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'There's a certain respect of the person and the people who sent us here' that changed a little later in the '90s,' Rep. Pelosi told Harris-Perry, explaining that she saw civility dwindle over time in Congress. She praised President George H.W. Bush for reversing his opinion on raising taxes, being thankful 'he had the courage to do what he did' and the attacks on him were not as vicious as attacks grew to become.
She then theorized that a climate of hostility would keep women away from politics by virtue of them being born women:
The stridency, the harshness' they suppress, they suffocate the system with money, they suppress the vote and they poison the debate and that's not a good formula for women because women need to have a civil conservation. The minute a woman gets tough in a debate, you know what they say about her.
There is nothing particularly incorrect about Rep. Pelosi pointing out that politics is one of the more difficult sports and it takes a thick skin to survive. She is also not incorrect in pointing out that it's pretty easy for a woman to earn the 'bitch' label just for agreeing or disagreeing with a stance a man opposes. It happens, as any woman who has ever had a political opinion can tell you. But the problem with Rep. Pelosi's message here is that she posits the solution to the problem is to dumb down the game or make politics more 'civil'' that the problem is not that some women are hesitant to take the rhetorical punches, but that women as a whole are somehow born unable to withstand the difficulties of being a public official. If politics were Jeopardy! and only men kept winning, Rep. Pelosi would argue that the solution would be to make the questions easier, and not to change the way guests are recruited or educational emphases in classrooms.
To argue that women are inherently unable to withstand the heat and thus politics as a whole has to change teeters dangerously close to a sexist argument. Beyond that, it validates the attacks on women for having political opinions that Rep. Pelosi rails against to begin with. To say that people should behave more civilly lest women scurry back into their shells is to say that those who hurl sexist invective at women are right to think they are too weak for the job. It encourage women to continue scurrying away instead of standing up, fighting back and proving those who dismiss them wrong.
Rep. Pelosi has never backed down from a political position because of what 'people' would say about her for being a woman. That she excuses those who do benefits no one, especially women who would otherwise be involved in the political process but now feel justified in sitting it out.
The segment via MSNBC below:
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'the minute a woman gets tough in a debate,' the subsequent characterizations can deter her from continuing to participate.
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I wonder which political party makes those characterizations'.hint it starts with a R
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I have been paying attention to politics, both casually and, more recently, professionally, for over 30 years and Nancy Pelosi is, without a doubt, the stupidest person to hold a leadership position in that time, and is, quite possibly, the stupidest elected official in the last three decades. It's as if the liberal caricature of Dan Quayle and the liberal caricature of Sarah Palin had a baby girl and that baby was nursed using a lead baby bottle filled with formula made according to Chinese quality control standards, and then she was educated in American public schools in the worst neighborhoods in the country. And that baby would still be smarter than Nancy Pelosi.
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Sarah Palin called Nancy Pelosi a dingbat. She's right. Nancy Pelosi is a dingbat.
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The game is already 'dumbed down' now and getting dumber every year with the foolishness going on in Washington. Beyond personal enrichment and ego aggrandizement, why anyone wants those jobs is a mystery.
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Nancy Pelosi and Mellisa hyphen hyphen Harris hyphen hyphen Perry!!
Now that is what you call riveting, hard hitting, must watch TV.
I would bet they had to cuff the Camera people to stanchions in order to
hold them in the Studio until the end of that segment! -
You claim Pelosi suggests: 'women as a whole are somehow born unable to withstand the difficulties of being a public official.'
Where on earth do you get that she said they were 'born' that way? She didn't use that word. She said that when a woman tries to get involved in a 'tough' or 'harsh' debate, she's almost immediately going to be attacked as a 'bitch,' as you put it. That's all she says. She never said that women, by virtue of their DNA or biology, are not qualified to be there.
I watched the clip. No where in there did she suggest the problem was with women themselves: she clearly targeted the toxic political environment as being hostile to women with strong personalities, thus the environment itself is a deterrent to women who would otherwise get involved. It's harder for women to be in politics, so that's why there are fewer of them. And it's not harder for women because they're incapable of playing the political game; it's harder for them because the game has different sets of rules for women. Ask Sarah Palin or Sandra Fluke, two women from completely different ends of the political spectrum, and I'm pretty sure they would agree that the political game is harder to play when you're a woman.
Thus, your Jeopardy comparison is incomplete. If women who went on the show were called 'bitches' or 'c**nts' every time they tried to buzz in, then fewer women would likely go on the show. Men would win all the time not because women couldn't answer the questions, but rather because women don't want to play the game if they're going to be treated differently while playing it. It's not that the questions need to be made easier; the environment would have to change, and that's what Pelosi is pointing out.
I don't particularly like Pelosi because she's a grandstanding hack (walking out of the Holder vote was childish at best), but you're misrepresenting her point.
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Was Pelosi attempting to scale back all the stuff thrown at Palin while it was happening- She was the Sopeaker of the Hosue and her side were the ones tossing the bombs and she did nothing'she is from Northern California and while Whitman was under attack where was Pelosi? What she really means is that the GOP disagrees with her so they are uncivil- and that civility means agreeing with her'she is not out there changing the tone which she attacks- and she has the power to do it
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