She's not helping

I am not that political, and this is not a political blog. I care about issues, less about politics themselves, and the political blog market is oversaturated. I confess to minor blog mission creep, but when I do address politics, I usually reference existing articles or metablog existing blogs. This is an essence a mom blog, and I'd like to keep it that way.

I've not once been tempted to address an issue that's been bothering me, and up to now I'd decided against it. Those of you that read the Post will have read or heard of that awful piece a few weeks ago on how women are uselessly emotional, practically incapable of making rational decisions (particularly political decisions). More research-based pieces have argued that women tend to follow issues less, know less.

I can't authoritatively confirm or deny this phenomenon. As one friend regularly reasons, about our collective national ignorance across both genders, when the people you know can find Canada on the map, it's hard to believe the statistics. Well, most of the women I know are well-informed, and I've run across one or two men who have displayed some stunning ignorance.

What I will say is, if this is true, stop. Stop, now. Put down the US Weekly and go learn about your elected officials (unless, of course, you live in the District, in which case you don't have any). Go look at an atlas; read the paper; watch some BBC news. There's no excuse-- it's your world.

The guest on Thursday night's Daily Show-- talked about defining patriotism not as pinning flags to your lapel but as being informed.

And it does matter-- it's not about obscure facts. These things MATTER. The identity of THE defining, influential Latin American revolutionary matters. The issue mistaken in the clip in the previous post MATTERS.

Should you choose to remain ignorant, however, the least you can do is not make the rest of us look bad.