By KAREN PARKER
County Line Publisher Emeritus
Ah, the times they are a-changin’, as recently demonstrated by Florida Congressman Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), who evidently believed it was okay to call a coworker a “f*cking b*tch” on the steps of the capitol.
Reportedly the two had never met, but Yoho was enraged over her speech and called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) “disgusting,” telling her “you are out of your freaking mind” for describing poverty as a root cause of crime. It went downhill after that, leading to Yoho throwing out the insulting, sexist slur with which we are all familiar.
This is certainly a new generation. Despite having grown up with Gloria Steinem and “women’s liberation,” most of us baby boomers might have just absorbed the insult and moved on. Some might have shed tears; others might write it off as “boys will be boys,” and then it would go into storage with all of the other insults, degradations and indignities most every woman of any age has suffered at the hands of men. I cannot say I was physically abused, but I do have war stories from my younger days, and for many decades, I was the only woman in the state who owned a newspaper (not with my husband or inherited) in a male-dominated field. There are a few war stories there.
But Cortez is of a new age. She took her complaint in front of Congress, detailing the entire encounter, including Yoho calling her a “f*cking b*tch.” All of that will be written into the Congressional Record, enshrined for all of history.
She was not impressed with Yoho’s half-hearted apology that he would never say such a thing because he has a wife and two daughters. And neither am I. Every man who abuses, rapes, insults, pays women less than men — they all have mothers, and maybe a sister or daughter, and when did that ever stop them?
Yoho is 65 years old, so it would be a stretch to believe delivering an insult of this magnitude is a one-off.
It may be the first time he has been called out on it, however. It gives me great pleasure to know this news likely headlined every newspaper in Florida and certainly made most, if not all, of the news channels. So perhaps Yoho’s wife has to go to the country club and endure rude stares from her fancy friends, or his daughters will have to explain why their dad is such a jerk.
But Yoho will suffer very little. If he had done this on the job at Walmart or Toro, he might have been well be on the way out the door. Congress has an ethics committee, but it does very little. Theoretically, Yoho’s bosses are the voters who sent him to Washington. Yeah, right. Mostly we send them there based on whether there is an “R” or a “D” after their names. Too few of us can even name their Congressman. And, if you can, can you name any bills they introduced or how they voted?
They know that they can act with impunity and that unless they do something stupid like Yoho did, they will fly under the radar.
You won’t know who they take money from and to whom they owe favors. You won’t know how many votes or committee meetings they miss or how much of the day they spend dialing for dollars for the next election. Are they there to improve life for the governed or to destroy their political enemies?
For example, Derrick Von Orden wants you to vote for him because Ron Kind voted to impeach Trump. Now that may be the most important thing in the world to you, but you might want to balance it off with his other votes. For example, Kind voted to contain the premium cost of Obamacare to 8.5 percent of a family’s income, he voted for the Protecting America Wilderness Act, the Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Act and to stop any war acts in Iran and many others. Kind has been there since 1997, and you can find some 65 pages of his votes at https://votesmart.org, along with a lot of other information about his actions in Congress.
There is no small irony that 2020 marks 100 years since women were given (or took) the right to vote. It may be due to the pandemic or an election year, but that anniversary has received little attention. It doesn’t get much play in the history books either, as, like slavery or our treatment of native Americans, it’s hardly one of our proudest moments.
It took nearly a century to overcome a Constitution that promised equality to all, as long as they were white men. By 1917, women had lost their patience and were the first to picket the White House. President Wilson thought their antics were amusing until they hung on so long it made him look bad.
Law enforcement stepped up, bludgeoning women protesters, slamming them to the ground and dragging them off to one of the most notoriously brutal prisons. Those who continued to protest with a hunger strike had tubes shoved down their throats and were force-fed a mixture of milk and eggs. Held down by a half-dozen strong men, some nearly died when the tube was shoved into their windpipe, and many took months to recover from the abuse after being released from prison.
Power is not given up easily, and behavior such as Rep. Yoho’s may well be a reaction to the loss of white male power. There are now 79 women in the House and 20 in the Senate. That is still far less than half, which would more closely represent the country’s population, but improved from those grainy black and white films of the 1960s showing a sea of suits and ties.
This week, the country is rightfully honoring the life of Rep. John Lewis, who sacrificed blood and flesh to bring about the Voting Rights Act and who spent a lifetime battling for equal treatment of all Americans. We should not forget that women also made enormous sacrifices, and we should find it shameful when we fail to honor those sacrifices by staying home from the polls.
That right is so universal to women it even allows us to vote for a man who brags about being able to grab women by the pu**y.
I bet those early suffragettes never saw that coming.