Mike Huckabee is an I-Deee-Otttt
MmmHmm and you can tell him I said so. I have got my thong in a bunch, and even though it is already planted between my sweet and ample cheeks, I am feeling the same discomfort as if it was period time and I was wearing my granny panties.
In less than 24 hours, I have seen two things that made my blood boil. Here we go:
Example 1:
A "friend" on Facebook, a fellow Girl Scout leader posted a link to a blog post about the role of wife and mother:
I heard a great sermon this week about “Christian feminism”, and the pastor said, with no apologies, that we have embraced feminist thinking to the point that we don’t even recognize it as feminism anymore. My favorite point he made was this:
“If you choose marriage, you choose a full-time job, ordained by God as part of His created design. I don’t know why that job is looked down upon; if you don’t want it, don’t get married.”
Of course, I would never advocate “not getting married” in order to pursue a career. But his point is valid…we treat the occupation of marriage and motherhood as if it is some fringe activity, or a hobby, able to be properly executed with our left-over time. NOT SO!
And our feminist thinking within the church kicks against that notion. We will not be told that “our place is in the home”…we want to be homemakers only if we choose to be homemakers. But let’s think about it for a second…
If I get a job as a lifeguard at the public pool, I am expected to be there, every minute, in order to fulfill all my duties properly. Now if I decide that I don’t like sitting out in the hot sun for hours on end, I could choose to get down from my chair; I could choose to find another job, and I could choose to just pop in the pool arena every now and then to make sure things were going OK. I could even hire someone else to do my lifeguard job, while I go do something else; but if I am the lifeguard, I am responsible for what happens at that pool, whether I am there or not. I could call myself the lifeguard, but I would be a lousy one.
Because if someone needed me, I wouldn’t be there. If there was dangerous horseplay, I wouldn’t know about it. If someone started to drown, I could not save them. I could not manage my “domain” of the pool unless I was fully there, mind, body and spirit, all the time. My leaving and allowing people to drown would not be because I didn’t care about the people swimming, but because my selfish motives drove me to abdicate my responsibilities.
I can become a wife, and a mother, but if I leave my “station” as manager of the home, I have left my home open to disaster. If my presence is somewhere else most of the time, my attention and affections are most likely there too. The needs of a well-managed home are tremendous…no one can fulfill them adequately if she is away. She can settle, and justify, and compare, and decide that she’s doing OK compared to so-and-so…but that’s not our standard.
Upon reading this, I got very upset. For some very personal reasons. For me, working outside of the home was an absolute necessity when I was married, and holds true today as a single mother. Do I think I was any less of a mother/caregiver/wife/housekeeper/cook/chauffeur and all the other jobs mom's get because I had a job? HELL NO. Did my house and children's lives absolutely crumble to the ground because I was not there 24/7? NO.
And what really got me? Here was this Facebook "friend" absolutely contradicting herself. She was a Girl Scout leader. A PTA mom. She ran a group for military wives on base. Isn't that in direct conflict with what she just posted?
How can someone who was a successful Girl Scout leader believe whole hearted-ly in this? Isn't GS by definition the foremost example of what women can do? The notion that the "man" runs everything is antiquated and that we as women can do anything we set our minds too???
According to this post, I should be at home, in my pearls and heels, greeting my husband with a high ball glass as he walks in the door. Dinner is on the table and you can faintly hear the "music" of the washing machine in the background........ Uh no thanks. This makes it seem like because you got married, and are now a wife and mother, there is nothing else in this world you should be doing then following your children around 24 hours a day. You most certainly should NEVER have any outside interests/hobbies/activities for fear that your children are going to be lacking in some aspect. God forbid you are not there to wipe their asses at every turn.
You know these mom's. 90 some percent of them that I have met want nothing more than a break for an hour, a night, OMG a whole day even. Should they feel bad for that? For turning their "post" over to someone else? Whatever........
We are all entitled to our beliefs, and can post whatever we want on Facebook. I was just dumbfounded by this from someone who I thought was on the same playing field as I. Why does this upset me so? I felt attacked, even thought it wasn't personally directed at me.
After some back and forth on the subject, this "friend" brought up that for her it was a way to examine her life and what her goals and struggles were. AND, that even though she and I don't agree on the subject, it certainly got us talking about it no? Touche.
Example 2:
Natalie Portman, newly crowned Best Actress Academy Award winner, has found herself at the center of two hot debates this week. As a face of Dior, when the charges and video of head designer John Galliano’s anti-Semitic spill came to light, Portman assisted him to the door by declaring she was “shocked and disgusted” at his remarks as “an individual who is proud to be Jewish.”
She’s kept silent over family values GOP presidential wannabee Mike Huckabee’s remarks about single motherhood. We cede the floor to Huckabee, who spoke to radio host Michael Medved:
"One of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine. But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.”
Are you kidding me? Wow. If that doesn't make every single mom out there extremely pissed off I don't know what should. On public assistance or not is NOT the issue here. Mike Huckabee obviously has a poor opinion of mom's who, for whatever reason, have to go it alone.
Are there ladies out there taking advantage of the system? Sure. Is that true for everyone? HELL NO. Do I like being labeled as un-educated because I'm a single mom? NO. I make peanuts, gets next to nothing in child support and could qualify for food stamps, or some kind of public assistance. I don't take it. You know what I do? I go without things in order to make sure I can pay all my bills.
I gave up cable for 8 months. I don't go out to eat very often. I don't buy new clothes, get my nails done or drive a fancy car. Why? Cause I can't friggin afford it. But is that due to laziness or lack of education? NO. I work my butt off with a 40 hour a week job. I even took a temporary second job last year to make some extra money.
When I get my tax return each year, I pay as many bills forward as I possibly can. That makes it easier for me later down the line. Now, I have gotten off topic here......... a sure sign that I am highly agitated ONCE AGAIN.
Well, Mike Huckabee. You can take your narrow minded, pampered ass, right wing attitude and shove it where the sun don't shine. Because unless YOU ARE a single mom, you can have an opinion, but you may not attack us all as a whole and lump EVERY single one of us in to the same category. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Mmm k?
Comments