Two of these women have definitely shopped here. Not sure about the third.
May 15 // April 24, 2017
Here's the story...of three lovely ladies.
What does this say about us?
Here’s a story – circa about two weeks ago or so – that offers us a snapshot of three women in President Trump’s America. We’re not exactly sure what it says about us, but maybe we can figure that out together. Not to mention we’re already tired of reading about the AHCA and trying to make sense of it. Plus, that seems to be old, old news around here (meaning, the U.S.A.) these days.
So let’s begin – as we almost always do, about two weeks ago – with a TWAN Quiz:
Q: Who is Peggy Whitson? She is:
TWAN (perplexed) aside: In a society where women seem to be seeking encouragement and – God help us all – empowerment everywhere, on the streets of D.C. (while wearing pink hats) to the streets of lower Manhattan and a petite statue in bronze, why not look to the skies? Dr. Whitson is the perfect role model for anyone seeking an accomplished, educated, role-breaking leader who is the perfect choice to encourage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
Weren’t you tired of reading about Dr. Whitson? Enough already with the coverage! Wait, what? You didn’t? It was right there – on page 14 of The New York Times! (The headline: Trump to @AstroPeggy: Mars in My Near Future.) The President, his daughter Ivanka and Astronaut Kate Rubens placed a congratulatory call to Dr. Whitson, to acknowledge her accomplishment and leadership, and underscore the signing the NASA Transition Authorization Act, and the Inspire Women Act, which ensures that NASA continues recruiting women for important STEM-related jobs in aerospace.
And speaking of Ivanka Trump, she’s the second woman in our trio. A few weeks ago, she took part in a G20 women’s summit in Berlin, at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ms. Trump is a cum laude graduate of the Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania. Up until January 21, she ran the business development arm of Trump International and is now an unpaid advisor to her father in his role as president.
Additional panel members at the summit included:
Angela Merkel: German chancellor since 2005; arguably Europe's most powerful leader; holds a doctorate in quantum chemistry.
Christine Lagarde: the first woman to serve as the head of the IMF, who was previously France's finance minister. She is also a lawyer with a number of master’s degrees.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands: The Queen worked for some of the world's top banks before meeting and marrying King Willem-Alexander. She is also a UN Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development.
Chrystia Freeland: Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs: studied Russian history and literature at Harvard; has a master's degree in Slavonic studies from Oxford. Had a career as a journalist before entering politics.
Juliana Rotich: Previously executive director for Ushahidi, an election mapping platform which was used to track possible voter intimidation in the US election. She now works as a strategic advisor and entrepreneur.
Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller: President and chairwoman of technology company Trumpt, she holds a doctorate in philology.
Anne Finucane: Ms Finucane is vice chair at Bank of America, and was named by Fortune magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in the world last year.
Interesting, group, no? And what did we read about Ivanka’s message and her presence there? Boos. Hisses and boos. Well, in the US newspapers and some overseas media we read about hisses and boos. And we loved it. We posted it everywhere with enormous enthusiasm for days on end. But if you read anything about the panel discussion in German press (Der Spiegel, and yes, we did the translation), or in the admittedly more right-leaning Bild, the response to Ivanka – while not exactly warm and welcoming – was hardly the raucous and venom-filled invectives we read about stateside.
But no matter. Ms. Trump is not welcome in the “empowered women” community and never will be. Her childhood was privileged; her beauty and intelligence helped open doors and her achievements as an independent adult are specious. (Let’s not forget that all of that worked for Jacqueline Bouvier. Or even for Chelsea Clinton.) But Ivanka belongs to the wrong political party so this is a non-starter for her and always will be.
We’ll end with another question. Here you go:
When are an extra-long glance, an increasingly close professional partnership and strong signals of personal interest from one-co-worker to another NOT examples of sexual harassment? When it’s “flirting” that turns into an affair that turns into broken marriages that turns into an engagement.
Look, we get it. Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezenski were co-workers and dear, dear friends. They worked side by side for many years, on the radio, and on television. They traveled together, spent longs days together and did God knows what else together. Then he got divorced (again!) Then she got divorced (quietly!) Then they fell in love. That’s no doubt exactly how it all unfolded.
Whatever. We just think it was worth recapping these three stories, because they offer us a pretty reasonable snapshot of who we’ve become. Intelligence, ambition, resourcefulness? Peggy Whitson is yesterday’s minor headline so basically no thanks, we’re not that interested. Well, we’re not unless we can use those terms to create a punchline about the President’s daughter. Ivanka Trump is in a no-win situation. We give her credit for trying but she will never succeed in her role as “advisor.” But the social media buzz about Ms. Brzezinski and her engagement was also enthusiastic and pretty vile. We don’t seem to like her much, either.
No, we seem to want to ignore the admirable and relish the stories that will degrade our national conversation, and help us find more ways to despise the President, his staff and each other. And even worse, these kinds of incendiary stories seem to be exactly what the news media is feeding us a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. Why? We can’t explain it.
That may not be true. But it feels true.
Here's the story...of three lovely ladies.
What does this say about us?
Here’s a story – circa about two weeks ago or so – that offers us a snapshot of three women in President Trump’s America. We’re not exactly sure what it says about us, but maybe we can figure that out together. Not to mention we’re already tired of reading about the AHCA and trying to make sense of it. Plus, that seems to be old, old news around here (meaning, the U.S.A.) these days.
So let’s begin – as we almost always do, about two weeks ago – with a TWAN Quiz:
Q: Who is Peggy Whitson? She is:
- A Canadian panelist who appeared on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s panel in Germany
- One of the leaders of the Women’s March in Washington
- A scientist/astronaut
- An FBI agent
TWAN (perplexed) aside: In a society where women seem to be seeking encouragement and – God help us all – empowerment everywhere, on the streets of D.C. (while wearing pink hats) to the streets of lower Manhattan and a petite statue in bronze, why not look to the skies? Dr. Whitson is the perfect role model for anyone seeking an accomplished, educated, role-breaking leader who is the perfect choice to encourage girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
Weren’t you tired of reading about Dr. Whitson? Enough already with the coverage! Wait, what? You didn’t? It was right there – on page 14 of The New York Times! (The headline: Trump to @AstroPeggy: Mars in My Near Future.) The President, his daughter Ivanka and Astronaut Kate Rubens placed a congratulatory call to Dr. Whitson, to acknowledge her accomplishment and leadership, and underscore the signing the NASA Transition Authorization Act, and the Inspire Women Act, which ensures that NASA continues recruiting women for important STEM-related jobs in aerospace.
And speaking of Ivanka Trump, she’s the second woman in our trio. A few weeks ago, she took part in a G20 women’s summit in Berlin, at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ms. Trump is a cum laude graduate of the Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania. Up until January 21, she ran the business development arm of Trump International and is now an unpaid advisor to her father in his role as president.
Additional panel members at the summit included:
Angela Merkel: German chancellor since 2005; arguably Europe's most powerful leader; holds a doctorate in quantum chemistry.
Christine Lagarde: the first woman to serve as the head of the IMF, who was previously France's finance minister. She is also a lawyer with a number of master’s degrees.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands: The Queen worked for some of the world's top banks before meeting and marrying King Willem-Alexander. She is also a UN Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development.
Chrystia Freeland: Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs: studied Russian history and literature at Harvard; has a master's degree in Slavonic studies from Oxford. Had a career as a journalist before entering politics.
Juliana Rotich: Previously executive director for Ushahidi, an election mapping platform which was used to track possible voter intimidation in the US election. She now works as a strategic advisor and entrepreneur.
Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller: President and chairwoman of technology company Trumpt, she holds a doctorate in philology.
Anne Finucane: Ms Finucane is vice chair at Bank of America, and was named by Fortune magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in the world last year.
Interesting, group, no? And what did we read about Ivanka’s message and her presence there? Boos. Hisses and boos. Well, in the US newspapers and some overseas media we read about hisses and boos. And we loved it. We posted it everywhere with enormous enthusiasm for days on end. But if you read anything about the panel discussion in German press (Der Spiegel, and yes, we did the translation), or in the admittedly more right-leaning Bild, the response to Ivanka – while not exactly warm and welcoming – was hardly the raucous and venom-filled invectives we read about stateside.
But no matter. Ms. Trump is not welcome in the “empowered women” community and never will be. Her childhood was privileged; her beauty and intelligence helped open doors and her achievements as an independent adult are specious. (Let’s not forget that all of that worked for Jacqueline Bouvier. Or even for Chelsea Clinton.) But Ivanka belongs to the wrong political party so this is a non-starter for her and always will be.
We’ll end with another question. Here you go:
When are an extra-long glance, an increasingly close professional partnership and strong signals of personal interest from one-co-worker to another NOT examples of sexual harassment? When it’s “flirting” that turns into an affair that turns into broken marriages that turns into an engagement.
Look, we get it. Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezenski were co-workers and dear, dear friends. They worked side by side for many years, on the radio, and on television. They traveled together, spent longs days together and did God knows what else together. Then he got divorced (again!) Then she got divorced (quietly!) Then they fell in love. That’s no doubt exactly how it all unfolded.
Whatever. We just think it was worth recapping these three stories, because they offer us a pretty reasonable snapshot of who we’ve become. Intelligence, ambition, resourcefulness? Peggy Whitson is yesterday’s minor headline so basically no thanks, we’re not that interested. Well, we’re not unless we can use those terms to create a punchline about the President’s daughter. Ivanka Trump is in a no-win situation. We give her credit for trying but she will never succeed in her role as “advisor.” But the social media buzz about Ms. Brzezinski and her engagement was also enthusiastic and pretty vile. We don’t seem to like her much, either.
No, we seem to want to ignore the admirable and relish the stories that will degrade our national conversation, and help us find more ways to despise the President, his staff and each other. And even worse, these kinds of incendiary stories seem to be exactly what the news media is feeding us a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. Why? We can’t explain it.
That may not be true. But it feels true.