Fox News host Jessie Watters: seemed to be channeling Warren Farrell with some particularly obtuse remarks he made recently on the Fox show “Outnumbered” on the “single ladies” vote.
Hillary Clinton needs the single ladies vote. I call them ‘The Beyoncé Voters’ — the single ladies. Obama won single ladies by 76% last time, and made up about a quarter of the electorate. They depend on government because they’re not depending on their husbands. They need contraception, health care, and they love to talk about equal pay.
If we ignore the implicit racism of his castigating “Beyonce voters” for being welfare “takers,” Watters is more or less rehashing an old, bad argument that Farrell made in The Myth of Male Power. In a section of the book called “Government as Substitute Husband,” Farrell wrote that “when divorces left women without husband-as-savior, many women looked for substitute saviors … .”
While New Age women turned to gurus and traditional women turned to God the Father or his alleged earthly representatives, Farrell wrote, feminist women either opted
to save themselves or to turn to the biggest savior of all – government as substitute husband. … Divorces led bodies of men (called legislatures) protecting women collectively as other men (called husbands) failed to protest women individually. This meant raising taxes mostly on other men to provide money mostly for women. When divorces deprive women of husbands to protect them, then, our collective unconscious still wants to protect women.
Farrell attempted to hand-wave away the inconvenient fact that the overwhelming majority of those running the government are men by suggesting that
a legislator is to the voter what a chauffeur is to the employer – both look like they’re in charge but both can be fired if they don’t go where they’re told.
So apparently the “chauffeurs” in government are completely at the mercy of women voters, since women make up a small majority of voters.
Given how laughably simplistic – and just plain wrong — this argument is, it’s kind of astounding to think that Farrell has a degree in Political Science.
Farrell’s “Big Daddy” government theory was also popular with one of this blog’s most prolific trolls, a fellow calling himself NWOSlave. Some sample comments (each paragraph is from a different comment of his; click on them for links).
There’s plenty more where that came from, but you get the idea. He went on and on and on about this. Then again, he went on and on and on about everything.
NOTE: Quotes from Farrell taken from pages 237-238 of the original hardback edition of The Myth of Male Power.
I see a lot about how disdainful and anti-intellectual rural Americans are, everywhere really, but it goes both ways. The more urbanized a region, the more the people look down their noses at the folks in the sticks; one only has to listen to hipsters cruelly mocking everything that rural people enjoy to know that. I’m not sure why it comes as a surprise when the hillbillies reciprocate the feeling.
Now, rural Americans are overwhelmingly white, and racism is pretty rampant, and a good portion of their animus toward the cities is born of racism. So it’s really easy to dismiss them as backwards. White people in the city, however, don’t have a lot of stones to throw on the racism front, and self-satisfied snobbery is not a good place from which to criticize the attitudes of others.
MM, that’s a terrific article. I’ve worked in finance, or finance adjacent all my life. I’m also pretty interested in the history of finance. I can’t begin to articulate the disillusionment I felt after the crisis of 2008. I’m not sure that sending a few high-level bankers to prison would have helped; maybe that would have scared other high-level bankers straight, maybe it wouldn’t. But I cannot believe that no regulation resulted. That’s highly abnormal. I see young people continue to pour into jobs that are basically gambling with no downside. If you happen to do well, you get a multi-million dollar bonus. If you lose, you have to make ends meet on your $300k salary that year. It’s like nothing ever happened. Meanwhile, other young people fight for the right to work fulltime in the fast food industry, and the middle class pays a higher effective tax rate than the super-rich. Something is going to give way.
Did someone say ‘New Math’?
http://youtu.be/UIKGV2cTgqA
🙂
I worked my entire career at the VA (prosthetic service). Over those twenty four years, I saw budgets and staffing being slowly but steadily whittled away.
Now, there’s a hue and a cry about how ineffective the VA system is. Maybe we should privatize it! Who, I wonder, would benefit from this?
Back when healthcare reform was being discussed, the so-called ‘public option’ was the first idea discarded. Reform turned into a full-employment act for insurance companies. Who, I wonder, would benefit from this?
A subtle pattern begins to emerge.
Regarding misogynoir, it reminds me of a scathing poem by Essex Hemphill. It ends with the line (IIRC), “we are about loving each other* the way America is about loving us.”
*Specifically African-American people.
I think a lot of conservatives in Minnesota, other than the stereotypical religious righties and super rich people are of the temporarily embarrassed millionaire variety. People truly think that if enough taxes are cut and enough unions are busted they’ll be able to bootstrap themselves into a 7 figure salary.
It’s so baffling because these same people tend to agree that things have gotten worse for the middle class recently. Yet they can’t connect the dots and realize that the middle class was better off when taxes were higher and unions were stronger. Somewhere in the back of their minds they must know that supply side economics has failed, but they’re in denial and tell themselves that one more tax cut for the rich, one more deregulation will do the trick. I wonder what it will take to shake people out of it?
Also, Policy of Madness, could we please try not to generalize about rural folks?
Pretty much all of Alaska counts as rural, by a lot of standards. Saying that rural folks are mostly white feels way too much like erasing Alaska Native cultures.
I’m really, really uncomfortable with that.
Our state already has an ugly little bit of history, where different native groups were put in camps, not allowed to speak their languages, and were taught in a manner specifically attempting to make them as ‘white’ as possible.
Now, folks are scrambling to record as many conversations as possible, and trying to preserve some of he more hard hit cultures.
So, yeah, please no ‘Rural Folks be white rednecks who hate city folk ’cause hipsters look down on them’
Didn’t mean to jump on you, but over-generalizations make me feel a tad nervous.
Policy of Madness — I was speaking mainly of my uncle, his family, and the neighbors. Other than the house immediately nextdoor — a NYC guy who summer’s up there, I don’t think any of them have been to anything close to a city in years. I know my uncle won’t even come down here anymore — “it’s too dangerous” (Bull. Fucking. Shit. When you have goddamned black bears wandering around like they own the place, and coyotes making regular appearances, you have no standing to call New Haven’s ‘burbs dangerous)
So yeah, any perception he’s got of we city folk is based on me and the rest of the family, and TV. (And I take no issue with getting dirty, finding snakes in rock piles, cow manure, getting my arm sucked into an overly friendly cow’s mouth, not real keen on the spiders, or the whole YOU HAVE BEARS!! But no, I don’t look down my nose at them. Or at least I didn’t before last summer’s “this conversion is clearly going nowhere, I’m going upstairs” and then having the insults get WORSE once I wasn’t replying at all)
Pecunium — yes, THAT day. And I apologize again for melting down in your inbox, I don’t take well to being trapped with grown men screaming insults at me long after I calmly walked away.
“If a precious woman cries sexual harrassment ya call Big Daddy to punish the bad man. Dontcha? Men stand up individually for themselves. Women run to the State and demand punishment.”
This one in particular confuses me. I’m perfectly happy to beat a man within an inch of his life for sexually harassing me, but I know the government *frowns* on that sort of thing. I would go to jail for assault, and all.
I assume a man would also go to jail for assault. But do men get a special free pass, where they can pound the shit out of their harassers without fear of reprisal? Because that would explain a lot.
Julie uh, I don’t think violence solves any problem, but a lot of men sure do.
@Argenti
“it’s too dangerous” (Bull. Fucking. Shit. When you have goddamned black bears wandering around like they own the place, and coyotes making regular appearances, you have no standing to call New Haven’s ‘burbs dangerous)”
Well, actually, black bears are very timid. In a face to face, 95% of the time (which happen because you spook the bear) its just posturing and the bear will back down. The only high risk situations are a mother with her cubs or if the bear has no escape route. Coyotes have been acting weird in the North East because they mixed with wolves, but typically, they don’t look for troubles with humans. Where I live now, they are not present and I really miss hearing them howling at night. Moose are the most dangerous critters, both the female with a calf, and the male in rut. In the country, pot growers and thieves are more of danger than the wildlife. I would think one of the unspoken reason for your uncle not going in town may be the traffic, which can be intimidating. That’s one of the reasons I avoid big cities like the plague.
@contrapangloss
“Saying that rural folks are mostly white feels way too much like erasing Alaska Native cultures.”
That definitely was not my intention. I meant that, if you take the US as a whole and split it into people who live within a metropolitan statistical area and those who do not, most rural people are white. Rural black people exist, and so do Native Americans, and every other group you can name, just not in equivalent numbers to white people. I’m sorry. I did not intend to erase any of them. I’ll try to be more careful next time.
@Argenti Aertheri
“I was speaking mainly of my uncle, his family, and the neighbors.”
I understand that that wasn’t meant to be a generalization, but can you see where it comes across as one? Maybe you have friends or acquaintances who talk about country folks as backwards hicks – they may not intend it to be a generalization either, but to a country hick it definitely seems that way. I don’t just mean on TV. I mean people talk to each other, face to face, and make fun of rural people.
I live in a mid-sized city and I hear it all the time. I have visited much larger cities, and it seems epidemic there (and, hilariously, mid-sized southern cities are on the target list for mockery, too). I am not a fan of the “hipster” thing, partially for this reason (and partially for other reasons).
It’s legit to criticize people from the country for their racism, but not legit to criticize them for drinking Budweiser and not whatever small-batch craft beer is The Thing Today.
I think Julie’s point was that the implications of that statement are that women rely on the legal/justice/emergency response system to solve conflicts, whereas manly men manfully take matters into their own man hands (i.e., vigilante justice). Women are weak and dependent and can’t handle house fires and street riots by themselves.
In MRA/Libertarian World, asking paid public servants to do their job makes you childish and emotionally needy, while impulsively lashing out is a sign of maturity and self-reliance.
Re: New Math – my daughter just finished kindergarten, and I have to admit I’m kind of smitten with the way math is being taught (in our state, at least). Pecunium is right, at this stage at least there’s a lot of Set Theory, but that’s perfect for little ones who are still trying to grasp the whole concept of addition and subtraction. I’ve also been impressed with how intuitively algebraic and geometric concepts are being introduced while they’re still mastering simple addition. I almost dropped my teeth during homework time when I realized that my five-year-old had just finished a math problem where she had solved for a variable.
Of course, this is definitely a YMMV situation. My daughter has an affinity for numbers and patterns anyway, she obviously lucked into a good teacher, and the curriculum in our area seems to be pretty good. It also definitely works in her favor that she’s starting her school career with New Math. I can imagine how confusing it must be to be a fourth or fifth grader taught under the old system and to suddenly – hey, presto! – have to switch to a new, weird concept.
I think New Math was dead in Canada by the time I went through school. There was a lot of Base 12 / Base 8 stuff in the back of the textbooks which we worked around and never dealt with. I picked up just enough to realize how useful that could be with, say, time or bytes.
@leftwingfox, me too. I only ever heard about it on US sitcoms.
Julie: I assume a man would also go to jail for assault. But do men get a special free pass, where they can pound the shit out of their harassers without fear of reprisal? Because that would explain a lot.
If the “harasser” is male, they most certainly do; all to many occasions.