RealClearPolitics.com/DailyDebate
February 4, 2014
2. Dispatches
———
Wendy Davis was supposed to be the new feminist hero of the Democratic Party. Which she is, I suppose—but in a way that exposes the deeper assumptions of the feminist left.
Davis rose to prominence by leading a filibuster in the Texas state senate against a law imposing restrictions on late-term abortions. The filibuster ultimately didn’t succeed, but it gave Davis a national reputation and provided the basis for her to run for governor of Texas, giving Democrats new hope for their long-sought goal of taking Texas back from the Republicans.
Davis also tried to over-egg the pudding by building up her biography as a kind of feminist hero, a teenage single mother living in a trailer park who worked her way up alone, through grit, determination, and “the help of academic scholarships and student loans” to put herself through Harvard and achieve success as a lawyer and politician.
Then the Dallas News dug into the story and found out that she left something—or rather someone—out of her biography.
“Davis was 21, not 19, when she was divorced. She lived only a few months in the family mobile home while separated from her husband before moving into an apartment with her daughter.
“A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter. He paid for her last two years at Texas Christian University and her time at Harvard Law School, and kept their two daughters while she was in Boston. When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody, and the girls stayed with him. Wendy Davis was directed to pay child support.”
When you give your biography and declare on your website, “And you’re damn right it’s a true story,” then it had damn well better be a true story. And not just sort of tru-ish.
And if you spin a feminist yarn about how sisters are doin’ it for themselves, the truth had better not turn out to be that you got ahead by marrying an older, economically successful man. Jeff Davis, it turns out, was making a six-figure income—which was a good deal more money in the early 1990s than it is today—and cashed in his retirement account to pay for Davis’s education. He then took over as the primary caregiver for Davis’ two daughters while she took off for Harvard, and he later introduced her to his political connections to help her launch her political career on the Forth Worth City Council.
That’s a more old-fashioned way for a young woman to get ahead.
To add insult to injury, Davis received the endorsement of Brandon Wade, the founder and CEO of a website that matches young women with “sugar daddies.”
“Wendy Davis is proof that the sugar lifestyle is empowering. It can take a single mom from squalor to scholar, or in this case from the trailer park to Harvard, and a seat in the Senate. The sugar lifestyle creates an opportunity for women to transcend the single mother stereotypes.”
Ouch. From feminist hero to “sugar baby.”
Now, let us stipulate that Brandon Wade is a publicity-seeking scumbag. And let us also stipulate that we don’t know what actually happened in Senator Davis’s marriage. Jeff Davis leaves the door open for a little speculation, telling reporters that she moved out “right around the time the final payment on their Harvard Law School loan was due. ‘It was ironic,’ he said. ‘I made the last payment, and it was the next day she left.’” You don’t tell that to a reporter unless you’re just a little bitter. But from the outside, we don’t really have the basis to judge whether their relationship was purely mercenary.
But what we can see is that it’s a heck of an ommission to write out of her biography the amazingly supportive husband who made her success possible. Mona Charen notes how this is also true of the glowing profiles of Davis in the press. “Her 18-year marriage to a man who committed himself to her welfare and went into debt to help her achieve her career goals was practically airbrushed out, mentioning in passing—’she married again for a time’—to explain the appearance of her second daughter.”
Compare this to what is expected of a male politician, for whom it is obligatory to acknowledge the love and support of a spouse. And does anyone remember the “you didn’t build that” controversy during the 2012 election campaign, when President Obama took up the argument that business owners couldn’t claim credit for their success because they had used public roads? So it’s not OK to tout your indepedence from government. But it is OK to ignore any private help you have received. Thus, Davis drops her husband from the narrative, but acknowledges “the help of academic scholarships and student loans.”
This is how Wendy Davis is really twisting her life story to fit the agenda of the feminist left. It is not acceptable to acknowledge the assistance and support of a man. It’s only acceptable to acknowledge the support and assistance of government. That’s the real ideology of the feminist left: not equality for women, but the belief that women can only advance with the support of the state.
The term “bureaugamy,” recently popularized by James Taranto, was originally coined by Lionel Tiger “to refer to the relationship between officially impoverished mothers of illegitimate children and the government,” in which the state takes on the role previously served by a husband.
In Davis’s case, the relationship is a little more twisted. She actually did have a husband, whose support was far more important than anything provided by government. But it turns out she was not really free to give him her affections, because there was a prior commitment that turned out to be more important to her. In the end, her heart belonged to the state.
Call her a bureaugamist.
———
John McCain and Lindsey Graham claim that Secretary of State John Kerry has privately admitted the collapse of President Obama’s Syria policy, including the prospect “that al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria pose a direct terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland.”
But hey, at least the al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria are at war with each other.
And in Afghanistan, the Taliban is broke, partly because Saudi funders have moved their attention to the jihadists in Syria.
Obama lied, people died.
At a big academic conference, hundreds show up to discuss bashing Israel—and at a meeting to discuss the plight of overworked, underpaid adjunct instructors? Four people. It’s an interesting reflection of the priorities of “progressive” academics.
———
—Robert Tracinski
The Daily Debate
edited by Robert Tracinski
Brought to you by RealClearPolitics.
Robert Tracinski is also editor of The Tracinski Letter.
Follow meon Twitter.
Send comments or suggestions to tracinski@realclearpolitics.com.
The Bureaugamist
No comments:
Post a Comment