I don't believe Barack Obama meant to reference Sarah Palin when he used the phrase "lipstick on a pig." A deliberate attempt to do so would surely have been seen by his campaign as (political) suicide by (media) cop.
I think Obama just forgot, after getting rid of Hillary Clinton, that there was another queen in the deck.
Bad move - to forget about women.
I have a lot of compassion for Obama and other men in politics. As I look across our nation's field of congresswomen, I see the men have to deal with a lot of Queen Bs, if you know what I mean.
As for uniting all women under his blanket of hope and change, that's not going to happen for Obama.
Because, even though "most of us know as much of history as a pig does of lipsticks," (Charles F. Lummis, Los Angeles Times, 1926), Obama should not mention the historical war on equality, when the debates on the 15th Amendment divided blacks and women, former partners in the crusade against slavery in the 1860s.
After women suffragists turned their attention to join abolitionists in working for African American and women's rights, many civil rights politicians and abolitionists forgot about their efforts and refused to demand that the language of the 14th and 15th amendments be changed to include women.
Women suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support the Fifteenth Amendment because it excluded women. But they were particularly appalled when freed slave and celebrated abolitionist (and half-white) Frederick Douglass, who had sat in their homes and attended their meetings, drinking their teas, eating their cookies and supporting their causes, would not mention women's rights at his invitations to speak on the amendment from 1865 to 1870.
Douglass fought to secure the rights for African-American males first, before trying to achieve the same rights for any women of any color.
Some commentaries praise Douglass for going to work for women's rights immediately after the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. He called for an amendment on women's right to vote and wrote an editorial, "Women and The Ballot," published in October 1870. Big deal. The queen bees of the second half of the 1800s were polite but not impressed. He died in 1895 and went down in the history books as a noted abolitionist, not a women's rights advocate.
It was more likely the Silent Sentinels who finally accomplished the work abolitionists put off doing 50 years earlier.
For two and a half years, from Jan. 10, 1917, until June 1919, more than a thousand women suffragists and supporters in the National Women's Party picketed every day and night (except Sunday - when I presume they were in church praying about it) in front of the White House during Woodrow Wilson's presidency. They campaigned against Wilson, during the 1916 election and after he took office, for his and other incumbent Democrats' continuing refusal to support a suffrage amendment.
As a result of the non-violent civil disobedience campaign, 168 picketing women were arrested for "obstructing traffic," jailed and brutalized at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia and the District of Columbia Jail from June through November 1917. [Move Militants from Workhouse. (1917, November 25). The New York Times, p. 6.]
They were released Nov. 27 and 28, and in March, the Washington Court of Appeals declared all suffrage arrests, trials and punishments illegal.
The protest resumed, but, despite the court ruling, the arrests did also in August 1918. Then in October, the Senate failed to pass the amendment by two votes.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
In December, protesters started burning Wilson's words in watch fires in front of the White House; in February 1919, they burned his image.
When the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the right of all women to vote passed both the House of Representatives (May 21) and Senate (June 4), the women packed up. They carried their fires back home and worked to get the amendment ratified in August 1920.
Regardless of which side of the aisle they're on, women in politics make me proud - and smile, as, right or wrong, they provide different perspectives and attacks on the issues, and quite a bit of entertainment at times.
Women do not cast their pearls before swine, but they do know how to wear them with lipstick and high heels, while roasting pork bellies over an open pit.
- Tere Dunlap is a Monroe Times reporter. She can be reached at tdunlap@themonroetimes.com.
I think Obama just forgot, after getting rid of Hillary Clinton, that there was another queen in the deck.
Bad move - to forget about women.
I have a lot of compassion for Obama and other men in politics. As I look across our nation's field of congresswomen, I see the men have to deal with a lot of Queen Bs, if you know what I mean.
As for uniting all women under his blanket of hope and change, that's not going to happen for Obama.
Because, even though "most of us know as much of history as a pig does of lipsticks," (Charles F. Lummis, Los Angeles Times, 1926), Obama should not mention the historical war on equality, when the debates on the 15th Amendment divided blacks and women, former partners in the crusade against slavery in the 1860s.
After women suffragists turned their attention to join abolitionists in working for African American and women's rights, many civil rights politicians and abolitionists forgot about their efforts and refused to demand that the language of the 14th and 15th amendments be changed to include women.
Women suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support the Fifteenth Amendment because it excluded women. But they were particularly appalled when freed slave and celebrated abolitionist (and half-white) Frederick Douglass, who had sat in their homes and attended their meetings, drinking their teas, eating their cookies and supporting their causes, would not mention women's rights at his invitations to speak on the amendment from 1865 to 1870.
Douglass fought to secure the rights for African-American males first, before trying to achieve the same rights for any women of any color.
Some commentaries praise Douglass for going to work for women's rights immediately after the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. He called for an amendment on women's right to vote and wrote an editorial, "Women and The Ballot," published in October 1870. Big deal. The queen bees of the second half of the 1800s were polite but not impressed. He died in 1895 and went down in the history books as a noted abolitionist, not a women's rights advocate.
It was more likely the Silent Sentinels who finally accomplished the work abolitionists put off doing 50 years earlier.
For two and a half years, from Jan. 10, 1917, until June 1919, more than a thousand women suffragists and supporters in the National Women's Party picketed every day and night (except Sunday - when I presume they were in church praying about it) in front of the White House during Woodrow Wilson's presidency. They campaigned against Wilson, during the 1916 election and after he took office, for his and other incumbent Democrats' continuing refusal to support a suffrage amendment.
As a result of the non-violent civil disobedience campaign, 168 picketing women were arrested for "obstructing traffic," jailed and brutalized at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia and the District of Columbia Jail from June through November 1917. [Move Militants from Workhouse. (1917, November 25). The New York Times, p. 6.]
They were released Nov. 27 and 28, and in March, the Washington Court of Appeals declared all suffrage arrests, trials and punishments illegal.
The protest resumed, but, despite the court ruling, the arrests did also in August 1918. Then in October, the Senate failed to pass the amendment by two votes.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
In December, protesters started burning Wilson's words in watch fires in front of the White House; in February 1919, they burned his image.
When the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the right of all women to vote passed both the House of Representatives (May 21) and Senate (June 4), the women packed up. They carried their fires back home and worked to get the amendment ratified in August 1920.
Regardless of which side of the aisle they're on, women in politics make me proud - and smile, as, right or wrong, they provide different perspectives and attacks on the issues, and quite a bit of entertainment at times.
Women do not cast their pearls before swine, but they do know how to wear them with lipstick and high heels, while roasting pork bellies over an open pit.
- Tere Dunlap is a Monroe Times reporter. She can be reached at tdunlap@themonroetimes.com.
