On Sunday's This Week, they concluded the show with a feminist tribute. ABC’s Cokie Roberts sat down with feminist legend Gloria Steinem for what should’ve been an interview on her first book in over 20 years, My Life on the Road. Instead, it was a celebration of her life. George Stephanopoulos gushed that Steinem “sat down with our own pathbreaker, Cokie Roberts, for a look back at 50 years of change in feminism and journalism.”
Roberts began by suggesting today’s young women don’t appreciate the Old Guard enough: “Gloria Steinem, loved and hated by millions, grew up in a world modern Americans wouldn't recognize. Women were legally denied jobs and credit and shut out of prominent positions. But instead of accepting that world, she led a movement to change it.” Steinem talked about feeling the pressure to have a family, and then found she was happier without one:
ROBERTS: I mean, does it wear you out to see what people call the mommy wars?
STEINEM: It does drive me crazy, because what about daddies?
ROBERTS: There are daddies, yes. Right. And that's particularly true in the political world. So a female candidate is asked who's going to take care of the children and a male candidate is never ever asked that question.
STEINEM: Yes, absolutely. And a male candidate is applauded for considering the family and the -- what's going to happen to, you know, deciding whether to run for the Senate or president or something. If a woman did the same thing, she is often kind of disqualified by that.
ROBERTS: And we're seeing it right now. Paul Ryan saying, as a condition of taking the speakership, that he needed to spend time with his family. And everybody said, oh, isn't that sweet?
STEINEM: Yes, right. I recognize that as progress.
ROBERTS: So though much has changed, much has not.
Amazing! Feminists cry and complain that men don’t do enough to be part of the family, and then when they make a point of taking a position only if they are guaranteed family time, they are still ridiculed!
Roberts avoided the issues that many women have with feminism, especially abortion and the Planned Parenthood videos. Instead, she asks Steinem, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008, if the country is ready for a female president. Last time, Steinem didn’t think the country was ready. Why? Well...because men of course!
STEINEM: What made me feel that way was actually seeing big grownup friends of ours on -- guys in the media, who are perfectly serious people, saying things like, about Hillary Clinton. "I cross my legs whenever I see her, she reminds me of my first wife standing outside alimony court." Looking at a powerful woman made them feel they had been regressed to childhood, because the last time they saw a really powerful woman, they were eight. So they behaved like eight.
I guess that explains Bill Clinton. But Roberts didn't ask Steinem about her backing Bill Clinton during the impeachment process despite the sexual-harassment and sexual-assault allegations against him. Like Hillary, she could only decry a vast right-wing conspiracy. "Believe the accuser" went out the window.
It would be nice to know which “guys in the media” hated Hillary as a shrew outside alimony court. It certainly didn’t come across in her mostly favorable media coverage in 2008.
