Topic: Newsmax
Yes, this really happened: Paul du Quenoy spent his Aug. 30 Newsmax column raging at Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley because she made a joke about men:
"If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman," said former South Carolina governor, U.N. Ambassador and now Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley at last week’s GOP debate.
Haley’s misandrist quip was her response to an invitation asking the eight candidates who participated to state their case for their party’s nomination.
Was it just a joke?
A folksy needling from a chromosomal underdog?
An attempt at levity as seven male rivals recited their resumes in crisp soundbites?
It could have been any, all, or none of these things, but that’s not the point. We all know what would have happened to any man who attempted to advance himself — or simply make an observation — by mocking the opposite sex.
Just ask former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, who was forced to resign after merely speculating --- in off-the-record comments based on empirical data --- that women mighthave slightly less aptitude for science than men, a proposition in which he hoped he would be proved wrong.
By any right, Haley’s crude stereotyping of half of humanity as feckless dolts who cannot get anything done — and dismissal of all of her rivals on the basis of gender — should disqualify her from any position of responsibility.
Du Quenoy then defended the honor of men, who he thinks have done many more important things than women have:
The 1.1 million men who have died in our country’s wars might take great exception to Haley’s sexist implication that men don’t "do" anything.
The country she lives in, the state she governed, the laws she enforced there and seeks to enforce as president, the countries that welcomed and educated her immigrant parents, the rights she enjoys, the institutions in which she studied, the organization where she served as an ambassador, the political party whose nomination she is pursuing, and the format and technology that allowed her to reach a large audience were all created by men.
Those who fought for Haley’s freedoms at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Normandy, and a thousand other places were men.
A man wrote the Declaration of Independence, inspired by ideals of liberty and self-government developed by other men.
Men wrote the Constitution, and over a century ago men amended it so that Haley and her sisters could vote and hold public office.
He then ranted that typical women's jobs involve only saying, while men's jobs are all about doing:
Contrary to Haley’s derogatory comment, it's in fact women who gravitate more toward careers that involve "saying" rather than "doing."
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), women account for 81.5% of social workers, 79.7% of elementary school teachers, and 72.9% of human resources managers.
Men, on the other hand, comprise 93.8% of firefighters, 97% of bricklayers, and 97.8% of electricians, jobs defined by "doing" things that Haley could scarcely live without.
Men eschew college education in greater proportions than women to pursue such vocational careers, in significant part because educational and white-collar professional environments are now often so openly hostile to men.
From there, du Quenoy portrayed men as the real victims of society:
Our family law courts routinely discriminate against men in child custody and divorces, the overwhelming majority of which are initiated by women.
At terrible cost, our social services and public culture incentivize the absence of fathers from their children’s lives and disdain nuclear families as outmoded and oppressive.
Our elite professional culture admonishes men that they are "privileged" and insists that they therefore yield authority, opportunity, and participation to women, even though women in such environments have long earned and advanced equally to or better than men.
Government agencies, educational institutions, and employers regularly award benefits and recognition to women in programs that exclude men, despite civil rights laws that explicitly prohibit such discrimination against either gender.
Our Department of Education requires educational institutions to employ vast bureaucracies to police male sexual initiative with biased investigations that deprive men of basic rights, privilege female testimony over male testimony, and dispense with time-honored evidentiary standards to impute guilt and impose life-altering sanctions on men.
[...]
Nikki Haley is nowhere to be seen on any of these vital issues. Instead, her casual sexism accepts and endorses the sick, sad status quo.
Du Quenoy concluded by bashing Haley some more:
Haley’s revolting attitude could help explain why she is polling nationally in the single digits, trailing in third place behind two abler men even in her home state, and conducting her failing candidacy in a way that looks embarrassingly like an audition for employment under one of those men.
We can only hope that when that man wins his party’s nomination, he has the wisdom and foresight not to entrust Nikki Haley with any amount of responsibility.
Whether he does or not, we can sigh with relief that this woman’s place will almost certainly not be in the White House.
So bizarre was du Quenoy's rant that Newsmax felt compelled to add this disclaimer to the end of his column: "The views expressed in the preceding column are solely the author's."
