Women in the Bush team

Author: Frank Flanders
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2004-12-01
Features: The Bush administration has always wrapped its tough policies since the Reagan administration in cleverly feminine rhetoric. In the public's perception, they are either unconventional, gentle and steady, conservative and outdated, or gentle and obedient. Take a look at why Chevron named a tanker after Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor; how Labor Secretary Elaine Chao intimidated West Coast dockworkers to protect the interests of her family and friends involved in China trade. From the battlefield of the office, the Bush administration has always wrapped its tough policies since the Reagan administration in cleverly feminine rhetoric. With the help of women used appropriately, he managed to get out of the trap. These valuable talents of the president have not been carefully examined by the media. The women in the Bush team—those who entered the cabinet or held high administrative positions—have been stereotyped in the public's mind as either unconventional, gentle and steady, conservative and outdated, or gentle and obedient. Their carefully crafted images have been set in stone, even though their real-life records have not yet entered the public's view. This is a specialized study on how the women in the Bush team rose to prominence and what they did after reaching high positions. Take a look at why Chevron named a tanker after Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor; learn about the financial ties between Interior Secretary Gale Norton and the tobacco companies, which earned her the nickname "Marlboro Woman"; see how Labor Secretary Elaine Chao intimidated West Coast dockworkers to protect the interests of her family and friends involved in China trade; and read excerpts from the lesbian novel of Lynne Cheney; discover how Karen Hughes got her job with the help of the National Organization for Women (NOW). The swing female voters can decide the outcome of the election today, and the Bush team has gone to great lengths to win their support. This book is sharp and engaging, revealing the essence of a cynical just war, and showing the readers that the women in the Bush team are nothing more than a group of anti-feminist politicians with women's faces.
Excerpt: Cover girl Karen Hughes, as one of the most powerful women in President Bush's campaign team, Karen Hughes' career began to take off largely thanks to the National Organization for Women (NOW). The story of Karen Hughes (formerly Karen Pfaff) starts when she was a law student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. By chance, she chose a journalism course and fell in love with the profession from then on. She recalls: "I was always a debater." In 1977, she started as an intern at the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of NBC—Channel 5. As USA Today noted, with her "representative boldness," she turned this internship into a full-time job. Hughes herself said: "This was probably the last time a graduate was hired directly into a major market news division." Another point worth noting is that the year Hughes graduated coincided with the best period for women in the news industry. With a newly passed federal law, women could easily enter the previously male-dominated news industry. In that year, nothing excited people more than entering the prominent broadcast and print news media industry. In 1972, thanks to the active lobbying of NOW, the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. With this act, women sued The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Newsday, Newsweek, and NBC, and won all of them. NBC, which was then a subsidiary of RCA, settled out of court, paying more than $1.75 million to 2,600 former and current female employees, thus avoiding a gender discrimination lawsuit in federal court. The company also agreed to implement a affirmative action plan, hiring more women at all levels and providing more training opportunities. In 1977, in Dallas, Karen Pfaff came to a small branch of NBC looking for a job. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act required the government to collect data. A 1970s survey by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission claimed that the television industry had employment discrimination, with various restrictions on race and gender, and it was hard to escape blame. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) criticized the major broadcasting companies. Lawsuits and the fear of lawsuits forced the media to open circles that had previously been exclusively for men, and a generation of female journalists entered. Even today, as Susan Faludi pointed out in 1991, the most successful women in the news industry today are those who broke through the barriers back then, such as Jane Pauley, Lesley Stahl, Judy Woodruff, Diana Sawyer, and Connie Chung. In 1977, ABC hired Barbara Walters as the host of a late-night news program for $1 million, a first for women. In 1977, NBC Channel 5 hired Pfaff. Smart, strong, and with blonde hair and blue eyes, she often worked late into the night, even on weekends, and had all the qualities needed to become an excellent female journalist. Unlike many female journalists before and after her, Pfaff had the strong backing of the women's movement and the federal government. During the years she worked there, Texas welcomed several key figures in the history of the women's movement. As part of the United Nations International Women's Year commemoration, a total of 30,000 people, most of them women, attended the National Women's Conference in Houston. The conference was funded by the federal government. The International Women's Year commemoration was a broad, bipartisan activity. Several American first ladies, including Rosalyn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, and women's rights activists Coretta Scott King, Gloria Steinem, and Bella Abzug, met. They discussed issues such as government-funded child welfare, equal pay for equal work, reproductive and sexual freedom, and the suggestion of a cabinet-level department specifically for women's issues. Phyllis Schlafly also came to Houston. Schlafly was a right-wing lawyer and a major proponent of anti-communism, anti-feminism, and religious extremism at the time. When the representatives of the International Women's Year movement marched into Houston Stadium to show support for the Equal Rights Amendment (which was nearing the end of its deadline and still needed three states' votes to become law), Schlafly, as the leader of the anti-ERA "StopERA" organization and the conservative group "The Eagle Forum," called her followers to a "Support the Family" rally at the Astrodome on the other side of the city. Schlafly declared: "We oppose the Equal Rights Amendment and the 'anti-family' goals of the International Women's Year." People in the audience waved their Bibles in support of her speech. A reporter for The Washington Post who covered the event noted a group holding Confederate flags, with one side reading "Los Angeles White Women Against the Reds, Federalists, Lesbians, and Jews" (as originally written) and the other side reading "Abzug, Friedan, and Steinem are anti-Christian Jews." Houston's caused a nationwide reaction, of course, and it also affected Karen Pfaff's hometown of Dallas. This was a turning point in American politics, the force of which was felt across the country, with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade (legalizing abortion), and the 1972 Education Amendments, Section 9 (which banned gender discrimination in education), alled the United States, but the results of these shocks were still undecided. By 1977, although it was still unclear whether Steinem or Schlafly would win, the outcome was soon to be decided. After 1977, no state approved the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, supported by Schlafly, was elected President. In 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment failed. The Reagan administration's Federal Communications Commission stopped collecting data on employees in the broadcast and print media. Without statistics, it would be almost impossible to prove the existence of employment discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission appointed Clarence Thomas to strengthen the work. Thomas was a young black lawyer who had just finished work with the chemical company Monsanto. Thomas was a critic of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and supported government intervention aimed at encouraging the hiring of minorities and women through affirmative action and non-discrimination actions. He even publicly opposed the law he was appointed to enforce. He was also a young bureaucrat. After taking over as the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982, he did not disappoint and immediately steered the agency's work onto the right track.