Your daughter’s pretty little head needs an adjustment. The Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization that exists primarily to turn female children into professional pushers of Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs, has joined a loud chorus of female-crushers.
The Girl Scouts Research Institute has just commissioned a suspect study that found an overwhelming number of Scouts — despite their forced entry into cookie capitalism — don’t think they have the smarts to balance checkbooks, handle credit cards or put enough pennies in a piggy bank to pay for college. And why not?
These children are as young as 8. Grow up!
It’s been a rough couple of months to be a member of the fair sex, a majority that, if you believe the hype, is made up primarily of losers, whiners and victims.
Last month, billionaire Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg published her awful book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” which sent a loud message destined to undermine ladies: If you want a family, a life, you’re a disappointment to the sisterhood.
If you’re not CEO of a Fortune 500 company yet, if you can’t afford to strut in Louboutins, then you’re not trying hard enough. It’s your fault.
The bash-women fest continued on April 9, a date which will live in infamy. That’s the annual Equal Pay Day holiday, set by an outfit called the National Committee on Pay Equity. It’s a doozy.
The committee insists that the average woman earns a lot less than a man, just 77 cents on every dollar he makes. By that logic, a woman has to work just over three extra months, until April 9, before she reaches the pay her male counterparts earned for the previous year.
Lest you disagree, President Obama cynically campaigned on the warped number last year. This month, he issued a proclamation stating, “But even now, too many Americans are seeing their hard work go unrewarded because of circumstances beyond their control.”
Then — drumroll, please — “I continue to call on the Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.”
This may be the first time, ever, that new federal regulations are supposed to lead to hiring more people. Especially women.
In truth, the argument is completely bogus.
“The way I see it, there’s a lot of good news for women and girls,” said Sabrina Schaeffer, executive director of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. “But when the president and lawmakers paint society as hostile to women, it’s really unfortunate. I guess I am offended.”
The 77-cent statistic has been repeated so often, most Americans take it as gospel. But it’s wrong.
The number compares the median salaries of all workers. If you compare, say, teachers to teachers, corporate honchos to corporate honchos, if you take into account women who chose to jump off the fast track to have families, the pay gap magically disappears.
In fact, the median income for young, single, childless urban women is higher — sometimes much higher — than that of men, concluded a study by Reach Advisors, a Boston market-research firm.
This led the notoriously anti-women New York Times to write that superior female earning power is destroying young gals’ love lives.
“It’s not uncommon to walk into the hottest new West Village bistro on a Saturday night and find five smartly dressed young women dining together — the nearest man the waiter,” said a piece titled, “The End of Courtship?”
The Scouts survey found that a staggering 88 percent of cookie-peddlers, ages 8 to 17, don’t think they can cut it financially. Really?
“Women are the No. 1 consumers, from groceries to electronics to cars,” said Schaeffer. “To me, that suggests that women are financially literate.”
I asked the Scouts whether the organization used a defeatist mind-set. Did cookie mongers enter into the survey with the assumption that girls are genetically inferior to boys in ways of money? I never found out.
In an e-mail, the Scouts’ public-relations manager promptly called me, “a) a known misogynist b) looking for a headline.” (He later apologized.)
True misogynists (and that includes feminists) refuse to see how far women have come. Surveys like the Scouts’, people like Sandberg, and holidays designed to make us look weak don’t empower girls and women. They infantilize us.
That’s not equality.
Reese’s name is now mud
Reese Witherspoon is one Oscar away from becoming actress Tara Reid.
Reese, who won Best Actress for “Walk the Line” and whose latest film is “Mud,” was riding in her husband’s car in Georgia when a state trooper pulled the vehicle over. James Toth, 42, was charged with DUI. Reese, 37, was nailed for disorderly conduct after mouthing, “Do you know my name?’’ Who cares?
Reid was allegedly ejected from an LA clothing store after demanding a “fame’’ discount. No one knew her name. Before long, who will remember Reese Whatsername?
Say it ain’t soda, Mike!
This is not an overreaction by Mayor Bloomberg’s health killjoys. We’re too fat!
The city’s bulging waistlines have led to an astonishing 10.5 percent of adults — that’s 650,000 people — being diagnosed with potentially deadly diabetes, the Health Department said.
The alarming number, well above the national average, makes one reconsider the mayor’s latest ambitious, but ill-conceived, health initiative, recently blocked by a judge.
Banning big sodas might help kill obesity, but what about big milk shakes and fattening fruit juices? People need to eat better, not gorge on supposedly healthy stuff. Moderation, Mr. Mayor.
Weiner as mayor-erect
Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, must really want him out of the house. The junk-obsessed ex-congressman, who’s threatening to run for mayor, last week said he couldn’t remember how many girls he entertained with Twitter pics of his engorged manhood. This means New Yorkers could be faced with even more photos of Weiner’s ho-hum anatomy, he told RNN-TV.
Being elected mayor would solve Weiner’s problems. It would get him out of Huma’s hair, while giving the sleaze something to do other than change son Jordan’s diapers.
How did this get to be our problem?
Real slimed
Has Bill Maher found religion? The Boston Marathon bombings compelled the famed atheist to defend Christianity from an attack by California Professor Brian Levin, who equated fundamentalism with radical Islam on Maher’s HBO show, “Real Time.’’
“That’s liberal bulls–t right there,’’ he snapped. “I mean, there’s only one faith . . . that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the Prophet.’’ Nice to see that Maher, a proponent for legalizing marijuana, has sobered.