On the IWF’s home page, our own Carrie Lukas details what happens when a Cosmo-clone chick-mag whose usual beat is clothes, diets, and sex tips tries to get serious about policy issues. It turns into one of Myrna Blyth’s Spin Sisters, dishing out liberal disinformation and worn-out ideological feminism.
Carrie’s target (her article is also on National Review Online): the June issue of Glamour, which features an article about President Bush’s proposed Social Security reforms, which Glamour, along with the big government-loving feminist ideologues it parrots, opposes. Carrie notes:
“The writer parrots the dishonest tactic favored by reform opponents: comparing only the guaranteed benefits of the proposed system to the benefits promised under current law. In colorful print, the article provides examples of how much individual women will lose as a result of President Bush’s plan.
“The small detail missing from these calculations is that current promised benefits are a fiction, because the government won’t be able to pay them. In fact, current law would require an across-the-board benefit cut of nearly 30 percent once the “trust fund” is exhausted in about 2041 — about the time Glamour’s 20-something readers will be looking through Modern Maturity for advice about what to wear on a retirement cruise.”
“Social Security’s looming bankruptcy is something that serious politicians from both parties have long recognized needs immediate attention. Glamour’s favorite ex-president, Bill Clinton, took time out from seducing interns to highlight the system’s financial problems during his second term. New York’s beloved liberal icon, the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, chaired President Bush’s Commission on Social Security reform and helped lay the foundation for the plan being considered today. The fact is that Social Security faces real problems that can only be fixed in one of three ways: raise taxes, cut benefits, or find a way to pre-fund future benefits, such as through personal retirement accounts.
“Rather than cover the pros and cons of these options, Glamour minimizes Social Security’s financial problems and turns to three ‘nonpartisan’ (in fact notoriously leftist) feminist groups — all staunch opponents of reform. These ladies offer no plan; they merely emphasize the current program’s benefits for women and assure readers not to worry their pretty little heads about the future.”
I used to be a faithful reader of Glamour back when it aspired to more class and less exposed flesh. I still enjoy flipping through the magazine for its monthly “Do’s and Don’ts” how-to-dress feature–especially, of course, the delicious “Don’ts.” Indeed, Glamour’s website features a “Don’t of the Day”–and if you click to today’s “Don’t” (after scrolling down the home page), you can view a see-through black evening dress that looks like a knock-off of the breast-revealing number that would-be First Daughter Alexandra Kerry wore to the Cannes Film Festival last year (warning: much is revealed). Glamour’s caption reads: “Don’t you wonder why she’s bothered wearing a top?”–a question that well might have been asked about Alexandra.
That’s the kind of thing that Glamour does well and used to do more of. But as Carrie points out, the fix that our Social Security System is in is real and serious, not an invention of the Bush administration:
“In just over 10 years, it will start running a deficit and require an infusion of income taxes. As a result of the drain, those taxes will have to rise or the government will have to cut funding for other programs — an option that will no doubt be fiercely opposed by Glamour’s liberal editors.”
As Carrie notes, it is Glamour’s working young readers who will be bearing the brunt of any tax increase needed to fund Social Security as it currently stands. They’re the ones who stand to benefit from the personal retirement accounts that Bush has urged. But Glamour would rather pick up the meme of the feminist ideologues it admires: What Social Security problem?