Reasons to Vote Against Kerry (The Teresa Factor)
5. Teresa. I don't know quite how to get my arms around this quote from Teresa Heinz Kerry:
Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?
A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job - I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things. And I'm older, and my validation of what I do and what I believe and my experience is a little bit bigger - because I'm older, and I've had different experiences. And it's not a criticism of her. It's just, you know, what life is about.
Where to start? "Real job"? Many people have noted that Laura Bush was a schoolteacher and librarian until she married W at age thirty-one, that she had a master's degree, etc. Others have noted the insult to stay-at-home mothers implicit in the notion that raising children is somehow not a "real job." (I can tell you that my wife -- who, like Laura Bush, worked until 31 and then began staying home with our children -- would not be pleased if I described what she does all day as wife, homemaker, mother, Parish trustee, free-lance writer, etc., as not being a "real job.")
No, the thing that jumped out for me was her notion that somehow her experience of life has been "bigger" than Laura Bush's. I think there is probably an argument there -- she's lost a husband, after all, which is certainly an experience that cannot be underestimated, she was born overseas and has experience of other cultures, etc. On the other hand, I think it's probably pretty safe to assume that Laura Bush's experiences as the daughter-in-law of a Vice President and President, sister-in-law of the governor of Florida, and wife of the governor of Texas and President of the United States have been pretty darn big too. Let's face it, neither of these women are exactly your run-of-the-mill housewives.
The fact of the matter is, for the past ten years at least, and realistically for the past twenty-five years, Laura Bush's "job" has been being the wife of a prominent public figure. Just in this campaign, look what she does -- give speeches, give interviews, etc. As first lady, she directs an office and has a significant schedule of public events on her own, and her own staff. The Man from Mars Test is applicable here... a Man from Mars would look down at Laura Bush and see someone doing things that are indistinguishable from his perspective from the things that other people of substantial accomplishment and responsbility are doing, namely, a person with a high-powered "job" indeed.
So the upshot of this is that the silliness of Teresa Kerry's remark is not that it is a rip on stay-at-home housewives or women without "real jobs"; the silliness stems from the fact that Laura Bush obviously wouldn't fit those categories anyway. But the real problem is the condescension that suggests that Person A's "experience" is somehow deeper and more profound that Person B's experience. I think as a general matter this is a dangerous tack. You can never really know what another person has been through. The notion that my experience is somehow ontologically deeper or "bigger" than yours is an argument from authority, not from facts or logic. It has the same rhetorical structure as saying that "I went to Harvard and you went to Texas, so I'm smarter than you," or saying that "My daddy is a doctor and your daddy is just an electrician, so I'm better than you."
This is all probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but the comment does say something about Teresa's elitism that I think a lot of Americans won't like.
On the other hand, she's an odd duck, this Teresa Kerry, but I sort of like the fact that she seems to spit the bit every now and then. You just know that the Kerry campaign has her wrapped up tight. Her gaffes may actually be a sign of the eccentric human being she is trying to break out of the festival of banality that is any Presidential campaign.
Q: You'd be different from Laura Bush?
A: Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good. But I don't know that she's ever had a real job - I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things. And I'm older, and my validation of what I do and what I believe and my experience is a little bit bigger - because I'm older, and I've had different experiences. And it's not a criticism of her. It's just, you know, what life is about.
Where to start? "Real job"? Many people have noted that Laura Bush was a schoolteacher and librarian until she married W at age thirty-one, that she had a master's degree, etc. Others have noted the insult to stay-at-home mothers implicit in the notion that raising children is somehow not a "real job." (I can tell you that my wife -- who, like Laura Bush, worked until 31 and then began staying home with our children -- would not be pleased if I described what she does all day as wife, homemaker, mother, Parish trustee, free-lance writer, etc., as not being a "real job.")
No, the thing that jumped out for me was her notion that somehow her experience of life has been "bigger" than Laura Bush's. I think there is probably an argument there -- she's lost a husband, after all, which is certainly an experience that cannot be underestimated, she was born overseas and has experience of other cultures, etc. On the other hand, I think it's probably pretty safe to assume that Laura Bush's experiences as the daughter-in-law of a Vice President and President, sister-in-law of the governor of Florida, and wife of the governor of Texas and President of the United States have been pretty darn big too. Let's face it, neither of these women are exactly your run-of-the-mill housewives.
The fact of the matter is, for the past ten years at least, and realistically for the past twenty-five years, Laura Bush's "job" has been being the wife of a prominent public figure. Just in this campaign, look what she does -- give speeches, give interviews, etc. As first lady, she directs an office and has a significant schedule of public events on her own, and her own staff. The Man from Mars Test is applicable here... a Man from Mars would look down at Laura Bush and see someone doing things that are indistinguishable from his perspective from the things that other people of substantial accomplishment and responsbility are doing, namely, a person with a high-powered "job" indeed.
So the upshot of this is that the silliness of Teresa Kerry's remark is not that it is a rip on stay-at-home housewives or women without "real jobs"; the silliness stems from the fact that Laura Bush obviously wouldn't fit those categories anyway. But the real problem is the condescension that suggests that Person A's "experience" is somehow deeper and more profound that Person B's experience. I think as a general matter this is a dangerous tack. You can never really know what another person has been through. The notion that my experience is somehow ontologically deeper or "bigger" than yours is an argument from authority, not from facts or logic. It has the same rhetorical structure as saying that "I went to Harvard and you went to Texas, so I'm smarter than you," or saying that "My daddy is a doctor and your daddy is just an electrician, so I'm better than you."
This is all probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but the comment does say something about Teresa's elitism that I think a lot of Americans won't like.
On the other hand, she's an odd duck, this Teresa Kerry, but I sort of like the fact that she seems to spit the bit every now and then. You just know that the Kerry campaign has her wrapped up tight. Her gaffes may actually be a sign of the eccentric human being she is trying to break out of the festival of banality that is any Presidential campaign.
posted by PDB at 11:33 AM
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