Girls’ Rules
The November 2006 election opened the door for a sea-change in
This election was a referendum on sloppy intelligence work, inter-agency turf wars, political over-reaching, lies to Congress and the people (lies nearing the magnitude of fraud, serving agendas conceived before any excuse for action toward them occurred), and unethical behavior ranging from the torture of prisoners to the exorbitant prices paid for Haliburton’s goods and services. Let’s not forget the egregiously exorbitant price paid in the lives and limbs of soldiers and innocent civilians in the name of security from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
The electorate taught our political parties—both of them—a lesson. That lesson is change and accountability for it. It’s a lesson of hope and of trust, but hope that must be fulfilled and trust that must be earned. One of the most important results of this election is the historic accession of a female representative to the post of Speaker of the House.
That’s how much we as a people see the need for change. We have played by boys’ rules long enough. Now the girls are not only at the table, we’re closer to the head of it. We shall raise the level of discourse. We shall reach achievable security and economic goals through effective strategies. And we shall burn no bras to do it.
That 1960’s bra burning myth was always just that, myth and metaphor: “Set ‘the girls’ free.” It’s been a long, complex climb, setting the girls free, and the climb’s not done yet. We have sheer north faces to scale and glacier fields to traverse before planting the Chickland flag on the peaks we will summit.
Then we’ll have to mark the trail clearly for others to follow and defend it against the kudzu-like encroachment of the persistent Oldboysland parties. But they have long had their own trails to the summit, and they can (and will) continue to use them. The only difference will be that the Chicklanders will not ever give up our paths to those same summits – and a few new peaks the Oldboyslanders never thought of. Not to worry, though; we’ll share the view.
Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House. During their campaigns, Republicans held that possibility as an unimaginable horror which—along with the threat of a Democrat-led abandonment of the War on Terrorism—would dishonor Our Great Nation. Really? More than initiating an unjustified war did? More than torture of prisoners did? More than defrauding Congress and the electorate into sending our soldiers to die and spending our wealth for nothing good or necessary while enriching politically well-connected companies did? Being led again by the party that achieved our last balanced budget would be worse than that?
Most people aren’t that good at math and logic. The Republican marketing machine was counting on that and also on the fascist-conservative voting block’s deeply subconscious fear of powerful women. I mean, you suppress a group for your own advantage all your life, con them into believing that it’s for their own good, keep them in the dark about how you’re really running the world – and then when somebody turns the lights on, and they see how the world really can be for them, well, the payback should scare you.
I don’t know what’s so surprising about a woman being Speaker of the House. Every woman I know is the primary speaker of her house. Men always complain that we speak too much. Recent studies show that we use more words per day than men do. (Not counting, I’m sure, the many subtle meanings of the common male locutions “Humma-humma,” “Hoo-wah,” and “Oh, baby!”) So a woman becoming The Speaker makes sense in a biology-is-destiny kind of way.
I hope that the first woman Speaker will redeem us Baby Boomers from the embarrassments we have suffered because of the compulsions and excesses of the first two (male) Presidents of our generation. I hope she sets a precedent for the next (and probably last) President of our generation, if the next generation doesn’t pre-empt our last hurrah. Nancy Pelosi’s statements since the elections have established a strong foundation for those hopes – pragmatic, realistic, reasonable, open-minded. I’m pretty sure she can pronounce “nuclear” and construct a coherent sentence.
Thus, she may also be able to help structure a coherent approach to economic and military recovery. Although Pelosi represents that hotbed of liberalism,
It’s time to raise the, um, standards. Let’s hear it for the girls!
© Kate Diamond 2006
posted by Kate Diamond @ 4:58 PM
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