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45 comments
1 Political Atheist  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 10:54:41am

Rest In Peace Geraldine.
Always a strong woman and trailblazer.

2 _RememberTonyC  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 10:55:04am

She was feisty and smart ... RIP Geraldine Ferraro

3 HappyWarrior  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 10:55:52am

RIP Geraldine, I would have happily voted for Mondale-Ferraro.

4 PhillyPretzel  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 10:57:47am

No matter the political party Geraldine Ferraro should be honored for what she achieved.

5 wrenchwench  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:02:38am

It may not have helped to flip that Mondale-Ferraro ticket to Ferraro- Mondale, but I doubt that it could have hurt.

6 Ericus58  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:17:05am

I have always liked and admired Ms. Ferraro.

This is the Lady that the Tea Party women could only hope to be, but will fall short in being.

7 PhillyPretzel  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:19:10am

re: #6 Ericus58
True. They do not come close.

8 recusancy  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:20:33am

Why are women always called feisty?

9 Political Atheist  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:21:52am

She really did elevate the ticket in a way few VP's ever do. Especially lately...

10 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:22:39am

re: #8 recusancy

Why are women always called feisty?

Well, what are the male adjectives, and do they, in any way, sound unattractive?

Women don't like being described as anything that sounds like ugly.

11 Stanghazi  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:23:57am

re: #10 EmmmieG

Well, what are the male adjectives, and do they, in any way, sound unattractive?

Women don't like being described as anything that sounds like ugly.

I'll settle for smart.

12 PhillyPretzel  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:24:32am

re: #8 recusancy
Here is a definition of feisty from The Free Dictionary. [Link: www.thefreedictionary.com...]

To me it sounds like nice and nasty at the same time.

13 recusancy  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:25:55am

re: #10 EmmmieG

Well, what are the male adjectives, and do they, in any way, sound unattractive?

Women don't like being described as anything that sounds like ugly.

How about strong, tenacious, fighter. Chihuahua's are feisty.

14 recusancy  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:26:36am

re: #12 PhillyPretzel

Here is a definition of feisty from The Free Dictionary. [Link: www.thefreedictionary.com...]

To me it sounds like nice and nasty at the same time.

Would you ever call a guy feisty and mean it as a complement?

15 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:26:46am

re: #13 recusancy

How about strong, tenacious, fighter. Chihuahua's are feisty.

Those are good. Those sound like the pioneer woman getting her family across the plains while holding them together emotionally.

16 William of Orange  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:27:07am

Just a matter of time before we see a female president. She paved the way.


Rest in peace.

17 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:27:10am

re: #11 Stanley Sea

I'll settle for smart.

Yeah, but you can be smart and neurotic at the same time.

18 _RememberTonyC  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:32:06am

re: #8 recusancy

Why are women always called feisty?

It's because some of them are feisty ... It's a complement in my book.

19 _RememberTonyC  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:33:11am

re: #14 recusancy

Would you ever call a guy feisty and mean it as a complement?

Absolutely yes

20 PhillyPretzel  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:34:24am

I got to go. BBL

21 BishopX  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:39:49am

re: #19 _RememberTonyC

I think of Waxman as feisty.

22 bluecheese  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:40:10am

and another racist passes on.

Onward we march.

23 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:42:45am

re: #22 bluecheese

Aside from the "don't speak ill of the dead immediately after they die" rule, would you care to explain your remark?

24 Stanghazi  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:43:26am

re: #22 bluecheese

and another racist passes on.

Onward we march.

huh? who?

25 Stanghazi  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:44:09am

Holy shit, look at my karma lizards!!!

pimp it!

26 austin_blue  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:44:12am

RIP, Gerrie.

And yes, she *was* feisty. So was Sparky Anderson.

I like feisty.

Afternoon, all.

27 Gus  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:44:55am

re: #22 bluecheese

What the hell is that about?

28 Simply Sarah  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:45:15am

re: #25 Stanley Sea

Holy shit, look at my karma lizards!!!

pimp it!

There. :P

29 Stanghazi  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:45:32am

Thanks Simply Sarah! It's going to be a good day! heh

30 austin_blue  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:45:49am

re: #22 bluecheese

and another racist passes on.

Onward we march.

Pointless and petty.

This cheese has gone bad. Smells like socks.

31 SanFranciscoZionist  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:45:52am

During the election, Ferraro said:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, and if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Could we let the woman be buried before we discuss whether that statement unbalances everything else she did in her life?

Thanks.

32 _RememberTonyC  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:46:33am

re: #21 BishopX

I think of Waxman as feisty.

Good for you ...

33 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:50:06am

re: #31 SanFranciscoZionist

Interesting, but I still hold to the "Don't show up at the funeral and make nasty remarks. Stay home." rule.

34 lostlakehiker  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:55:02am

re: #8 recusancy

Why are women always called feisty?

Women are not, in general, as combative as men. They don't kill as often, they don't get in bar fights as often, they don't volunteer for the armed forces as often, and they don't play first person shooters as often. No culture is known in which these sort of trends run the other way.

Women who venture into the combative arena of politics have to be somewhat combative. If you're standing for election, you're trying to beat the other candidates, after all. Men who run for office are more combative than the average man, and a woman who is as feisty as the average man running for office will be correctly seen as particularly feisty compared to the overall pool of women.

Hence, the adjective tends to fit. It's not pejorative-it's a kind of compliment. It attributes to the woman in question that degree of combative zest that's appropriate in candidates for elective office.

In Ferraro's case, who could dispute that?

Wikipedia page about Geraldine Ferraro.

35 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:55:16am

re: #33 EmmmieG

Which is not sent at you. I noticed that the original commenter has not bothered to clarify their remark.

36 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:57:35am

I must go do things today. I would do them in a feisty sort of a way, but I'm also coming down with a cold, and those two are incompatible.

37 bluecheese  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 11:59:41am

re: #35 EmmmieG

Which is not sent at you. I noticed that the original commenter has not bothered to clarify their remark.

what do you want me to say?

others have asked that we not get into it.

I will leave you with this clip.

Youtube Video
38 lostlakehiker  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 12:01:27pm

re: #31 SanFranciscoZionist

During the election, Ferraro said:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, and if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Could we let the woman be buried before we discuss whether that statement unbalances everything else she did in her life?

Thanks.

Do keep in mind that she was dying of cancer. It's what a man or a woman does when at the peak of their powers, judgment and strength intact, that ought to get the most weight when it comes time for a summing up.

39 Obdicut  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 12:02:06pm

re: #34 lostlakehiker

You're wildly mixing up different kinds of 'combative', there. The kind of combative that drives physical aggression does not have much to do with that that drives other forms of competition. It can, but an individual who's highly combative is as likely to be that way because he's of low social rank.

Your psychology is rather ad hoc.

40 lostlakehiker  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 12:11:43pm

re: #39 Obdicut

You're wildly mixing up different kinds of 'combative', there. The kind of combative that drives physical aggression does not have much to do with that that drives other forms of competition. It can, but an individual who's highly combative is as likely to be that way because he's of low social rank.

Your psychology is rather ad hoc.

Across the board, you name the forum for head to head competition, be it killing legally, killing illegally, chess, or debate, you will find that the fraction of men who go in for it is different from the fraction among women.

Any number of our highly combative politicians, good or bad, have been personally combative as well. Take, say, Andrew Jackson. Or George Wallace. Or Winston Churchill across the pond. Not to say that they were murderers in their private lives---their violent side was manifested in service to their nation, or in sport. But, there it is.

Women, in general, do not enjoy the kind of advantage in social rank that's implicit in any claim that they steer clear of combative situations because they don't have to fight to establish status. If anything, women on average enjoy a lower standing in the informal pecking order of society.

41 Gus  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 12:12:18pm

OT - Slow day.

Image: 2358300579_5aca0f7802_z.jpg

42 Obdicut  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 1:34:00pm

re: #40 lostlakehiker

Across the board, you name the forum for head to head competition, be it killing legally, killing illegally, chess, or debate, you will find that the fraction of men who go in for it is different from the fraction among women.

I'm sorry, but 'killing illegaly' and 'debate' have nothing at all to do with each other.

Including them under the rubric 'competition' takes away from any significance that you might draw from that conclusion.

Any number of our highly combative politicians, good or bad, have been personally combative as well.

Any number? No. The number is not 100%. It's nowhere close to it. There is no demonstrated association between violence and being a politician, at all.


Women, in general, do not enjoy the kind of advantage in social rank that's implicit in any claim that they steer clear of combative situations because they don't have to fight to establish status. If anything, women on average enjoy a lower standing in the informal pecking order of society.

Oh boy.

You can't really use 'pecking order' that way. Humans don't have a pecking order the way chickens do. We've got a much more complex social order, more resembling baboons.

You seem to think that because I said that some men are combative due to low social rank, that implies a claim that 'women steer clear of combative situations because they don't have to fight to establish status'. The two statements have nothing to do with each other. Neither women nor men have to fight in order to establish social status in humans. And the statement "women on average enjoy a lower standing in the informal pecking order of society" doesn't really make any sense, since standing doesn't matter on average, it only matters in interaction between individuals.

There is no link between being physically combative and being successfully physically combative. There is no link between being socially competitive, and being successfully socially competitive. When you say "Men who run for office are more combative than the average man" it's an essentially meaningless statement. You're using a very vague term, and you don't actually know if they are more 'combative', or more successfully combative.

43 moderatelyradicalliberal  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 2:04:25pm

re: #31 SanFranciscoZionist

During the election, Ferraro said:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, and if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Could we let the woman be buried before we discuss whether that statement unbalances everything else she did in her life?

Thanks.

I wouldn't say it unbalances everything else in her life, but my age makes it so I don't really know her for anything else, but the way she behaved during the 2008 campaign. I hope she RIPs, but it's not my fault how she chose to end her public life. If she has any black friends before the 2008 election, she didn't have any after. Much in the same way Helen Thomas has decided go into the end of her public life making statements that would cause people to conclude she's anti-semitic.

Who you reveal yourself to be at the end of your life matters a lot.

44 lostlakehiker  Sat, Mar 26, 2011 4:58:45pm

re: #42 Obdicut

I'm sorry, but 'killing illegaly' and 'debate' have nothing at all to do with each other.

Including them under the rubric 'competition' takes away from any significance that you might draw from that conclusion.

Any number? No. The number is not 100%. It's nowhere close to it. There is no demonstrated association between violence and being a politician, at all.

Oh boy.

You can't really use 'pecking order' that way. Humans don't have a pecking order the way chickens do. We've got a much more complex social order, more resembling baboons.

You seem to think that because I said that some men are combative due to low social rank, that implies a claim that 'women steer clear of combative situations because they don't have to fight to establish status'. The two statements have nothing to do with each other. Neither women nor men have to fight in order to establish social status in humans. And the statement "women on average enjoy a lower standing in the informal pecking order of society" doesn't really make any sense, since standing doesn't matter on average, it only matters in interaction between individuals.

There is no link between being physically combative and being successfully physically combative. There is no link between being socially competitive, and being successfully socially competitive. When you say "Men who run for office are more combative than the average man" it's an essentially meaningless statement. You're using a very vague term, and you don't actually know if they are more 'combative', or more successfully combative.

Good grief. This misstates, in the guise of restatement, almost everything I wrote. And it makes incorrect statements of fact to boot.

First, fighting, whether in the boxing ring, in debate, in war, or over who said what in the bar, is all competition.

Second, "any number" is not a synonym for 100%. Of course I didn't claim that all politicians were personally, physically combative.

Third, there is, in fact, a correlation between having been an officer in the armed forces, and running for, or winning, the presidency.

Fourth, the notion that low social standing is the main cause of physical competitiveness, and that this accounts for why men fight/compete more than women, is again misguided. Every society has exactly the same fraction of its population in the bottom 20% of social standing, yet violence rates are spectacularly different from one to the next. And in all, men fight more than women.

Fifth, I wrote "informal" because, yeah, human "pecking orders" are not literally pecking orders. It's more complicated than that. But complexities aside, it's simply not true that women enjoy higher standing than men and that the different tendency of men and women to fight springs from men generally ending up at a lower social rank than women.

What IS true is that men are, in general, more prone to being feisty, whether it be in the boxing rink, the debate forum, over a chessboard, in war, or in bars. Or most any situation which is head to head competitive, with a clear winner and a clear loser and consequences riding on it.

And therefore, a woman who fights, be it in physical sport, in war, in intellectual sport, in politics, or just brawling, is further out on the spectrum of competitiveness/combativeness/feistiness within the pool of all women, than a man who does the same is, within the pool of all men.

45 Girl with a Pearl Earring  Sun, Mar 27, 2011 6:03:39am

Geraldine Ferraro was a classy lady, with an emphasis on "lady." I did not agree with her politics, but that's really beside the point. She fought courageous battle against cancer. Rest in peace.


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