Friday, March 8 2019, was designated as International Women’s Day. Watching TV anchors talk about this on air raised some thoughts, brought back previous thoughts & memories. We thought again about how men, at least TV anchor men, have progressed. Take MSNBC’s Chris Mathews for example. He is, to us, the personification of a strident, opinionated, blustering, yet entertaining male TV anchor who doesn’t seem to care much about the truth of what he alleges on TV.
But Chris Mathews, in our opinion, would not claim to speak for African-American, Asian-American or Latin American men. He gets that men of different races may have different views & ideas than him even though they share his gender.
In contrast, we think the “White” Women’s movement has not yet progressed to even the Chris Mathews stage. In a terribly racist mindset, they presume that African-American women, Asian-American women & Latin American women have the same issues & mindset that they have. And they don’t even care what women, especially non-white women, in other countries think. It is as if the “White” women’s movement has adorned a “White woman’s burden” to run the thinking of foreign non-white women.
We recall that a few years ago Sallie Krawcheck, an accomplished woman & a fervent White women’s activist, tweeted that the Women’s market was bigger than China. This was joyously retweeted, as we recall, by the then Bloomberg TV anchor Stephanie Ruhle and by a couple of other “blond” female Bloomberg TV women. Being simple minded, we asked whether the Chinese women’s market was included in the China market calculation or not. This simple question seemed to throw these very bright & accomplished women into confusion and they ended that tweet’s thread.
We realized then that these White Women just don’t think of Chinese women or any other non-white group of women as having their own views. Their “white women’s burden” has blinded them into a racist-type mindset.
If you still doubt us, look back to CNBC’s Women at the Top show broadcast on their Fast Money slot on June 4, 2013. We remember our sheer stupefaction to this day. Because CNBC showcased 10 “at the Top of Finance” women in that hour – 4 Panelists & 6 experts out of which 9 women were White Blonde women. And who was the token minority – a white brunette woman. We couldn’t believe our eyes as we watched this parade of 9 White Blond women as representatives of successful American women on CNBC. It ended with the token white Brunette woman. Look at their photos below.
Forget the TV host. What about the Executive producer of the Fast Money show? What about CNBC Management? Were they color-blind or tone-deaf, we wondered. Then we remembered how CNBC has treated Indians & Indian issues on air and we said, ahh that’s just CNBC being itself. The network calls itself “First in Business, Worldwide” but has a totally “white” & anti-color mindset at its heart. Think, this network doesn’t even have a single black African-Caribbean woman anchor today.
We remembered this Women at the Top show from June 2013 as we watched today’s White Blond Anchor Sara Eisen go semi-nuts in castigating US CEOs for not including women on their Boards of Directors. Many of her points were valid & we admired her dedication to what she considered as issues of all women. But, as seems typical of her, her mindset was narrow & focused on herself and her cohort.
Because in literally 3 hours of TV time (1 hour in the morning & two hours from 3-5 pm), Sara Eisen did NOT invite a single non-White woman on her show. Not one African-Asian-Latin woman. Ms. Eisen showed no care or concern about the issues & needs of non-White American women, let alone “International” women. We tried to ping her via Twitter to alert her to what she was doing but she was so gone into her own “white” women’s mantle that she didn’t care.
That once again brings us to CNBC Management, the Executive Producers of her two shows and her co-anchors. None of them tried to bring her back to earthly America which is racially diverse even if Ms. Eisen apparently doesn’t recognize that. See what we mean about CNBC management being totally “white” and anti-color in their own mindset. But not CNBC anchors are like Ms. Eisen. In stark contrast to her, Ms. Morgan Brennan, a white blond CNBC anchor herself, invited a non-white woman on her segment about women’s day. Kudos to her.
2. Christine Lagarde & her dangerous manifesto
Who is Christine Lagarde, you ask? She is the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”), the powerful organization which “bails out” countries in fiscal trouble. Prior to that, she was Minister of Economic Affairs in the French Government. It is Europe’s prerogative to appoint the head of the IMF and Europe chose her in 2011. Four years after that, Ms. Lagarde was found guilty of negligence in a financial affair by the Court of Justice of the French Republic.
(Sara Eisen) (Christine Lagard)
Ms. Lagarde seems to share the narrow “white” women mindset of Sara Eisen. Look what she tweeted for this week’s International Women’s Day:
- Christine LagardeVerified account @Lagarde Our research has shown that if women’s employment equaled men’s, economies would be more resilient and economic growth would be higher. http://ow.ly/uztr50mOcle
#IWD2019
#WomensDay
Predictably, Sara Eisen retweeted this on Friday:
- Sara EisenVerified account @SaraEisen – Sara Eisen Retweeted Christine Lagarde -Memo to politicians seeking growth “for the bottom half of countries in our sample in terms of gender inequality, closing the gender gap in employment could increase GDP by an average of 35% of which 7–8 % points are productivity gains due to gender diversity”
Unlike Sara Eisen, who by her own admission on TV, still has a 14-year old girl in her, the mission of Christine Lagard can be very dangerous to many countries in the world.
First what Christine Lagarde says is absolutely true in countries with very low unemployment rates, countries like USA, Western Europe & Japan. And education, higher education, for women can indeed do wonders for countries & their societies. Speaking personally, the women in our family are all highly educated, aggressive and have successful careers. Our maternal grandfather did wonders for his family simply by paying for college for his two daughter. He did that at the cost of his own lifestyle but ended up enriching lives of his children, grandchildren & great grandchildren.
But blindly following Lagarde’s dictum can be very dangerous to many countries, especially countries with high unemployment rates. When such countries devote resources to closing their gender gap in employment, they run a serious risk of destabilizing their countries.
Because young women, fortunately or unfortunately, have NOT “progressed” to the angry violent terrorism-generating attributes of young men. Today’s reality is that the world has too many aspiring male job seekers and too few jobs. This is not a new problem. In the previous centuries, kingdoms solved the problem of too many unemployed young men by sending them to the border & waging wars against neighboring kingdoms. That solution has been practiced for thousands of years including the last century. The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war itself caused deaths over a million Irani & Iraqi soldiers.
That is now frowned upon. So the masses of unemployed young men in the world are turning either to becoming migrants into Europe (& now into America) or becoming terrorists. As we said, masses of unemployed young women are far far safer for countries & societies than masses of unemployed young men. That is why Lagarde’s focus on closing the gender gap in employment might prove extremely dangerous for poor societies worldwide. Because that would throw almost an equal number of men out of the workforce.
And both Christine Lagard & Sara Eisen know the situation is likely to get worse. Lagard’s IMF has already reduced the projected growth rate of the world economy. Sara Eisen has spoken on air with economists who expect a recession in America, today’s only large growing economy in the world, in 2019 or 2020. Expectations for oil prices are being lowered as well. What would that do for economies in Africa, Middle East & even Mexico that depend on oil & commodities? Fewer jobs & higher unemployment for men, especially young men.
Even India, currently the fastest growing economy in the world, is seriously falling behind in job creation while the number of young men seeking jobs keeps increasing. No wonder we are seeing signs of backlash against “women’s empowerment” emerge in India. By the way, the experience of Mumbai suggests that women working to support unemployed men doesn’t work well because most of these men stay at home drinking & gambling or resort to petty crimes.
- ian bremmerVerified account @ianbremmer – % who agree that when It comes to giving women equal rights, things have “gone far enough” in their country – Spain 62% India 59% Russia 44% Italy 40% Germany 35% US 33% UK 29% France 27% Japan 19% Ipsos
So until women truly take over the global mantle of primary wage earners & family supporters from men, Lagarde’s focus in closing the gender gap in employment is likely to backfire in high & secular unemployment countries.
And what about Sara Eisen? Despite her professed women’s activism & her 7-figure compensation, she saw nothing un-feminist in presumably getting her husband to pay for her probably expensive wedding ring. Her first love may be foreign exchange but Sara Eisen presumably doesn’t practice “mean reversion” (inherent in foreign exchange trading) by paying for her husband. That makes the household worker women in Mumbai who support their unemployed husbands & their children on their meager salaries far more feminist & representative of “International women” than Ms. Eisen.
A suggestion to Sara Eisen. Next time she tries to speak about “International women”, she may want to invite for a debate a successful non-white American woman, like say Congresswoman Omar. Ms. Eisen could learn something from that debate. Even if she doesn’t, at least Ms.Eisen would add color-diversity & views-diversity to her all-white-women show.
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