Yesterday, The Irish Times (Irish national daily broadsheet newspaper) published an opinion piece by Newton Emerson, journalist and commentator, entitled "Working women almost certainly caused the credit crunch".
I am a regular reader of the daily paper, and value the inclusion of some columns by conservative, right-wing and sometimes barmy views in the newspaper, which takes a predominantly liberal, left-wing editorial line. This piece, however amusing in its stupidity, is also infuriating.
You can read the entire article for yourselves, which advocates women leaving the workforce so that men can have jobs, but I thought I'd bring you some of my favo[u]rite excerpts:
Of course there will always be a place in the world of business for exceptional women. Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching. But the general employment of women is another matter.
Mediocre men, corrupt men, greedy men can all continue to work, but only exceptional women can work in business. What can one say about the inference that teaching is an offence to masculinity???
[W]orking women almost certainly caused the credit crunch by bringing a second income into the average household, pushing property prices up to unsustainable levels.
The economic crisis in Ireland has been exacerbated by recent banking scandals, but no doubt the worldwide failure of the capitalist free market system has had nothing to do with inherent problems with capitalism, the corruption in industry, banking and government - all of which are predominantly populated by males... (Newton: just so we're clear, this is sarcasm.)
And to conclude, Mr. Emerson leaves us with this puzzling statement:
In short, women were the driving force behind the greed, consumerism and materialism of the Celtic Tiger years and it was female employment that funded their oestrogen-crazed acquisitiveness.
(Note to those of you unfamiliar with Irish economics: the Celtic Tiger was a term used to refer to the economic boom we experienced here in Ireland from the early 1990s until the recent downturn.)
I never realized that my oestrogen was so dangerous.
I have taken quotations from the article, and to do it justice you really must read the whole thing. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll think it's an early April Fool's prank. Unfortunately, it's no joke.
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You're right, it does read like a prank! It could run in The Onion!
The writer is an ass from line one. It opens by assuming that a married hetero man is reading the paper, and his wife is just waiting him on him, slaving over his breakfast. Ugh.
According to the Wikipedia, Newton Emerson, the author of this article, is a political commentator and satirist who runs a website similar to The Onion. You've been had.
It's that "dry Irish wit" thing that got you!
This guy was basically going for a Steven Colbert effect - and he succeeded brilliantly in presenting himself as a male chauvinist jackass of the worst sort!