Dear Madam President. . .Really? – by Amanda S. Green

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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Dear Madam President. . .Really? – by Amanda S. Green

I am taking a step away from Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals this week. Don’t worry. I’ll return to it next week. As I told Sarah a couple of days ago, this week has been tough, and I feel the need to snark. That’s not possible with Sowell. I started the snarkage Tuesday with a look at some of the excerpts from Sean Penn’s book. But that left me wondering what to snark at over here. I have a couple of books set aside for later commentaries. So I really didn’t want to do them. Then I remembered Dear Madam President, the newly released book by Hillary Clinton’s former communications director, Jennifer Palmieri.

Here’s the blurb for the book:

DEAR MADAM PRESIDENT is an empowering letter from former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to the first woman president, and by extension, to all women working to succeed in any field. By using lessons learned during her experiences with Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Elizabeth Edwards–to name a few–Palmieri through each chapter creates a forward-thinking framework of inspirational and practical advice for all women everywhere–from boardrooms to living rooms–who are determined to seize control of their lives, their workplaces, and their country. DEAR MADAM PRESIDENT will turn the results of the 2016 election into something incredibly empowering for future female leaders and independent thinkers everywhere.  

As a country, we haven’t wrapped our heads around what it should look like for a woman to be in the job of President. Our only models are men. This of course was seen during the Hillary Clinton campaign, and no one knows this better than Jennifer Palmieri. While wildly disappointed by the outcome of the election, Palmieri optimistically argues in the book that the Clinton candidacy and all she experienced on the campaign trail–confusion, admiration, hate, love, acceptance, rejection–can now open the country up to reimagining women in leadership roles. And that is what Palmieri takes on in this book–redefining expectations for women looking to lead and creating a blueprint for women candidates and leaders to follow.

Wow, “empowering”. That means it has to be great, doesn’t it?

But wait, it is a letter to “all women working to succeed in any field” based on “lessons learned during her experiences with Hillary Clinton”, Obama and Elizabeth Edwards. Oops. What lessons could she have learned from Clinton? How not to take responsibility? How to continue to whine about the results of an election more than a year after the fact? How to condemn and undermine women who accused her husband of sexual harassment and worse and yet support all those who accused the current president and other men of the same thing? (Double-standards are loved by Shrillary, aren’t they?) And what about Obama? What lessons could she have learned there? I know! I know! Maybe she wants to teach these women reading her “letter” how to sell out their country and allies. But let’s not jump to too many conclusions. After all, this is only the blurb. Maybe the book actually has some substance to it.

“. . . creates a forward-thinking framework of inspirational and practical advice for all women everywhere–from boardrooms to living rooms–who are determined to seize control of their lives, their workplaces, and their country.” What? Wait! If a man wrote this about a woman’s book, you could just hear the howls of outrage. From the living room?!? How many leadership or how-to books aimed at helping men be better executives, etc., refer to how they should act in the “living room”? In fact, I don’t recall any of them talking about how a man should react or act anywhere but in a business setting. Or is the author talking about in a social setting. Even then, isn’t that sexualizing the woman or at least saying how she socializes needs to be considered in how well she can be empowered? And isn’t that something all the Feminists tell us we shouldn’t do? Or is this another example of that double-standard the Left is so good at applying?

“As a country, we haven’t wrapped our heads around what it should look like for a woman to be in the job of President. Our only models are men.” OMG. There are no words. The writer in me wants to reach through the computer to find the person responsible for writing those two sentences and shake them until their brains run out of their ears. The only problem is I’m not sure they have brains. I don’t know of many women – or men – who haven’t thought about a day when a woman sits in the Oval Office as President. Following the Feminist dogma, it shouldn’t “look” any different for a woman to sit there than a man. Then there is the “only models are men” bit. Sorry, but no. We have other models. They might not have actually made it to the Oval Office but they are models nonetheless. They might be models of what we want or what we don’t want, but they are models. Every woman who has run for office, be it for local dog catcher or President of the United States, is a model. Every man should be as well. Sorry, whoever wrote this blurb, but the sex of the candidate isn’t the main thing most of us look at when deciding who to vote for. I know that doesn’t fit your agenda or dry your tears for Shrillary, but it’s the truth.

So, what about the book?

I’ll admit I haven’t bought it. Nor am I going to buy it. This book is a perfect example of overpricing by traditional publishers. Coming in at approximately 190 pages, the price for the e-book is $12.99. Nope, not gonna buy it at that price. I wouldn’t buy it for half that price. I did, however, download the sample.

The book opens as advertised, as a letter to some unnamed future female president. “Dear Madam President” are the first words you read. Okay, other than arguing over punctuation, there’s not much to snark there. Not that I have far to go before finding something.

“I am not even sure who you are.”

That’s the next sentence. All I can say is I’m glad the author doesn’t know who “Madam President” is. If she did, it would mean she can see the future. Of course, it would also mean she should have been able to see that Shrillary wouldn’t have been elected. If so, she either enjoyed tormenting HRC by encouraging her to run – and lose – again or she thought she could alter the future. Neither is very encouraging, is it? (VBEG)

“I don’t know if you are a Democrat or Republican or something else, I just know that you are out there somewhere. And you need this book.”

Wow! She is certainly sure of herself and her so-called wisdom, isn’t she? She doesn’t know who this future president is or what her party might be but, by golly, she knows that this unnamed and unknown woman needs her book.

“I wasn’t sure how to address you in this letter. Doesn’t madam suggest you are married?”

So, she is a Washington insider and wasn’t sure how to address the “president”? She’s worried calling her “Madam President’ refers to her marital status. Hmmm, am I the only one who remembers Condi Rice? I do believe she, an unmarried woman, was addressed as “Madam Secretary” and no one thought it meant she was married. Oh, wait, I see now. This is all a set up for the author to get to what she really wants to say.

It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, so long as you can do the job.

Bullshit.

It matters.

So, despite years of being told it shouldn’t matter what a candidate’s sex is, it really does matter. I’m confused. Which is it? Oh, wait. I know. It matters if the candidate is Democrat. Then we should vote for her because of her sex. That’s what Shrillary’s been telling us this past year plus. She’s harped – and like a harpy—on the fact all the women who voted for Trump were weak and couldn’t vote in any manner except how their husbands told them. They were traitors to their sex. They were jealous of her, a successful woman.

Riiiight.

Obviously, the author of Dear Madam President agrees. Worse, she wants us to listen and follow her lessons.

Nope, not gonna happen.

You will bring an entirely new perspective to the office. You will expand our nation’s comprehension of what it means to be a leader. In its best moments, your presidency will give us a more fully realized sense of leadership—one that combines the best qualities of women and men.

OMG. Pardon me while I laugh hysterically. How many years of women’s rights is this gal going to push us back? An “entirely new perspective”? Why? Just because someone does or doesn’t have a penis? How in the hell is that going to expand the nation’s comprehension of what it means to be a leader? And what the fuck is “a more fully realized sense of leadership”? Is she really telling us a woman will be a better leader simply because she is a woman?

Given all the gains women have made in the last one hundred years, having a woman president may not seem like that big of a deal. It is. Step back and look at it from the arc of human history. It is still a revolutionary concept for a woman to be in charge. All of our models for a person in power, and certainly for the American president, are based on men.

I swear, I’m glad I didn’t buy this book. I’d have already launched it against the wall and we’re not more than four or so pages into it. The above quote has to be one of the most asinine I’ve read in a long time. “It is still a revolutionary concept for a woman to be in charge.” I guess she’s forgotten about Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, Angela Markel, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir and Benazir Bhutto to name just a few. [And in the arc of human history everyone from Hatshepsut on down to Empress Matilda, Queen Elizabeth, Catherine de Medici on to those people you named.  These people believe the arc of history has an arrow because what they know about history is jack and sh*t.  – SAH] That doesn’t take into account female governors, members of Congress or other world parliamentary bodies.

I guess they don’t count because their very existence negates the basis for her book – that we have no such role models and need the author’s “insight” in order to become the best woman and leader we can be.

I could go on. I could talk about how the author claims they tried to remove Shrillary being female from the political equation during the election and how that removed, according to the author, half of Shrillary’s humanity. Yes, you read that right. According to the book, HRC was only half-human because they didn’t let her play up the fact she was female. Funny, I don’t remember her ignoring the fact she was female. Do you? In fact, I seem to recall how she pointed out how that made her better qualified. She never failed to overlook a chance to be seen as part of Bill-and-Hill or as mother or grandmother. If you’ve read her book, you’ll see how she made a conscious effort to connect to women because she was female. So either Palmieri was taking part in another Clinton’s candidacy or she is deluding herself – or trying to delude us.

And this is the book being touted as the one we, as women need, in order to be successful in a man’s world. This book that tells us we didn’t have any control over our lives and how we were perceived until Saint Hillary took to the national stage and ran for the presidency. What an insult, not only to each and every woman who has strived to be the best she can be for not just years but for centuries but to each and every woman who ran for political office before HRC. It is in insult to Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president. It insults Geraldine Ferrarro, the first woman to run for vice president on a major political party ticket. It insults Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and all the others who ran for office before HRC ever thought about it. Not that they care, but it also insults Sarah Palin who first ran for and won the office of governor of Alaska and who later took to the national stage. Of course, if Palmieri were to discuss Palin, she’d have to discuss how her own hero, HRC, took to center stage to attack Palin. Where was her loyalty to her gender then?

So no, I’m not going to use this as a handbook to “empower” me as a woman. A handbook should be well researched and historically accurate. It shouldn’t have me wanting to throw it through the window – unless I am in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and the book might take out one of the walking dead and give me time to reload the real weapons. Since neither is the case, I will delete the sample and go find the brain bleach. The only thing I can say is that, one chapter in, it isn’t as bad as HRC’s book. But that just means I’m damning it with faint praise.

Until later. (I promise we’ll get back to Sowell next week.)

[OMG, the reading masochist is at it again.  If you want her to do more slice and dice snarkage, hit her pourboire jar. – SAH]

275 thoughts on “Dear Madam President. . .Really? – by Amanda S. Green”

  1. DEAR MADAM PRESIDENT is an empowering letter from former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to the first woman president, and by extension, to all women working to succeed in any field.

    Oh, I see. If it envisions a woman president, either HRC or one in the mold of HRC, it is a fantasy of nightmarish proportions.

    1. I’m wondering if it isn’t high farce. After all, the author doesn’t believe there have been any women in leadership roles who can be our role models. Surely she isn’t that ill-informed. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course she is. She has drunk from the Obama well and sacrificed upon the altar of HRC. The book is about some dystopian future. There’s no other explanation.

      1. My suspicion is that, for certain people, if you are not part of their enlightened political movement you cannot count as true example of leadership — no less that of female leadership.

        1. No doubt. We see examples of it every time the dems open their mouths and try to point to a “strong female leader”.

        2. Truth of the matter is, you don’t even count as human in their minds. It’s one of the ways they can justify committing atrocities. After all, no people were harmed during Krystalnacht, right?

          1. I wish you weren’t so very right.

            Not that this is exclusive to the Left. Almost every self0selected Elite in history has been that way about the Lower Orders.

            When you come right down to it, I think it’s the real moral justification for the Second Amendment;

            The right of the peasants to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed to that their so-called ‘betters’ are properly scared of them, and thus mind their goddamned manners.

            1. and thus mind their goddamned manners
              And you’re putting it nicely at that. But yes, absolutely.

        3. I still remember workshopping “The Wolf and the Ward and having a leftist critiquer (he told me so) mind that the heroine was clearly a strong women and yet sew.

          (And this was someone with the honesty to admit it.)

      2. It’s always Year Zero for these people.
        They must substitute novelty for ability, and to do that, actual real first achievements must be memory-holed.

  2. > How many years of women’s rights is this gal going to push us back?
    —
    Given what Saint Obama (The Holy, The Anointed) did for racial issues, women would be lucky to retain the right to own property or vote…

    1. I’d say she’s taking us back to the time of scold’s bridles but part of me sort of hopes so — simply so they can be applied to certain “women’s leaders” today.

      1. I certainly hope not. As much as you all would see that as a nightmare itself; for us guys to be held responsible for the behavior of our womenfolk would wipe at least 15 years off our average life expectancies.

  3. As a country, we haven’t wrapped our heads around what it should look like for a woman to be in the job of President. Our only models are men.

    Aside from the possible differences in wardrobe why should the role of President be substantially different when a woman holds the office?  

    The job description of President was outlined in The Constitution, no?  The position has been held for better and worse over the years by the forty-five occupants of the office to date, which should provide further information about the requirements of the job.

    There are and have been models of woman in leadership in the world — good and bad.  We can take a look to those women.  While we can learn a bit about how not to go about it from those leaders who with less than stellar records, I would suggest we would do better to examine the likes of Maggie Thatcher and Jean Kirkpatrick.

    1. But, but, but, a woman’s different — but she’s not — yes, she is — no, she’s not.

      I’m confused.

      The problem is they can’t decide which side of the line they are on. So they straddle the line and choose what best suits the narrative of the day. Sort of like the French. VBEG.

      As for women in leadership, how dare you suggest there are some we could look at now to be role models — good or bad. She tells us outright there are none we can look to. All the models are male. I swear, if I’d been reading the physical version of the book, it would have hit the wall at that point.

      1. I have an image of them straddling a thin rail between ‘men and women are the same’ and ‘women have some special good’ … and the confident feeling that it will be mighty painful for them when they finally loose their public footing.

                1. Pronounced “Why,” not “Wee.”

                  Because I have an easier time with existential questions than bladder issues.

      2. Thank God all women are different.
        If all women were like Hillary, this would be the last generation and we’d go extinct.
        Say, maybe that’s what did in the dinosaurs. And Hillary is just about the right age too. /smirk

      4. ” if I’d been reading the physical version of the book, it would have hit the wall at that point.”

        Wall? You are too nice. It would have hit the active wood burning stove, from inside …

      1. Well, yes, true. Due to his non-sequential terms Grover Cleveland gets counted twice — as #22 and then as #24.

      2. Actually I may be mistaken (as has the author of the Dear Madam President). According to some historians there have been 45 presidents, even if one is not included in the official record. How can we forget the shadow presidency of Edith Wilson?

    3. Yep. This sounds like a … ‘grown up’ version of that ‘children’s book’ that was done that had a whole line of ‘males in high positions’ etc, “…and then came Hillary.” Because it conveniently erases all the other FEMALE LEADERS THAT CAME BEFORE… ‘just because they weren’t in the US.’ or something.

      1. The Left always erases any history that doesn’t reinforce the point they are making at the moment, even if they needed it for the point they just made or will need it for the next point. They are that contemptuous of us, AND that stupid.

  4. I hate leftists that try to see things through a feminist prism. Look at Canada’s current government where EVERYTHING has to be judged on feminism and gender equality *rolls eyes*. Never mind is that we want a functioning government that’s not trying to put their thumb on the scales for special interest groups….

    1. You mean the PM who culturally appropriates when it suits him in order to be “cool”?

      And you’re right. I want a government that first and foremost works. I don’t care what sort of plumbing those in leadership roles have. As long as they are doing their jobs, nothing else matters.

        1. Nit – he is PM, not president.

          I think I would have to hurl if he was our head of state instead of just our head of gov’t.

        2. Logically, if a woman can combine the leadership styles of men and women, so can a man. But they are so sexist that this never occurs to them….

          Everybody steals from what works.

          1. Because the tenet of third wave is that men are incomplete women. Thus they have to be corrected.

          2. “Everybody steals from what works”

            When did you see a politician steal from Reagan?

            Okay. having well thought-out principles, clearly articulating them and adhering to them in the face of opposition is just a pointless gimmick which makes actual leadership hard.

            1. I’ve seen several who claimed to, but they were usually found innocent due to lack of evidence.

  5. We need a “point finger and laugh” icon along with the “Like”. 😆

      1. You shouldn’t beat your head against your desk, it could hurt the desk and leave you with an even worse headache than you had from reading such writings.

      2. Does this serve:


        Denatured version: sherv[DOT]net/cm/emo/angry/bang-head-on-desk[DOT]gif

  6. Is it evil of me to hope that Hillary Clinton and Jennifer Palmieri live to see the day we have a female President? Something I’d like to stay around to see as well. The schadenfreude would be delightful. Someone else winning the prize that HRC and her toadies believed was rightfully hers.
    Lots of strong capable Republican women out there ready to step into the job. Which would have to make an enormous number of progressive heads explode.

    1. You are an evil man, Uncle Lar, and we love you for it. That would be a wonderful day indeed. Think of the look on their faces as a conservative woman wins the popular vote and the Electoral College. Imagine their expressions as she walks up to take her oath of office. It would be glorious, I tell you, simply glorious.

        2. I’ve actually considered making a Shepard Fairey style shirt with Nikki Haley’s image on it to wear around and about. I started having those thoughts right about the time she told the Palestinians at the UN meeting that she had no intention of shutting up like they told her to.

          I already agree with many of her stances but that sealed the deal.

          1. Wouldn’t those tickets blow some minds? Women, minorities, and conservatives to boot!

            1. But don’t give them pearls to clutch. They kicked Dave Truesdale out of worldcon for that.
              Give them polished stone beads and they’ll think you’re one iwht the universe and be happy.

              2. The only pearls they’d be clutching are the pearl handles of their guns, Sarah. Then think about the vapors the other side would suffer. Bwahahahaha

                1. “They’re ivory. Only a pimp from a cheap New Orleans whorehouse would carry a pearl-handled pistol.”

    1. Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher… Not all perfect mind you but potential examples.

      1. Yeah, but:
        Thatcher was conservative, therefore not female
        Meir was an Israeli patriot, therefore doubleplusbad
        Ghandi was brown, therefore not really human to these people

        1. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was greatly hindered in doing her job as President by people upset she wasn’t prioritizing their own money making interests. My Dad met her during work time, not ceremony, and she had no patience for the waffly timewasting makework and ‘presentations’ that were so beloved of officials at the time. She had a “There is a lot of work to be done, and very little time to do it – don’t waste my time and yours’ attitude, which he liked. She wanted the Philippines to improve, not the coffers of Certain Interests, thus the desperate need of her opposition to make sure she couldn’t run for president ‘again’ – even when she had no interest in doing so after her term and was content in improving her own district (she was very well loved for what she was doing there) and incarcerating her without due process was one of the big human rights violations of the Aquino administration (under whom cronyism and corruption ran absolutely rampant. If you want to know why we have a hardass like Duterte as President, it’s because we had a President who was weaker than Obama, with an even more compliant media than you have in the US and might have been some kind of autistic to boot.)

    2. Aye, evidently there’s never been a Queen, nor an Empress, nor… Alright, those have a distinct tendency not to be elected leaders, but even then… as said by others, multiple examples exist.

      1. Queen, Empress, whatever — they must have a political base in the power centers else their rule vanishes like the morning mist.

      2. So, then whose record long reign was it that the present monarch of Great Britain broke on September 9, 2015?

        And while we are at it who holds the record of the ninth longest reign (44 years, 127 days)? Give you a hint, this monarch gave a famous speech to the troops at Tilbury which included the following paragraph:

        I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

      1. Wait, what about those fantastic matriarchies that they know existed in ancient days? You know, the ones that left no permanent records or major works, but they must have been otherwise the patriarchy would never have allowed women the power of speech and we would all still be grubbing for bugs and carrion in the jungles.

    4. Queen Elizabeth, and one I surprised somebody hasn’t mentioned, since you would think it is someone the Left would look up to enormously, Angela Merkel. No granted she isn’t a role model I would ever want to follow, but one would think the leftists would be shouting her praises to the heavens.

      1. Remember, all of those other places aren’t actually real to them, and can’t be used as examples.

      2. The problem is holding the portal open long enough to usher them all through will also allow the One Who Shall Not Be Named to come through the other direction………………

  9. I think I have to say that the mere fact that this book exists is already Too Much Information as far as I’m concerned.

    Of course Margaret Thatcher doesn’t count as a female leader; her conservatism unsexed her. I ran into that actual, explicit statement in a graphic novel I read a decade or so back. . . .

          1. They keep trying to change people in what they aren’t and when they do, they’re even more unhappy.

            1. Progressives are human?

              I’m not so sure about that.

              They are either Heinlein’s mind-controlling Slugs or minor demons. 👿

                  1. Y’know, that phrase meant something different to me before I learned the youngsters were eating TIDE PODS. *shakes head*

                    Were I of the younger generation I’d be almighty p*ssed that people of my age were being judged by that. I mean, grunge and valley girl speech was bad enough to grow up with. And eighties music. But pica as the badge of a generation? Yeesh.

                    3. *gives GWB the hairy eyeball* Working in mechanic’s shops and hanging out in bars for years upon years, long after it actually got to be the nineties and we got Brittany Spears and Alanis Morisette, all that was played on the radio was the same d*mn 80s music. Kokomo. Built this City. Blame it on the Rain.

                      *shakes head*

                      On a related note, if there were radios playing in the turn of the 17th/18th centuries, people would be complaining about Bach and Hayden like I complain about hair bands. Which tells me those idiotic ear worms I so despise will be infecting generations to come, like as not as “classical” type music. At which point the world will end. *shakes head*

                      Fortunately, I will probably be dead by then and have nothing to do with it, unless reincarnation hits. *chuckle*

      2. Because they can act instead of letting progressives move them around like chess pieces.

    2. Wait, if that unsexed her in the eyes of liberals could it be claimed that makes her nonbinary and then would the liberals be guilty of queer erasure/ciswashing or some other, equally made up, concept?

        1. You are only non-binary if you declare it for yourself AND ascribe to the correct political religion.

          In the case of those who are identified as being inauthentic-female (or inauthentic-whatever) they have been marked with the status of heretic and traitor.

        1. That’s amusing (fascinating fascism!). And disturbing. And revealing.

          GENDER IS NOT PERSONALITY, YOU IDIOTS!!!

    3. Maybe fifteen years ago now, I was living in England during Labour admin under Tony Blair. One of the feminist Ministers published pamphlet about history of women in British politics that somehow ‘forgot’ to mention Thatcher at all.

        1. Oh heck, the fawning over the Black Panther movie seems to have completely forgotten the Blade films from the 90s.

          1. Well, in fairness, the Blade movies were a little more niche, not part of the wildly successful MCU, and didn’t advertise their comic book roots like the MCU movies do.

            But yes, Wesley Snipes did indeed star in a successful comic book movie franchise. I wonder who owns the rights these days? Blade wouldn’t really fit with the current tone in the MCU, but it would be interesting to see what Marvel Studios could do with it.

  10. ‘How many leadership or how-to books aimed at helping men be better executives, etc., refer to how they should act in the “living room”?’

    I can think of one, actually. Old one, on leadership etiquette, which I only found in my twenties and not in my early teens when it would have done me so much good (and avoided a disastrous relationship and worse job). Stuff like how to handle when someone in a position of authority above you is wrong correctly, how to work with difficult personalities under time pressure, and other things.

    There was a chapter on how to seek, find, pursue, and marry a “woman of quality.” Further advice on marriage and social settings, things like “no matter your home life act in such a way as you and your wife present to the world as of one accord” (in other words, never tear down your spouse in public, but more support them how you can).

    Also had advice on how to behave when you’ve won a fistfight… and when you’ve lost. *chuckle* I’ll have to see if I can find it again when I get back home. It read to me as general advice on gentlemanly behavior in the latter half, how to master yourself and lead men in the first.

    Of course, today just about every word would be some kind of -ism or hate speech. *chuckle* Probably as repellent to Palmieri as her book would be to me. *grin*

    1. If you can find it, please share.

      Sometimes those old etiquette books, or homemaking books (!), seem so completely awful but they certainly worked to keep people on the same page and they didn’t assume that everyone already knows everything.

      And frankly, not knowing the untaught rules is one of the ways that children of successful people have some real “privilege” and advantage. Scoffing at mindfully teaching those things only serves to make class differences more unassailable.

      1. As I understand the history, etiquette books started being published when middle class people started getting rich enough to mingle with the elite, and wanted to have the unwritten rules written down.

        I don’t think the principle has lost its validity. The most useful book I ever read as far as being self-employed is concerned was the first Miss Manners book. It also had the virtue of being wonderfully funny. . . .

      2. I will if I can find it, but it has been almost sixteen years and a half dozen moves since I read it. Most likely it is in the boxes I’ve not yet unpacked… Which I really need to get to. After I sell a car, fix a leaking roof, paint, help a friend find a house in the next two months (all the time he has before he’s homeless) etc…

        Maybe I need to start a “To Do” notebook, because the list is longer than my arm already. *chuckle*

      3. As I explained once to a liberal friend of mine, that’s what protocol is for. It seemed really ‘harsh, outdated and unnecessary’ to him (at the time) but it gave people a roadmap and guide to behaviours that allowed them to interact in society and social situations, when different cultures might see one’s gesture of appreciation as a deadly insult. (He did think that good manners and right conduct were essential in a civilized society, and I was explaining that diplomatic//international protocol was the common ground rules that allowed different governments and cultures to interact without hopefully causing too much offense.)

        The fact that good manners and right conduct is no longer taught, but somehow expected to be ‘known through nebulous osmosis’ and that the rules for what’s considered such by progressives keeps changing on a moment by nanosecond notice… well, I am not surprised when people flounder at the very least.

        1. And for those of us, we Odd ones, who were brought up in the world *without* those handy training wheels of polite manners and social rules, it stunk on ice. We had to reverse engineer things as simple as acceptable greeting manner- people really don’t want to know “how” you actually are, they are just performing a semi-polite greeting ritual.

          Sure, we’d have found a way to be awkward even in that world, no doubt. But at least there were some guidelines that everyone was trained in, so one could communicate somewhat without folks getting the “that boy ain’t right” look in their eye.

          1. My youngest brother, as a teen once answered why he didn’t do small talk. “I don’t feel the need to ask how they are – obviously they’re healthy and doing alright, or they wouldn’t be hanging around outside their front doors, greeting people as they walk past. Surely they can see the same thing looking at me, they’re not blind! I’ve acknowledged their presence and returned their greeting. What more do I need to do?”

            For a long while he found a number of small niceties and polite little things utterly unnecessary wastes of time.

            1. *chuckle* Words mean things, but not always what we say they mean. There’s a *lot* of unspoken subtext and innuendo in common everyday speech that I am morally convinced normal folks just “get” and don’t analyze to death.

              Those polite little things and small social niceties signal to the human tribe “I am of us, I am normal, I am safe.” Those who don’t respond with at least approximations of proper behavior trip something deep in the human brain that says “danger,” I think.

              We’re social apes, even those of us who don’t do the whole “social” thing well, or like people all that much. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, millions perhaps, made the complex structure of our brains that consciousness emerges from and sapience arose from. There’s a lot of weird stuff in there, if you believe the evolutionary biologists (and psychologists).

              I think that’s where mother instinct went when we got all big brained and complicated. Those deep things, like smiles, like the feeling of “other” when we meet something that isn’t what we expect. We don’t have the sort of hunting instinct and survival instinct that other mammals are born with. But I think those things remain in humans in strange ways. Human greeting rituals are dog butt sniffing or cat slow blinking. They are more complex and nerdy, but I think they work for that slot that determines “of us” and “not of us- danger!”

              I was one of those kids like your youngest brother, so I thought a lot about this sort of thing, trying to brain out what should have been gut, I guess. It takes longer, but with observation, experimentation (sometimes hilarious experimentation), and careful examination of the results, even an extreme introvert odd with antisocial tendancies can manage to pass as normal human for short periods of time! *grin*

              1. yeah, two guys at the place i had lunch today were setting off all kinds of my ‘not us’ triggers and i wasnt comfortable and kept an eye/ear on them until they finished and left.

              2. The lovely, wonderful young woman he is going to get married to very soon was a very shy, understated sort of lady. For his birthday, she made a giant handmade card, with little notes in the shape of open books that were glued into it, and she had quietly gathered all those notes from everyone in their course (since it was only two classes, around 60 people or so) and he was rather bemused by it. He showed it to my mom, my sister in law (to middle brother) and myself; and when I heard what the young lady had done, I said that she was in love with him (while sis in law was squeeing in delight at how sweet and romantic it was…)

                Youngest brother: *blink* Really? What makes you say that?

                Sis in law: ARRRRRRRRRRGH OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU BE SO DENSE?!

                Mom: *helpless laughter, facepalm*

                Youngest brother: …What?

                Me: *explains, slowly, in detail, why all the females in the household knew what he apparently had utterly and totally missed.*

                After that weekend, Youngest Brother went and asked the young lady if she liked him. A few of his other friends later said it was something EVERYONE KNEW EXCEPT HIM. The giant derp.

                They’re each other’s first love, have been together since 2007 and he’s making sure that the wedding is this idealistic romantic shindig, complete with historical church and gorgeous reception, overseas honeymoon and had their pre-wedding photos taken in Japan. We adore her to bits – she’s a good lassie, with her head screwed on right and she doesn’t look it but came from the school of hard knocks, and has been a positive influence on the guy we joked had a grand total of 3 facial expressions as a teen.

                (The day he used a smiley while chatting to me had me staring at the IM like “Who are you and what did you do to my brother?! Pod person!”)

            2. The answer to your teen brother is, of course, “This provides a socially acceptable way for you to strike up a conversation with an attractive girl, and furthermore one which she is socially constrained to answer. So she has to actually talk to you and be reasonably nice, rather than blow you off because you aren’t one of the ‘cool kids’. Over time she becomes accustomed to speaking with you, and it becomes possible for a genuine attraction to grow, to the point that it might occur to her that ‘Chet’ the Quarterback is a barely housebroken baboon whose employment prospects after he hits his ceiling in football are McDonalds-heavy.”

              1. Chatting to females, and having a few friends (male) wasn’t a problem, it seemed. His best friend in high school was female. His gift to her one birthday was a silver necklace (one he had me pick out because ‘You have good taste’), which apparently was a source of confusion – her parents thought it was a courting gift, and I had to explain to my brother why jewelry was considered a courting gift.

                Fortunately she wasn’t the type to get easily offended and when he said “No, I just thought you’d look nice with a silver necklace,” she took it in stride. She visited the house pretty often until she went overseas for college and she was smart and had a tongue in cheek sense of humor – she was the one who teased my brother about having only 3 expressions. (When he laughed in protest, she went AHA! FOURTH EXPRESSION UNLOCKED!)

                Youngest brother was the one who also wrote up a legal contract that had one of his friends sign over his soul for the loan of 5 pesos (He had me print the thing, and walked out of the room saying ‘Here! Sign!’) and it’s still one of the more entertaining legal anything I’ve seen. (The loan was repaid and I suppose ownership of said soul reverted back to the owner.) How my brother was supposed to take ownership of the soul without the untimely demise of said friend has been the topic of occasional discussion, but since the debt was repaid it was moot…

                1. “How my brother was supposed to take ownership of the soul without the untimely demise …”

                  There are plenty of soulless men, women and others. They’re called politicians although some present as journalists.

                  Many on the Left sell their souls to the Party in exchange for being told what to think say.

                  1. Yeah, but the kid wasn’t what I’d call soulless. So it’s a matter of puzzlement still.

                    (Idle conjecture: so if a soulless person makes a deal to sign away their soul, isn’t that person cheating the entity they’re making the deal with? Assuming that the entity was that dumb to begin with is a different matter, but…)

    2. Of course a recent response to the situation far too many modern men find themselves in operates under the acronym MGTOW, or Men Going Their Own Way. From observation it’s composed primarily of males tired of being manipulated and demeaned by social justice feminists. Seems a prime example of radical feminists getting what they asked for and not liking the results in the least.

      1. *nod* This is my read on it from what little I’ve learned as well. After years of parroting feminist propaganda, i.e. “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” a lot of them are now in their thirties or later and getting more than a little desperate. And men who have been hearing such things their entire lives want nothing to do with it.

        Once you get that age, your brain pattern is pretty much set. Oh, you can change it, a little, but it’s hard and people are lazy. Well, not so much “lazy,” but it really is *hard.* And beyond that is the deep seated biological stuff, like the desire to have kids, and the desire for a strong, capable mate. Women have a narrow window to get all that together, while men can sire a child for much longer without difficulty (biologically speaking).

        For a small set of third wave feminists, this is perfectly fine. They aren’t interested in sex with a man anyway and have ground their biological impulses flat in that area, but the majority of women, many of whom are simply leftist by default (by media exposure and by group identity, something that drives women differently than men. Not more, I think, but very different), these women are left high and dry.

        Men, especially higher status men, can date (and marry) younger women without difficulty. The cultural landscape is such that they *haven’t* been pushed to “man up” and start a family early. They’ve been pushed away by feminists enough, or been badly burned by them, that it’s just not worth the effort. Which makes the women who do not follow the feminist herd all the more sought after, once they are identified.

        I do wonder how the culture will flip in the next fifteen years or so. Because the cycle looks to be spinning up again, and what is old may once again be new.

        I just hope it isn’t bellbottoms or eighties hair band music. *chuckle* I wouldn’t wish that on any youngster.

        1. Not only that, but the 30-something women don’t realize just how toxic they can be. Men really don’t want a woman in their lives who regards them as a rhetorical punching bag.

        2. “Men, especially higher status men, can date (and marry) younger women without difficulty.”

          The essential male privilege is that men get to take longer to choose to mate. Under our modern social contract they even have greater choice about the conditions under which they mate, as many “baby daddies” can attest.

          Think what you might about what is right, but one ineradicable fact remains true: The future belongs to those who show up for it, and folk who don’t make babies won’t be attending the party.

          1. which is why our opposition needs the MSM and educational complex spreading their pipe dreams, because they don’t have kids

          1. No way. Can’t be. I mean, gages in the ears, fine. Paying hundreds for graffiti’d denim jackets, okay. But bellbottoms? Come on. Tell me it’s a niche market, like hipsters. Or the Japanese. They’re weird anyway. Bellbottoms can’t be a thing again. It ought to be against the laws of nature!

            1. I think I borrowed my mom’s bellbottoms for a 70s Day in high school. She never wore the extreme ones, though; they were moderately bigger than a bootcut pant, and I like those. …Another time I borrowed a fingertip-length dress, but I was not used to managing short skirts so it wasn’t an entirely comfortable experience.

              1. I never really thought about the practice needed to manage short skirts. Guys clothing just doesn’t have that sort of issue, unless you have to wear a sword. That takes practice until you learn the skill. But for the rest? We’ve got it easy.

                Bellbottoms are about as unattractive an article of clothing I can think of, and the sort of thing that would do naught but cause tripping hazards and get caught in doors, chairs, and quickly get filthy, as I recall. But I live in the are that time forgot, so there were flowers-in-their-hair hippies even in the early eighties around here.

                When I was a kid, I borrowed my dad’s leather coat sometimes. It was too small for him anymore. Not your usual leather coat, it was the kind made rough-out, with leather strings as a mantle. Hard to describe, sort of old western looking thing.

                I noticed that some of the fringe was cut, and thought *I* had messed it up. So I told dad about it, and he laughed. Said when he was in the service in Germany, folks thought he was a “real American cowboy” (he’d never been further west than the Mississippi, same as me. Come to think of it, he was the same age then I am now. Huh). They’d follow him around and cut those little strips of leather off, take them home to show their kids.

                I’ve an old denim jacket, lined in raw wool, from my grandfather, too. Very warm, durable coat. Hard to find things like that these days.

                1. I’m glad I don’t have to routinely deal with short skirts, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t want to have to do shirt buttons all the time either….

                  Mom definitely didn’t have the more extreme version — no dragging on the ground or much inclination to snag on anything — although on reflection, I don’t mind ankle-length skirts (depending on what I’m doing… stairs while carrying stuff, not fond), and it’s possible some of the issues you describe would transfer.

                  Both those coats sound fantastic.

                  1. Shirt buttons is no real problem. *chuckle* It’s the ironing around the buttons, getting the seams right, and keeping them neat that’s a trick. Well, that and finding good medium weight flannel that lasts longer than a couple of years (wear along the stitch line from heavy use has turned more of my good work shirts to rags than I care to think on).

                    Long skirts are nice. Yeah, the drag on the ground doesn’t sound good. My grandmother always wore long skirts, about ankle length, as I recall, but that never took with the younger generation. Probably the stairs while carrying things you mentioned (stairs everywhere in my little mountains, seems like). But to me they just look decently feminine. Perhaps I’m a bit old fashioned.

                    The coats, oh yes they are. I was tickled pink when I got them, years apart. My godson, however, is going to be too much a monster to will any of my good clothes to once he grows up. He’s already up to my chest, and he hasn’t really hit his growth spurt yet (nine! He can’t be that old yet!).

                    1. It’s certainly possible to manage a long skirt on stairs, but there’s a point where it’s definitely safer having a free hand for it. (That said, it was not a skirt but pants an inch or so too long that caught under my heel and dumped me on the apartment stairs… twice… and I don’t even have a fabric-related excuse for the third time.) On the other hand, I think there’s a point with a short one where there is simply no solution to somebody following you up the stairs except for them not to look.

                      I just don’t like plackets. *laughing* Never have, probably never will, would get used to them if I have to.

                      Oh, gosh, my daughter feels shockingly tall and she’s only two.

                2. According to Professor L’Amour, that fringe served several useful purposes. First, they helped the coat shed rain water. Additionally, those fringe strings could be cut off as needed for any of the thousand and one things a working hand might need a bit of string for, from piggin’ strings to tying back a gate.

                  I will allow as bell bottoms looked alright on short skinny dancing sailors.

                  1. Then there is this abomination:


                    What idiot woke up one morning and declared, “Women want a denim wedgie!”

      2. Funnily enough, the feminist response to MGTOW has been ugly and screeching rage – what was considered fine for women to do – declare they didn’t need men – is unforgivable for men to do.

        I’ve seen it described as ‘rape’ by claims of ‘It denies a woman their sexual choices’ (and if pressed, the explanation goes “it deprives women of their choice of date, sexual partner, husband and father of their children, if she’s chosen a specific man for this, and he has decided all by himself that he is not interested in any of the above.”) Then there are the usual epithets of ‘misogynist bigoted anti-woman’ blah blah blah.

        It’s as if the feminists didn’t believe in equality, and that men shouldn’t have the ability to make up their own minds about their own lives.

        1. No. That kind of feminists want to be superior in power to men (and any woman who disagrees with them) because then they think they will be equal to the Patriarchs and thus have overturned the patriarchy. Since, in their minds, women were not permitted to reject men, now men should be forced to cater to and be dependent on the whims of wymyn. It is a sad, sick, and destructive mindset, to put it mildly.

          1. The thing I don’t get is why they’re even paid attention to in this day and age. In previous generations, they would have been rightly exiled to the fringe, or outright outcast for their incredibly unacceptable horrible behaviour.

        2. A certain portion of women have long believed men to be their property, required to serve their interests for no greater reward than a woman’s smile.

      3. “Seems a prime example of radical feminists getting what they asked for and not liking the results in the least.”

        For some reason (*smirk*) that sentence conjures up a picture of a frumpy woman with a protest sign jammed up her arse.

  11. It blows my mind when people use Hillary as an example. Granted, she did power the old fashioned way… on the coat-tails of her husband. One of the more common progressions to power is a wife taking over from her husband. Why do you suppose that people are talking about Michelle Obama? Because this is something we DO have role models of.

    In this sense Sarah Palin is a vastly superior role model for female leadership. Her husband had nothing to do with politics. Starting with running for Mayor it was her doings, not his. And she ought to be a role model in that sense no matter if one likes her politics or her personally or not.

    2. If there is one thing to be said about the husband whose coattails Hillary rode in on, it’s that at least he had experience in politics. Plenty of experience, as a matter of fact. If Michelle Obama manages to ride her way to a nomination, she won’t even have that going for her. On the other hand, much like Hillary, Michelle doesn’t possess a fraction of the charm her husband has.

      1. We can be thankful that Hillary was daft enough to ignore the experience and campaign-capable (and campaign-proven) Bill. I don’t trust him. I don’t like him. But I must grudgingly admit he knows how to play things to get elected and appear, to some, ‘good’ and to others ‘good enough’. Had she listened… we could be in deep kimchi.

          1. An admission no one should consider a compliment. It is like admitting Mengele was a skilled surgeon.

        2. I say the same thing about Obama. I don’t like him in the slightest, but he is charming enough to get ahead and happened to be in the right place at the right time.

          Surely it’s no coincidence that after those two We the People elected the much blunter W and Trump.

            2. You just named it. You saw through those professors when the rest of the students ate up every line he spouted.

            3. Eh. Slight disagreement.

              When I was working at Big City College, most of the profs at least had some… cachet? Gravitas? Heck, *dignity* was common, back in the days of yesteryear. That guy doesn’t remind me of the least of them. Not even the Sociology prof who wanted her students to call her “Auntie Pearl.” *shakes head*

              What he *does* remind me of is a d*mned jumped-up grad student TA. The ones new to their position, trying desperately to project competence (of which they’ve little, if any, at all), making bizarre stands on ridiculous issues, and more than a little drunk on the power that comes from being the focus of so many people. The fumbling, the lack of maturity, the smooth teleprompter voice contrasting with the hesitation when off script, the cadence of voice is all newbie Teaching Assistant to me.

            4. Red diaper baby, raised by a radical socialist mother, schooled as a teen in a Madrassa, smoked and skated his way through college with the advantages offered to foreign minority students, and entered politics through the Chicago Democratic machine.
              I was born and raised in downstate Illinois which is why I never trusted a damn thing that came out of that community organizer’s mouth.

              1. This. Something about the man’s voice set off the hackles on the back of my neck. I COULD NOT listen to him for more than a few minutes, as it felt like he was trying to sell me a bill of goods. He could have been reading the ingredients on the back of a box of food, and I would have felt the same way.

                1. This. & I feel the same about Michelle. Interesting enough, although the kids went a bit wild after the WH, but it sure did not stay in the news. Not “bad” but definitely not acceptable. Anyone believe that kids got the “message” after a stern talking to by dad & mom? No? Me either.

          2. Remember that Obama became president mainly because he ran against Hillary in the primaries, after 8 years of W’s squish.
            He seemed charismatic because he wasn’t the typical dull AlgoreKerry party hack, nor was he Shrillary.

            1. And also, he ran against McCain in a year in which the burst real estate bubble could be pinned on Republicans. Romney with his business experience might have been able to win. McCain was never going to do so.

    3. And the Left attacked her so universally and vociferously that I run into people of only mildly political persuasion who are somehow SURE that she was tried and convicted to nameless but awful crimes.

      1. She took a picture with a fish. 😉

        (The only thing that she was “convicted” of, which never got to that point, was starting a legal defense fund which, it turns out, is (was?) against the law in Alaska if you’re an elected official.)

  12. “It is still a revolutionary concept for a woman to be in charge. ”

    I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the writer has never seen/read She-Wolves:The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth. (Haven’t had a chance to read it myself, but I was lucky enough to catch the PBS version.)

    1. Yeah, but they weren’t third-wave feminists, so they don’t count.

    2. “It is still a revolutionary concept for a woman to be in charge.”

      Then many of the jobs I’ve had have been revolutionary. From immediate boss/manager/supervisor to site director. And know what? I didn’t think anything much of it either way. They did it.. well or poorly.. and that’s an individual thing. If “competence at” could be so easily predicted, then there would be real systemic discrimination… biased toward maximizing profits, race/color/gender/moonphase/etc. be damned.

      Now, we don’t even have “blind” meritocracy as the EEOC and such must be kept at bay. A feedback loop is, once again, distorted – and the results… even those “aided” by the system are not really aided. It’s mighty hard to destroy ‘privilege’ when the method is to grant it.

      1. I don’t know for sure. I let my Prime membership lapse. I know that the dvd set is available from PBS and Ama$on and you can stream the video on Ama$on for a fee.

    1. Yes, please do. With your hard head it won’t do the desk any good and will only worsen the pain. 😉

  14. I think what we need to focus on is the claim that Hillary seemed only half-human. I believe that’s giving someone way too much credit. To me at least, Hillary seemed far less human than that.

    1. Hey now… it’s not the percentage of human-ness, or even lack of it, but what one does with (or without) it. Some humans are horrifying. Some “monsters” are good to have around.[1]

      [1] I will refrain from the bias of self-inclusion. Rating oneself is a risky thing at best. And, admittedly, some seclusion and solitude is enjoyable. Some. Overdose of that also has issues.

      1. Oh, I’m not one to judge based on how human/nonhuman an individual seems, being a fullbody cyborg and all (not a pretty custom job either, can’t be bothered to spend the money on that kind of setup). I just find it odd that it’s being focused on when Hillary spent so little effort on actually passing. If she’s going to make a talking point of it she should have at least tried, then maybe I could understand.

            1. The whole “walking” thing is far more complex than it looks. That’s why the field stalled for decades after the “Hardiman” project ran up against the limits of simple hydraulics and servos. Now we throw stupid amounts of computing power at the problem, and four-legged walkers are doing fine in the labs, but two legs require more processing and degrees of articulation. Honda has been tuning the software of their “Asimo” robot since the mid-1980s…

              It takes a newborn human years to get the “walking” thing down, and they have the firmware from the start. Add a few shots of 140-proof, and even adults are liable to have glitches… The HRC model is clearly still in beta.

              1. Bipedal locomotion is some of the most difficult to accomplish, especially with respect to balance. There’s a reason the best walking robot examples we see are quadrupeds.

  15. I have discovered the proper means for women of the world to use “Dear Madam President” to empower themselves!

    You take the book, place it under your buttocks while seated in order to raise yourself up to see better, and appear taller. You can use it to stand on to reach higher shelves, but you have to be careful; the book is slippery and might scoot out from under you at the worst possible moment.

    1. I still like my idea about throwing it at approaching zombies. Even brainless as they are, they would recognize the stupidity of it and shuffle off in the opposite direction for fear it would cause them to forget they needed brains to survive.

      1. Just don’t try to use it as a shield. Such a flimsy, insubstantial book would be about as much protection as a wet piece of toilet tissue.

      2. Kind of like those little sonic devices that are supposed to repel bugs and vermin. “No brains here! No brains here!” *chuckle*

  16. The notion that Hillary lost because she’s female and people couldn’t cope with that is a convenient excuse that makes it unnecessary to evaluate Hillary as a candidate. The idea that she was told not to emphasize her sex is a bit absurd because even before she lost the excuse of “sexism” was the go to explanation.

    Bernie Bros?

    There is no sense in which Hillary Clinton was “on my side”.

    There were a couple of times that I had sympathy for her, though. One when Obama turned his “snide” on her and comforted her that she was “likable enough”. Another when he publicly countermanded her initial State Dept. assignments and appointed her to “women and girls” instead of matters of State.

    1. I know a fellow who has voted (D) since FDR who said he couldn’t vote for that woman. I have no doubt at all Ferraro got his vote in ’84. It’s wasn’t sex or gender or chromosomes or body shape. It was… attitude and behavior. I don’t know how he voted… for all I know, he might well have left the Presidential race blank for the first time in his long life.

      1. Yep. I know a few dems who said and voted the same way. I have no doubt my father, an Oklahoma dem born and bred, would have cut his own throat before voting for Hillary. It wouldn’t have been because she was female but because of her actions. Pretty much the same reason why he didn’t vote for McGovern.

        1. One of my favorite books on politics is Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”. The fun part comes towards the end, where McGovern tried to come to terms with his disastrous shellacking, and blamed the whole loss on racism.

    2. My first schedenfreud of the 2016 election was Hillary supporters calling Bernie Bros sexist and Bernie Bros complaining about it.

    3. In one of the Democrat primaries, she said something about being proud to have Republicans as enemies. She’s been a public figure for decades. This was Old News to most Republicans. Many of them calculated their odds of personal survival accordingly. The Democrats just couldn’t match that experience versus Trump.

  17. These people believe the arc of history has an arrow because what they know about history is jack and sh*t. – SAH

    And since jacksh*t is proof of the patriarchy, it’s time for jillsh*t!

    Not sure what comes after that… jesh*t?

    1. Jack sh*t would probably be Jenny sh*t in the female form, but Jill sh*t sounds better.

      1. “Jenny jenny who can I turn to
        You give me something I can hold on to
        I know you’ll think I’m like the others before
        Who saw your name and number on the wall.”

          1. Too much trivia stuffed into a grasshopper mind. It’s like being in a perpetual state of free association. Great for brainstorming, hell on wheels for filtering out viable solutions.

  18. My maternal grandmother had theory that talented women would become governors or premiers and totally avoid national politics. In federal system, health education welfare policies are local matters and females get involved in politics because of crappy school their children attend or their retired parents are receiving poor health care. My nana thought only peacock males would want to be president because they do a lot of strutting with very little responsibility.

    2. “In federal system, health education welfare policies are local matters and females get involved in politics because … ”

      That may be why the Libs seek so desperately to nationalize those arenas, creating a sucking vacuum drawing women into the presidency.

      Of course, nationalizing those arenas means they function even more poorly, so the leadership produced is fatally flawed.

  19. To answer the question you posed about what we can actually learn from Obama: you can learn a lot! I, for instance, learned how to smile charmingly and say a whole lot of words while saying nothing at all. I learned to look suave while blaming the guy who came before me for all of my mistakes and failings as a person and a president. I learned to look cool while the media, Hollywood, and the powers that be played softball with me and destroyed anyone who trie(d/s) to hold me accountable for my sneaky, underhanded ways. I learned to look dashing while fooling those easy to fool that I would end the wars we were in while doing the exact opposite in reality.

    Granted, I haven’t gotten anywhere with these lessons, but that’s just because I am a woman and society is so super patriachal in wanting me to actually do a good job instead of hiring me for my speshul womanness.

    In all realness, am I the only one who sees the title of this book and thinks about all of those Madame President headlines that had to be squashed when it became clear that Trump had, after all, won the election? If I wanted to celebrate my Fearless leader, the last thing I would want to reference is her “Dewey defeats Truman” moment, but then again, that’s just me.

    1. I actually was watching something about that election a few weeks ago. Think on the campaign side of things there was actually some similarity. Namely the populist campaigning. Rallies and whistlestop tour

  20. I live near those statues. Kinda got me excited before I even read the headline 🙂

  21. “… the Clinton candidacy and all she experienced on the campaign trail … can now open the country up to reimagining women in leadership roles.”

    I think the country was quite able to imagine Hillary in a leadership role. That would be why Trump won.

  22. It seems clear to me that the problem here is that this book has an inappropriate title. We should suggest alternate titles, such as: “The Kool-aid tastes great!”

  23. By the time somebody is President from either party their freedom of action is seriously constrained. It is hard to get Congress to go along with anything they wish to promote. This is a feature not a bug. The less they do in total the better for the country. A full year skipped would do everyone so much good…
    A female President would be different – how? Same favors owed and same political base. Do people really want a President Mom? Do they think a she will be gentler and safer? The macho man Argentine leaders found out what a powder puff Margaret Thatcher was. They are lucky they got out of that one without losing Buenos Aires. It’s easy to wonder what they are thinking – but then you just have to remember they don’t really think – it’s all feelz.

  24. I’m wondering whether “the Arrow of History” means they think History is male?

    That would probably be clearer if I could be bothered to find and insert a “Mars” sign.

  25. Eventually, there will be a “First Woman President”, and I have the same hopes for her that I had for the “First Black President” (which were, of course, dashed), and indeed for every new President we elect.

    I hope for her to be a calm, rational, competent leader, who believes in America. and who believes in the rights and liberties guaranteed by the constitution. So… yea… probably NOT a Democrat then, and likely not a Republican either (Sorry “R”s, I don’t believe the hype anymore).

    Basically, I’m not holding my breath on this one.

    1. My God. Can you imagine how this country would be had Thomas Sowell been elected President rather than Barack Hussein Obama?

      1. Dare to dream big: imagine Thomas Sowell and Walter B. Williams with their hands on the levers of power.

        Of course, the Senate chamber would need a thorough and complete cleaning after all the ‘splodey heads.

  26. Why won’t Shrillary and BO shut up? BO should leave DC and do something else. He had his two terms. A year after her loss HRC should shut up and do something else. Like taking care of her health.

    1. His ego won’t let him keep out of things. And incidentslly, he has found something new to do, and I really wish he hadn’t. Netflix has signed him for a new Netflix Originals show.

  27. About including Obama in her list of women to be taken as models … is this the coming-out announcement of Barak as lesbian-trapped-in-a-man’s-body? Deferred so long only because Michelle didn’t want it to be obvious until the girls were out? Just wondering…

  28. Someone up there someplace mentioned “strong women” and it reminded me of how often it seems like it’s a code word for getting leadership wrong. And people who don’t understand male leadership aren’t going to somehow get female leadership right… not that they’re different sorts of things at all, but you know what I mean.

    And it always reminds me of when Pelosi was first Speaker of the House and how excited everyone was about this huge accomplishment and watching Elenor Clift (?) gush on and on about all the dictatorial edicts (do those actually have the same root?) that Pelosi issued and how she was going to punish any of the Freshman Dems that didn’t fall in line and kiss her ring. Strong. Leader.

    And you know what? While I believe with all my heart that Hillary only *allowed* Bernie to run because he was the token fruit-cake candidate for the year and that she had the fix in so that she didn’t face any real Dem competition, the fact is that LEADERSHIP creates more leaders and where are they?

    Under Obama’s term there didn’t seem to be any hungry young politicians in the wings, eager for their turn to shine. Dems got OLD. Did Pelosi create and nurture a new crop of Dem up-and-commers? Where are they?

    And the media made jokes about the Republicans fielding upwards of 14 candidates for president. While the Dems had a geriatric field of 2.

    2. There were actually a few more Democrats in late 2015 and early 2016 who boldly announced their intention to run for the Democratic nomination that year. I believe all of them dropped out of the race before the first ballot was printed. Few now remember this because none had any real base in the Democratic party, and each of them got a paragraph or three in the print/online media and twenty seconds of TV coverage. Meanwhile the media could barely spend away from gushing over the doings of the Hillary and Bernie campaigns and their supporters. They were also all fairly up in the years, too, IIRC.

    3. And Hillary still might not have gotten the nom if she hadn’t rigged the process this last time.

      1. Look what happened in 2008- she let some upstart kid get attention, and he would up as President. There was no way in the world she was going to let that happen again, so the field of potential Democratic Candidates was pretty much sown with salt and allowed to go barren.
        Which would be okay, as Hillary! was destined to victory in 2016, and… yeah…
        2020 will be interesting. I suspect that Hillary will continue to work hard to get the nomination again, and any potential party leaders are going to continue to keep their heads down until they finally put her out on a farm somewhere. Which means that the Democratic leadership will continue to be the same geriatric leftovers from the McGovern days.

        1. Donna Brazile appears to be very unhappy with the current state of things, which is ironic given her former ties to Hillary.

    4. Wasn’t there a Martin O’Malley or something like in there for a while? Ah ha, yes he was. Until Feb. ’16, when he tanked in the Iowa caucuses. So, not really worth mentionining, I suppose.

      1. And Jim Webb dropped out in fall of 2015, stating he was uncomfortable with many of the Democratic Party’s positions. O’Malley and Webb were two of the ones I was thinking of.

  29. Anyone else marvel at the fact that with the Internet, the greatest repository of information the world has ever know, liberals seem more and more ignorant of history?

    1. I audit a writers’ forum. There’s a section called “Research” where they ask questions of each other.

      Granted, it’s mostly young and hardcore SJW, but… they keep asking questions that would take a simple web search to find the answer to. Trivial things. They have to have internet; they’re posting on a web forum. But they have no clue that search engines exist, or for some reason they’d prefer to look like fools rather than use one.

      1. That would run the risk of being exposed to incorrect facts. Like almost anything Booker T Washington said. Safer to ask the people that ‘know’ the ‘goodfacts’

    1. For the purposes it really only matters that they exist, not that they’re admirable.

  31. You’d think that someone who is interested in female leadership would research more. She’s a Democrat and you’d think that she’d be touting that of the 39 females who have acted as governor or been in office elected or because of taking over from a male who left for health or political reasons, most have been Democrats. But then, maybe it would also highlight that in recent times, the number of Republicans has been getting higher and is currently 5 to 4 Republican to Democrat in governorships.

    1. I know. As a Texan, I keep thinking about Gov. Ann Richards who gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1988. Or how about Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, another Texas governor. She first served as governor after her husband was impeached. She ran for and won office not once but twice. Or how about Barbara Jordan, the first African-American elected to the Texas senate since Reconstruction? She gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1976, iirc. But they don’t count I guess. For whatever reasons, these women, who were trailblazers, aren’t role models. I will quote the book’s author. Bullshit.

  33. “Take my advice after all I only helped Shrillary FAIL and helped Obama remain oblivious to how divisive he was.”

    1. Here’s hoping the next democratic presidential candidate — and most of the rest of the candidates as well — use her book as the “how to get elected” manual.

  34. I wonder if we are about to reach peak-Woke and watch a crash? Here we have the writer (not Amanda) talking about how different a woman’s leadership would be from a man’s and making some pretty sexist-sounding assumptions about women. Last week it was a teacher insisting that first-grade girls who play with trucks and trains are really female-to-male transsexuals, thus implying that real girls only play with dolls and have only traditionally female interests. At some point, something has to give, even if this is all part of mass psychosis of some kind.

    1. I am reminded of a joke I heard once, told (well, re-told) by the great Ronald Reagan (and he *was* great, a better man and president than we have seen yet in my lifetime). It was a Russian joke, told among themselves, the kind he collected over the years.

      “The two fellows in the Soviet Union were walking down the street, and the one of them says to the other one, ‘Have we really acheived full Communism? Is this it, is this now full Communism?’ And the other one said ‘Oh hell no, things are gonna get a lot worse.’ ”

      That pretty much sums up my opinion on the matter, I’m afraid. It’s going to take a bigger shock to do it, is all. Might not even be a bad thing, just a change in the generation upcoming revolting against the fetid corpse of the old, the one still mouthing the words of a dead philosophy that should have been buried decades ago.

  35. I made it almost to the end of the first quoted paragraph before I yelled, “Buzzword Bingo!” Usually it takes a page to fill my card.

    1. And remember, that was the description from Amazon’s product page. The book itself is even worse. I keep telling myself I don’t want to read all of it and won’t read all of it. But the snark that lives inside of me is really pushing that this might be something that needs to be done.

      Hello, my name’s Amanda and I have a problem. I am a masochistic reader who takes pleasure in reading and snarking really bad books.

  36. Modern Day Feminism: “We are just as able as men (when we are not more suited than men), We are strong, We are fierce, We are tough, and if you disagree, We will go hide in a safe-space until anyone not 100% agreeable to us is gone away.”

        1. And she’s so HAPPY when she’s being fierce. I think we may have happy warrior in the girl, and warrior because he’s protective in the boy.

  37. “advice for all women everywhere … who are determined to seize control of their lives, their workplaces, and their country.”

    From the Vale of Forbidden Thoughts: what if they do not want to “seize control”?

  38. We have no models of a female elected head of state?
    Margaret Thatcher? More than once I said I would have voted for her for President.

    If you don’t like her Merkel, Myer, or even Gandhi.

      1. If she has her way, it is apparently going to be ‘muslims overrunning the entire EU’ bad. Tom Kratman’s Caliphate, just as predicted.

      2. I did say they were good models, but they are models.

        It is one thing to ignore history but Merkel, for good or for bad, is a female head of state right now. How can they not be a model of what a female president would be like?

        Hell, that’s another reason to have voted against Hillary but even then it serves as a model.

        1. Good point, because philosophically, Merkel and HRC are a lot alike. I think Merkel is personally honest, but both are hard-core socialists with the idea that the West owes the rest of the world for…. pick something. (The leaders of Sweden’s “Feminist government” have no excuse, IMHO.)

  39. I’d have been perfectly happy voting for a former governor who was elected on her own merits, not because of family connections or who she was married to. Who fought the the established politicians and won. But Sarah Palin was absolutely savaged by the permanent establishment types, including the two faced buffoon who selected her as a vice-presidential candidate- which gave me a reason to vote for the ticket. Not for him.

  40. Off topic, but hometown pride mandates I push this:

    I don’t know him but I endorse his message.

    HT: Power Line

    1. Sidebar on that:

      “I am a legal immigrant and I am an American by choice.”

      “Who needs an AR15 with a 30-round magazine? Had the Koreans in the LA riots not had AR15s and AK47s with 30-round magazines and Ruger 30s their businesses would have been burned to the ground like all of the other businesses in their neighborhoods.”

      1. Bunch of school kids did an anti-gun March for Our Lives in New Hampshire last Saturday. (Glad they weren’t excused form school to do it during the school day.)

        The phrase, “The students are revolting!” comes to mind, followed immediately with the response, “Yes, they are, aren’t they?”

      1. The Daughter resides the next county over. When she saw the clip she commented she is sorry she won’t be able to vote for this man if he ran for city office.

            1. Which puts her at a decided disadvantage when trying to resist a vocal minority that views the law as a convenient club to be obeyed only when it’s to their advantage.

  41. determined to seize control of their lives, their workplaces, and their country
    Well, that doesn’t sound very marxist, at all, now does it? You know what we do with people who seize control of their workplaces or their countries? We take them out and hang them (or shoot them on the spot).

    Our only models are men.
    Ummm, how about that Ghandi lady? Or Aquino? Or that Iron Lady one over in Britain? Or that crazy East German woman? Oh, and that Jewish woman somewhere….
    Note they aren’t all winners, even though each of them are – by definition – more of a winner than Hillary Clinton.

    all she experienced on the campaign trail … can now open the country up to reimagining women in leadership roles
    Ummm, we weren’t too upset about it before 2016, but now, yeah, we’ve reimagined it, and we just say “No”. This is that whole affirmative action effect in play: you put forward someone that only gets by on their hand-up, and they hurt your cause because everyone asks, “That’s the best you could do?!?”

    “all women working to succeed in any field” based on “lessons learned during her experiences with Hillary Clinton”
    So, these are “do NOT’s”, right?

    Or is this another example of that double-standard the Left is so good at applying?
    Or maybe that the blurb writer just isn’t as ‘woke’ as they should be, and haven’t yet been punished adequately for their thought crimes?

    but the sex of the candidate isn’t the main thing
    Oh dear, but it must be one of the primary things! Because INTERSECTIONALISM! Woohoo! And the great part is, with 57 to choose from, we have 400+ years of “First”s in front of us – assuming they all serve two terms like they deserve – because, after all, the black man got two terms, so it’s only fair that everyone else more intersectional than he was also gets two.

    They were jealous of [Hillary], a successful woman.
    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… *breathe* … HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    By what definition? Other than an appointed position of Secretary of State, what are her accomplishments? Oh, well, I guess she did get elected as a Senator. Of course, so did 0bama. And Ted Kennedy managed that for … how many decades? So, not much of an accomplishment, I’m thinking.

    how that removed, according to the author, half of Shrillary’s humanity
    Wow, that’s a pretty small measurement. I usually don’t bother to measure that fine when I’m cutting and carving a clue bat.

    It insults … Bella Abzug
    Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark.

    So no, I’m not going to use this as a handbook to “empower” me as a woman.
    It could, conceivably, get you that extra half inch to reach the top spice shelf. Or to dust the knick-knacks on the very top of your bookshelf. So, it has that going for it.

    (And, yes, I’m late to the game. Yesterday was a trying day.)

    1. Being originally from New York State, I think the last decent Senator from there was probably Jim Buckley (kind of surprised the fellow is still alive at 95.) Hillary doesn’t even make it out of the bottom 10%

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