A proper lady doesn't practice tacky punditry

While many of us are still either cheering Rick Santorum's departure or adjusting to living in perpetual fear that at any moment he's going to pop up with his own TV show, some commentators are turning their decidedly narrow gaze elsewhere on the Congressional landscape. Take this excerpt from Judith Warner's New York Times column that ran Thursday:

While the excitement over Nancy Pelosi, most likely to be our first female speaker of the House, is still fresh, and while those of us who care about these things are still bubbling over the election of the highest number of women to Congress in history, I’d like to issue a challenge: Ladies, step up to the plate on behalf of the rest of America’s women — and their families. ... if Ms. Pelosi’s experience of motherhood is to have any meaning for the rest of us, or any relevance to her life as a politician, we’ve got to see some follow-through.

Pelosi's "experience of motherhood" should not have any relevance to either. And the fact that supposed female opinion leaders continue to focus on "family issues" is precisely the reason gender is still an issue in discussions of politics and professionalism. Yes, ladies of Congress, step up to the plate – give me free shit because I have a functioning uterus, too!

See, when male politicians set policies that benefit only others just like them, it's sexist and elitist and corrupt. When women do it, it's apparently being a good representative – not to a constituency of actual, diverse people in a physical district someplace, but to some over-arching, dated and delusional ideal of what it means to be an authentic woman.

But despite her (Warner's, now, not Pelosi's) calls for mandating "paid family leave" and legislation "to provide low-income parents with subsidies to stay at home and care for their infants themselves," Warner assures us, just in case we had any doubts, this is not, in fact, part of a "radical leftist agenda:"

In fact, there’s no better antidote to the selfish individualism and empty materialism that Americans of all political stripes say is corrupting our country than policies that allow families to spend more, and better, time together.

And what better way to accomplish that than by handing out entitlements to selfish individuals who happen to have kids so they can stay home and have it all in greater empty, materialistic comfort.

What grates me about arguments like these are that they're so often advanced as representing the middle, the mainstream, the average American with a basic set of scruples – or just everyone who happens to have two X chromosomes. But you're not arguing equal pay for equal non-work, something we could all get behind with gusto, you're arguing for us to pick up your slack.

Working mothers, you are a special interest just like any other – the difference being you're only concerned with your own nuclear family. How is that not the apex of selfish?

Witness Elizabeth Vargas using her first report back on "20/20" ( set your TiVos, kids) to oh-so-altruistically present "a segment on the plight of working mothers, beginning with herself."

For the "20/20" piece airing Friday, Vargas examines the lives of three working women with children, interviews politicians and serves up a slew of statistics on the problems faced by working mothers. As an example of public attitudes, she cites a Cornell University survey of undergraduates who said that if they were employers, they would offer women with children $11,000 a year less in salary than childless women, and be 44 percent less likely to hire those with kids.

"There is still in this country real discrimination against working mothers," Vargas says.

Uh, "discrimination" is paying someone less for the same work due to factors that should be irrelevant to job performance. When you're not there half the time because Kayleigh has a cold or Dakota has an early interpretive dance practice, that's hardly irrelevant.

But Warner managed to find a study to cite in arguing that "workplace inflexibility, the lack of family supports and workplace bias" are creating a crisis and "forcing American mothers out of the work force -- whether they can really afford to 'opt out' or not."

This comes on the heels of news articles showing how working-class moms are putting their youngsters in all-night child care, and how couples are increasingly enduring split-shift work schedules — putting their health and marriages at risk — to avoid the costs and anxieties of day care.

Gee, I must have missed those articles. I did, however, catch the ones about how married couples are now officially in the American minority. And the ones on how wages aren't keeping up with inflation. Oh, and this one from Warner's own paper the very day before it wasted post-election op/ed space on her, on the latest trend among these woe-ravaged mothers: "martini play dates."

These women are not out to get drunk, they say. And they insist they are not drinking out of need. Rather, they are looking for a small break from the conventions of mommy-hood — a way to hold on to a part of their lives that existed before they had children and to bond over a shared disdain for the almost sadistically stressful world of modern parenting.

How is it possibly news that people are turning to alcohol for relief from their alternately boring and stressful lives? Oh, but when single or child-free people drink, socially or alone, it's immature, slutty or pathetic. When "working mothers" drink, that's a cry for help to this hostile, cruel society from its selfless perpetuators that deserves collective attention and sacrifice to remedy.

"Giving up a career (and a piece of my identity) and boredom were the core reasons I drank," said Jennifer Ramsey of Sacramento, Calif., in an e-mail message, explaining how being a stay-at-home mother contributed to her alcoholism. "I know that this isolation and need to appear like the perfect mom are stressful for many women."

Key phrase: "Giving up." Despite my still lingering irrational fears from that waste-of-my-elementary school time catechism class (hey, I had my own imaginary friends to hang out with, thanks), I and many other females have managed to avoid spontaneously waking up one day to find ourselves with child. Women choose to have children (and just looking at the fate of all the anti-abortion measures on state ballots this election cycle, we want to keep doing so). Women choose to stop working. If women choose to try and "have it all," they either have to make priorities or deal with the conflicts.

As a woman, I don't assume this country owes me a career, a significant other, kids, friends, and the financial and material security to indulge any other wants I might have, all with a side of sunshine and serenity – I just want a career, money and a goddamn hot man, but I've not got a single one of those. Where are my government subsidies? My perk-plated job offers? My own personal diplomatic exchange program with one of the less corrupt and destitute eastern European nations? I would surely be a more productive member of society if I had any one of these things – so come on, female representatives, get crackin', you owe me.

At the very least, everyone should take a lesson from Katherine Harris. I know, I know -- but you don't see her whining about being out of a job, do you? She just does her own, independent thing, despite you know, all good sense and reality, and the tailor-made offers still find her.