Yesterday President Obama gave what I call a “car salesman cup holder speech” to the all-female graduating class at Barnard College.
“You can be powerful and stylish, too” said Obama. “That’s what Michelle would say.”
Oh THANK HEAVENS. Whew! I don’t know about you, but ladies, I feel completely at ease after hearing that I can be both powerful and stylish. I’m grateful that, in a commencement address to a women-only college, the President didn’t condescend to his audience with a speech on fashion magazines and beauty.
Until there are women who tell her ignore our pop culture obsession over beauty and fashion and focus instead on studying and inventing and competing and leading, she’ll think those are the only things that girls are supposed to care about.
Yes, in the year 2012, please imagine that your female audience cares for economics, please tell them how difficult it’s going to be for them to find a job because one out of two college grads can’t find employment. Tell them how you planned to secretly double their student loan rates anyway after the election. Please tell them, Mr. President, that on your watch women are hardest hit, so the odds stack up immeasurably against them. Hide from them, for the sake of your own reelection chances, how the female sex has been hardest hit by the unemployment numbers, with 324,000 of my sisters dropping from the job pool entirely because the prospect of employment is hopeless.
This President has a problem with the ladies. For such a “fabulous” speaker, he has a proven inability to articulate adequately to women why they should support him beyond “free” birth control pills. A campaign/commencement speech that has all the grace of a Derek Zoolander eulogy about how women can be powerful, stylish, and should be leaders instead of following fashion magazines doesn’t cut it.
This is why Democrats are tanking in the polls with women.
When women go to purchase a new car, they don’t want to be told about the cup holders. They want to know about the milage, the engine, is it all-wheel drive?
Democrats can’t stop trying to sell women on cup holders.