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Mao to Kissinger: Take our wives. Please!
Transcripts recently released by the State Department confirm the Chinese leader's appalling opinion of women.
Carol Lloyd [2008-02-14]

  • Oh boy

    Let me preface this by saying I don't hold men as a gender responsible for any of the following. Nor is this a "girls are better than boys" manifesto, so don't tell me I think vaginas are magical. I'm simply rebutting the following statement:

    "Typically men can cause some small scale trouble, but only women can eviscerate a nation from within."

    Yes. "Small-scale trouble" like the Crusades, the 100 Years' War, the War of the Roses, the Reign of Terror, the American Civil War, the Crimean War, WWI, the Communist Revolution, WW II, the Cultural Revolution, the Korean War, the Vietnam Police Action, the Cambodian experiment, the Islamic Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, Somalia, Rwanda, the Bosnian War, the Taliban, the famine in North Korea, and our current chart topper, the War on Terror.

    Some of my favorite leaders who "eviscerate a nation from within" include Henry VIII, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott, Robespierre, and Bush Jr. (I suppose we could add Roxalena to that list, but it's hard to know for certain she corroded the Sultanate: the Sultans themselves could have been to blame.)

    But Wars are flashy stuff. "Eviscerating from within" seems less about war and more about socio-political machination. Perhaps we should talk about the economic troubles, like the Gilded Age, the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Great Depression, the McCarthy Red Scare, Reaganomics, the S&L collapse, Halliburton, Enron, and today's lovely Mortgage Crisis.

    (Granted, there are perhaps plenty of women involved in this mix, but one would be hard-pressed to view these debacles were on the feminist to-do list. Plus it's hard to pretend that "Reaganomics" refers to Nancy).

    Then there are programs like China's "one child" policy, Jose Atienza's "natural family planning" agenda, Iraq's Morality Police, Hezbollah's (and others') "Martyrs' Brigade" (yup, women sometimes blow themselves up, but they are foot-soldiers, not generals or master minds in this effort), and the US policy of withholding foreign aid from groups that provide abortions to women who need them.

    I could go on, but I'm getting bored.

    Are Brittney's and Hilton's panties (or lack thereof) really comparable?

    -- Juliebird
    [Read Juliebird's other letters]
    Friday, February 15, 2008 05:00 AM
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