Queen Nancy
Betsy has a quite a bit to say about Nancy Pelosi’s rise to Speaker of the House and I agree with what she has said. Betsy quotes from a Washington Times article about Nancy’s Wednesday evening festivities:
“We have waited over 200 years for this time to come,” Mrs. Pelosi said on the eve of her selection as speaker, a position that makes her second in line to the presidency after Vice President Dick Cheney.
“We will not just break through a glass ceiling, we will break through a marble ceiling,” she said. “In more than 200 years of history, there was an established pecking order — and I cut in line.”
After calling herself “the most powerful woman in America,” Mrs. Pelosi flexed her right muscle like a weight lifter to much applause at an event yesterday titled a “women’s tea.”
“All right, let’s hear it for the power,” she screamed as the jubilant applause continued.
She expanded on that with her actual acceptance speech.
“This is an historic moment — and I thank the leader for acknowledging it. I think you Leader Boehner. It is an historic moment for the Congress, and an historic moment for the women of this country. It is a moment for which we have waited over 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren’t just waiting; women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling. For our daughters and our granddaughters, the sky is the limit, anything is possible for them.
I must say that I really don’t think that “we” have been waiting 200 years for a female Speaker. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1920 even though some states had already given women the right to vote. That’s less than 100 years ago if you do the math. Point of fact, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives (Jeannette Rankin, R-MT) served from 1917 to 1919 – before the Constitution was amended. She was elected in 1916 – 90 years ago.
Since then, more women have decided to run for office and more have been elected to serve in both the House and the Senate. A woman being elected to any leadership post in the House or Senate was just a matter of time. Nancy accomplished this when she was elected minority leader. She is now Speaker mainly because her party gained a slim majority for the 110th Congress.
“For our daughters and granddaughters, the sky is the limit, anything is possible for them.” Only just now? Only the sky? Women have been elected Head of State in other countries (as Betsy reminds us of Margaret Thatcher). Women have headed up major corporations. Women have gone into space (a bit further than the sky…)
Listening yesterday to speech I was hoping for the theme music to queue up like at the Academy Awards® telling the winner to stop thanking people…
Betsy says
I‘d like someone to ask Nancy Pelosi how her being a woman will change her leadership of the House. What will she do that a male Democrat wouldn’t do? Does she believe that women are that different from men that a woman politician is going to push different policies and lead differently?
I know that the media will never treat her like they treated Newt Gingrich after the Republicans took over in 1995, but she needs to be wary of too much self congratulation. This “I am woman. Hear me roar” schtick is getting old very fast. Let other commentators talk about it, but Pelosi should move on to the business at hand. And Hillary Clinton sure must be hoping that Pelosi doesn’t wear out her welcome as the first woman Speaker and make enough Americans sick enough of hearing all this celebration of womanhood to not want to vote for a woman for president.
She’s sooo excited about being Speaker of the House and yet I don’t hear her, or her supporters, talking about the women around the world who aren’t free. Those who can’t even leave the house without a male escort. Those that still don’t have the right to vote. Women who can be beaten and killed for wearing the wrong clothing items.
Oh yeah, it’s their “culture”. We have to respect their “culture”.
