Recently, President Barack Obama was doing the only thing he seems to be capable of not screwing up (see: getting people to give money) and still managed to step in it with his base of totalitarian hippie supporters somehow.
At a fundraiser outside of San Fransisco, the President included in his remarks that attorney general of California, Kamala Harris was “the best looking attorney general in the country”. The hippies got angry and used it as an opportunity to peddle their speech-policing about what is and isn’t okay.
What isn’t okay about noting that someone is attractive? Nothing, obviously. Which is the only thing that makes this a noteworthy story. The articles and social media praise for those scolding the president don’t even make an attempt at logical arguments. They just forbid and demand and seek to bully and shame those who don’t adhere to their thought and comment codes and it’s gross.
The definition of “political correctness” is forbidding truths inconvenient to the political Left, which is rooted in Marxist ideology seeking “sameness” but usually masking it under the more palatable but flexible term of “equality”. This strive for sameness requires a lot of social engineering that no un-brainwashed person would find at all appealing, so pressure tactics need to be employed under the guise of pleading on behalf of a victim class.
In this case, the social engineering the hippies desire is the 1960s version of “feminism” (the attack of femininity in the pursuit of women being seen, thought of, and treated no different than men in any way) which is the opposite of feminism (embracing the feminine and observing it as different but equal in respect and legal rights to masculinity and other typically male traits). Hippie feminism demands the suppression of the fact that men find women attractive, so thus it demands that references to this fact be banned. Media using attractive women are demonized as “objectifying” women and comments on women’s attractive appearances are labeled as doing the same thing. This is because that under an ideology of sameness-worship, the observation of differences debunks the end goal. So their solution is just to ban it. Call these things offensive.
It doesn’t matter that there is no logical basis behind keeping quiet over obvious observable truths and it doesn’t matter that there is nothing insulting, degrading, inappropriate, or out of context about polite notation of such obvious observable truths. The argument is merely “we said so. the end”.
Harris was already noted by President Obama as being “brilliant” and that “she is dedicated and she is tough” before he added that she was also “the most attractive attorney general in the country” so there is no argument to be made about any kind of denial of her non-physical attributes. Instead, the presidents comments are just being called inappropriate and offensive by the usual suspects of hippies stepping in front of someone who was neither victimized nor offended and broadcasting about victimizaiton and offense.
Mika Brezinski on MSNBC said “It just divides women and it just divides people up to separate them by looks and probably was a little ham-fisted. I just think the whole thing, the whole dynamic about women and their looks puts women under a lot of stress that they don’t need.” I like Mika and don’t want to beat up on her, so i’ll leave it to you to decide if she really believes that hippie talking point and/or if it is congruent with pictorials like this:
Katie J. M. Baker asks in a Jezebel post that uses an unflattering photo of Kamala Harris, “was it wrong of Obama to call Harris “the best looking attorney general” while listing her many other attributes?” and then immediately answers herself with “Yes”, because, she says “Women put up with enough unsolicited attention as it is; the president of our country doesn’t need to legitimize the practice by piling on.”
Robin Abcarian in the LA Times had to admit the statement is “accurate” and “stating the obvious” but still asks if it was “sexist” (inadvertently admitting that truth is sometimes “sexist” which un-defines the word sexism). She concludes that making obvious statements about a womans attractiveness is predatory and problematic by saying “More wolfish than sexist, I’d say. And this may be a little problem he needs to work on.” In an attempt to justify this potential “problem” that needs “working on”, Abcarian says:
As Arlette Saenz of ABC News pointed out, Obama got into some hot water a while back when he addressed a reporter as “sweetie.” That was obnoxious, and demeaning, and Obama rightfully apologized. In 2008, he told Hillary Clinton she was “likeable enough” during one of the primary debates, which turned off God knows how many women, who heard the smug judgment of an arrogant upstart.
2 more bogus examples as the reporter didn’t express any offense at the “sweetie” remark, which isn’t inherently obnoxious or demeaning and the “likeable enough” comment was a joke in response to a question about whether Hillary “is likeable” (so in other words, he was using the language of the question in the debate to make light of the question in her defense – not decreeing to Hillary that he, as an elitist, had dubbed her to be adequate).
Amanda Marcotte at Slate wrote an article titled “Sorry, President Obama, but Complimenting a Colleague’s Looks Isn’t Harmless” but forgot to include in the article, any “harm” inherent in such an action. Instead she just points out that dumb hippies on twitter rebuked the President, and lauds that many were male and dismissed columnists debunking the lunacy as “unsurprising defensive whining”. At least she is unsurprised that when cry-bullying over fake victimization stories in service to illogical dogmas are used as offenses, the defense is expected. Her laughable evidence that complimenting women “isn’t harmless” is a statement by a social scientist who quoted a 1996 paper in where researchers discovered that – gasp – passive-aggressive behaviors exist. Marcotte should get with the 21st century and realize that this isn’t news. Yes, it’s true that people can say nice things in manipulative ways for negative outcomes – thanks for that professional citation to uncover that obvious point literally everyone is already aware of. Sorry, Amanda, but the potential to be negative by paying people compliments doesn’t make the act of making a compliment in itself “harmful”.
Joan Walsh at a Salon.com titled “Kamala Harris deserves better” un-makes her point in nearly every line of the first few paragraph by admitting the details that contradict he phony claim of sexist oppression (Obama and Harris are close allies; the compliment was intended as such and not as an attack; that it was preceded by calling her “brilliant”) and then says “but my stomach turned over anyway”.
And that’s the perfect summary of this situation: “Yes, there was nothing wrong whatsoever about this comment that had good motives, was well received by the person it was directed to and was objectively accurate…but I hated it anyway” – Hippie Feminism in a nutshell.
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To review: President Obama says something nice about a friend and supporter at a fundraiser and no one there complains and the friend and supporter expresses no problem at having been publicly complimented by the President of the United states on her brilliance, toughness, dedication, and good looks. Leftist crusaders, however, step in to say that’s not okay in a variety of outlets, but to recap the 5 covered here:
An MSNBC host says that complimenting women on being attractive adds “stress that they don’t need” and “divides” them, even though she adds to the division with 90% more hair and makeup vamping and 100% more leg showing than her male co-anchors.
An LA Times columnist says that it is “wolfish” and “a problem” to compliment a women on her looks, even though she admits herself several times that the woman in question has complimentary looks (ie: a compliment).
A Slate.com columnist claimed that a 1996 paper someone wrote said that nice things could potentially be used in bad ways and dubiously concluded that that is proof that complimenting a womans appearance is “harmful”.
A Jezebel columnist said that the president was “piling on” the plight that women already unjustly suffer when they look attractive by saying so.
And a Salon.com columnist claimed that she became physically sick when she heard that the President had complimented a woman.