Front Page > Issues > 2004 > April

Ambushed by Flanders' Bushwomen

I used to think that if women ran the world it would be a much better place. There would be no wars, no hunger, no poverty, and no discrimination. Life would be just and fair for all. I also used to think that one size fits all and that one day god would lift the curse and the Red Sox would win the World Series (okay, I confess I still have faith in the last one). I was swimming in the third wave of the women’s liberation movement and everything was changing. Life for women and men would never be the same. Women would make a difference and women would be different in how they made things happen. I was obviously suffering from blindness caused by my head being up my ass.

The election of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister of England in 1979 pretty much lifted my own particular veil of innocence and ignorance. Thatcher’s rise showed me loud and clear that one didn’t have to be a man to be a prick. ow I’m a little more cynical and wiser. I don’t automatically vote according to gender any more. Too many women elected to office have actively campaigned to destroy affirmative action programs, gut workplace health and safety protections, reduce aid to families on welfare and overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s like they have some kind of amnesia that allows them to forget that they got where they are today, a seat of power, because of some of the very programs and policies they seek to destroy. They seem to believe the pull-yourself-up- by-your-bra-strap myth and if they can do it, anyone can. The women who sit on George W. Bush’s’ cabinet and in his inner circle of advisors all suffer from that dangerous mind-set and amnesia.

Bushwomen are also willing participants in a well-orchestrated masquerade to have American women believe that this administration really believes that the W. stands for women. Bushwomen, Tales of a Cynical Species, by Laura Flanders (Verso Press, 2004) rips away the masks, dissects the rhetoric and, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, pulls back the curtain to expose the truth. Flanders was the founding director of the Women’s Desk at the media watch group, FAIR, and she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR’s nationally syndicated radio program. She is currently the host of Your Call, a public affairs program heard daily on the Internet and on public radio in San Francisco. She has held her own against Bill O’Reilly and was a regular panelist on the Fox News Watch. Because of her experience, Flanders sees beyond and beneath the smoke and mirrors and the shallow, fawning mainstream reporting that the cabinet women enjoy. Flanders does not beat around the bush (okay, I couldn’t resist saying that) as she clearly reminds us that Margaret Thatcher did not have the monopoly on prickdom and in some ways she was a mere amateur.

Enter the Bushwomen: Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor; Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor; Gale Norton, Secretary of Interior; Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture; Christine Todd Whitman, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency; and Karen Hughes, White House Counsel and George Bush’s personal handler. Laura Bush and Lynn Cheney complete the Bushwomen Eight. On the surface the line-up is remarkable. Never is this country’s history has a president appointed so many women to such high levels of authority and power. Even Patricia Ireland, president of NOW, was impressed with the appointment of Hughes and Rice, calling it a significant breakthrough. But as Flanders makes perfectly and painfully clear in Bushwomen, these women are not role models for feminism. In fact, even though most of them benefited from the struggles and victories of the women’s and the civil rights movements, the Bushwomen seem intent on tearing it all down.

As a whole, the Bushwomen portray themselves as everyday women, typical women, just like you and me (okay maybe not me). This carefully crafted façade is simply a front to engender comfortable feelings of unity with women, with the ultimate goal of strengthening the Republican Party. The voting gender gap is alive and well, and the spin masters and puppeteers of the GOP are scared — scared of losing their power. Bush uses these women to soften the blows of an administration bent on world domination. Condoleezza Rice justifies and spins our invasion of Iraq as an extension of the civil rights movement. In a speech she gave to the National Association of Black Journalists she said, “Like many of you, I grew up around the home-grown terrorism of the 1960s. The bombing of the church in Birmingham in 1963 is one that will forever be in my memory because one of the girls who died was a friend mine... We should not let our voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking freedom. [Denying people freedom] was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad.” Of course Rice omits her well-rooted connections with the oil industry and their vested interest in seeking freedom for the oppressed.(She served on the board of Chevron for many years and it is no coincidence that after the “liberation of Iraq” Chevron Texaco was the first oil company to win a contract for 10 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil) She is pro-business at all costs, the human toll included. The mainstream media never deeply questions Condoleezza Rice’s words or her vested interest in building profits for corporations. Whether out of fear of being branded sexist or racist or simply disinterested in the truth, the media seems to prefer to talk about Rice’s fine tailored fashion and her concert quality piano playing.

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is a piece of work who is actively attempting to destroy any affirmative action policies even though as a Chinese immigrant she benefited from these same policies. She suffers from amnesia because the truth does not fit into her right-wing ideological philosophy. This is an ideology that promotes the idea that affirmative action is unnecessary because all one has to do is adopt a regiment of hard work, strong ethics and character and—-whoosh all discrimination and barriers disappear. Chao also likes to bring in her personal history, though she has created and marketed a biographical myth. She conveniently forgets about her father’s major international trading company, (a company who has benefited by Chaos’ power)her up- bringing in toney Westchester County and her Mt. Holyoke education. None of that would fit into the “look what I became, you can do it too without the victimizing taint of affirmative action”. Chao is bent on destroying, though she refers to it as transforming, the Department of Labor and turning it into less of an advocate for workers and more of a watchdog on unions. She has gleefully been proud of the reductions in the DOL’s budget, reductions which resulted in funding cut for enforcing health and safety laws, child labor regulations and the minimum wage. Once again the Bush administration uses a woman, an Asian immigrant woman, to soften the blunt reality of an administration that eliminates work safety rules because, as Chao says, “ we want businesses to have more freedom to address workplace safety in their own ways.” We all know that Asian women constitute the majority of sweat shop workers, but if Elaine Chao says that businesses will work on their own to make that sweat shop safe for employees then it must be true. Flanders refers to Chao as the model of the “model minority” myth and it is that myth that fuels organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, right-wing think tanks that discard the need for social change, workplace regulation or anti-discrimination laws (Charles Murray, an American Enterprise scholar is the author of The Bell Curve). Chao is well connected to these groups and in fact many of her DOL change proposals are carbon copies of their position papers. Chao has more than achieved the American Dream. She has surpassed it and now diligently works to dash that dream for others.

And then there’s Gail Norton, Secretary of the Interior, a one-time libertarian who campaigned against the national security state, worked to legalize marijuana and end the censorship of porn. That Gail Norton is long gone and in her place we have the Gail Norton who, as Attorney General of Colorado, supported the death penalty, tougher juvenile detention centers and chain gangs “to combine hard work with humiliation.” She also appealed, not once but twice, Colorado’s Supreme Court’s ruling that Amendment Two, which had banned anti-discrimination laws for gays and lesbians, was unconstitutional. She took the case to the Supreme Court where it was struck down once and for all. As far as environmental issues, Norton supported the voluntary compliance program, which permitted polluting corporations to decide for themselves whether they were in compliance with environmental laws, and she filed a friend of the court brief against the Endangered Species Act. A perfect choice for the protector of our land, air and water.

Norton is a Bushwoman who needs a handler. In 2003 Norton told the House Resources Committee that drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge was no big deal since “the refuge in winter is a great white nothing.” Norton is also connected to advocates of the Wise Use movement, a movement that wants no government regulations around land use. Bring in the dirt bikes, bring in the snowmobiles, to hell with the land, it’s ours, let’s use it. Norton also entertained proposals that would put corporations such as Disney in charge of our national parks. Norton and Chao, like other Bushwomen, share a deep involvement in the same right-wing groups including ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. In 2003 ALEC drew up the “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” which would criminalize virtually all forms of environmental or animal rights advocacy. You would think that the Secretary of the Department of Interior would distance herself from such madness but no, Norton was, in fact, the Keynote Speaker at one of their policy summits. Just recently Jessica Simpson, a TV reality-show singer and pseudo actress complimented Norton on the nice job she did on decorating the White House. Christ I wish that was the extent of her powers, and the only “interior” Norton exercised power over.

Are these women guilty of betraying their gender? Are they guilty of that collective amnesia which prompts them to forget how they came to their position of power? Or are they some perverted example of the success of the feminist movement where the playing field is leveled for those who play along and everyone gets a chance to be power mongering pricks?

When you read about the Bushwomen (their values and beliefs, and their connections to a corporate world that doesn’t give a fuck about people, only profits), you might begin to think that Bush is not as dumb as he looks or sounds. It is an effective strategy to have these women represent an administration which is blatantly and proudly anti-women (except for the chosen few) and anti-labor(forgetting who makes up a good majority of the work force). Some people might be fooled by these women and believe what they say because they are women. Do us all a favor, give them a copy of Bushwomen, and when they’re done reading it make sure they are registered to vote.

Jack Danger is the Alliance book editor.