This is me loving this blog post.

Why do so many women (and others) think policy is what stops us from being perfectly happy?

"Why do so many women (and others) think policy is what stops us from being perfectly happy?"

Because the only world view most people get is of their own perspective. And it's a constant perspective....

I try to use reason for everything, but the message I get from so many people is reason lacks feelings.

Duh because how you feel doesn't accurately reflect the truth.

Purp, a few hours ago I listened to about 2 minutes of this before deciding it wasn't a reasonable treatment the question, specifically, Is the world going to Hell?

I resent human nature, y'know? Including the weaknesses in my own.

And what I hate most about popular thinking in our time is that as religion has become such a less-powerful force, there's no institution demanding humility with a constant drumbeat in our appreciation of the world around us.

Instead of being tamped (by however a corrupt and self-interested ecclesiastical agency), our lesser nature is pandered-to by government power. People by nature will want to believe all the bad stuff comes from something outside themselves, and that they deserve a bigger slice of candy because of the pain they've experienced in normal life. And all our institutions increase their authority by encouraging that belief, without exception.

We might think that doesn't apply in the glorious bloodthirst of naked capitalism... But as you've probably noticed, business doesn't get a whole lot of respect nowadays. The marketplace has brought us to a condition which essentially all our ancestors would regard as Heaven on Earth: Long, safe lives in warm comfort eating nourishing food and planning to do whatever we want. But even in NYC, our citadel of shameless competition, the main newspaper belittles people who buy and sell things as primitive. Seeing the regulatory burdens afflicting every business of every size diminishes their attraction as realms of freedom.

So, in summary —and I hope you've been writing this down— I say this to you, the blog comment reader:

• Jack Welch is a gaping asshole, and we've all known this for at least twenty years.

• It nonetheless remains the case that the best way to be come rich –the best way both for one's own acquisitiveness and for the success of the surrounding society— is to work like a freaking dog without surcease for a very long time, such that your spouse doubts the sanctity of your marriage and your children sometimes wonder what you look like.

• Meaningful success will always require sacrifices. Painful ones. You know you're near the honey when it starts to sting, etc.

So there's that.

Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Let's be explicit here: The woman who offered the word "regrettable" is, in fact, a presumably-libertarian Reasonoid.

Go figger.

Look at it this way. Women don't rule the world. Neither do 99.9% of men. And for much the same reason.

I will never be a CEO or be up in the executive levels in my profession (and not just because I speak a bit to honestly sometimes). It's because I don't want that life. I go to work, get the job done, leave. What do you mean there's a company barbeque on Sunday? Sorry, I'm busy.

Don't think I'm a 9 to 5 zealot, I work in a field that requires a lot of night and weekend work, happily take work calls out of hours, etc. But I demand my compensation in personal time rather than overtime.

So I'll never be Rupert Murdoch. But then, if I were him, I would have quit 20 years ago. How much money does one man need? That attitude explains why I'll never have that choice.

I'm cool with being in charge within my own sphere of influence, where I still have daily interaction with the new faces in the "corporation" in which I work. At my level, there are a lot of women who are held to the same standards that I am. To rise so high and sit behind the mahogany desk in the massive 50th floor office and to be a bajillionaire holds little appeal. To have more resources than I could reasonably use in a few lifetimes seems absurd. My dreams are modest and attainable before I hit 55. And available to men or women.

The Goddess writes: Why is that "regrettable"? Maybe it gets them better chicks, a better jet, a better house in Aspen, and maybe they like all that.

But when does someone like Jack Welch get to enjoy all that? If you're a workaholic and life's great pleasure for you is overachieving, by all means, go for it. But if you expect a life of the perks that Amy describes, my question is, "When do you get to enjoy them?"

It's not about the money, it's about the power. Money is just a way to keep score.

I'm with Ltw on this. I worked 14 hours OT on Monday and Tuesday. I'll use some of it to take next Friday off to golf in a fun tournament with my wife and take the money for the rest to use as a down payment on next winter's vacation to somewhere warm.

I enjoy my work, but I enjoy my leisure time too, so I likely will not get another promotion before I retire in 5 - 6 years.

I would be interesting to see if female CEO's of large corporations agree with Welch's opinion.

One of the most valuable things my (feminist) mom taught me was "You can do anything you want; you just can't do everything you want."

I am happy to live in an age where, as a woman, it is generally sociably acceptable for me to do whatever I want. I can choose to work like crazy and be a CEO or I can be a stay at home mom or anything in between. It is really, truly baffling to me that it is news - deeply offensive news - that to achieve something like CEO status at a huge company you have to give up something else, like free time or being supermommy. The latter is especially baffling because male CEOs have traditionally relied very heavily on their support structure at home - they have not been superdaddies. Hence the old saw "Behind every successful man is a woman."
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"if you expect a life of the perks that Amy describes, my question is, "When do you get to enjoy them?"

And Jack Welch's gratification might not be women, real estate, or etc. It could very well be that he has a personality that finds the job itself extremely gratifying.

Corporate shareholders are not going to turn their multi-million dollar entity over to someone who will opt to go to Junior's school play rather than meet with a potential client or stay in the office to wrest just a few more dollars for the bottom line.

Corporate employees don't want to hear that their CEO has been tutoring his son in math or taking his wife to a Broadway play rather than working long hours to make sure the company is financially solvent and ready to meet the market challenges facing it.

To get to (and stay in) the corner suite, you must marry your company. The company must be your favorite child (sometimes your only child).

Weekend golf outings that don't involve clients or partners or business matters are a luxury.

A good CEO can't roll into the office at 9:00am and get out early enough to beat the traffic and help Junior with his homework.

It's a wonderful dream, but not reality. TV CEOs may spend most of their time having affairs or hatching personal schemes, but real-world CEOs cannot.

My guess is those feminists who condemned Jack Welch as "spectacularly stupid" are not CEOs of major corporations, nor will they be. They'll never work that hard. They just want the [unearned] credit when a woman works hard and long enough to get the corner office. As if their huffing and whining was what shattered the glass ceiling they invented to rationalize their failure to reach the corner office.

Why don't we ask Meg Whitman or Anne Mulcahy or Carly Fiorina or Shelly Lazarus what they think of Welch's comments. I'm willing to bet they'll agree with him.

Unrelated, Amy, but someone just danced her last dance.

That goes for the CEO of countries as well. That's why Obama....Oh crap. Nevermind.

I think Elle hit on the deal here... Someone who is willing to put so much into their work enjoys it for it's own sake.

this is why you can't mandate somebody to do that, because it takes certain traits to be like that. And not all in business. There are plenty of scientists who similarly work an insane amount, and may never get off track to have families. They are even more driven because they don't always get a monetary reward.

So, complaining about how there aren't enough women in the CEO chair... you can't mandate that, because of the traits required for it.

The false assumption is that those traits AREN'T what makes the whole enterprise successful.

Sure. In some cases not, sometimes there are CEO's that are stupid.

But let's just talk about business and sciences... How many of you know the local business owner that never takes a break, that never gets a vacation? I grew up in that household. We never went on vacation because my mom didn't have enough extra money to find and pay a manager who would be trusty enough to mind the store. How many of us know farmers that are the same way? I know scientists that never married or had children because they were ON FIRE with their sicence, and didn't want to stop for anything.

I think these traits are present in many people, it's just to varying degrees. Some people have a few extra hours here and there to sneak in a family or other things, and some don't and/or choose not to.

I always ask people grousing why it's not OK for people to choose. Some say it's somehow not fair that the choice exists, others don't answer. The don't want to see that if you are driven enough in this world you can do an astonishing number of things. Maybe NOT every thing, as the saying goes.

I sure hope if I ever die of a vice-derived disease I have some good cover for my obit. 9/11 dust, that's rock solid.

What else causes cirrhosis?

> And Jack Welch's gratification might not be
> women, real estate, or etc.

...Well...

> It could very well be that he has a personality
> that finds the job itself extremely gratifying.

As it happens, "the job itself" is, in his case, an indisputably self-centered and acquisitive endeavor. And women rate high on his list; the present (much-younger) wife #3, the one who writes columns with him, broke up marriage to #2 through an illicit affair in the context of interviewing him for a business magazine (from which #3 then lost her job).

"Neutron Jack" earned his nickname through slicing and dicing corporations in consideration of tax codes (etc.) but without concern for employees: 'The companies are still standing but the people are gone'. His career was a 1980's fundament of the Wall Street shenanigans that eventually morphed into our present (and continuing) banking crisis.

Jack Welch is not a nice man. His "business" gifts are all about paperwork and manipulation, not about creating wealth. His career choices ought not be regarded as exemplary.

> What else causes cirrhosis?

Bad-dum-PUM!

Reminds me of that old joke...

Sorry, I meant this old joke.

(Smurf is presumably talking about Miss Summer and 9/11.

He's right... It's a bit of a reach. But isn't that what you'd expect from a person like her, an effort to connect one's own life to something huge and pivotal?

It's like how people teased Shirley Maclaine for talking about being a Queen of Egypt (or whatever) in her past lives, rather than a scullery maid or some toothless retarded kid living on the edge of a desert.

"they deserve a bigger slice of candy because of the pain they've experienced in normal life"

I love you Crid.

"And Jack Welch's gratification might not be women"

My favorite cheating billionaire story is Francois-Heri Pinault Selma Hayeks current husband. He was in a relationship with Hayek and Linda Evangelista at the same time, got both women pregnant at the same time. He then denied Evangelista's baby, never paid child support and denied any sort of relationship with her. She proved it was his kid and got an obscene amount of child support.

Can you imagine it? Hayek a top Hollywood celebrity and Evangelista the greatest model of all fighting over a man.

Women, no matter the status they are all the same.

(BTW Heidi Klums first baby daddy also denied paternity of their kid.)

Feminists blame this on enduring sexism in the workplace.

Feminists are stupid

And there is no question that sexism is a real problem.

And apparently so are you

I can’t think of a single woman (myself included) who has worked in a male-dominated environment and not felt that she must work extra-hard to prove herself before she is taken seriously, something men rarely encounter.

That becuase of government mandated hiring practices which force businesses to hire unqualified women to meet quotas. When it is a know fact that a good chuck of women got the job based soley on their sex and not their qualifications can you really be upset that people who dont know you dont know you?

That might discourage some women.

Only the stupid and lazy ones, ie feminists

But for most, that’s not the main obstacle to climbing the corporate ladder to the topmost rung. . . It’s just that women don’t like it

Maybe you arent so dumb after all, but wait even while admiting womens own choices are what keeps them from the top you are still advocating that they be given top positions anyway. I take it back, you are just as dumb as I originally thought

It is unfortunate that men haven’t experienced something equivalent that would liberate them from traditional role expectations and allow them to make unorthodox life choices for a more fulfilled and self-actualized existence.

Show us rich supermodels marrying and screwing homless bums or good looking trash men over short fact ugly millionaires. Thats the experience it will take

Men remain psychologically wired for worldly success. But it’s unclear whether it’s their inner needs that are driving them or external social expectations.

Inner needs, women wont touch your junk if you cant afford to wine and dine them

If feminists were honest

Sorry, I almost passed out from lack f oxegyn laughing so hard

Is there anything sadder than someone so obviously trying to convice themselves of something they know to be false?

> BTW Heidi Klums first baby daddy also denied
> paternity of their kid.

Flavio has lived a colorful life... But he's always been more entertaining than decent.


Besides:

> got both women pregnant at the same time.
> He then denied Evangelista's baby

☐ Evangelista

☑ Hayak

As Brian yoosta say, "Simple!"

(Better rack)

PS- I love you too. You'll never know.

I'd pick Hayek too but only because she has the same heritage as my mothers family (mexican of middle eastern descent).

BTW my brother married a Mexican woman and her family never once believed he was hispanic. 6'4 Arab guy can do that to ya.

Evangelista seems to have comic-book superpowers that only work on women, through magazines or whatever. Men don't seem to care. Except for the guy you mentioned. And even then....

Well fashion is a straight women/homosexual male centered art. It's nearly impossible to explain to people that dont inherently understand it why it's so alluring.

But you're right, all those billionaires fuck the fashion models but dump them for bustier more womanely prospects (as is the case with Flavio. )

BTW I've been reading comic books lately and a straight mans understanding of fashion is a porn star look. It fascinates me.

Why is that "regrettable"?

Because it is a result of testosterone poisoning.

In the short term, feminists are using the law to combat it.

In the long term, they are hoping for an antidote.

Female CEOs weigh in:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577410520511235252.html?mod=e2tw

"My guess is those feminists who condemned Jack Welch as "spectacularly stupid" are not CEOs of major corporations, nor will they be. They'll never work that hard."

They want it handed to them on a platter. And if it isn't, well, it 'must be sexism'.

"I can’t think of a single woman (myself included) who has worked in a male-dominated environment and not felt that she must work extra-hard to prove herself before she is taken seriously, something men rarely encounter."

That is the biggest bullshit I have ever heard, men have to work *extremely* hard to be taken even remotely seriously. Jesus. Maybe you don't realize this is the case because men aren't whinging like babies about it, like you are - they just toughen up and plough through and do what needs to be done - and because you're too self-centered to consider what other people have to go through to earn their success. Success is really, really difficult.