There are many devastating revelations in Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, Ron Suskind’s new book on the inner workings of the Obama administration, but perhaps the most damaging is the insinuation that President Obama and the men on his staff are sexists.
Former White House communications director Anita Dunn is quoted as saying the Obama White House “actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.” Former head of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer even said she “felt like a piece of meat.”
An anonymous current female official directly placed the blame on Obama: “The president has a real woman problem. The idea of the boys’ club being just Larry [Summers] and Rahm [Emanuel] isn’t really fair. [Obama] was just as responsible himself.”
These accounts portray President Obama as a man who, at best, allows his male staffers to create a hostile work environment for his female staffers and, at worst, participates in it himself.
Since the Democratic Party claims to be “for women,” this is rank hypocrisy. Unfortunately, this attitude is entirely consistent with the left’s despicable misogynistic treatment of conservative female leaders like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.
Since the day she came on the national stage, Sarah Palin has been attacked in sexually degrading ways — most recently in Joe McGinniss’s disgusting tabloid trash. Michele Bachmann, too, has faced sexist smears and photos from the left. Romer’s comment about feeling like a piece of meat reminds me of the time Keith Olbermann called Michelle Malkin a “big, mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.”
Contrast this with Fire From The Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, a film by Citizens United Productions that builds up and celebrates women leaders. The first-ever film to tell the entire story of the conservative woman in her own words, Fire From The Heartland spotlights strong, inspirational women like Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Dana Loesch.
These women are the unintended consequence of the liberal feminist movement, in part because they have seen how feminists abandon their principles when confronted with blatant hypocrisy from men on the left. These liberal women are willing to overlook President Clinton’s abuse of women and President Obama’s boys’ club because of their support for other items on the feminist agenda like abortion on demand.
The cast of Fire From The Heartland embodies the spirit and determination that liberals wish they had on their side. These women leaders are fanning the flames of liberty across the nation and leaving liberal feminism in the dust.
As the unnamed Obama official told Ron Suskind, President Obama has a woman problem. Whether it’s the dissatisfaction of the women in his administration, the conservative women leaders who have risen up to challenge him, or the fact that only 43 percent of women approve of the job he is doing (after 56 percent voted for him in 2008), President Obama clearly has failed to live up to the “hope” and “change” he promised. We won’t learn the full consequences of his actions until 2012, but the phrase “Hell hath no fury” comes to mind.
David N. Bossie is the president of Citizens United and Citizens United Productions, and the executive producer of “America at Risk.”
