Canadian Rick McGinnis shows that sometimes the foreign perspective, no matter how near the foreigner is to this country of mine, is still the wrong perspective. He says that women should not vote in the presidential election as “payback” to the way we supposedly have been treated by this campaign — you know, all the attacks on Sarah Palin, the pushing of economic theories that will damage our economy and therefore the less-secure economic status of women, even the way Hillary Clinton was treated (I for one did not care for the whole “pants suit” gibes that both sides of the political spectrum engaged in — there’s nothing wrong with pants suits, you misogynist, real-women-only-wear-dresses-and-pantyhose jerks). But Mr. McGinnis is wrong. Here’s why:
— It would have no effect on the hordes of swooning fangirls who cream in their thongs at the very sight of Barack Obama, and who squeal and faint at his speeches.
— It would have no effect on the Sarah Palin haters, many, if not most of whom are women. Has Rick McGinnis never heard of jealousy and envy? When it comes to hatin’ our fellow female, men have nothing on us.
— It would have no effect on the men voting for Obama. True, if some miracle happened and all women stayed home, then McCain would probably win by a larger margin, but telling McCain’s female supporters to stay home only takes votes away from McCain, and as I’ve already said Obama has plenty of fangirls. Whether there are enough of them to make a difference in the election process remains to be seen, but telling women who would otherwise vote for the McCain/Palin ticket to not vote seems to me to be beyond stupid.
— It would rightly be seen as an instance, not of principled political stance, but of pique. “He talked mean about a girl!” In this day and age more than ever the last thing we need are women making decisions based on emotion, and that’s what they would be doing if they let the sight of some stringy-armed coffee-cave denizen wearing a “Sarah Palin is a cunt” t-shirt stay make them stay home and sulk.
— It would not do any of this: “wreak havoc with pollsters and campaign operatives at the very least, and delegitimize a dispiriting and tainted election at best.” He rightly calls is a “slap” in the next sentence — and slapping is what hysterical females do to their boyfriends for forgetting their birthday or something trivial like that. See my point above.
— It would punish McCain for no good reason that I can see, even though he’s run one of the politest, cleanest campaigns I’ve witnessed in a long time.
I don’t even know why this was written. It won’t happen — women don’t think as a bloc, really we don’t, and those few women who might be influenced for this sort of thinking will disappear into the general mass of people who didn’t vote for whatever reason, so I guess he made his word count quota for the week. A better article that he could have come up with: “I am urging all non-American citizens to shut up about the US presidential election.”
(Via Kathy Shaidle.)
Update: Kathy thinks I missed a satire. (See comments.) That’s as may be — I usually catch these things, but it just didn’t read that way to me. I’m putting this here, though, just to let people know there is a possibility that Rick was being tongue-in-cheek. Canadian humor is famously muted; I guess that’s an effect of living in a country where free speech is seen as a vulgar “American” value and the government has Niceness Enforcement Squads to make sure no one hurts anyone else’s feelings. If they catch you I think they wrap you in tons of pink batting (Canada’s version of red tape — it’s much warmer) and leave you on an ice floe. (If you don’t believe me, read Kathy’s blog. Okay, maybe the ice floe bit is a little exaggerated.)