Saturday, January 25, 2014

The Facts of Life: The Wendy Davis debaucle

Wendy Davis, the Texas gubernatorial candidate who rose to fame for filibustering a bill in the Texas legislature that would have prevented abortions of viable unborn babies for eleven hours in tennis shoes has had a bad week. But it was even worse for her now embarrassed admirers.

Turns out her hard luck story about being a single mom raising her kids in a trailer park bore little resemblance to her real life in which she married a guy who took care of her kids for her while she took all expense paid leave from her family to get Harvard Law degree after which she dumped said guy the day after he finished paying off her school loans. As Ann Coulter put it:
The reason Wendy Davis' apocryphal story was impressive is that single mothers have to run a household, take care of kids and provide for a family all by themselves. But Wendy was neither supporting her kids, nor raising them. If someone else is taking care of your kids and paying your tuition, that's not amazing.
Apparently her pro-choice ideology doesn't translate well into campaign propaganda: You can't choose the facts of your past.

Memo to Davis Supporters: Bad things can happen when you champion someone for supporting late-term abortions.


7 comments:

Lee said...

Someone on Twitter posted: "Wendy Davis needs a man like a fish needs a rich bicycle that will pay its way through fish law school and take full custody of its spawn."

Anonymous said...

Oh looky, it's the new Abortion Barbie.

One Brow said...

What's the issue?

http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/20/wendy-davis-fights-sexist-attacks-dignified-truth-bomb.html

Reads like the the sort of classic, land-of-opportunity-motif story conservatives would typically hail as a sign of being a real American.

Lee said...

> "This is so embarrassing for Republicans..."

What would be embarrassing, if liberals could be embarrassed about anything, would be that the writer, Sarah Jones, doesn't even mention what it is about the Wendy Davis bio that made it so ludicrous.

To claim to be the very model of the modern feminist, but then to carefully omit how she got her husband to pay for her college degree and law diploma, and then right after that divorced him...

Sounds much more like a woman exploiting a man than a woman bravely making it on her own.

One Brow said...

Lee,

Spouses often support each other going through school. Sometimes they get divorced afterwards. How is that not feminist? Is it feminist when a woman works to put the man through school, but not the other way around?

I really don't understand what you think is supposed to be embarrassing?

Lee said...

> Spouses often support each other going through school. Sometimes they get divorced afterwards.

Sometimes people are hit by lightning. So what's your point?

> How is that not feminist?

I guess it depends on what definition of 'feminist' is used.

If it means "it's man's duty to give everything to women and expect nothing in return," then perhaps you've got a point.

But if it means, women can raise themselves up through hard work and determination, then my point stands: she didn't exactly do it on her own.

> I really don't understand what you think is supposed to be embarrassing?

Well, apparently Ms. Sarah Jones understood, which is why she left such pertinent facts out of her narrative.

One Brow said...

Lee,

You split a paragraph, and then asked me the relevance of the first split, divorced from the second. That makes no sense.

What are the supposedly pertinent, embarrassing facts Jones left out?

Again, is it feminist when a woman works to put the man through school, but not the other way around? How is getting help from your spouse not feminist?