machine. But this religion was deadly to morals, to science, to civil freedom : no society could be progressive under its influence. It was favourable to superstition, cunning, and sensual indulgence; but it bore no fruit, it yielded no marriageable arms to the vine, it sheltered no healing plant. The soil was grassless where it grew ; the fox made its nest at the root, and the owl screamed in its branches - Such was the religion of Mahomet.''

S.T.Coleridge ``The War Not a Crusade'' _The Morning Post_ April 16, 1800.

Brent said...

Thank you, Ann! This is such an important topic.

Taking up what you, and Tony, said above, Susan Faludi is a self-deluded pseudo-scholar who provided the smell of scholarship and intellect for the Feminist Movement since the late 80's.

But the saddest and most dangerous thing about Susan Faludi is that not only was Backlash, her first book, filled with a mountain of footnotes that did not support what Faludi was writing - which should have made her a pathetic laughing stock - but every bit of media that you encountered about Backlash made it seem like it was replacing the Bible in value and scholarship.

The media - yes, just about ALL of the media - was far too cowed by the feminist culture of the 70's and 80's. As long as Steinem or Friedan said it, it was "truth". The "make-it-up-as-you-go" Faludi became an "authority", with her poorly documented treatises taken at face value by every news reporter and interviewer.

With such dishonesty as Faludi's still on the prowl, is there any wonder that feminist fervor has noticeably cooled in the 2 younger generations?

Unknown said...

Speaking of "defending" Hillary:

FactCheck.org release - 11/9/07

We have posted a correction to our Oct. 31 article, "Hillary's High-Stepping," which included a statement that Hillary Clinton was "misleading" in her answers to questions about restrictions on the release of documents pertaining to her time as First Lady. We have retracted that portion of our criticism.

Subsequent comments by former President Bill Clinton and his official representative in dealings with the National Archives, Bruce Lindsey, led us to take another look at the matter. Our re-examination of a 2002 letter Bill Clinton sent to the Archives, as well as further conversations with experts in the narrow area of presidential records law, led us to the conclusion that the former president didn't ban access to his communications with his wife, as moderator Tim Russert said in his question.

Russert was wrong, and so were we. The corrected version of our story now appears on the FactCheck.org website.

Jazz Bass said...

this is why my wife hates feminists.

Unknown said...

Jazz,
"Hate" is an overused term.

Unknown said...

rhhardin,
Hear any new really funny tapes making fun of "people" lately?

Anonymous said...

When gender-feminism is your hammer, everything looks like a thumb.

Unknown said...

paul,
I dated a woman in college who had "hammer" thumbs.

Still does.

Mortimer Brezny said...

The "caricature" of feminism that Men's Rights groups lambaste is "Women should have power over men because women are better than men." When they respond to this caricature, they are called: (a) unsophisticated, because real feminists do not think this way; (b) male chauvinists, as their negative reaction is a rationalization of the male privilege that patriarchy seeks to protect; (c) ignorant, as the dictionary definition of feminism refers to equality, not an oppositional master/slave dynamic.

Now, I do not agree with Men's Rights advocates, despite having serious issues with IMBRA, which seems unconstitutional to me. Nor do I agree that all feminists are female chauvinists dedicated to advancing women's interests at the expense of men's interests. But it seems Hillary Clinton -- or at least a few of her vocal supporters -- are playing a gender card that is precisely the caricature of feminism that scares Men's Rights activists and sells a good deal of deviant porn.

Assuming the Men's Rights activists are wrong, shouldn't real feminists be outraged? Where are the op-eds decrying female chauvinism and praising egalitarianism? All I see is cheerleading a Presidential candidate for the audacity of having a vagina.

Unknown said...

Whether men will admit it or not, they're scared to death of powerful women.

Always have been...always will be.

Mortimer Brezny said...

Whether men will admit it or not, they're scared to death of powerful women.

That's a nice, misandrist line there, SuckyOldson, but any rational person should be scared of a tyrant who has it out for her because of her gender.

Unknown said...

Mort,
I have absolutely no idea where you get that.

I don't hate women.

I'm merely expressing an opinion based on many of the men I've known over the years, and their reaction to women who are more powerful or domineering than they would like.

Unknown said...

Sorry about that...typo.

Men.

Mortimer Brezny said...

Sucky,

I think your "typo" only serves to prove my point.

(Not to mention that stating that all men think a certain way, no matter the contrary evidence, is sexist.)

Unknown said...

Mort,
It's MY opinion, based on MY experiences with people I've known and still know.

If you disagree, that's your prerogative, but if you really think there aren't men out there that don't like Hillary or other powerful women for just that reason; that they're powerful...you're living in a dream world.

As for being "sexist," I have no idea what that's based on. I don't "hate" men and I certainly don't "hate" women.

Mortimer Brezny said...

Sexist beliefs, as a species of essentialism, holds that individuals can be understood or be judged simply based on the characteristics of the group to which they belong—in this case, their sexual group, as males or females.

Sexism is commonly considered to be discrimination and/or hatred against people based on their sex rather than their individual merits, but can also refer to any and all systemic differentiations based on the sex of the individuals.

Sexism can refer to subtly different beliefs or attitudes:

The belief that one gender or sex is inferior to or more valuable than the other;
Female or male chauvinism

The attitude of misogyny (hatred of females) or misandry (hatred of males); as well as

The attitude of imposing a limited and/or false notion of masculinity on males and a limited and/or false notion of femininity on females, or vice versa.

A feeling of distrust towards the opposite or same sex, most frequently operating at unconscious level.

Unknown said...

Mort,
Good Lord...give it a break.

I didn't say ALL MEN...EVERYWHERE... I said "men"...as in; MEN IN GENERAL.

Much like; women are not fond of men who are bullies or who are abusive.

But...as we ALL know...there are SOME women who are attracted to bullies, etc.

But, hey...here's a suggestion for YOU: Go fuck yourself.

*That is if you actually like you.

Mortimer Brezny said...

Go fuck yourself.

-- LuckyOldson, articulating the feminist rationale for the Hillary Clinton candidacy

Unknown said...

Mort,
I have NO idea what in the world you're basing your comment that I'm somehow "articulating the feminist rationale" for anybody or anything tells me you have some real problems with women.

Find yourself a good shrink.

You need help.

Mortimer Brezny said...

SuckyOldson: "[A]nything tells me you have some real problems with women. Find yourself a good shrink. You need help."

See? I write a comment saying that (a) real feminists should stand-up for egalitarianism; (b) Men's Rights Activists are wrong; and that (c) implies I have a negative view of porn that demeans women's dignity, and Sucky's nonsensical rejoinder, after stereotyping men as cowards and cursing at another man, is: "Anyone who holds beliefs a, b, and c must hate women."

Which, by the way, is exactly the nonsensical gender card that Hillary's campaign is playing.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Lucky-

Blacks are less intelligent than whites.

I don't hate blacks.

I'm merely expressing an opinion based on many of the blacks I've known over the years, and their grades in school.

It's MY opinion, based on MY experiences with people I've known and still know.

If you disagree, that's your prerogative.

As for being "racist," I have no idea what that's based on. I don't "hate" blacks.

( Note that the above comments are not my actual opinion, but were stated as a way of making a point. If anyone tries to use them later to show that I am a racist, it will: a) prove my point, and b) show how stupid they are for not understanding my point.

Unknown said...

Mort,
Again...give it a break.

All I said was this: "Whether men will admit it or not, they're scared to death of powerful women. Always have been...always will be."

I wasn't saying that ALL men feel this way, only that MANY of the men I've known, worked with, drank with, worked for, hired, fired, supervised, etc...we "intimidated" and yes..."scared" of women they perceived as being more powerful than themselves.

*People are scared of spiders. Not ALL people, but people in general. Agree?

For whatever reason, you take my initial comment to mean that I am "articulating the feminist rationale for the Hillary Clinton candidacy"?????????







If you don't think this is the case...fine.

Unknown said...

ignorance,
Whatever.

former law student said...

To find out what a feminist really thinks about whether women are equal to men, just ask her opinion about porn actresses. You will soon learn that those particular women are not rational actors but easily coerced and exploited by anyone with a y chromosome.

reader_iam said...

There's this handy category called "modifiers." Examples are: many, most, some ... etc.

Mortimer Brezny said...

SuckyOldson: "Whether men will admit it or not, they're scared to death of powerful women. Always have been...always will be."

You say you were generalizing, but what you were really doing was employing sexist setereotypes.

"Always have been, always will be" suggests you refer to a timeless Truth, implying that irrational fear of women is an essentially male trait. You explicitly insist it is is true even if men deny it, implying that is a hardwired attribute of the male brain. Again, essentialism. It is strikingly similar to the Freudian claims that many radical feminists make about men; that patriarchy is a construct of the irrational fear and hatred of women that all men have because of female sexual power ("vagina envy," if you will). It is also strikingly similar to the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton's campaign, which denigrates and marginalizes men by calling her competitors boys who give her "attention" because they are "obssessed" with her.

You will soon learn that those particular women are not rational actors but easily coerced and exploited by anyone with a y chromosome.

Yes. You have to say that to justify the wage gap between female and male porn actors. Which you would seek to justify if you didn't really believe in egalitarianism.

Unknown said...

Reader,
Great suggestion.

Kind of like; Americans hate terrorists.

Oooop, sorry.

Most, many, some...Americans hate terrorists.

Better?

Duh.

KCFleming said...

For example, many LOS posts lack sufficient modifiers, resulting in over-generalizations.

Mortimer Brezny said...

Can anyone here dispute that part of the rationale of Hillary Clinton's campaign is sexism?

Unknown said...

Pogo,
Why aren't you at a cigar club?

*And thanks for joining in. I appreciate the attention.

Unknown said...

Mort,
I can't.

KCFleming said...

Soon enough.

Since taxes on tobacco are earmarked to fund health care in Minnesota, I gotta do my part.

It's for the children.

Unknown said...

Pogo said..."For example, many LOS posts lack sufficient modifiers, resulting in over-generalizations."

This from a guy who doesn't think smoking kills 400,000 Americans every year...and if we institute no-smoking laws...WHAT'S NEXT??

No more roller-blading, driving, motorcycles...

Why?

Because the whole smoking kills campaign is an "over-generalization."

reader_iam said...

Context, LuckyOldSon, context.

I know you're smarter than that, even if you don't (want to acknowledge it).

Unknown said...

reader: "over-generalizations"

KCFleming said...

It's interesting to me that the dose-response curve on cigarettes fails to evince a risk for less than 5 cigarettes per day, though you won't find that little tidbit written about. I do not know what the no-risk use of cigars is, but I cannot believe that once per week is an inherent danger.

OTOH if it is, then I'll be doing the government a favor by dying early and using fewer SSI and Medicare benefits.

That's just me, though, the altruist.

Anonymous said...

And, with some help..., I will use the "gender card" (11-9-07) to destroy not only Hillary, but feminism as well. See below:
tom said... Below you'll find what I posted above at about #40. The reason I post it again (about #60) is to illustrate how bad off we as a country -a world- are. Feminism has destroyed any backbone in men whatsoever. No one has commented on the fact that I have posited the near complete revision of civil rights in the USA -and the world. Because feminism has made pansies, wimps, faggots and worse out of all men in our once great country. Yesterday I met a Sunni iman from Lahore,Pakistan in Yonkers who could probably beat any one of you supposed American men either intellectually or physically because of his determination. As I see it -because of feminism- no man in America today has any idea what being a man means. And I call all you "men" perverts, faggots, queers, ass- wipers and worse. America's men today are worse than cursed women/ feminists because they are to lazy even to wipe their own asses. POSTED EARLIER:
More to the point, do we (including women) want women anywhere other than at home with -and raising- their own children whom they have borne in their own wombs ? Who is going to pay for the retire- ment pensions of all the baby- boomers ? Young workers -far less numerous than in 1960s- are already highly taxed. Our politicians are afraid to touch Social Security because they'll not be re-elected. Public pension plans nation-wide are near bankrupt -and private pensions may be worse off. The die has been cast and the fight is upon us : Inter-generational warfare between all the aging baby-boomers who supported feminist nonsense and young -already excessively taxed- workers. Who do you think will win ? I very much doubt we old-timers will. And why has this occured/is this occuring ? It is one of the innumerable horrors wrought by feminism, a feminism which said that men and women are equal (such a dastardly lie), that women should work instead of having children, that abortion was a woman's "right" and so much other contemptible nonsense that I couldn't even list here; because life itself has been attacked by a feminism that only embraces death. And that is what Hillary Clinton and her equally foolish husband (whose cockmanship I highly esteem; as Hillary couldn't satisfy him, he found it necessary to get tit elsewhere -so even Hillary has been victimised by feminism) will bring to America and the world if she gets elected. As to Maxine Weiss, thank-you. And I note that the female genius, once a woman agrees with a man, is to do him better.Tom
a) Maxine Weiss said... http://www.last.fm/listen/user/YuleMaxine/playlist (I like your playlist, Maxine. And I hope to be singing in my church choir (tenor/ baritone) for midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
b) Ann Althouse said... Oh good lord.
c) Trooper York said... When Federico Fellini was directing... in the bizarre world of freaks and demons ( to my dear NYC tax attorney in NYC (a gayboy ? who know), you really should re-assess your "freaks and demons" for you may be missing the ones who work with you...or the fellow you see in the mirror every morning -for such a status can come about without one being aware of it).
d) tc said... Oh yes, dear Ann, I am a Roman Catholic and I go to mass every Sunday/Saturday night. But I was also trained by the Jesuits, the Jews, U.S. Intelligence agencies... And I revere all of the above.
You, Ann and your fellow feminists are going down, all the way down. Tom

reader_iam said...

LOS: I was referring to your 4:01 comment, not the other conversations in which you're engaged.

I don't disagree with your point that some number or proportion of men--mostly likely fewer or smaller than some people would like to believe, and most likely greater or larger than others would like to believe--are intimidated by strong women, and a chunk of those always have been and always will be.

Shorter: It's the scope, not the content, of your remark I was questioning--and only then because I thought the scope was a gratuitous overgeneralization that would make it easy for people to look past the point, which is a good one. And germane.

Jeez, why do you have to make it so hard even to AGREE with you?

Mortimer Brezny said...

I thought the scope was a gratuitous overgeneralization

I thought he meant what he said.

Unknown said...

Mort,
Give it a break, Dude...you know exactly what I as saying , implying, inferring, etc.

See if you can understand this...and I want to make sure I'm being perfectly clear:

BLOW ME.

P.S. Sorry, Reader, I overreacted...because I sense you may be a powerful woman...and you scared me...seriously.

Mortimer Brezny said...

BLOW ME.

-- SuckyOldson, elucidating the feminist rationale for the Hillary Clinton campaign

reader_iam said...

Uh-huh. Right.

You all can call LuckyOldSon "Lucy." Me, I'm going to call him "Will."

rhhardin said...

luckyoldson writes
rhhardin,
Hear any new really funny tapes making fun of "people" lately?


Well, let's see. How about Norwegians?

Unknown said...

rhhardin,
Ima Swede.

Meade said...

"There isn't even an association between cowboys and wolves. Cowboys don't fight wolves."

Actually, cowboys do fight wolves. At least they did when there were wolves roaming the land in packs preying on cattle - cowboys' livelihood. Cowgirls fought wolves too. At least real cowgirls did."

Trooper York said...

They might fight wolves, but they pee in thier chaps when they face Giant's!!!!!!!
LET'S GO GIANTS!

New York Giants Fight Song

"Fight, You Fightin' Giants!"

Come on and fight you fightin' Giants,
Roll along, to a score;
Come on and fight you fightin' Giants,
Roll it up, more and more.
Go on and show your might, you Giants,
As you go, t'ward the foe;
Come on and go, go, go, go, go fightin' Giants,
Giants Go!

Marching along the road to victory,
Fight Giants fight, you're on the way.
Singing a song, another victory,
You're gonna win again today.
So rack 'em up, and stack 'em up,
And go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

Come on and fight you fightin' Giants,
Roll along, to a score;
Come on and fight you fightin' Giants,
Roll it up, more and more.
Go on and show your might, you Giants,
As you go, t'ward the foe;
Come on and go, go, go, go, go fightin' Giants,
Giants Go!
- - - by Herb Steiner, Cy Gillis, Kyle Rote, 1960

Unknown said...

Ann:

I know this is your blog, but couldn't you start moderating comments and delete some of the above idiots?

Truly, they are a waste of type.

former law student said...

One thing worth responding to in tc's murky word stew: The much maligned baby boomers gave "America's Greatest Generation" a far better retirement than they deserved. Couples living on one income, taxed at 2%, were living off the income of two income couples taxed at 15%, yet they were bleating about being cheated of their rightful due for being "notch babies" or some bullshit. The confiscatory FICA rates were excused as being necessary to amass a "trust fund" so that Gens X, Y, and Z would not have to spend half their income supporting their elders. But the idiot in the White House, with his trillion dollar war on Saddam, is spending his fellow boomers' trust fund.

Too bad we didn't make it a spendthrift trust.

And too bad I didn't turn all my savings into Euro-denominated funds. Since Bush took office, the Euro has gone up 50% -- a better investment than anything I could have made.

Caroline said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Bonnie,
Who the hell are you?

Bob's Blog said...

Mud, yes, mud!