It's All The President's Fault

When I was growing up in the 1930’s and ‘40’s girls were constantly admonished to dress, speak and act in a certain manner (determined by adult white males) or else whatever bad thing befell you was your fault for not dressing, speaking, or acting in that certain manner.  This is, of course, quite constricting since no matter what a girl or woman did, if something bad befell her she had no recourse.  This shifted all of the responsibility for the ‘bad thing’, be it rape, loss of good reputation, being known as a smart girl and therefore unappealing to men who did not like women who were smarter than they were, or just general concern over the ‘appropriateness’ of the girl or woman for marriage material back onto the girl or woman, and the men could feel quite smug about their superiority.

This morning I awoke in my usual state of non-awareness before coffee, wandered in to the kitchen, poured my coffee, and went in to slowly drink it while watching the Tivo’d program, Morning Joe.  I settled down, and shortly got a very rude awakening.  I hate waking up to arrogance, and in particular when arrogance is not recognized by the pundit who doesn’t recognize that he is being particularly stupid.  Here were three or four supposedly erudite gentlemen talking about how it was all President Obama’s fault that he didn’t get everything he wanted on the recent “fiscal curb” negotiations because he hadn’t spent enough time in “outreach” to Congressional leaders and members.  If he were only more outgoing like VP Joe Biden he would have achieved much more, so it was really his fault that the Republican leadership in the House was so intransigent!!  Don’t, for heaven’s sake, blame the Republicans.  They were only doing what they had said they were going to do, which was to keep President Obama from achieving, first, reelection, and then when that got blown out of the water, anything at all.  And that, of course, was his fault.

I try really hard not to attribute either misogynistic or racial attributes to people I don’t know personally.  But the discussion this morning was so revolting to me.  If the members of Congress are so immature that they need to have “Daddy” come down and pat them on the head for being good boys and girls, we’re truly in deep yogurt.  Forget the fact that President Obama is an academic.  Forget the fact that VP Joe Biden is a time-honored politician at heart, and that he has a more naturally outgoing personality.

Do I want a President who is all smiles, back-slapping, and hail-fellow-well met?  We had one in Lyndon Johnson, and people were ticked off at him because he was so shallow.  So give me a thoughtful, knowledgeable, and compassionate man for President, such as Barack Obama.  The thing that really ticked me off this morning is that the discussion was based, probably unintentionally, or not, as the case may be, around the superiority of the white men sitting at that table.  I would hate to think they were thinking that way because of the color of President Obama’s skin.  If they were, their erudition was about as deep as the President’s skin color.