I sit on my couch in my small apartment in Flushing Queens in NYC. I love to listen to the news most Sundays sometimes to a fault...or so my daughter tells me. I love to know what is going on in the world I live in but I am not obsessive about it. Sometimes I feel like the current POTUS because that is how he gets his news, watching TV and flipping from channel to channel to hear what the talking heads are saying about him. I am different though because I choose who I watch and I do not flip from channel to channel and for me not all news channels are publishing fake news. However I can watch news for hours on end and never get bored.
Today December 3, 2017 I am listening to AMJOY on MSNBC from 10:00 am until midday. I am shaking my head as they are now conducting a postmortem of how the elections were lost by Clinton because all the male reporters were not willing to push back on issues of sexual abuse allegedly levelled against the current president because they (male talking heads) were scared of what could come out of their own private life closets to haunt them. So far Bill O'Reilly, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, and many others have either lost their jobs or are under suspension for one thing or another related to sexual abuse or false reporting. As such, talking heads concluded that Hillary Clinton lost because of sexual harassment that was not fully investigated and pushed back on by talking heads.
This reminded me of a conversation I had in 2005 with a white American lady. The lady was in her late 80s. We were discussing politics. As a black woman I thought America would have a female president before there could ever be a black male president. She argued that America was still a man's world more than we all thought. She told me that chances were higher for a black man being president than a female. She alluded to the fact that the men in America and most women still felt that political leadership belonged to men more than women. She mentioned that those people would vote in their thousands to prevent a woman from becoming president. To them any man any office would be better than a female.
To say I believed her then would be a lie. I realized after the primaries in 2008, when Hillary was being given a run for her money by a newly elected black senator from Illinois. He had come into my radar in 2004 when he had become the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention that year. That was also my first year of actually experiencing elections in the US. I learned everything from the primaries to the end. Obama's speech was resounding, exhilarating, inspirational, and motivational. The following day I went to the library and borrowed his book Dreams From My Father. It gave me an insight into the man who Democrats fell in love with in 2004. No one was left in any doubt that if he ever decided to run for presidency he would win. There he was in 2008 after one term as junior senator from Illinois giving Hillary a tough time. I started to wonder whether he would make it. I questioned whether it was that mentality my friend Thelma had told me about of assuming that any man was better than a woman or was it that people just liked him, not just liked but loved him.
I was not left in any doubt at all when he won the election to beat the well seasoned politician and known world wide that I realized my friend was right. America was and still is a patriarchal society. The majority still believe that man were and still are better leaders than women. I did not follow the primaries in 2016. I started following the debates of one man for Republicans and one woman for Democrats. It was like watching the fight of the titans. Nobody had anything glamorous to say about the two opponents but each party wanted their candidate to win. The female knew about the world, had good strategies on policy, displayed good discipline under pressure, and had views that were impressive. The male seemed to be stirring hate the way he spoke of immigration, religion, and minorities. I could not find anything that I could admire in him as my president and leader of the free world, if elected. The bottom for me fell off the bucket the weekend the Entertainment Tonight video came to light. To watch the video I almost threw up. Who could have such an attitude towards women except someone who hated women. Politics then sunk to a new low in America for me. The fact that on video I actually saw his imaging talking of grabbing women's private parts without permission was the lowest level even. it spelled to me in capital letters I AM A FEMALE ABUSER. It was deplorable. The things he uttered I could not believe and only have him dismiss that as locker room banter was beyond the pale.
That tape was degrading and dehumanizing to women. I could not imagine any women in their right minds voting for him nor any men who cared for their daughters and respected their mothers voting for this man. There was no pushback from the talking heads each time they had him they gave him soft balls. It clicked today that the talking heads had more skeletons in their closets than the republican candidate had.
The talking and investigative heads failed America because they feared backlash. They failed America because of their personal reasons. They failed America because they did not play hardball. I suffered abuse at the hands of a man in a developing country. I could not believe living here in he US that one of the self confessed female abusers was going to occupy one of the most envied offices in the world. I was disgusted beyond anything describable.Now as the talking heads continue to talk I realize that we should not have expected the push back from men. They are still protective of the old boys club. The world is still their oyster. They hold the most powerful positions in the world. They still earn more than women. They have intimidated women into silence for centuries. How can they not have their cake and eat it?
As women we can no longer afford to stand on the side lines and hope men will do what is in the interest of women. More of us should be among the talking heads, more of us need to shout even with closed lips to the rallying cry Me Too. Let's not wait for men to push back but us to take charge and be talking heads wherever we are.
