gender and stuff

Yeah. And stuff.

I used that lighthearted title to put potential readers at ease. I'm not going to launch into a vitriolic rant about the gender issues that are boiling just below the surface of this election cycle. Or maybe I will. If my clever title trick worked, you're already reading. Hah!

I turned on Fox yesterday. I do that sometimes. You know why. You do it too. Anyway, they were profiling Geraldine Ferraro. I was confused for a few minutes. Why is this on FOX of all places? What is going on? My confusion was particularly pronounced, because the day before that I'd watched Britt Hume acknowledge that Michelle Obama gave a good speech at the Democratic Convention. I wondered what sort of weird happy pill had been slipped into his coffee that morning. Then the rest of the Fox panel followed suit, with only William Kristol dribbling on about the mediocrity of it all.

"Ok. So has Fox gone soft?," I asked myself. Then it hit me. How could I be so stupid. They're pandering to me. They want women to see how sensitive they can be, and thus how sensitive Republicans can be. They used Geraldine Ferraro's story to strike a nerve with me, to remind me how far women have come, but how far we have yet to go. They want me to think that Clinton's absence from the ballot in November is symbolic of every obstacle we women still face. They want me to vote for McCain.

When I figured this out, I felt really exploited. And angry. Following Clinton's speech, some lady on the Fox panel went on and on about how great her speech was. Kristol was sitting next to her, and his expression was one of utter derision. He doesn't give a rat's ass about Clinton, women who support Clinton, or women in general. He thinks the blonde lady sitting next to him is a dingbat, an unqualified nitwit, unable to analyze her own shopping list let alone politics. And Kristol, I think, is pretty representative of the type of people running the show at Fox.

I don't know how effective this shit is. I tend to assume people are smarter than that, but then people tell me, "No, Claire, they're really not..." and show me some link or other to the rantings of this or that whackadoodle.

Do you think Fox's tactics are working? How about when they pander to black, Hispanic, and other minority voters? Please anyone who accidentally finds this post, let me know what you think.