Attack of the Killer Career Women

Many people ask me why I call myself a feminist, as if it's a paranoid overreaction to an imagined threat. This is Happy Equality Land now, where men and women work side by side, earning equal salaries for equal work and sharing equally in household chores, right? Just ask any working mother! We’re in the post-feminist age now, baby! Cue the dance music!

Um, no. Last week, an article appeared on the Forbes Magazine web site titled (I kid you not), Don’t Marry Career Women by Michael Noer. After an outcry from readers and staff, Forbes.com yanked the article and posted it days later with a rebuttal. In this article, Noer asserts that the career “girl” (whom he defines as having “a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year”) is wrecking the institution of marriage. So now homosexuals are in good company – women such as myself are also working to unravel the very fabric of civilization.

Because my attempts at summarizing this article would not do it justice, and any commentary would just be obvious, here are some excerpts (but please, read the article for yourself):

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extramarital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 times more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas). Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat. And if the cheating leads to divorce, you're really in trouble. Divorce has been positively correlated with higher rates of alcoholism, clinical depression and suicide.

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy. They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do. You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do. You will be more likely to fall ill. Even your house will be dirtier.

You heard it, fellas. Even your house will be dirtier. But I suppose the upside is that you have a scapegoat for any and all personal failures.

So why am I a feminist? With schmucks like Noer walking the streets, with an article like this in a mainstream economic magazine like Forbes, why ISN’T any self-respecting person a feminist?

And on a lighter note...

Zach Braff is so adorable it hurts. If you haven’t already, check out the Garden State soundtrack as well as the new The Last Kiss soundtrack. His adorable-ness is paired with a killer taste in music.

He’s soooo allowed in my living room.

"Bonjour, you cheese eatin' surrender monkeys."

Rumsfield is transforming into Groundskeeper Willie before our very eyes. He’s got that paranoid uneven temper, the kind you back away from slowly while averting your eyes and speaking in a soft monotone. The man’s gone nutters.

The latest has him calling opponents of the Bush administration morally-confused fascists, and going on to make the dreaded Hitler comparison, the mark of any true crazy. His rant continues in his usual forehead-slappingly ridiculous fashion:

… part of the problem is that the American news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive. He said, for example, that more media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor.
"Can we truly afford to believe somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?" he asked.

Appeased, yes, and sometimes even elected. Twice.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/29/AR2006082900585.html

Petfinder.com

Most of us have those sites we can't look at without wanting something RIGHT THIS MINUTE. Overstock, Amazon, and Apple, oh my! Mine? Petfinder.com. If left to my own devices, I'd have dozens of shelter dogs overtaking my home. Can someone please adopt this dog so I can come over and play? Hollis is at the Charlotte Humane Society, and would make a fantastic birthday present for Jimmy on August 12. (She also looks like Murph and Scout's long lost pup... Hey, you've seen those two in action...)



And as my mini PSA, I want to plug local shelters... There's no need to pay insane amounts of money to get the designer dog of your dreams. Shelter dogs need lovin, too, and there's nothing like the feeling of giving a pet his second shot.