Anti-feminist-in-chief
The president makes me sick. Literally, physically sick. When asked if he felt obligated to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court, he channeled his inner Larry Summers to respond:
“Actually I can’t tell you the number of women, including Michelle, who say, ‘Choose the person you think is going to be best.’”
This is standard anti-feminist rhetoric. Talk about choosing “the best person” — as if in a nation of 300 million that would somehow preclude finding a woman to fill the job. Use non-feminist women as human shields to defend your stance. (“My wife says it’s okay!”)
What’s even more nauseating is that this is the fucktwit the feminist establishment embraced as a “super-feminist.” And now they’re too worried about saving face to criticize him.
Vomitous. Just vomitous.
30 Responses to “Anti-feminist-in-chief”
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BabeinLA says:
Yes. He literally makes me nauseous, always uneasy, with his strange past, his flipflop present, and his ping-ponging TOTUS-head presence.
Don’t for get that Gibbs said pressuring for a female Supreme could be “counter-productive.”
May 24th, 2009 at 12:14 am EST -
Lexia says:
Wait, wasn’t this the candidate who rode the “historical” wave all the way to the White House? Weren’t his critics told to shut up because the importance of installing the first black president overrode everything else?
Strangely, none of that matters now. Just who’s the best person for the job.
Too bad his own campaign didn’t have the prescience to follow his advice. Too bad for all of us.
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Unree says:
Meh. The question Obama got was: If you don’t pick a woman, what can you say to your wife, mother-in-law, and daughters? Pretty inane, also hard to answer–especially if you’re trying not to tip your hand to reporters. I share your opinion of this politician but I don’t blame him for intoning that what his wife and other women care about is that he pick the best person, whether male or female blah blah.
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Violet says:
If Obama were a feminist, he would have told the reporter, “But I do plan to appoint a woman. Women should be appointed to every vacancy on the Court until it’s 50-50. It’s outrageous that 8 out of 9 justices on the Supreme Court are men.”
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cellocat says:
Violet says:
If Obama were a feminist, he would have told the reporter, “But I do plan to appoint a woman. Women should be appointed to every vacancy on the Court until it’s 50-50. It’s outrageous that 8 out of 9 justices on the Supreme Court are men.”
If I heard him say that I would know that I was either a) dreaming, b) in a different space-time continuum, c) drugged, or d) crazy.
It is outrageous that a statement like that would create a huge firestorm or be a politician’s death-knell, but I think it would.
And look what’s happening to Pelosi now, too. Bitter irony, that…
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Kiuku says:
Because choosing the best people naturally results in (white) men everywhere.
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soopermouse says:
on the bright side of things nobody will vote for the asshole a second time. But alas, the @I told you so@ is getting stale.
I wish all the people who voted for him holding their hands on their ears pay for it dearly and live to understand that they did it onto themselves.
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anna says:
Saying “I plan to pick the best person” only implies “I don’t plan to pick a woman” if you do believe that women are inferior.
It is possible to be a feminist and not support affirmative action, to believe that if people were truly selected based only on merit, women would make up half of all top jobs, without having to specifically say “Make sure we’ve got our quota of women filled. Reserve plenty of spots for women, otherwise it’ll be dominated by men.”
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Kiuku says:
yea but the men are just relieved. unfortunately. they are just so relieved from the terror of possibly having a woman in the white house that they would sacrifice the entire country. they don’t care. they will destroy the entire world before that happens. it’s their worst nightmare.
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Violet says:
It is possible to be a feminist and not support affirmative action, to believe that if people were truly selected based only on merit, women would make up half of all top jobs, without having to specifically say “Make sure we’ve got our quota of women filled. Reserve plenty of spots for women, otherwise it’ll be dominated by men.”
And given the rate at which vacancies occur on the Court, and the typical length of service of each justice, and the enormous power this body of 8 men and 1 women wields over the lives of all American citizens, and the fact that we do live in a perfect meritocracy, it certainly makes all kinds of good feminist sense to simply allow nature to take its course and wait for the Court to naturally assume an even distribution.
Congratulations, anna: in your zeal to defend Obama, you’ve crossed over to the dark side. You’re now a shill for anti-feminists.
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Branjor says:
If people were selected based only on merit, more than half of the SC would be women.
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Sis says:
I’m glad he said it. I’m glad it’s out there. I’m going to start attaching it as a sig line in all my listserv comments and e-mails.
“Actually I can’t tell you the number of women, including Michelle, who say, ‘Choose the person you think is going to be best.’”
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yttik says:
What really makes me ill is the response people will have if Obama doesn’t appoint a woman. They’ll spin him as the “post gender” president and declare that equality has been achieved. They’ll say he is so highly evolved that he doesn’t even think in terms of gender. They’ll say he’s shown great courage in refusing to view women as oppressed minorities. They’ll praise him for promoting the idea that women can achieve whatever they want based on their own merits. MS mag will put his picture on their cover thanking him for advancing feminism.
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leis says:
Anna-
“Saying “I plan to pick the best person” only implies “I don’t plan to pick a woman” if you do believe that women are inferior.”Ah, so I’m the misogynist. Thanks for clearing that up.
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tinfoil hattie says:
Right, Anna. “I plan to pick the best person” never, ever, EVER translates secretly to, “Of course I’m picking a man. I am just pretending to have thought long and hard about it, so that when I don’t pick a woman, I can say, ‘B-b-but-but-but I told you I would pick the best person, and here he is!’ without hearing crap from you feminists.”
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Violet says:
For what it’s worth, I do think he’s going to pick a woman. But it won’t undo the damage. He’s already trotted out the “my wife says women’s representation doesn’t matter!” line o’ bull.
I wonder how he feels about all-white juries?
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raindrop says:
And when Obama picked Biden for his VP, was he picking the person who was “going to be best”?
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Unree says:
When I read Violet above @4, my first reaction was wow, way idealistic–what politician would ever say THAT?
Then I remembered 1993 when Bill Clinton said his attorney general would be a woman. The dudez howled a little about the end of the meritocracy, but life went on. Amazing how backwards we’ve gone.
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Lori says:
This bigotry rests on the ridiculous notion (that egomaniacs love) that there is ONE best person for the job. That’s just preposterous. There are probably 500 equally well-qualified for this job and a good number of them are women. Saying they are going to find the best, with all those options, just builds in an excuse to extend the bigotry,
It’ll be nice if he appoints a woman, but I’m expecting an African American male with no writing on abortion issues who will side with the anti-choice lot.
But Violet, you may be right. This threatening about how detrimental lobbying will be to the feminist cause, may only reflect Obama’s desire to completely own nominating woman and to not have to risk it looking like he caved into women’s groups.
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Sis says:
An African American? Shouldn’t he appoint the best person for the job?
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donna darko says:
It better be a woman. 1 out of 9 is unacceptable. Even he knows this. Common touch sounds like a cross between Harriet Miers and someone to have a beer with. Bush III indeed.
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Tabby Lavalamp says:
Off topic, and I know it’s about what is expected from the source, but holy crap…
http://weeklystandard.com/Cont.....y.asp?pg=1 -
octogalore says:
I agree with Lori, there’s no “one” right person. So therefore, anna is incorrect that:
“Saying ‘I plan to pick the best person’ only implies ‘I don’t plan to pick a woman’ if you do believe that women are inferior.”
Because you CAN feel women are among those in the “best qualified” group and ALSO that someone saying he plans to pick from that group may not be picking from among the women in that group.
I also agree with Lexia about the underlying hypocrisy here. There’s certainly some precedent from benefiting from “historical” but then turning around and insist on “most qualified” when you’re not personally affected, but I’m unclear as to why Clarence Thomas’ precedent is one President Obama admires here.
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Lexia says:
Good god, Octa! Did the Presnit actually say he admired that one step from a perjurer? Thomas has since been proven to have lied during his confirmation hearings with respect to his pornography viewing, at the very least. That undermined the whole of his defense with respect to Dr. Hill.
One the other hand, as I believe Sugar N Spice said, Obama -is- Thomas: the packaging, the marketing, the incompetence, the lies. So that would make sense.
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JR says:
I don’t know. I think it’s pretty important, and feminist, for Obama to (a) pick a woman, definitely, and (b) say that she is, in his judgment, absolutely the best candidate for the job (and specifically NOT just the “best woman” for the job).
The simplest way to fight the annoying and ever-present perception that the best person for the job is always a white man is to state forcefully that you’re picking the best person for the job — and then don’t pick a white man.
(Of course, as Violet may be suggesting, there’s not really a “best person” for this job. There is some set of well-qualified people, lots of whom are women. So all Obama really has to do is pick one of them. But our meritocratic mythology requires One Best Person for every job, and given that, I think he should recite the “best person for the job” mantra and then, obviously, pick a woman.)
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Keri says:
And “affirmative action quotas” work. The countries were women are the closest to men in equality (Scandinavian countries) have quota goals for the percentage of positions in their federal governments that must be filled by a woman. Some even either had or current have a woman head of state- like Iceland, and not only is she female, but she’s a lesbian socialist.
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slythwolf says:
on the bright side of things nobody will vote for the asshole a second time.
That’s what we said about Bush, for all the good it did us.
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octogalore says:
Lexia — no, I don’t mean that he explicitly said he admired Thomas, just that he’s following the precedent Thomas set, of reaping personal benefits from a policy and then stating it shouldn’t apply for others.
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femina says:
0bama is all image and no substance.
He’s building his political arguments for 2012: now for women, I have selected all these women in my cabinet and administration; I have set up the Alliance for Women and Girls; I have cleared the path of any contenders against Kirsten Gillibrand’s NY Senate race; (possibly) I have named a women SC Justice; etc. I am so wonderful that people call me the first feminist president.
So, if you squint real hard, you could easily see Hillary sitting in the Oval Office.
Yeah, right.
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julia says:
Yeah, Violet, me too: I can’t stand to hear his voice. I turn off the radio whenever he’s on. He did pick a woman for the Supreme Court; I only heard about her this AM listening to No Problem Radio (NPR) because I’m out in the mountains and that’s all they’ve got. And, of course they had two male law professors criticizing her, saying she wasn’t intellectual enough and that there’s been some concern about her temper. We know what that means: she’s a strong woman.
Does anyone know about her? Sonia Sotomayor?
Why the “president” makes me sick: jailing people indefintily w/o trial. Now it’s legal and they can do it to us. Democracy mi culo.
Coal mining.
Bailout.
Sending ‘prisoners’ to countries that will torture them, so we can say that we don’t. I just read that the number has risen since Obama’s been in office.
Saying a woman’s right to choose is between ‘her, her doctor and her clergyman’
CUTTING SOCIAL SERVICES which will mostly affect women!
And on and on, and it’s only been four months.There is a reader on this blog who went to school with Obama, and she told me she knows his brand of sexism. I wish she would write about it…
