Unfit For Just About Anything

On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 1:26 PM james skinner <yeatsskinner@gmail.com> wrote:

Stephen Moore thinks it’s an honor that Donald Trump is considering him for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.  But with that honor has come a cascade of reporting about Moore, which has demonstrated that he, like Trump, is as unqualified for the Federal Reserve as Trump is to be president.  Moore’s positions regarding monetary policy have been consistently wrong over the years. Krugman  

It surprises no one that Trump has put forward another candidate who lacks the ability for the job he would be responsible to undertake.  Nor is it surprising that this person exhibits similar sexist and racist attitudes that have been displayed in Trump’s words and behavior over the years.  Fortunately, for opponents of his appointment, Moore has provided enough evidence in his written work to convince any decent senator to reject his nomination to the Federal Reserve Board.  

Moore has repeatedly made offensive and disturbing comments about women.  Swirling through his remarks one detects a malevolent misogyny. In an essay responding to the news of sexual assaults on college campuses, Moore lamented the passing of the “good old days” when boys were encouraged to experience the new found freedom college frat life provided:

“They [women] seem hell bent on draining all the fun out of college life.  Colleges are places for rabble-rousing. For men to lose their boyhood innocence.  To do stupid things. To stay out way too late drinking. To chase skirts...It’s all a time-tested rite of passage into adulthood.  And the women seemed to survive just fine. If they were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to keg parties?”

Washington Times, Sept. 2000

Besides espousing a puerile, bizarre and stupid point of view, there reverberates through Moore’s words a vicious contempt for women who have been victims of sexual assault.  Interestingly, Moore’s view of women parallels Trump’s. Access Hollywood Tape  The potential new Federal

Board Governor believes women are “commodities” for men to possess.  And although Moore will deny holding such a materialist’s attitude one could encounter as standard thinking a century ago, Moore has flown his sexist colors unabashedly.  

Writing for National Review Online, Moore postulates the ill effects of women earning greater pay than men:

“What are the implications of a society in which women earn more than men?  We don’t really know, but it could be disruptive to family stability. If men aren’t the breadwinners, will women regard them as economically expendable?  We saw what happened to family structure in low-income and black households when a welfare check took the place of a father’s paycheck. Divorce rates go up when men lose their jobs.” National Review

It’s difficult to unravel Moore’s scrambled thought process here.  Let’s see, when women earn more than men, divorce rates among the white, middle class rise in a pattern similar to divorce rates among those in poverty?  Of course, logical reasoning is the furthest thing from Moore’s mind. His true objective is to malign women and African Americans, to portray them as somehow responsible for any economic troubles.  His is the classic bate and switch: make the privileged victims and victims villains.

Moore’s ridiculous, twisted formula in no way camouflages his sexsim and racism; he fools no one.  And if Republican senators attempt to rationalize and defend Moore’s above words claiming that Moore is honestly observing what he sees in American society, democrats must counter with the other numerous displays of his sexism.  For example, Moore has made clear that he would deny equal pay for women if he could:

“The women tennis pros don’t really want equal pay for equal work.  They want equal pay for inferior work. There’s a very practical reason why Pete Sampras, for example, makes a lot more money than Martina Hingis does.  He’s much, much better than she is...If there is an injustice in tennis, it’s that women like Martina Hingis and Monica Seles make millions of dollars a year, even  though there are hundreds of men at the collegiate level...who could beat them handily.” National Review  

Moore has complained about the media coverage he has received.  He believes he is being unfairly attacked, the way Kavanagh was.  He has whined about how “all it’s been since then is one personal assault after another, a kind of character assassination.”   Poor Stephen Moore.  Well, at least, Trump has continued to support him.  Of course, That’s what one would expect from Trump. When Trump looks at Moore, he is peering into a mirror of himself.  And in that way, these men are made for each other. A perfect symmetry of incompetence, ignorance misogyny and bigotry.