What Women Want

I hereby pledge to write nothing mean-spirited in this post. I like women. I love women. I lust for women. I respect women. My Mother is a woman. Margaret Thatcher is a woman. I study the philosophy of a woman, Ayn Rand.

(After a start like that, you know I’m heading for major trouble in this post.)

Ellen Goodman writes about how women voted in 2006.

This was… the year women provided the Democratic margin of victory. If men had been the only voters in Missouri, Montana or Virginia, we'd have a Republican Senate. This is also the year in which women drove the agenda.

All right. That’s no crime. Many intelligent people voted Democrat. Let’s go a little deeper into Ms. Goodman’s analysis. (See how I used the feminist neologism Ms.? This caveman is on his best behavior here.)

So if women drove the agenda, what will make things "better"?

I was wondering that myself. What do women want?

Women worrying about a diminished future for the next generation are looking for a broad, overlapping domestic agenda. Some pieces can be found in the to-do list assembled for the Democrats' "First 100 Hours": raise the minimum wage, fix the Medicare prescription drug program, halve interest rates for student loans and bury the dead horse of Social Security privatization.

Oh, I see. Women want more socialism.

So for many, the biggest concern still is health care. As Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, one of the new breed of young moms in Congress, says, "I don't want the next generation of moms hand-wringing over how to deal with the sniffles and waiting until it turns into pneumonia." It's past time to make health care available to all kids.

Well, if the ladies want it for the kids, I guess it’s okay if we TURN AMERICA INTO A SOCIALIST HELL. Let’s make doctors slaves of the state because women are wringing their hands over the sniffles. No problem!

Sorry. That was mean-spirited.

As for education, especially early education and child care? The desire to truly "leave no child behind" tops terrorism on the female list. And for women who share a family-table view of the world, economic security includes the increasingly elusive retirement security.

Cradle to grave nanny state. Thanks, ladies.

It's been a long time since Americans have looked to the government with expectations. Now, we're making a list. And checking it twice.

While the men slip out the back door to have a drink at the corner bar. “The ol’ lady’s making a list,” one mutters, then knocks down his rum and coke. The other men nod in silent commiseration. They know. Women don't make lists that say, “watch football, drink beer, golf with your buddies, sit around in your underwear scratching your ass, watch me clean the house.”

They're making a list. Will America survive? Will we march into a fascist tyranny because a preponderance of women just are not motivated to study economics and politics and philosophy?

In my day job, I listen to FM radio stations. The hard rock stations targeted toward young men are obsessed with sex because young men are obsessed with sex. (Old men are too, he says after two seconds of introspection.) Go to the station web sites and you’ll find “Babe of the Day” – pictures of hot young girls in bikinis. It is horrible how men objectify women. Certainly, women are right to condemn such adolescent behavior.

You know what they have on stations targeted toward young women?

Daily horoscopes.

Daily horoscopes.

Draw your own mean-spirited conclusion.