Opinion> Connie Schultz> Another Stupid Theory About Women

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Another Stupid Theory About Women

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell graciously has supplied new material for my book about American women, titled "Myths, Stupid Theories and Deep-Down Dirty Lies: Why Women Should Rule the Earth and Control the Volume, Too."

Rendell's recent contribution brings me to Chapter 4,237. My, it's something how a book almost can write itself.

At last week's National Governors Association conference in Philadelphia, the ever-loquacious Democrat was onstage chit-chatting before a live microphone at Independence Hall. You might recall that then-candidate Barack Obama delivered his speech about race just footsteps away from that same hall. This time, though, the pronouncement from the podium was a little less profound. On a scale of 1 to 10, it ranked between zero and just plain dumb.

Rendell was apparently unaware that the microphone at the lectern was live. It's a puzzle how a longtime politician wouldn't suspect that every microphone is turned on, but life is full of mysteries, which is why so many of us pray.

Anyway, Rendell was sharing his views on why Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is a swell pick for Homeland Security chief.

"Janet's perfect for that job," he said. "Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19, 20 hours a day to it."

Open mic, insert penny loafer.

This got CNN's Campbell Brown going in a recent commentary, let me tell you.

"If a man had been Obama's choice for the job, would having a family or not having a family ever even have been an issue?" she asked. "Is there an assumption that if you're family-free, then you have no life? By some, yes."

She chastised Rendell. "Your comments do perpetuate stereotypes that put us in boxes, both mothers and single women."

I don't have a bone to pick with Brown, but she could lighten up on the governor just a bit. He was, after all, fully behind Hillary Clinton in her quest for the Democratic nomination for president. He saw firsthand what happened to a woman who years ago let herself be derailed by the demands of family life.

Don't we all wonder what Hillary Clinton could have been if she hadn't spent all those months matching lids to sippy cups? Now to mention all the brain cells that die with every hunt for the blankie.

What does Hillary Clinton have to show for all her dithering over diapers and Desenex? She's a U.S.

senator and the next secretary of state. She also was the first viable female candidate for president and is one of the most famous people in the world. Talk about squandering your potential on onesies.

Slacker.

Rendell insists he was misunderstood. His spokesman, Chuck Ardo, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that his boss's comments "simply referred to the demands of the new position that (Napolitano) is going to take. He believes that public servants at that level of government have no lives, including himself."

This must be news to Rendell's wife, Judge Rendell, and his son. I trust they've had their own off-mic chat with the good governor and we won't be hearing any more of his theories on how families suck ambition dry or about the bleak and lifeless landscape of single women.

This brings me to a point so obvious it's embarrassing to have to say it out loud. There are all kinds of ways women find life worth living, and a growing number of them don't have to marry or breed to know their lives matter. The most wearying part of many single women's lives is erroneous assumptions about what they're missing. Several of my single friends wryly note that the unkindest cuts often erupt from their unhappily married friends.

Rendell is right if he thinks marriage entangles lives, especially for women. What he forgot to mention is how clever we are at sorting and cobbling. Maybe Campbell Brown can ask him about that when he's on her show next time.

Meanwhile, I still am trying to figure out whether Rendell's comments should go in my "Myths" section or the one on stupid theories. My deadline is flexible because I can finish this book only when I run out of material.

That may take a while.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

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Ma'am...Next, you guys will be wanting the TV controls, and there goes all my exercise...So what are you trying to do???Turn my right arm into a tooth pick???Who is that going to impress????Let me tell you the problem, and I think Cicero said it: As soon as a woman becomes your equal she become your master... Well sha... Situation back to normal; so this time, leave it that way... If men do what they do 90% of the time to get the girl, then let the girl do, so she can be got, because she will do it better, and in the correct order, and not to an unnecessary degree... I don't know if it is anatomy or psychology, but I think if I thought more like many women I would not have to think nearly as much, that stuff would make sense that now I must make sense of... When women ran the world as once they did, they did so better because they had a sense of consequences, that the children they birthed might be fed into the fire of war if people could not get along... It is not that they could not thirst for blood, but this sense of consequences, and the fact that political power flowed through the weaker sex even when it was held by the men meant that the least in society had the means to protect themselves from the idiots... And it everywhere has saved mankind...Thanks...Sweeney

Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sun Dec 7, 2008 4:43 PM

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I find most womens' rants about Rendell's silly, tasteless remarks to be thinly disguised sexism. Too often, the underlying premise is that the burdons associated with being a wife and mother are somehow greater than those borne by husbands/ fathers. Rubbish. A very wise man once observed that while women have the most difficult job in the world because they have to bear children, men have the second toughest because they have to hear about it - for the rest of their lives.

I am a husband and father who took both jobs seriously, and did a lot of single parenting precisely because I deemed it proper to support my wife's life ambition to be an educator, mentor and counselor. She was gone a lot. I can't recall ever complaining that my wife never took me anywhere, or that we just did not seem to "talk" any morel. For her part, she was generous enough never to complain because I did not know or care what colors the walls or carpeting were, or that I am not a very good cook. I do floors and windows though.

Lighten up gals. Life is too short to keep looking for things about which to be annoyed.

Comment: #2
Posted by: terry odonnell
Sun Dec 7, 2008 5:15 PM

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Ma'am; ... Maybe I should say, that I do not disagree with the Governor's conclusion... So often; people in Government, or high up in any formal hierarchy are there because they cannot relate...If they could relate they would not need power... Ask why most people do not seek power over others.... Ask why most people don't seek out the military, or the police, or the IRS... Most people find they have all the authority they need in life as human beings to relate to other human beings, and it is only those wanting in some detail of their personality who have to be elected or appointed or anointed... We can all have influence... We all make a difference, and we all make history... But it is wrong to admire people in public office for anything, because even if they do what they do from the best of motives they must still put their personal lives on hold, and what if their familys needs them??? But clearly; many are simply driven for power, crooked and deformed by the desire for power, when, to be a human being requires that no one be a master or a slave....As a citizen, I can give no more authority than I have, and I give none of my power.... If government has come to represent power above the norm, it is power that has been robbed out of people's lives, and those who seek to hold that power withhold it from its rightful owners, and they are then no better than thieves, so they should have no lives, and they should be cursed, and they are cursed in the same fashion that all people do wrong out of ignorance are cursed....Look at those who seek formal power with sympathy and pain because they are a danger to us, and a curse to themselves.... So what if all our relationships are structured by forms??? We all need to relate, and to learn to relate as human beings, and as equals, informally.... Thanks... Sweeney

Comment: #3
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Mon Dec 8, 2008 5:41 AM

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