Given the poll numbers for Senators Obama and Clinton, it's pretty clear that "America is ready" to vote for either of these. But it's painfully obvious that the news media aren't ready to be grown-ups about it.
What set off this most recent round of chest-thumping and chanting from the He-Man Woman Haters Club was a fairly standard declaration from Senator Clinton that attending Wellesley--an all-women's college--prepared her for the boys-club of national politics. This set off a chorus of complaints from the valiant defenders of male privilege that it was unfair to bring up gender in politics.
Well of course her time in college prepared her for national politics--it's college. Who could honestly question that national politics is a good-old-boys network? She is the only viable female candidate for the Presidency in the history of the country. And when is it ever inappropriate to bring up gender in politics? Or in just about any other context? It's. always. relevant.
I could go into a whole speech about how woman are socialized in school to be less aggressive than men, and that women's colleges are important because they help women to overcome this programming, but we all already know this. And, as many others have pointed out, what is going on here is that the men who complaining about bringing up "gender" don't recognize that they, too, have a gender. Chris Matthews , in particular, is bursting with cognitive dissonance, simultaneously complaining about Senator Clinton "playing the gender card" while perpetrating a bizarre romanticization of white male privilege.
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