Posted by
Tzimisce on Friday, December 21, 2007 2:32:43 PM
“Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”
This is actually a good question. It actually sounds like something one of my feminist professors would have asked in one of their patriotic rants about how much Americans and our culture suck.
But the question actually came from Talk Radio Host Rush Limbaugh and thus it’s regarded as anti-feminist and anti-woman by people who didn’t hear his entire monologue on the subject. The lesson here is clear: depending on who you are (and how you vote) you can get away with saying certain things. If you’re white and male there isn’t much you can say without getting yelled at – and that’s not racist, sexist or homophobic on the part of the Politically Correct (didn’t you read their book explaining why it’s not?)
But Limbaugh brings up an excellent point: our culture is obsessed with looks. Not just on women either. About fifty years ago Nixon lost an election to Kennedy after a debate where a sweating Nixon (who claimed to have a cold) squirmed under questioning while his opponent across the aisle looked confident. I guess it’s a natural byproduct of being able to send pictures from one coast to the other in a matter of seconds and having a population with enough wealth and privilege to see those pictures the minute they get transmitted.
And women who tend to care more about the way they look than men often have a harder time. The funny part is that women tend to be harder on the way women look than men. Remember what feminists said about Paula Jones? These were women attacking another woman on the basis of looks. Feminists also like to attack Dr. Laura on the basis of how she dresses as well. Rush even said all of this himself:
“There is this thing in this country that, as you age -- and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood -- America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can't get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, in the box office. “
So its semi bizarre to me that he is in trouble for what he says. If anything libs and Hillary supporters should be happy that Limbaugh brought this up cause he was actually defending their candidate on this front. So you’d think they’d be praising him.
But I’ve noticed that “open minded” people on the American left seldomly listen…