THE TENDER GENDER

Now as the war continues in Iraq with its atrocities and fatalities, we must not let our attention become totally fixated on it. The 9/11 Commission must finish its report and deliver it to the American public soon.

The macho war-politics of Bush cannot gush unrestrained. Despite the societal concept that women are weak and lack leadership abilities, it has been women who have ramrodded the formation and nurturing of the 9/11 Commission.

Four 9/11 widows, collectively referred to as "The Jersey Girls", are spark plugs among the 9/11 families that insisted on the formation of a commission to investigate 9/11 which Bush was adamantly opposed to.

"They call me all the time," said Thomas Kean, the panel's chairman and a former Republican governor of New Jersey. "They monitor us, they follow our progress, they've supplied us with some of the best questions we've asked. I doubt very much if we would be in existence without them."

When the Commission lacked money, the families lobbied for a bigger budget. Whenever it faltered, they flogged it. They spent months demanding that Condi Rice testify.

It was their silent protest, walking out of the hearings, that applied public pressure on the White House forcing it to put Rice before the Commission in a public hearing under oath this week.

It was that hearing under oath that made public a presidential briefing paper about bin Laden that was ignored by Bush while on vacation in Texas.

Their next big hurdle will be to prevent the White House from holding up the Commission's report until after the election. Certainly this is where all of us can and should help. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0405-02.htm

Now all the time the Jersey Girls and other 9/11 families were battling for our right to know the facts, another group of women were part of the Bush gang working to take away our Constitutional rights and environmental controls.

Condoleeza Rice, Elaine Chao, Christie Whitman, Gale Norton, Ann Veneman, Karen Hughes, Laura and Lynn.

When these women arrived at the White House, the media concentrated mostly on their style, appearance and family connections so most of us did not trip to their "vicious, unethical, unprincipled, extremist behaviors."

It turns out that these women benefited from the woman's movement or laws that were passed through the efforts of feminists, then later gulped down the radical right agenda as if it were mother's milk.

Through them, the Bushites have "put a female face on anti-feminist policy." An example is the much vaunted "flex time" midwifed by Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao.

A careful reading will show that flex time does not refer to you and does nothing for you, the employee, rather it is the employer who benefits and you, the employee just gets screwed.

Huge thanks and a tip of the 'Gapper's hat goes to Laura Flanders, author, radio talk show host and all around bush burner. She has written a great book called Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species

"From the US workplace to the war zone, the Bush administration has wrapped female-friendly rhetoric around some of the most hard-core policy since Ronald Reagan. Some well-placed women have helped to pull off that con job. Invaluable to the president, underscrutinized by the press, the Bushwomen-women appointed to the inner circle of the president^Òs cabinet and subcabinet-are cast in the public mind as moderate, malleable, maverick, irrelevant or benign. Their carefully crafted images tap into stereotypes, while the reality of their records has remained out of sight -- until now."

Flanders hosts a radio call in program Monday-Friday, 10-11 am PST or 1-2 pm ET. Listen on line at http://www.yourcallradio.org or tune in to KALW 91.7 fm, in San Francisco. She is also heard weekends on: http://www.airamericaradio.com/

Contrast the Bushwomen with the Jersey Girls, the four 9/11 widows who led the drive to bring an arrogant administration to its knees: Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken, Kristen Breitweiser and Patty Casazza.

They deserve more than our thanks, they are heroes and should be awarded this country's highest medals of Honor. http://www.southjerseynews.com/issues/april/m041403p.htm

CAN YOU HEAR US NOW, MR. BUSH!

twanda@sover.net

2004-015

Copyright 2004 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@sover.net.