Congenial-speak #56

Era of Women

Glass ceilings receive scratches, kind of like a woman's nails might irritate the back of a man in an auto-erotic fantasy. They leaves cracks, wounds proliferate to heal, they raise to seal, men whose fates are revealed. And when the bleeding begins, let the blood letting in, allow the confessions to begin. They're moguls of Hollywood, of Real Estate; they hide at Pennsylvania Avenue, on capitol hill and those of Hollywood. Bill “Slick Willy” Clinton, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Cosby, Roger Ales, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Weinstien, George HW Bush, Roy Moore, Donald Trump. Al Franken? He surprised me most. As a self-professed “Giant of the Senate” I really thought he was smarter. But, to his credit, contrary to most of his colleagues across the aisle Al apologized with a sincere letter right away. He invited the ethics committee to investigate him.

The alleged power-plays are about to begin. It is definitely there. Hillary, Mrs. C, the first woman was a first lady, the Democratic nominee lost her opportunity to be president on a constitutional technicality. Advantage women. Trump's glutinous past of disparaging women, beginning—and hopefully—ending with Rosie O'Donnell, opened the box, knit the pink pussy hats, began a narrative that exposed centuries of men for what they believe, or thought was to be believed still, after the 1970s. Something is happening here, something long overdue, like a library book that presents women in submissive roles that you were ashamed to return. The catharsis of this may be—aside from empowering women—that a female Democratic nominee in 2020 becomes president. (See my last post discussing the self-imploded death of the GOP.)

Politically, constitutionally speaking, as far as power-tripping, it started with the Adams, John and Abigail, America's first “power couple.” The fairer half, better part, of the couple, in a March 1776 letter, requested that her husband “remember the ladies” as he drafted the code of laws at the Continental Congress. She enlightened him, saying “all men would by tyrants if they could.” That was over two centuries ago. A track record set by the most powerful men in history, from Thomas Jefferson to JFK to Bill Clinton. It is a mentality that began with the aspiring actress on the casting couch and paused for air, for benign comic effect with Woody Allen and Pee-wee Herman in the movie theater. It never ends though. It's an idea that's been circulating since (for the sake of this post) the Garden of Eden. For want of a more concrete base, we will assume the whole woman from rib bubbe mayseh (Grandmother's tale), the apple, the serpent. Blame the media, advertising, history books, ANY book ever written before 1980, men who had their heads in their ass during the whole sexual revolution, blame men who refuse to let go of this alpha ideal. They hang on to it like Conservatives hang on to, for instance, the second amendment. Oddly enough there is a connection. Each argument is old, even archaic, pathetic and worn. Each pacifies a primal need, an instinct that gets less necessary or plausible with each decade. And, last but not least, each involves the wearing of a cod piece, and extension of a phallic symbol or fallacies designed to elevate the men reluctant to codify their code of ethics.

I was raised in a very feminist environment. Although, for all I knew, back when young people were working at the DFL office on Hennepin, where my mom went to work as DFL chairwoman in 1968, power-plays between older men and young women might have been going on. Anything's possible. I personally never saw women like that, to be the respondent people to someone who held power. Yes, in my book Ten Years and Change: A Liberal Boyhood in Minnesota I sometimes refer to “silky-haired women in fuzzy ponchos” but what kid doesn't see the beauty in women who enter the house. At nine-years-old I certainly had nothing on them, and probably still don't. Is it something for themselves, self-ingratiating, following a goal, or does any man consciously say “hey, I'm going to go to law school after college, become a very wealthy attorney, and I'll have access to any woman I want?” I doubt 9 out of 10 men do. I sincerely believe that screwing women, along with all the contractors, was figured into Donald Trump's plan when he went to Wharton Business School. Nixon, Clinton, JFK et al. merely found it to be a pleasant benefit, an occupational hazard, an incidental provider of many, many ah-ha moments. That's not to say it's any less deplorable, but for them it was not pre-meditated. Obviously I have never aspired to any level of power. But, by the time this wave of men accused by women of harassment crests, it would not surprise me if I saw a living writer. I'm sure Hemingway, Henry James, Kerouac, definitely Bukowski did not get through their careers without incident. It would be a delicious irony if Hawthorn had been a harasser and/or an infidel. Fear not ladies, I just don't have it in me, the basic inclination for any power, the gall, the testosterone, the bladder, or the dangerous level of self-esteem that leads to arrogance.