Kathleen Parker: If Only McCain Were Less (or More?) Like Jörg Haider....

In a column that is insulting of men in general, and particularly of John McCain, Kathleen Parker can find only one explanation for John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate - and she does emphasize "mate":

One does not have to be a psychoanalyst to reckon that McCain was smitten. By no means am I suggesting anything untoward between McCain and his running mate. Palin is a governor, after all. She does have an executive résumé, if a thin one. And she's a natural politician who connects with people.

But there can be no denying that McCain's selection of her over others far more qualified -- and his mind-boggling lack of attention to details that matter -- suggests other factors at work. His judgment may have been clouded by . . . what?

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As my husband observed early on, McCain the mortal couldn't mind having an attractive woman all but singing arias to his greatness. Cameras frequently capture McCain beaming like a gold-starred schoolboy while Palin tells crowds that he is "exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief." This, notes Draper, "seemed to confer not only valor but virility on a 72-year-old politician who only weeks ago barely registered with the party faithful."

You know, just maybe his mind was "clouded" by advisors who kept harping on the deficiencies of the other candidates on his short list, as contrasted with a couple who waxed poetic about how Palin would excite "the base". (No, I'm not using the term "excite" in the same sense as Parker.)

(Meanwhile, in Austria....)

Sexist, Yes. But Against Whom?

A few years back I was involved with a board that addressed family law issues. One lawyer on the board, an older man, would object to any proposal that suggested the treatment of men and women as equally capable parents. His beliefs boiled down to the idea that men were naturally disposed to working outside the home and bringing home an income, and women were naturally disposed to raise children. He never objected to working mothers or daycare, but instead objected to the idea of treating men as equally interested or equally capable parents. Based upon his preconceptions, upbringing, and the role he had taken for himself as a parent, he simply knew better. Yes, he would debate people on the issue, but no, there was no room for movement in his beliefs - he would only argue to try to convince challengers that they were wrong. After a while, people stopped engaging him and we got back to getting through the agenda in a timely manner.

As with ever other human endeavor, parenting skills, interest in parenting, and aptitude for parenting fall on a continuum. Some people (men and women) are very interested in becoming parents, while others are not. Some have a great deal of interest in raising their children, and others have little. And despite their best efforts, some who are interested in raising their children lack the aptitude to do so. I'm not going to try to argue whether men and women fall on the same continuum, or if there are gender differences resulting from societal pressures and biology, first because I'm not aware of any good research into the area, and second because it's not relevant to this analysis. (If any reader coming across this knows of research, please share it as a comment.)

Some have suggested that it is "sexist" to ask of Sarah Palin, "How can you take a high pressure, all-consuming job while you are raising five children." To the extent that the same question would not be asked of a man (and let's be honest - it generally will not), there is sexism at play. But it's not only sexism against women. When a man takes a high pressure, high hours job, the assumption is that somebody else will take over the primary parenting role. That could be a spouse or a nanny. Nobody defends the man by stating, "Maybe he's a superdad who can work 60-80 hours per week yet still make the kids' lunches, attend all of their plays and sports meets, make cookies for the bake sale...." It's just assumed that he does not.

If that's your assumption about a man who works a consuming job, it's not necessarily sexist. If you've ever worked that much, or have observed somebody who does, you know that the assumption is usually correct. That parent is often out of the house before the kids are up in the morning, back home after they've gone to bed, or both. There are only so many hours in the day, and if you spend ten or twelve of them at work (plus commute time) you're not spending them at home. The sexism comes in if you don't ask the question of a man, but ask it of a woman.

One thing that has been overlooked in this "who's taking care of the kids" nonsense is that there have been a lot of women in high-powered jobs, both in the public and private sector, who have kids at home. In recent memory the whispers have not involved "How does she have time to take care of the kids and work that job," but have instead been, "Did she pay Social Security taxes for her nanny?" It's misleading to argue that there's a judgment of women in this type of situation when it is known how they take care of their kids. Sure, there are some people who view it as anything from a dereliction of your proper gender role to entirely inexcusable (unless you're Sarah Palin) for a mother to work outside of the home, but beyond that fringe reliance on a nanny is broadly accepted.

It seems apparent that for now the McCain campaign is giddy about being able to accuse anybody who asks anything about Palin of "sexism", so they're not going to tell us how the Palins divide their parenting responsibilities. They appear to love having people jump to Palin's defense with the assumption that she's a supermom, and don't want to lay out facts that might contradict the myth. But unless your assumption is that a working dad with a high pressure job is an equivalent "superdad", that assumption is also predicated upon sexist assumptions.

When a working parent, man or woman, who has tried to balance work and career, wonders, "How could she possibly do it," there's not necessarily any sexism in their wonder. People with one or two kids and forty hour per week jobs struggle with these issues. And sorry, replying "Who are you to ask," or "Why don't you assume she's a supermom", doesn't clear things up. You know what? If in fact Palin somehow manages a highly involved parent with all of her kids despite her obligations as governor, she should be writing a book of parenting tips. It could be a bestseller. And if she's relying upon her husband or a third party to pick up the slack, she would do us a favor by saying so and ending all the speculation - including the buzz the National Enquirer is trying to generate by depicting her teenage children as all-but-feral. There's nothing wrong with being human.

Sexism In Politics

At The American Conservative, Leon Hadar is dismissive of sexism in politics:

The New York Times is continuing to focus our attention on the charges of sexism that Hillary [Clinton] and its supporters have leveled against the media, quoting a leader of one woman group making it clear to America’s misogynists that “We’re certainly not going to take this lying down”.

Now…can anyone imagine the husband of a leading American female political figure winning political office by running on the coattails of his wife? Or is it conceivable that this man could win the support of the public, and especially that of male voters, by exploiting the sympathy he could receive after it was discovered that his wife had cheated on him with a younger man? Mmm. . . I don’t think so. Such a man would probably be ridiculed by men and women alike as a “loser” and a “girlie” man.

I think there is no question but that there were some appalling displays of sexism during the primary campaign. I also don't think it affected the outcome of the Democratic primary. But that doesn't mean it's somehow unreasonable to take note of it, and to regret that it occurred.

But perhaps more to the point, in attacking Clinton's supporters for raising the issue of sexism, Hadar illustrates their point. He sees it as somehow within the rules of the game to make sexist attacks on women, because a man who complained of similar treatement would be seen as a "'girlie' man" - that is, they're compared, unfavorably, to women.

No one is really shocked when men who run for political office - especially for the job of the US president who is also the nation’s commander-in-chief - are judged by their leadership qualities that tend to be associated with male attributes: strength; toughness; potency; charisma; ability to play political hardball.

And that somehow makes it defensible to define the qualities associated with womanhood (or "girlie man-hood") as evidence of weakness, prissiness, or inability to lead? Should I even have to explain this? There is simply no comparison between a form of "sexism" that asserts certain gender traits as positive with bona fide sexism that asserts certain gender traits as negative. The tendency to paint men who fail to meet this measure of "strength; toughness; potency; charisma; ability to play political hardball" as "girlie men" itself is a manifestation of sexism.

It goes with the territory of dirty politics. Male and female candidates don’t win brownie points by playing the role of the victim. No one expects that a male politician losing an erlection would accuse his opponents and the media of sexism or “anti-manism”. That would sound as either pathetic or ridiculous, or both.

And we delve even deeper into the absurd. It may be unfair to hold up a caricature of manhood (Hadar points to "military figures or football players" as doing well in politics, but sneers at male models, apparently forgetting that behind the action figure facade Gov. Schwarzenegger has more in common with the latter than with the former) as an ideal, but it's not anti-male to depict masculinity as a positive. Of course it would sound absurd if somebody deemed this to be "sexist" against men - and Hadar already told us what the response would be: The complainer would be deemed "a 'loser' and a 'girlie' man."

This hints at one of the peculiarities of the election. Even though it is widely assumed that racism played a role in some primary outcomes (with polls in some states showing a substantial population of voters who aren't comfortable voting for Obama due to his race), under present societal mores public figures and media figures are on the whole cautious about saying anything that would be construed as racism. While many are similarly circumspect about making statements that could be construed as sexist, there have been some surprising candor in the expression of sexism toward Clinton. A candidate can make a reasonably substantiated accusation of racism without being falling into Hadar's "girlie-man" archetype.

Hadar suggests that complaints about Clinton such as "She only got where she is because she was married to Bill Clinton", or "She wouldn't have stood a chance if people didn't feel sorry for her because of Bill's cheating", aren't sexism, because we would view a man who attempted to obtain office on similar terms as being weak, feminine and unsuitable for office. But sexism is not a defense of sexism. The woman may not suffer the same stigmatization as a man, because she's a woman and the assertions against her fit within predefined gender roles. It's okay for a woman to be a woman - but it's not okay for a man to be like a woman. Hadar may be right that a man cannot publicly complain of that, but there can be no missing that attempts to depict political opponents as weak and effeminate are a big and continuing part of politics. And under this model, being "like a woman" is a huge negative. Even if the target is a man, that's a manifestation of sexism against women.

Which brings us back to the current election campaign.

Had Mrs. Clinton been the candidate, she would no doubt have faced more attacks for being too mannishly abrasive or, conversely, too emotional to play the manly role. But Mr. Obama should expect similar damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t gender assaults. He will be cast either as the epicene metrosexual who can’t protect the country or else as the modern heathen with a suspicious middle name.

The attacks are already under way, as is evident if one enters the words “Obama” and “effeminate” into a search engine. The effeminacy canard lurks in Mike Huckabee’s imaginings of Mr. Obama tripping off a chair and diving for the floor when confronted by a gunman, and in the words of Tucker Bounds, Mr. McCain’s campaign spokesman, who depicted Mr. Obama as “hysterical.”

News media blatherers and bloggers are taking up the theme. On MSNBC, Tucker Carlson called Mr. Obama “kind of a wuss”; Joe Scarborough, the morning TV talk show host, dubbed Mr. Obama’s bowling style “prissy” and declared, “Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man”; and Don Imus, the radio host, never one to be outdone in the sexual slur department, dubbed Mr. Obama a “sissy boy.”

And on it goes.