Feminist criticizes Kerry's "butch' image.

[dand]

Barbara Ehrenreich was jeered at Tuesday's "Take back America" rally when she suggested that Kerry and Edwards had become too "butch" for their own good.
'It looks like the democrats are too frightened to be labeled "girlie men' by the party of Schwarzenegger to do what has to be done to protect us in this country.
She noted that in 1992, Democrats made women the focus of their convention, something she said was missing this year.


http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewNation.asp?Page=%3E%3E%3ENation%3E%3E%3Earchive%3E%3E%3E200407%3E%3E%3ENAT20040728b.html

[SheilaT]

1. I take it having

Teresa Heinz Kerry speak doesn't count. Nor does Carol Mosely Braun. Or former Governor Shaheen. Or Kathleen Sebelius. I'm sure I'm leaving out a few.

Ehrenreich can be weirdly out of touch with reality sometimes.

[Garage Queen]

4. Or Govenor Granholm tonight.

(Michigan's own "Jennie from the Block." hee!)

Good lord, honey. Methinks she needs to go lie down for a while. sheesh.

[BadGimp]

2. gag me with a spoon

there aint no pleasing the hard core of any constituency

For the money, I think Edwards is a prissey type. A tad too efeminate for my tastes.

And shait they are up against Commander Codpiece for crying out loud. Ya gotta put your manliest side forward. Soon it will descend into a "mine is bigger than your's" contest. Hey it could!

[mitchtv]

3. no it won't, Bush would lose that contest

in a nanosecond( nano pinga)

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Too much nit-picking.

That's why feminist lost the mainstream. They made issues over insignificant things like women wearing make-up. They need to keep their eyes on the brass ring and stop making silly comments which get picked up and end up overshadowing everything else.

[Warpy]

6. Ehrenreich is just upset at their lack of antiwar language.

and I can sort of see her point, although it would be counterproductive now. They've got to know how the party feels, something like 85% of the delegates are solidly antiwar.

She really needn't worry. I find Bush utterly sexless, a nancy boy who tries too hard, and I don't think I'm alone. His macho posturing as cowboy and flyboy only put me in mind of the Village People, and again, I don't think I'm alone.

However, being vocally antiwar at this point would open them to those "weak on terra, weak on defense, running scared" charges the right wing always trots out in a tough election. It's best not to encourage them by giving them specific ammunition. Even Dean knew that.

[TaleWgnDg]

13. yup, life is to chuckle at times . . .

at those who don't read an article before making comments.

In all seriousness, folks, Warpy is correct. Ehrenreich is merely saying in her own feminist words what most of the progressives have been saying all along . . . the front runners during this campaign did NOT talk anti-war rhetoric.

Instead, they grabbed onto the bully-boy (read: "butch") pulpit talking George-speak. Ehrenreich is correct. The culture of the extremists needs to be portrayed including its treatment of women. Call it "feminism" or call it "human rights for women" but do EXPOSE it for what it is . . . attack it directly . . . and do not "butch" it over a la GWBush.

[DinahMoeHum]

7. Oh, brother. More "Nothing-But-The-Best-For=The-Oppressed"

bullshit.

Oh, well. Barbara Ehrenreich has written a lot of good stuff lately. She's only human.


:evilfrown:

[struggle4progress]

8. Story questionable: CNS is a rightwing site. eom

[Miss Authoritiva]

9. I haven't had any luck finding other accounts of this event.

Googling only turned up this story again, and I haven't found anything on the "Take Back America" website. It's not that I doubt the quotes per se because Ehrenreich has gone on about "butchness" before. I just want to make sure things weren't taken out of context -- given that we're dealing with CNS here.

[RamboLiberal]

10. Ehrenreich is taking that theme with her column in NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/opinion/29ehre.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

The New Macho: Feminism
By BARBARA EHRENREICH

The Dems couldn't be more butch if they took to wearing codpieces. Every daily convention theme contains the words "strength" or "strong," and even Hillary has been relegated to the role of wife. The idea, according to the pundits, is that with more than half of the voters still favoring Bush as the guy to beat bin Laden, Kerry needs to show that he's macho enough to whup the terrorists. Of course, everyone knows that the macho approach is notably less effective than pixie dust - otherwise, we wouldn't be holding our political conventions under total lockdowns.

Well, I've been reading bin Ladin - Carmen, that is, not her brother-in-law Osama (she spells the last name with an "i") - and I'd like to present a brand-new approach to terrorism, one that turns out to be a lot more consistent with traditional Democratic values. First, let's stop calling the enemy "terrorism," which is like saying we're fighting "bombings." Terrorism is only a method; the enemy is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying superpower.

But as Carmen bin Ladin urgently reminds us in "Inside the Kingdom," one glaring moral flaw in this insurgency, quite apart from its methods, is that it aims to push one-half of those masses down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals. While Osama was getting pumped up for jihad, Carmen was getting up her nerve to walk across the street in a residential neighborhood in Jeddah - fully veiled but unescorted by a male, something that is illegal for a woman in Saudi Arabia. Eventually she left the kingdom and got a divorce because she didn't want her daughters to grow up in a place where women are kept "locked in and breeding."

So here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy for Kerry: feminism. Or, if that's too incendiary, try the phrase "human rights for women." I don't mean just a few opportunistic references to women, like those that accompanied the war on the Taliban and were quietly dropped by the Bush administration when that war was abandoned and Afghan women were locked back into their burkas. I'm talking about a sustained and serious effort.

[TaleWgnDg]

14. Ehrenreich could NOT be more correct . . .

simply put, Ehrenriech is saying what is reasonable and timely: EXPOSE their culture! Portray them for who they are. Show the world how they interact and treat EACH OTHER.

As a family law attorney who has seen, first-hand, the tragedy of broken Islamic marriages and how it impacts women and their children, I know full well what Ehrenreich is saying. And it doesn't stop at the door of broken marriages, it's also in so-called "honor killings" and the mere fact that women cannot function as full human beings in their culture. They are relegated to second class citizenry.

Yes, do expose it in all it's ugliness. And, as you are doing it, call it "feminism" or call it "human rights for women (and children)" but do EXPOSE it.

[Jade Fox]

11. Barbara, get your priorities straight here...

I think this convention has been very pro-woman, and I don't think the
John's have butched it up too much.

I'm disappointed in Ehrenreich.

[DaveofCali]

12. these nitpicks are not good

I don't like these "nitpick" criticisms that do nothing but steer attention away from the positive aspects, for nothing more than otherwise irrelevant stuff.