House Speaker and Armani Spokesmodel Nancy Pelosi arrived yesterday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, latest stop on her Freebooting Mideast Diplomacy Tour, and apparently wasted no time getting down to the most important issues. Specifically, Ms. Pelosi related to reporters that she had questioned the Saudis on the absence of women in their most senior government positions.
We remind Ms. Pelosi that Saudi Arabia is among the most repressive places on earth for humans of the female persuasion, and so we wonder why she chose this moment to address an outcome that would be nearer the end of a process of liberation than the beginning. Let's skip all that stuff about not going to universities, wearing giant, black robes and veils, never leaving the house without a man, polygamy, and other quaint expressions of culture. The real issue is that Saudi Arabia doesn't have a female Speaker of the House.
But it seems that in Queen Nancy's narcissistic world, what's happening in the room occupied by Queen Nancy ("Wait a minute! Where are all the bright, stylishly dressed women like me who should be running things in this country?") is more important than anything outside her serene gaze ("You mean that in this country women are virtual prisoners in their own homes?").
We note that some gentle readers take our pique at Ms. Pelosi to be related to her gender. It is not. We approve of powerful women in politics. Many of our most favorite qualify, namely Baroness Thatcher and Dr. Rice. We castigate Speaker Pelosi specifically for her unconstitutional operation of a foreign policy separate from the executive branch's and broadly for her naive isolationist philosophy that at once both condescends to other nations and overestimates human goodness.
1 comment:
Ditto.
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