Just when I thought the feminists of today couldn't get any further out of touch, Debra Dickerson proves me wrong with this howler of an article where she criticizes Michell Obama (wife of Presidential candidate and junior senator from Illinois Barak Obama) for leaving her job to help her husband's campaign.

I thought maybe the writer was being sarcastic when she said she's in a "Feminist Fury," but, as is usually the course with feminists, any irony in the article is clearly unintentional.  Just for fun, here's the article, with my comments:

"May 21, 2007 | You knew it had to happen.

Damn it all, Michelle Obama has quit her $215,000 dream job and demoted herself to queen... She's traded in her solid gold résumé, high-octane talent and role as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals to be a professional wife and hostess."

She's giving up a good but unspectacular job to help her husband become President.  Where are her priorities???

"Now, the energy and drive that had her up jogging before dawn and a gratifying day of work and family will mainly be spent smiling for the cameras."

When did jogging before dawn become a meaningful accomplishment?  Wait, doesn't the President jog before dawn?
 
"Just as we watch curvy, healthy-looking singers and actresses like Lindsay Lohan become anorexic too-blonde hoochies before our very eyes, so we're now in danger of having to watch the political version of that process:"

I thought this comment had to be a joke, but, no, she's seriously trying to draw a parallel between Lindsay Lohan's spiral into rehab with a wife giving up her who-gives-a-rip career to help her husband become President! (God help us if she succeeds, but still...)

"Any day now, Michelle Obama's handlers will have her glued into one of those Sunday-go-to-meeting Baptist grandma crown hats while smiling vapidly for hours at a time. When, of course, she's not staring moonstruck, à la Nancy Reagan, at her moon doggie god-husband who's not one bit smarter than she is."

I'm convinced this was written on a dare, as in "I dare you to find a way to fit Lindsay Lohan and Nancy Reagan into the same paragraph while somehow remotely making this tie in with the point of your article."  Well, she won the bet and the only victims are the people who can't stand poorly-written articles.

"Being president will be hard. So will being first lady for the brilliant Michelle -- imagine, having to begin all your sentences with "My husband and I..."

Um... most wives do acknowledge their husbands from time to time.  Even those who have full-time jobs.  In fact... don't tell anybody this... but this one time... my wife began a sentence with "My husband and I..."  shhhhhh!  This is just between you and me.

"I'm in a feminist fury about Michelle"
 
I'm in a male chauvanist laughing fit.  "Femistst fury?"  You don't say.  Go on.


"I'm blaming the world and every man, woman, child and border collie in it who helps send the message that women's lives must be subordinate to everyone else's."

I'm guessing the "border collie" part was directed at John Edwards. 

"No doubt her modern, progressive husband assured her she didn't have to quit -- probably even tried to dissuade her. It's also quite likely she's making this sacrifice so her children will have at least one parent available. But the result is the same. Our daughters grow up knowing that their freedom to work at hard-won, beloved careers hinges on the doings of their husbands."

And the "doings of their husbands" comment was directed at Hillary Clinton.

"Now is the time for feminism to reach out to black women via the contingent of Obama-esque overachievers out there who ought to be chilled to the bone by Michelle's retirement from work of her own."

Something about putting "retirement" and "bone-chilling" in the same sentence strikes me as something that won't go over too well with the Senior Citizens.

"Given Secretary Rice's, not to mention Oprah's, persistent singleness, black women who have earned high status may well wonder why they should bother trying to both date and develop successful careers if one's going to cancel out the other."
 
Most women would gladly give up their "satisfying" careers, along with useful parts of their anatomies, to find Mr. Right.  But you've got to admire somebody who is so entirely clueless about the desires of most women writing about what women should be thinking.

"No other group is less likely to marry. "

So, lemme get this straight, you think the reason the marriage rate is so low among black women is because they're all so tied down to their $215,000 dream jobs??  Hold on a second, lemme run this one by some of the women in my office...

The general consensus seems to be that black women aren't getting married because they can't find good men worthy of marrying.  And not a single one has a $215,000 dream job (boy, did that question get a lot of laughs).  Every one also said they'd give up their "dream job" to be married to Obama, including the ones I talked to who are already married to someone.  Must be that lack of feminism among black women.

"Given the innate conservatism of the black community, the burden to tend to hearth and home falls disproportionately on its women,"

Say WHAAAAAAAT?  Yah, she said "innate conservatism." The reason black women have to do most of the work caring for children is becuase of all those black Republicans.  And here I thought it was because black fathers weren't sticking around.  Shows what I know.

"While I'm not blaming Michelle, I am issuing a challenge: This political and professional sutee won't end until women refuse to step into the fire, disapproval be damned. Sen. Clinton can't do everything: The rest of us women must stand our ground. Whatever else you think of Clinton, you can't deny that she blazed a trail for women's right to work and, like, be smart in public. And, man, what a beatdown she got."

Yah, front-runner Presidential candidate.  Some beatdown.

"Linda Hirshman was an early observer of the phenomenon of top-tier women leading the retreat back to the kitchen. Following up a controversial article, "Homeward Bound," with an equally controversial book, "Get to Work," she harshly chastised elite, well-educated women for choosing not to work once they married high earners. Using census data and interviews, she argues that:

As a result of feminist efforts -- and larger economic trends -- the percentage of [working] women ... rose robustly through the 1980s and early '90s. But then the pace slowed. The census numbers for all working mothers leveled off around 1990 and have fallen modestly since 1998. In interviews, women with enough money to quit work say they are choosing to opt out. Their words conceal a crucial reality: the belief that women are responsible for child-rearing and homemaking was largely untouched by decades of workplace feminism ... Among the affluent-educated-married population, women are letting their careers slide to tend the home fires. If my interviewees are working, they work largely part time, and their part-time careers are not putting them in the executive suite."

I honestly wonder if the brains of feminists like these are miswired.  Do they never come in contact with real women, or are they so dense that they just don't get it?  Women aren't leaving the workforce because they have to, but because they want to.  They could afford all kinds of options, including marrying a stay-at-home dad.  What do they do?  They marry a high-earner and choose to stay home and raise kids.

Very few men dream of marrying Mrs. Right and raising children.  But most women do.  And it has nothing to do with what society is saying.  It's the same reason why women find masculine men sexy and are repelled by wussies.  When you're talking about people who can write their own ticket, you can't seriously expect anybody to buy your line of bunk that they're being "forced" to stay at home and raise kids, anymore than they're "forced" to buy that vacation home, or "forced" to get a luxury car.  Not the yacht... anything but the yacht.

"What can Michelle do? If Obama wins, she should go for it and take on a meaningful public policy role, à la Hillary Clinton's healthcare work. Just a lot more carefully."

The self-parody in this article continues.

Feminism is rightfully criticized for being irrelevant to black women and ignoring their issues. When it's not plain arrogant, that is. An excellent example of mainstream feminism's high-handedness is Maureen Dowd's recent petty bitching about Michelle's jabs at her husband on the campaign trail.

Apparently the author still holds out home that feminism is relevant to anybody.  Maybe there's a border collie or two who still believes this nonsense, but not the smart ones.

"black men have worked hard to reinforce the image of feminism as not just "white," not just lesbian, not just a plot to make contented black women unhappy with their lot but also (as usual) a war against black men. "

Oh, such ignorance, to think feminism is a war against black men.  Don't they realize it's a war against all men, and apparently children and the hapless border collie as well?  Stop acting like such victims, geez!

"Now is the perfect opportunity for the movement to reach out to black women by embracing Michelle and black women's causes in general. Progressive women should be working their way toward the middle ground a political wife must occupy and politely engineer ways in which Michelle can put her postelection time, win or lose, to worthy causes important to the black community -- welfare-to-work, hiring and job training, for example."

Job training - YES!  Please, oh PLEASE, God, let Michelle Obama's postelection job be to train her hsband to find another line of work aside from President.  P-L-E-A-S-E!!!

Well, that was fun.  Nothing like unintentional irony to bringhten up the afternoon.  These feminists are cute, in a clueless book nerd sort of way.