comments_image -

The Porn Candidate

Maureen Dowd's ideal female candidate would have an easier time than the real female candidate running, because her candidate is not a real person.
February 14, 2008  |  
 
Advertisement
 

Whaddaya know? This morning, as a thought experiment, Maureen Dowd contemplated a woman making a successful run for President. She'd like that, she says. She even hopes the "male reporters" in the media would behave if it ever happened. Presumably she includes herself in that group.

Dowd's candidate would have an easier time than the real female candidate running, because Dowd's candidate is not a real person, but one of those women on the internet pornography sites. Maureen's candidate has no brain, no record, no history, no family, no past statements, no existence except in her overheated imagination.

The internet porn candidate would be perfect, because, having no brain she couldn't be too smart, no record, so she could not have once voted in a way that some critic disagrees with, having no history, people would not simply be able to push a button on their computer to come up with witch lines about her, having no family, she would not remind them of their own sexual "unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies" having no past statements, she would not have talked too much, and having no existence except as a hypothetical, she would never actually win. Anything.

Linda Hirshman is the author of Get to Work ... And Get A Life Before It’s Too Late (Penguin 2007). A retired philosophy professor, she blogs at the New Republic, the American Prospect, TPMCafe, and elsewhere

submit to reddit

-
Email
Print
Share
LIKED THIS ARTICLE? JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST
Stay up to date with the latest AlterNet headlines via email
See more stories tagged with: media, women, sexism, porn, election08, dowd
Advertisement
Most Read
Most Emailed
Most Discussed
On REDDIT
On DIGG
 
loading most read content ..
Advertisement
Pro-Coal Group Pays People to Wear Its Shirts at EPA Hearing

By Heather Moyer | Sierra Club

 
 
Kids Inundate NY Governor With Concerns About Fracking

By Seth Gladstone | Food and Water Watch

 
 
Shareholders, Top Doctors Demand McDonald's Assess its Health Impacts

By Sara Deon | Civil Eats

 
 
Republicans Block NY Minimum Wage Increase That Would Give 880,000 Workers a Raise

By Laura Clawson | Daily Kos

 
 
Why Don't TV Meteorologists Believe in Climate Change?

By Katherine Bagley, | Inside Climate News

 
 
New Book Says Teenage Obama Was a Huge Pot Head -- So Why Won't He Legalize It for the Rest of Us?!

By Kristen Gwynne | AlterNet

 
 
Pew Poll Finds Clean Energy Is A Political Wedge Issue for Republicans

By Stephen Lacey | Climate Progress

 
 
Mitt 'Not Concerned with the Very Poor' Romney Visits West Philly, Gets Lesson in Keeping it Real

By Kristen Gwynne | AlterNet

 
 
Corporate Media Stokes Racial Angst in Election Coverage

By Adele M. Stan | AlterNet

 
 
5 Things to Know About the Paycheck Fairness Act (The Next Big Legislative Battle for Women)

By Annie-Rose Strasser | Think Progress

 
 
 
 
 
loading ...
POWERED BY DIGG'S USERS
 
[ page served from web 1 ]