More Women In Congress

Joni of the Sharp Shears

Even though she is a Republican, I was somehow cheered to see the Castrator made it to Congress.  Joni Ernst ran on the platform that because she grew up castrating hogs, she should would bring something new and valuable to Washington, D.C. I can see her point.  She replaces Tom Harkin in the Senate and she will be a breath of fresh air: She believes states ought to be able to nullify federal laws, an idea which harkens back to what resulted in the Civil War; she has called for arresting federal officials attempting to implement Obamacare; she agrees with Glenn Beck about a world conspiracy centered in the United Nations; she still insists George W was correct about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq--we just haven't found them yet. This is a woman with a fresh perspective on things. The great mystery to Mad Dog is she is from Iowa, not South Carolina, Arizona or Texas. In those states, she is main line.

Fact is, she has got herself a promising career and she is not mired in conventional thought.

When Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in the early 1960's her major, breakthrough insight was that women were unfulfilled and unhappy despite having  been told paradise on earth was a home with lots of modern appliances, a husband, children and material wealth. Friedan made it acceptable for women to look at their lives and ask themselves if the conventional life was really as honorable, fulfilling and wonderful as everyone said it was.  Each woman, in the privacy of her home, had to ask herself if one man, one life was enough. She did not have to feel guilty for asking this question. You have everything. Why are you looking for more?

Betty Friedan 

 So women went to work, and found new satisfactions and new frustrations, but who could be as happy as a castrating female Senator?

Betty Ice Princess 

Of course, this was the trap which Betty in Mad Men found herself: Beautiful husband, great house, kids, cars, horses to ride, but somehow, something was missing. In Betty's case, the hole in her life could not be filled by a single liaison in the men's room of a Manhattan bar; eventually she traded for a new husband, which did not seem to solve the problem either.

The problem, of course, was never the golden trap of wealth; the trap was buying into what you had been taught by the prevailing authorities about  what will make you happy.

When Mad Dog was struggling through his adolescence, when his seventeen year old with red lips was not concealed inside, but in full display, he kept running into girls who had been told that happiness was being a virgin on your wedding night. These were mostly the girls with good grades and hot college prospects. He ultimately discovered girls whose grades may not have been as stellar, but who laughed at the idea of restrictions on their sexual appetites or their prospects in life.

"I'll go through men the way men go through razor blades,"  one hotly pursued girl friend told him. "Men are disposable. I'll be a partner in a law firm and I'll command my own destiny."

That was a breath taking notion to Mad Dog in those days, because he did not feel he was at all in command of his own destiny.  In fact, she went off to college, then law school, and now works in Washington, DC in the federal government. She did go through quite a few men along the way.  

Mad Dog has heard, from mutual friends, she's had some rocky times, emotionally, but not because she chose to reject convention.  About that, reportedly, she has never had regrets. She ultimately did one conventional thing: She married the coolest guy in high school. He played football, became a Rhodes Scholar and ultimately a war correspondent. Mad Dog used to listen to him cover Bosnia on NPR. But then a college friend of hers visited them in London and her husband  ran off to Europe with the friend on the back of his motorcycle. So she came home, went to work for the government.   

Mad Dog hopes she's considering a run for Congress.  

As a Democrat, of course.