Ok, so the big news yesterday (bigger than Bush's last SOTU?) was that Ted "Mayor Quimby" Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama in this year's Democratic primary. Coming on the heels of his neice, Caroline, writing a glowing op-ed in the NYT comparing Senator Obama to her late father (President John F. Kennedy, for those of you who are complete non-DC-insiders), this was no surprise.
What surpised, annoyed, and kind of frightened me, though, was the reaction from the head of New York's NOW (National Organization for Women) chapter. In an interview with the Huffington Post, NY-NOW head Marcia Pappas
said that Kennedy's decision to back Sen. Barack Obama reflected a long-standing tradition of the "old guard" turning its back on gender equality. "What goes on has been going on from the beginning of time," said Pappas. "Woman have been very supportive of male politicians who have not been so easy to convince of woman's rights. You sometime have to twist their arm to go along on something. We think that Ted Kennedy, who claims to be a supporter of women's rights, who now has come out and joined the [Obama] bandwagon, is basically saying that a qualified woman, Hillary Clinton, is not qualified enough for him."Now, I'm pretty nonchalant on the stance of Women's rights. That is to say, I don't care what's between your legs, unless of course I'm trying to sleep with you (no surprises, please). I believe that women are equally qualified as men to hold offices and perform most any job. I'm a lukewarm supporter of some women's professional sports because I believe that someday the level of play will be equal and the best women will be able to play professionally with the men (yes, John McEnroe, you heard me). For instance, in my favorite obscure sport, rowing, Ekaterina Karsten, who has won many, many Olympic and World Championship medals in the Women's single scull, would have placed 6th among men's scullers last year. Personally, I would like to see the women and men's singles mixed together and medals awarded based on overall finish, but I'm probably insane. I have voted for both women (Barbara Mikulski, Connie Morella, Tammy Baldwin) and men (Russ Feingold, Herb Kohl, Ben Cardin, Paul Sarbanes, Chris Van Hollen, Al Gore, John Kerry, etc). I really don't care what you are, I care about who you are and what you believe. Maybe it would be good for Ms. Pappas to actually read what Senator Kennedy said yesterday, about getting past the "old guard" style politics of personal destruction and moving beyond racial and gender identity politics to elect leaders who can represent everyone. Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan farmer and a white woman from Kansas who was raised in Indonesia and attended school in Hawaii. He is Ivy League educated, and spent years as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago. He is a post-racial, post-gender political figure that has managed to get Americans of all colors, genders, and faiths excited about politics for the first time in a long time. To say that Senator Kennedy's endorsement is
just another example of "good old boys," who have "decided that they will support anybody but a woman... He knows in his heart that Clinton is the best person for the job, and for whatever reasons he seems he's not willing to support her."is to defy logic and plain english. To quote President Bill Clinton, how dare you? How dare you encourage us to step back into the idea that supporting a man means not supporting women? How dare you cast aspersions on the pro-choice leanings of a man who has long defied the Catholic faith with which his family has been identified and cast vote after vote in the Senate to support the Right to Choose? How dare you call an Irish Catholic machine politician endorsing a biracial candidate who has united so many diverse groups of Americans an example of the "good old boy network?" When Senator Clinton was heckled with a stupid, childish taunt before the New Hampshire primary, I had to shake off a wave of disgust for the idiots who thought it would be funny to say stupid, misogynistic things to the first serious Female candidate for a major party nomination. Now, I can't help but feel like you, Ms. Pappas need to be put in your place. Not in your place as a woman, but in your place in history, as a relic of an era of politics that my generation is trying to put behind us. We are sick of refighting our parents' social battles of the 60's and 70's. The Vietnam protests and the sit-ins and the riots and Stop ERA are over. For the most part, the good guys won. It's time to build on those victories by erasing the lines of race, gender, and faith that the "old guard" used to divide us, and you, Ms. Pappas, are simply trying to recast a mold that has long been broken. Please, please, please. Go away. Iron. My. Shirt.
