Newsweek and Daily Beast editor Tina Brown’s “Women in the World” summit was a star-studded affair (Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, and Oprah, and A-List journalists such as Barbara Walters, Christiane Amanpour, and Andrea Mitchell) and much larger than last year.
But the world seems to have shrunken for these self-absorbed women. Christina Hoff Sommers, who was positively impressed by last year’s summit, reports:
The 2012 summit, by contrast, was intensely partisan: A recurring theme was the alleged war against women waged by Republicans. More generally, the gathering was suffused with the grievances and anti-male vitriol of successful, wealthy American women.
It was as if the women’s-rights activists from Liberia, Egypt, and Burma were there to offer succor and guidance to American women in our time of need. Tina Brown said as much in the Daily Beast: “It is ironic that American women now need to be fortified by the inspiration of the women of the Arab Spring, who risked so much to win basic human rights.” What is ironic, and sad, is that Brown has lost track of the purpose and meaning of the summit, her own brilliant creation….
[W]hen House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi spoke, she had nothing to say about the plight of women in the developing world except that their example could inspire American women in our struggle against oppression. “This is our moment,” said an impassioned Pelosi. The “moment” in question was created by congressional Republicans who are opposed to the federal government’s requiring religious organizations to fund birth control, and by Rush Limbaugh’s vulgar tirade against Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University reproductive-rights activist.
Pelosi urged her American sisters to “have the courage of the suffragists and all that they did . . . and of the women who took part in the Arab Spring.” Expect the worst, she warned. “Whatever the arena is, it is stacked against us.” Her interviewer, journalist Pat Mitchell, concurred and described the current environment in the United States as a “nightmare.”
High point: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comparison of Sandra Fluke to Burmese dissidents. I think that just about says it all, so I’ll stop here. But read all of Christina’s piece. It tells you all you need to know about the small, small world of Ms. Brown and her associates.