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Margaret Pilarski

editorial assistant

i'm a feminist, and if you're reading this then you are too, you just might not know it yet. i like to eat cheese and travel, but i'm usually broke and/or spending my money on shoes and cocktail rings. i love dogs, rain, and driving offensively (and putting the last comma in a listed series). i'm se...

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super tuesday blah blah

last night the boyf and i sat glued to the tv to watch the votes roll in. some people were aching for the superbowl, i was waiting for super tuesday... come 10pm my eyes were closing so, very unheard of, we hauled our single tv from the living room to the bedroom to squeeze just a little more election excitement into our evening.

this morning with an ice cream and apple cobbler hangover, i woke up confused by the tv. remembering california, i lunged for the remote to see what had happened.

the anchors were obsessing over exit poll statistics, typical race vs gender vs age breakdowns. but the comment that struck me was something along the lines of “so why is it that democratic women over 45 so strongly support hillary clinton, while the younger women seem to be in favor of barack obama, what is it about that number – 45?”

and then, on cue, the statistic monger goes off on his/her rant about how older women are just aching for a female president, and that their life experiences have shown them more prejudice against women than the younger generation of females are aware of. sure, okay, while this explanation is both 1 – insulting to young women, and 2 – maybe plausible is the depths of unconscious brain sparks, i think there is a much clearer explanation.

that magic number, 45, is just one year younger than barack obama himself. 45+ women, why don’t you yea or nay my thoughts here... but, it seems pretty likely that older ANYONE would rather vote for someone whose experience and age they can trust, while younger ANYONE would likely be easiest swayed by a young, hip, dude whose message of hope resonates with their similar eager beaver greenness.

the older ANYONES probably feel more uncomfortable putting a junior-aged junior senator at the helm of the nation – hell, world. while i would then say that the younger ANYONES already feel distanced from politics when the typical candidate is often in hillary’s age range, so to see a hottie in his 40s, that’s just an easy pick.

i don’t think this is about keeping tabs on who’s been worse off over the years and adding up social hierarchies, i think that statistic was simply about the ability to relate, and i think that was obvious. news anchors pitting demographics against each other is unhelpful when the answers are much simpler.