A regular reader emails:

Gloria Steinem has a new book out. Someone told me about it, saying he wants to read it because it is about her life as a child, traveling with her father. I looked up the review of it and decided it would not be mainly about her life as a child, traveling with her father. It is more likely the same old grating antiquated feminist thoughts that she always spews. The review mentions that she touts ideas for education reform, a shift from competitive classrooms to more co-opting classroom learning. I scratch my head at that, since I think that the successful Gloria Steinem probably credits her own competitive nature more than any partnerships with people for her own success.

But, it also got me thinking about the Republican candidates, their diversity, and the language that Republican voters use when talking about the candidates versus the Democratic candidates and the language used when talking about them. In 2008, Democrats were focused on whether they’d have the first African American president or first woman president. That was basically what Obama and Clinton were reduced to. When Sarah Palin became the VP nominee, Steinem focused again on the candidate’s gender, saying that she was a win for feminism, but not the right woman. On the other hand, today’s Republican candidates are talked about in terms of their leadership skills, their experiences, their ideas. Gender and race play a minor role, at least when I talk to Republican voters. Which is how it should be. As a woman, I know when I’ve competed and won because of my skills and when I’ve won because I was a token. It is much more humiliating to win as a token than to fail because of lack of skills. The idea of taking competitiveness out of the classrooms is utterly frightening. How would children develop self worth? Develop skills to be marketable in jobs?

I did an Internet search for Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton and found more reasons not to read Steinem’s latest book.   Compare that rhetoric with what Carly Fiorina said in 2002 about labeling people by gender.

Obviously, the liberal Slate writer doesn’t agree with Steinem on this particular issue, but I think that the contrasting level of maturity seen between Steinem and Fiorina here epitomizes the general level of maturity seen in the Democrat voter versus the Republican voter.

I heard Steinem on “Fresh Air” a few weeks back, plugging the book – and was struck by how the author, who must be in her mid to late seventies, still sounded like a cranky junior high kid.