Good TV Tonight, Just Like Every Day

In the anticipatory buildup to the Sarah Palin/Joe Biden debate tonight, a latent reality as to the way men & women sometimes view each other has unknowingly been uncovered.

When CBS anchor Katie Couric grilled Palin on Supreme Court justices & decisions and Palin stumbled with her answers, either end of the political media spectrum reacted as one would expect. The liberals lambasted her as a know-nothing bimbo while the Republicans simply called it a non-event, adding that Couric was a shrew for shaping the questioning in a 60-Minutes-like manner. I imagine the truth is somewhere in between, and that in itself is skewed by whether it's coming from a male or female viewpoint.

But it got me thinking, again. When I entered the produce business in the late 1970's, I was amazed at the mass integration of females into the industry. Oh boy, they were vacuuming carpets, answering phones, restocking supply cabinets, even aspiring all the way up to data entry! My goodness, it was a regular Dolly Parton 9-to-5 empowerment.

Seriously, though, it was still the Dark Ages. Pioneers like Frieda Caplan were just beginning to be known as a major force instead of a novelty. My generation, in our twenties, was still single or just getting married and, sadly, light years away from understanding the workings of the female mind. And our fathers, steeped in fedora-hatted produce tradition, could not even conceive of a woman on the sales desk. It just wasn't done.

Fast forward thirty years. Any stigma previously attached to women salespeople has gone by the wayside. Just like us menfolk, there are women sharpshooters, ones with compassion, liars, smooth talkers & even a few pottymouths. It's not a 50-50 split numbers-wise yet, but it's not the good ol' boys network of the frontier days anymore.

I definitely like it this way, but for those of us married to women who are seemingly three steps ahead at times, the art of negotiation takes on a whole new meaning, and I'm hoping I do better at the office than I do at home.

Later,

Jay