Boebert Tries to Speak for Women, Fails Miserably

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Political iconography, the very fine art of connecting a political candidate or campaign with a particular image, has changed a lot over the years.  It went through the military phase of associating political leaders with their military backgrounds, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too," for instance, which was used to remind voters that William Henry Harrison had led the winning side in an important battle in the War of 1812.  And after Lincoln, a poor boy who had been born in a log cabin, won the presidency, politicians for the next half-century sought to burnish their own political credentials by bragging that they, too, had been born in log cabins.

Over the years politicians have talked about chickens in pots, sent their wives down into coal mines, used bags of illegal drugs to create news, and played musical instruments on late-night talk shows.  Sometimes they symbology they used even verged on being fine art - as with Shepard Fairey's beautiful "Change" and "Hope" posters created for the Obama campaigns.

Now, however, a new round of political iconography may be on the horizon, and this one may be every bit as ugly as when George H.W. Bush waved the bag of crack cocaine toward news cameras when he was trying to scare Americans into declaring a largely racist "war on drugs."  This new rush of images will be geared toward proving the toughness of female politicians.   Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert, a person who often appears "holstered" in public, went to Twitter this week to complain about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig taking a paternity leave.  In her casual dismissal of the Secretary's right to a paternity leave, the congresswoman noted that she had given birth to one of her four children in the front seat of a truck - and that real parents were too busy to take leaves when they had children.

"Real" parents might disagree with the pistol-packing mama from Colorado, but that is beside the point.  What is happening with Boebert's tweet is that she is actively trying to redefine the role of women in politics as well as ceding recent gains of women in the workplace back to the male supervisors and business owners who have dictated working situations for women for more than a century.  In Boebert's political world if a woman wants to succeed, she must be the equivalent of a well armed super hero, and she must be willing to play by the old rules.

What Lauren Boebert does not understand is that her contemporaries are very adept at playing by the old rules - that's how they got where they are at today - but most are also in the game of politics to make more than noise - they are in it to make change.  And as change happens, and as it becomes real, fewer and fewer American women will suffer from a lack of prenatal care.    Tomorrow's women will have the comfort of knowing that their children will be delivered in the safe environment of a medical facility - and not in the squalid cab of some pickup truck.

Giving birth in the front seat of a truck is not a badge of honor signifying a truly independent woman, it is a sign that society is still broken and that the war on women is succeeding.  It's time to crawl out of your truck, Boebert, and see what is going on in the world around you!