I was reading Kathleen Parker’s recent column about Ron Suskind’s blazing new book Confidence Men, and her take on the quote from some ladies in the Obama administration about not feeling welcomed in the economic team’s boys club. While most of the article is of the utmost pedestrian prose (as this Kathleen Parker we’re talking about), a revelation was levied that framed everything Ms. Parker has based her career on. The admission is probably nothing to those who could care less, but being that I am frequently exposed to her, for lack of a better phrase, “brain farts”, it made me want to find a window and scream out of it “Aha! It totally makes sense now!”

Ms. Parker admits that she’s worked from home some 20 odd years and really has no understanding of dynamics in a workplace. Be that gender politics, or other. It made sense why she failed as a co-host on her CNN show. It explains how every article she writes seems to have the common theme of someone who’s lived in a cave for decades trying to act like she’s got a modern grasp on the issues at hand. She has no real world experience to glean a constructive critique of reality from. That’s why she constantly appears to be alien on a lot of topics outside her grasp of mere flip flop-ness.

On one hand, I don’t blame her. If I could work from home and not have to deal with conflict that would arise from my buffoonish meanderings fronting as hard hitting editorials, I’d do it too. Mail those checks directly to me, and let me bark at the world from a 10 foot poles distance from anything resembling conflict.

The great thing about this is that Ms. Parker is smart enough to see that now there’s enough room to flip flop on this topic of gender politics. Whereas before she would just shrug it off and tell women to “grow a pair”, she now see’s that her ignorance was short sighted, so she can now understand where women may be coming from with the whole inequality thing. Especially now that it serves some purpose to her.

Being a Ms. Parker column, about half way through she runs out of gas and relates the tale of Mika Brzezinksi of Morning Joe fame and her inability to get a leg up on the show until she wrote a book about being mistreated. Of course this leads to a switch up at the show and a “deference toward the lady of the house is the new rule…but the show could use a lot more women.” Does Ms. Parker not realize that maybe they’re just humoring Mika? That maybe that book did more damage to that “Aw shucks guffaw we‘re one big huggy family” garbage that most morning shows project? For instance, if Ann Curry wrote a book slamming the way she’s treated at the Today Show, do you not think things would change around there?

That’s the problem with civil rights of any nature. There’s that razor fine line where you’re perilously close to patronizing the wounded party and not elevating their cause. Wouldn’t our society be a much different place had we not taken woman’s suffrage and black civil rights seriously? I mean no one’s taking a hose to Mika Brzezinkski or anything, but you get my gist. Ms. Parker is failing to see that line, and in fact does what most of our society does when confronted with issues like race and gender inequality: “Oh I thought we took care of that like years ago already, right?” It’s not a set in stone and done forever, it’s a constant battle of gains and losses, and no amount of book writing to change one person’s place on a morning show of gas bags is going to correct DECADES of malfeasance towards an entire subset of people!

Ms. Parker argues a remedy against the boys club mentality is “more women, more women, more women!” Obviously on top of living in a cave the past couple of decades, she doesn’t seem to see that more women would only STRENGTHEN the resolve of a boys club, and just lead to the “more women” feeling marginalized. This editorial reads less and less a veiled feminist tinged rant (go girls!) and more a veiled republican hit piece coming from a “democrats DO hate women” angle. However, Ms. Parker lacks the balls to out and out say that, she might alienate readers!

The change of true feminist progress is going to come from the bottom up, not from the top down. Most of the heads of corporations and business are old white doods that believe, although subconscious it may be, that a woman is to be seen and not heard. It’s not rampant or anything, but it sill bubbles underneath the surface. It’s why a woman still makes less than her male counterparts in the this day and age! It’s just that the only light shown on this issue is never a serious light, and it instigates nothing. It’s going to take a lot more than “nutting up” as Kathleen Parker suggests to get any real change done. Also, she’s not looking to change anything either, there’s more fodder for future writing here, she thrives on perpetuating the status quo.