It has to be hard to be an aging activist whose message is no longer relevant. Gloria Steinem was in the news all the time in the 1960s and 1970s when she was on the front lines of the feminist movement, which I’ve often said didn’t do us women any favors. She was burning her bras and demeaning men and everything male. Masculine was out and feminine was in. Men would be required to become more sensitive and accommodating to women …. until women didn’t like them anymore.
Gloria Steinem made her fortune declaring that the feminine was a more evolved life form than the masculine. And then she disappeared into a footnote and has not been heard from in years.
Now, she has found her voice again as a surrogate of Hillary Clinton. She has found a high profile masculine male that she can attempt to emasculate publicly and get lots and lots of publicity for it. She has chosen to attempt to throw a punch at John McCain by devaluing one of the most masculine of activities, being a man at war.
Steinem raised McCain’s Vietnam imprisonment as she sought to highlight an alleged gender-based media bias against Clinton.
“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience.
McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five and a half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”
She goes on to spout off about how all of our presidents have been male and therefore inferior. She’d now very much like all men in the country to please surgically castrate themselves.
So the question comes to mind …. what were Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem and John McCain doing for their country in the 1960s. I was thinking about just that when I saw an article on DIGG that answered just that question.
From This Pilgrim’s Progress … What Gloria was doing in 1968
By 1968 Steinem’s work had become more overtly political. She began writing a column, “The City Politic,” for New York magazine. Her involvement in feminism intensified in 1968 when she attended a meeting of a radical feminist group, the Redstockings. Proud of her feminist roots—her paternal grandmother had served as president of the Ohio Women’s Suffrage Association from 1908 to 1911—Steinem founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in July 1971 with Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm. That same year she began exploring the possibility of a new magazine for women, one that treated contemporary issues from a feminist perspective. The result was Ms. magazine, which first appeared as an insert in the December 1971 issue of New York.
What Hillary was doing in 1968 …
“In September 1968, Hillary Diane Rodham, role model and student government president, was addressing Wellesley College freshmen girls — back when they were still called `girls’ — about methods of protest. It was a hot topic in that overheated year of what she termed `confrontation politics from Chicago to Czechoslovakia.’
As the nation boiled over Vietnam, civil rights and the slayings of two charismatic leaders, Ms. Rodham was completing a sweeping intellectual, political and stylistic shift. She came to Wellesley as an 18-year-old Republican, a copy of Barry Goldwater’s right-wing treatise, `The Conscience of a Conservative,’ on the shelf of her freshman dorm room. She would leave as an antiwar Democrat whose public rebuke of a Republican senator in a graduation speech won her notice in Life magazine as a voice for her generation.”
What John McCain was doing from 1967 until 1973? Languishing in a North Vietnamese prison.
Sorry Gloria and Hillary, but I think John McCain wins the Alpha Male contest.
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Others commenting: Blogs for Victory (and here), Jules Crittenden,Outside the Beltway, Instapundit, HotAir, Jammie Wearing Fool, Ed Driscoll, Patterico’s Pontifications, Don Surber, Bits Blog, Scared Monkeys, Blue Star Chronicles, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
