The answer is because the Iron Lady rightly said that she did not owe her success to feminism. Thatcher ( a daughter of a grocer) owed every thing to her own talents and ambition. She did not ride the coattails of her husband (see Hillary Clinton) or inherit her position from her father (see Indira Gandhi). Thatcher recognized socialism for what it was – a corrosive philosophy which was destroying Britain and she challenged the unions stranglehold on the nation. Ultimately as the author points out – Thatcher will always be hated by the feminists because she rejected unequivocally left-wing politics and sloganeering.
by Kyle Smith
When it comes to the feminist version of history (sorry — herstory!), it’s hurrah for Gloria Steinem. She started a magazine nobody ever read. And cheers for Billie Jean King, the tennis player who proved a young professional athlete could beat a 55-year-old slob.
Give it up for Indira Gandhi and Hillary Clinton, who proved that you could sweep into power on the coattails of your dad or husband, and by all means let us celebrate Oprah Winfrey, who proved that you could spin mystical mumbo-jumbo, airy empowerment talk and perpetual wounded victimhood into a billion-dollar sisterhood racket.
What about the most important woman of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher, the subject of this week’s Oscar contender “The Iron Lady”? Here feminists get quiet. Demure, even. They let the gentlemen take over the conversation while they retreat to the next room.
Or else they attack her. In her first campaign to lead Britain, in 1979, a popular slogan launched by feminists was “We want women’s rights, not a right-wing woman.” (In her 1983 campaign, the Left boiled this down to “Ditch the bitch.”) A newspaper columnist put the common feminist view thus: “She may be a woman, but she is not a sister.” Opponents in Parliament dubbed her “Attila the Hen.”
“I owe nothing to women’s lib,” Thatcher said, and at another point she remarked, “The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison.”
Yet Thatcher is among the most effective living ripostes to so many of the things feminists say they hate, such as:
* Being judged superficially based on style. Thatcher was said by some to be “sexy” — Christopher Hitchens used the word to describe his early meeting with her at a party — but she largely ignored the fashion game. She stuck with her frozen-nimbus haircut and boasted about shopping for undies at Marks and Spencer, an unglamorous mid-market chain.
* Being defined by a man. Hillary Clinton, standing by her husband amid excuse-making for his legendary adultery, famously said, “I’m not some little woman standing by her man.” Though Thatcher’s husband, Denis, was a successful businessman, after her rise began, no one doubted who was the senior partner. Jim Broadbent shows with his twinkly-eyed performance in “Iron Lady” how Denis became increasingly amused by his secondary role, jovially calling her “the Boss.”
* Getting ghetto-ized. Far from fixating on stereotypically female issues such as the family, health and education, Thatcher was a research chemist and tax lawyer who steeped herself in economics and foreign affairs.
[………]
A writer for the lefty British paper The Guardian harrumphed, “[Thatcher] had little interest in improving the public image of women, or in furthering other women’s careers; she had no interest in peace, or sundry other matters that might be considered “feminine” . . . On a practical level, she improved women’s lot not at all. But for those of us whose world did improve, who saw opportunities swing open and had the background, wealth, education and circumstance to maximize them, she did something unmatchable. Is it churlish if I carry on hating her anyway?”
Feminists will probably carry on hating Thatcher for the twin faults of rejecting left-wing policies and demonstrating their feebleness, but there is a whiff of sexism about the suggestion that a real woman must support liberal dogma instead of thinking for herself.
Thatcher bettered the lives of Britain’s women and men by decreasing income taxes (which were as high as 98 percent for investment gains), defeating the unions whose demands amounted to a tax on every household, decreasing regulation and privatizing inefficient state-run industries. In an astute 1989 profile for Vanity Fair, Gail Sheehy wrote, “People refer to Thatcherism as if it were a coherent, worked-out ideology. What it really is, in my view, is a reflection of her character. The ultimate self-made woman, she has created a religion of herself. And from her character and ambition flow her policies.” Sisters should be proud.
Read the rest – No way to treat a Lady
DEVIL AND ANGEL:Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle watches over US Marines from his perch atop an upturned baby crib in a bombed-out building in Fallujah, Iraq. Branded a “legend” by his comrades and a “devil” by his enemies, Kyle racked up a record 160 kills.
Chris Kyle
by Gary BuisoSecluded on the top floor of a bombed-out four-story apartment building north of war-scarred Fallujah, Iraq, Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is just getting comfortable.
It’s November 2004. Thanksgiving time. The second battle of Fallujah has launched, and Kyle is swaddled in silence atop an upturned baby crib, studying the enemy through a Nightforce 4.5-22 power scope attached to a .300 Win Mag rifle.
He’s feeling badass.
“We just got word that the president of Iraq said that anyone left in the city is bad — meaning, clear to shoot,” he recalled for The Post. “From that point on, every fighting-age male was a target.”
That was just fine with Kyle, who spent five weeks in the hideout, protecting Marines on the ground and bagging seven confirmed kills — adding to his official total of 160, making him the deadliest sniper in US history.
“After the first kill, the others come easy. I don’t have to psych myself up, or do anything mentally — I look through the scope, get the target in the cross hairs and kill my enemy before he kills one of my people,” Kyle writes in his new autobiography, “American Sniper.”
During his 10-year career as a member of SEAL Team 3, Kyle, 37, saw action in every major battle during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He became known among his fellow SEALS as “The Legend.”
The enemy was less complimentary.
In Ramadi, insurgents put an $80,000 bounty on his head and branded him “Al-Shaitan Ramadi” — “The Devil of Ramadi.”
“That made me feel like I was actually doing my job and having an effect on the war,” he said.
In north-central Texas, Kyle grew up dipping tobacco, riding horses and hunting deer, turkey and quail — a cowboy at heart.
[……]
The son of a Sunday-school teacher and a church deacon, Kyle credits a higher authority for his longest kill.
From 2,100 yards away from a village just outside of Sadr City in 2008, he spied a man aiming a rocket launcher at an Army convoy and squeezed off one shot from his .338 Lapua Magnum rifle.
Dead. From more than a mile away.
“God blew that bullet and hit him,” he said.
For Kyle, the enemy is a “savage” — there’s no room for gray, only black or white.
His Charlie platoon even adopted the insignia of the comic-book vigilante The Punisher, spray-painting skulls on their body armor, vehicles, helmets and guns.
“You see us? We’re the people kicking your ass. Fear us, because we will kill you, motherf–ker,” he writes.
The married father of two is now president of Craft International, an outfit that provides sniper and security training for the US military.
He teaches what’s required to take that perfect shot: Study the terrain, correct for elevation and wind, prepare for the vibration after the shot, and keep in mind the Coriolis effect, the effect of the rotation of the Earth on a bullet’s trajectory.
[…..]
He retired a chief petty officer, and along the way, collected an armload of hardware, including two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars with valor.
“That’s just candy,” Kyle said. “That’s not why we were there.”
Read the rest – Meet the big shot