Can the "dame" think for herself?

I was reading Connie Schultz’s excellent column in The Plain Dealer this morning about Rush Limbaugh’s inept and insincere attempt to find out why women don’t like him and to win them over.

She pretty much nails why a man who calls women “dames” and brands any woman with a mind of her own a “feminazi” isn’t likely to increase his female listenership any time soon. She points out that in response to callers who cited things women don’t like about him, Limbaugh insisted on his right not to change.

“That's the very attitude that has put the "ex" in many a husband,” notes Schultz. (She kindly doesn’t mention that Limbaugh has three “ex’s” to his name.)

What really stuck in my craw, though — and has for some time — was the “disclaimer” at the end of her column, which the paper added last year.

It says, “Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz is married to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.”

While it’s nice of them to note that she’s won The Plain Dealer’s only Pulitzer in living memory, it doesn’t deflect from the sense that they are qualifying her opinions by suggesting that they are compromised by her marriage to Brown, that she is at risk of being nothing but a conduit for his beliefs and viewpoints.

That’s laughable and insulting. Brown and Schultz were in their 40s when they married, with long-ago first marriages, grown or nearly grown kids and, presumably, fully formed worldviews. It’s even likely that part of their attraction was the shared views and values they had developed over a lifetime.

I also wonder why Schultz is singled out this way. I am sure that “reader representative” Ted Diadiun would have a convoluted and patronizing explanation, but honestly, why is Schultz’s opinion less her own than, say, Regina Brett’s, whose husband Bruce Hennes has a media relations firm that has had many newsmaker clients whose interests Brett’s columns have sometimes touched on, at least tangentially? I suppose this unequal application of the disclaimer allows the PD to claim it’s not based on sexism, but it feels like it is. Why the same standard doesn’t apply to Brett I don’t know, although perhaps Schultz’s openly liberal outlook –which Diadiun has, on occasion, mocked condescendingly — has something to do with it. And no, I don’t see why Brown’s holding elected office should make any difference unless Schultz is advocating for a bill her husband is sponsoring.

If we assume that Brown influences Schultz’s opinions and topic choices, we should assume the same of every PD columnist. Tell us what Philip Morris’ or Kevin O’Brien’s wives do. If one was, say, a teacher and the other was a Republican fundraiser, couldn’t that influence their husbands’ opinions too? That she is married to Senator Brown is not a crucial piece of information about Schultz’s columns and it panders to the assumption that a woman will tend to adopt her husband’s opinions. Such an attitude could put the Plain Dealer in the same frosty situation with women that Rush Limbaugh is in— if its absurd overemphasis on professional team sports doesn’t do it first.