Stupid White Men-- and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! - Michael Moore [65]
Well, look at the bright side: We’ve had one helluva run! Thousands of years of total domination over the social order
and still going strong! Think about it—there has not been a single day when we weren’t in charge, when we weren’t calling the shots and running the world! Not even the Yankees can claim such an unbroken reign of unchallenged power. I mean, here we are, the minority, and yet we men have ruled over the female majority since time immemorial. in other countries we call that apartheid; in America we call it normal. Since the birth of this country, for more than 225 years, we have seen to it that not a single woman has held either the number one or number two offices in the land. For the better part of that time we’ve made sure that damn few of them have held any office at all. In fact, for the first 130 years of presidential elections, it was illegal for women even to vote.
Then in 1920, just to show women we’re good sports, we gave them the right to vote. And guess what? We remained in power!
Go figure. Suddenly, women had more votes; they could have thrown our collective male ass into the political trash heap. But what did they do? They voted for us! How cool is that? Have you ever heard of any group of oppressed people that suddenly, by their sheer numbers, takes charge—and then votes in overwhelming numbers to keep their oppressors in power? The blacks of South Africa, once free, did not continue apartheid by voting for whites. I know no Jews in America who voted for George Wallace or David Duke or Pat Buchanan (Florida debacle included).
No, the usual thing a sane society does is give the boot to the boot that’s been on its neck for umpteen years.
Yet more than eighty years after they gained the right to vote and—despite the growth of a massive women’s movement —here’s where we stand:
• Not a single woman has been on the ballot of the major parties for President or Vice President in twenty of the twenty-one national elections since 1920.
• Currently there are only five women governors in fifty states.
• Women hold only 13 percent of the seats in Congress.
• 496 of the top 500 companies in America are run by men.
• Just four of the top twenty-one universities in the United States are run by women.
• 40 percent of all women who are divorced between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four end up in poverty, compared with only 8 percent of married women who live below the poverty line.
• Women’s earnings average 76 cents for every $1 earned by men—resulting in a lifetime loss of over $650,133.
• To make the same annual salary as her male counterpart, a woman would have to work the entire year PLUS an additional four months.
Sooner or later, women are going to figure out how to seize power—and when that happens, let’s pray for mercy. After all, they are the stronger gender. Contrary to popular myth, it is men who are the weaker sex. Consider the evidence:
• We don’t live as long as women.
• Our brains are less well formed and shrink at a faster rate than women’s as we age.
• Proportionately, we are more likely than women to suffer from catastrophic illnesses such as heart disease, strokes, ulcers, and liver failure.
• Men are more likely to carry sexually transmitted diseases (which they pass on to their unsuspecting wives and girlfriends).
• Men’s major body systems—our circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and excretory functions—are all likely to break down long before women’s (though I guess the breakdown of the excretory system was no surprise, considering the case of air freshener you’ve got under the bathroom sink).
Only our reproductive system—the ability to produce sperm—lasts longer than a woman’s ability to produce eggs, but our delivery system peters out years before a woman discovers the benefits of enjoying a warm bath and a good novel.
• Men are unable to give birth, to keep the species going.
• Men lose their hair.
• Men lose