She’s a ______
Jill Abramson, a New York Times editor, writes an op-ed today reacting to all the hubub around Katie Couric landing in an anchor chair and she ponders: “At a time when women are running Fortune 500 companies and the State Department, and writing Supreme Court opinions, perhaps we have stopped pushing the save-get key for ‘the first woman to become _____.’ ” I do hope we’re getting past that. Today on Reliable Sources — as on much coverage of this story — there has been so much attention paid to Couric as a woman rather than as a professional that I think it risks becoming condescending and even sexist.
At the start of my checkered career, I was an intern on the Detroit Free Press in what was then known as the Women’s Section. (I took juvenile joy in picking up the phone and growling in my deepest basso, “Free Press … Women’s.”) Even back then in — dare I say it? 1973 — I was sick of headlines all starting “She’s a ______.” She’s a busdriver. She’s a rabbi. She’s a mortician, even. So what? To be amazed that a woman is doing any of these jobs is to intimate that we should be surprised she can do it. And that is essentially insulting.
Of course, that’s not to say that there are not plenty of jobs that women — and minorities of various colors, backgrounds, nationalities, and abilities — have not yet filled, starting with the presidency. But I’m quite sick of people asking whether we are “ready” for a woman President — or, for that matter, a black or Jewish (or one day, Muslim) President. We’re ready for a smart President.
Couric should be judged exactly as her male counterparts — and her female counterpart, Elizabeth Vargas — are judged, with neither greater nor lesser scrutiny given because she is a woman. I think the response to all the attention paid to her being the first solo anchor of the evening news should be, “so what?”
Tags: Culture
April 9th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Agreed.
Female? Who cares? Let’s get past that.
Hack? Well, yes. Sure, she was working within the constraints of a morning entertainment show. It remains to be seen whether she can make the switch to “serious” news.
I fail to see the importance of this, from any angle. The era of the anchor is over. I haven’t gotten news from TV in years, unless it was a breaking event. I’m on a computer all day. I don’t wait until 6:30 to have a talking head give me some gravitas.
April 9th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
If you read the (data-based) work of David Buss and other evolutionary psychologists, you’ll see that men and women are cognitively very similar. Women do tend to be better verbally (due to about 2/3 more connectors between their brain hemispheres), and men tend to be better where spatial thinking is called for.
Where they differ is physically — and then in the psychology that evolved in response to their physical differences. It’s why women have evolved to be less likely to have casual sex — because there was a great cost to it (9 months pregnant, years after that lactating, and a child to care for) — where men only lost a bit of time and a bit of sperm and could chose to move on or stick around and care for the offspring. Men also have more muscle mass and lack ovaries, for example. Again, the differences are mainly physical, not mental, so all this “A Lady Is A Fireman” stuff, and similar stuff today, is insulting and ridiculous.
One thing to consider, however, in terms of how many women are in certain high-placed positions, is whether they prioritize having children over their careers. I don’t want kids, so I’m all about what I do - not taking a few years off or going part-time to wipe noses and all the rest.
April 9th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Actually, I have to correct myself: “A Lady Is A Fireman” is somewhat remarkable - due to women’s general lesser muscle mass and physical strength. Where brute strength is called for, men will generally best women. Increasingly, though, jobs beyond celebrity athelete call for brainpower, not brawn.
April 9th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
And sorry to be such a comments stalker - I’ll stop now - but Jeff, are you from Detroit?
April 9th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Amy,
No, just worked there during a summer internship. I then returned to Chicago to finish school (Northwestern) and work on Chicago Today, a paper that had no tomorrow. When it folded, I had a choice of working midnight-shift in Chicago or dayside in Detroit. I chose midnights in Chicago.
April 9th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
We are only now getting to the point where it is not unusual to see women in high-level jobs. Give it another 5 years and the “first woman to ___” will be obsolete.
April 9th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
“So what?” is certainly my response to Couric’s assignment. I’d imagine that plenty of women in the country hold more important jobs.
April 9th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
An excellent female lawyer leaving her criminal practice for a quiet lifetime job on the bench told me, “Law is not a meritocracy. I’ll never be invited to play golf with the judges, and that’s where the deals are made.”
It’s not the theory but the customs that stand in the way of nonchalant equality.
April 9th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Jeff, for the most part I enjoy reading your comments, even when I don’t agree, but I’m really sick and tired of the media factotums, liberals in general, and you taking gratuitous — not to mention out of context — swipes at the president. He’s got a tough job and, believe it or not, we are at war with an enemy the likes of which we have never met before. (Go back and review the videotape of 9/11 which has largely been hidden from view the past few years). This constant unjustified drumbeat that the prez is an idiot that is broadcast around the world ultimately serves to undermine him when dealing with psycopaths like Hamas or the Saudi monarchy. You may not agree with him, and he may not be as articulate and smooth as Bill Clinton, or as worldly as Madeline Albright who debased herself and her country by running after Yasser Arafat when he walked out of a meeting, but I wouldn’t play poker with that guy unless I really knew what I was doing. In Texas, he beat incumbent Ann Richards, thought to be shoe-in for for a 2nd term; beat incumbent vp Al Gore (the election was his to loose–and is NO braniac, despite the popular wisdom of the press); beat John Kerry; got most of his agenda through Congress; and while the Eurosnots whine about the American cowboy, has the new democracies of Eastern Europe solidly on his side. Bush has, if nothing else, commanded the attention of the Arab despots who respect strength and resolution even in their adversaries. The constant carping diminishes you more than him.
April 9th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Sam,
Methinks ye doth protest too much. I didn’t say anything about this president. You’re projecting.
April 9th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Sorry, Jeff, but when you say, “We’re ready for a smart President,” and we only have one president at a time, how am I supposed to take that comment?
April 10th, 2006 at 6:58 am
More than anything we need Congressional reform with term limits, etc.
April 10th, 2006 at 7:00 am
Well, I for one am looking forward to the renewal of synergy in the media. Colonectamies don for Columbine Survivors… It has it all; Katie, Colons and Columbine with a twitch of Survivor just to round it all off…
April 10th, 2006 at 8:51 am
We’re ready for a smart government, partisanism aside, but I’m sure the enemy does not take much shelter in the idea that this rather dumb one has kicked their asses nine different ways so far.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Is there still an evening news on TV? Its been so long since I watched that I just assumed it no longer existed.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Couric is a great face for the Today show. “Real, serious” news coming from her chubby cheecks and bouncy bob, however, is a hard sell. News is news, so that goes without saying. Couric’s name is cache. Nonetheless, isn’t there a better newswoman out there? Maybe I’m just too judgemental, sexist and plain hard on women.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Um, who’s ass did we kick?
Really, what successes are you pointing to here, toad?
April 10th, 2006 at 10:37 am
I’m sure one can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or vice versa depending on which narrative you read. But no new attacks on US soil is criterion #1, and to hell with criteria #2 through #100, when I personally judge whether “it’s working” or not.
April 10th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
And no city-drowning hurricanes since Katrina either…
Your answer defies all logic. Which explains everything.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Fine, then let’s go to criterion of success #2: 75% of AQ leadership killed or captured.
April 10th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
Including all the Number 3s?
You’re buying that too?
April 10th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
Oh, and Sam, this is how you’re supposed to “take that”: you’re president is an idiot.
Case in point…
April 10th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
Pardon the typo, most of the blogs I visit have Preview on the right, and I clicked too soon…
April 10th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Big deal, Angelos, he couldn’t answer a question. I thank our lucky stars every single day that that blowhard Kerry isn’t our president. http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=13168. To excerpt from Marty Peretz’s column in TNR referenced above: “The Times alluded to Kerry’s well-known verbosity. So it wasn’t surprising that he also went off and said, “Not in one phrase uttered and reported by the Lord Jesus Christ, can you find anything that suggests that there is a virtue in cutting children from Medicare…Kerry asserted that “the Koran, the Torah, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles had influenced a social conscience that he exercised in politics.” My God, what bullshit politicians feel obliged to utter! Or maybe the bullshit is already second nature, or even first. But since Kerry raised it, let me ask: What hadith of the Prophet influenced him the most, and why? And here I have a personal interest: Which of the injunctions of Leviticus and who among the Prophets have the most meaning for him? Ordinarily, of course, I wouldn’t ask such personal questions of a politician. In the spirit of Jesus, Kerry will certainly forgive me for doing so. “
April 11th, 2006 at 8:03 am
He can’t answer ANY question. He never has! And he’s a leader? He might be qualified to manage the night shift at my local Sunoco. Might…
Please don’t tell me you’re criticizing Kerry for pandering to religious interests, as if he were alone. But last I checked, he was a practicing Catholic. Not a pseudo-religious cokehead using Jesus’s name whenever it was convenient for campaigning, who woulnd’t understand the philosophies espoused by “Jesus” if they were spelled out with crayon in words no longer than 2 syllables.
April 11th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Not criticizing Kerry for pandering to religious interests…but his statement is so transparent that it’s ludicrous. And that’s the problem with John Kerry, he’s a blowhard. All talk, all pomposity.
April 12th, 2006 at 7:52 am
To a simpleton, an intelligent man using complete sentences sounds like a “blowhard” I guess. To people who want a president who won’t destroy 230 years of history in just 8 years, we kind of look for those smart people who care about America.
As a friend of mine wrote:
…Jon Chait has a great piece in the New Republic about Red State Elitism. Chait dares to wonder in print how our culture has decided that people with education, adventurous tastes, progressive values and a preference for city living are somehow presumptively arrogant and elitist, while giving a free pass to Red Staters with their smug certainty in their own patriotism, righteous values, and eventual salvation. Since when did rednecks, sexophobes, bible thumpers, gun owners, Fox News watchers and folks who pay so little attention to public affairs that they still believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attack get a greater claim to “authenticity” as it relates to our political discourse than their fellow Americans living on the coasts, in university towns or in old union cities who happen to have different views and lifestyles? This is an important question, since some newspaper editors seem to have internalized this upside down view of elitism and are unduly intimidated by complaints that appear to come from these more “authentic” Americans.
Remember sam, smart is a good thing, not a bad one. As you can see in Bush’s every action and every public utterance, stupid is a bad, bad thing.
April 12th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Jon Chait needs to untwist his underwear and you need to have a double seltzer and calm down.
April 12th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Ah yes, the reasoned response of the simpleton. Stumbling over the complete sentences again?
Here, let’s try this:
Heh, heh, you see, I don’t know that, heh, heh, you know, heh, need another drink, heh, …
April 12th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
“I had a choice of working midnight-shift in Chicago or dayside in Detroit. I chose midnights in Chicago.”
A wise choice! I was an intern at WDIV in Detroit, and then at UPI in D.C. (when it was still in its heyday).
Always enjoy your blog and your passion for free speech, which I share.
Another question for you: Do you feel journalism school (I’m suspecting you went to grad school) was worthwhile, or do you feel young journos can get the training they need by getting their butt kicked by a good editor for a few years?