The 'ladies' of the Women's March: Not powerful, not tough
We last saw these women – liberal, largely white, and middle- or upper-middle-class – sobbing their eyes out in the early morning hours of November 9. Now here they are again in the streets of D.C., channeling Lena Dunham – not posing for the camera while squatting on a toilet bowl eating cake, but close, giving everybody the finger while chanting obscene, filthy slogans and screaming about how powerful they are and how they're not going away.
Well, they're not that powerful, because otherwise they would have carried the election for Hillary. And they certainly aren't tough – not tough like the many male police officers who make it safe for them to run this way, and that in the streets of our nation's capital, in order to pretend they are. Not tough like the really tough women either running or helping to run American farms and ranches and an endless variety of other endeavors across this land. Not tough like my immigrant grandmother, who, if she were alive today, would likely be arrested for washing their mouths out with Kirkman's soap. Not tough like my tough wife, my tough daughter, and my tough granddaughter, who keep kicking my can down the road. Not tough as Mother Teresa was tough or Margaret Thatcher or Joan of Arc was tough, or, God bless her soul, Edith Cavell.
And certainly not tough like "Mad Dog" Mattis, who might just save their sorry butts from some pretty bad hombres even less impressed with them than we should be.
Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most, Random House, BDD. See it here. He lives and writes in the colonial-era hamlet of Stone Ridge, New York; blogs here; and can also be reached at miniterhome@gmail.com.