Quote: I think I agreed it's bad form (esp. for us idlers and the Keyboard Kommandos) to bandy about what people should or shouldn't have done in X or Y extreme circumstance, especially to score political points on the backs of those who have suffered and sacrificed. BUT I think it's unfair of you to hold a civilian journalist (male or female) to the same extenuating standards as a highly-trained and sworn soldier. Don't armed forces pilots undergo interrogation resistance training and preparation for capture? Survival training in case the plane goes down?
Civilian reporters don't, so the venomous reaction to Carroll's coerced promo tape in particular disconcerted me. Daniel Pearl made coerced statements in a video yet no one faulted him for doing that, as he paid the ultimate price anyway, sadly, immediately thereafter.
clifp, you indicate that holding out for "weeks" is no biggie, but "months" would be laudatory. Not knowing the conditions.. care to put a number on it? Where's the "hero" threshold? Six weeks? Eight? Twelve?
If you want to continue nit-picking.. why are escapees more courageous than 'regular' non-escapees? Perhaps (as you indicate about being shot down) it's just a matter of good/bad timing, or of luck and what the circumstances permit. As you say.. McCain, who stayed when he might have left, might be braver (but not necessarily more 'ingenious') than Churchill or Yeager... but maybe the same set of choices wasn't offered them. Looking at Churchill's escape.. he was not in the military, so it was not a question of staying behind for the sake of "his men". As a white man in Pretoria, who is going to challenge him once he gets out (compared to a white woman walking the streets of Iraq)? The level of personal surveillance was undoubtedly different. The reward for Churchill's subsequent capture was "less than the price of a bottle of scotch" (27 shilllings).. so.. not exactly a "prize" hostage as far as his ex-captors were concerned. I guess we should be asking ourselves, given his mobility, why he didn't take down some sensitive/valuable enemy asset.. (mild sarcasm).
The point is not to drag down anyone's military accomplishments or sacrifices. The point is completely another: that women often find their actions
second-guessed more often than men, from my experience. Women themselves are definitely not immune from perpetuating the cattiness and second-guessing, BTW!!! Sometimes they can be worse!
I think it's great that you recognize women's contributions. I personally enjoy making cookies, but have had the luxury of being able to make other contributions and to tax more than my cookie-making muscles, a luxury of choice that Steinem
and many before her allowed me to have. I'd instead dream of the day when a single mom could work ONE job, instead of two. As with captivity, serfdom does not necessarily equal heroism.
Don't forget, too, that more egalitarianism allows men greater possibility to be stay-at-home dads. I know there are some here on the forum. They can be 'heroes', too. And while we're at it with the "hero" inflation.. so are men who bust their asses to bring home the bacon. We ARE all in this together.
Including Jill Carroll along with other, countless, un-named men and women. Steinem threw a stone, but it was by no means the first stone in the gender conflict, and I doubt it will be the last.
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Gloria passed up a great opportunity to outline where and how feminism should get going again.
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Agreed.
But it's not like every line she utters is the responsibility of all feminists, just like it's not the job of Obama to be responsible for everything any black person does or says (as he is constantly called to "repudiate").