No Country for Single Women?

Praising Napolitano as 'perfect' for Homeland Security because of 'no family' really a diss
By Gabriel Winant,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 4, 2008 10:12 AM CST
No Country for Single Women?
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, listens to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, left, during a meeting of Democratic Governors, Friday, June 20,2008, at the Chicago History Museum in Chicago. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is at center.   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Single? Career woman? Then you must be a cold, power-hungry spinster perfect for the 24/7 job of securing our nation's borders from terrorists. Or at least according to Pa. Gov. Ed Rendell, writes Gail Collins in the New York Times, who damned his unmarried Arizona counterpart Janet Napolitano as “perfect” to run Homeland Security, “Because, for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect.”

Rendell told Collins that he was misunderstood, and actually was talking about all workaholics. “I have no life either,” he said. Still, it always seems to be unmarried women who get "portrayed as vestal virgins who live only to serve their chief executive," writes Collins. “Instead of being celebrated for their achievements, they wind up regarded as slightly fanatic." Think Condi.
(More Janet Napolitano stories.)

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