I would never have noticed the Life of Julia if I hadn’t seen conservatives bashing it. And I would have already forgotten about it if conservatives were willing to let it go and stop mentioning it in derisive tones. I share Patrick Caldwell’s sense of mystification about the infographic’s allure for the right. Why are they so drawn to it? If it were the Life of Julio, would they have even bothered to comment? Is Rich Lowry’s “pity the poor thing” condescension just the other side of his starbursts for Palin fandom?
The original idea was quite simple. Take a person of the female persuasion, and detail government policies and services supported by the Obama administration that might benefit her at each stage of her life. She might go to Head Start. She can stay on her parents’ health insurance until she is 26, which helps her pay for surgery. She might need a small business loan. She might benefit from Medicare. Most of it wasn’t gender specific. The exceptions were access to affordable contraception and prenatal services, and the legal benefit of the Lily Ledbetter Act. Yet, this simple infographic not only made the right go nuts, they are still harping about it.
Lowry’s initial complaint was that Julia seemed to have no relationship that didn’t relate to the government, but that was just an artifact of the whole point of the thing, which was to show how Obama’s policies were better for women (and other human beings) than Romney’s policies. Somehow, it became an issue that Julia had a child with no mention of a husband (scroll to bottom). The infographic didn’t even say whether she got married, or whether she married a dude. Even William Bennett bitched about it. Bennett wrote a tirade about Julia in which he basically accused her of living her life as a dependent of the government. Why? Because she had a successful career as a web designer, small businesswoman and working mother? That is such an empty life now?
Back in November, William McGurn took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to ruminate about Mitt Romney’s loss and failure of most people to see The Life of Julia as a dystopic farce. He may have found an acorn with this:
During the 2012 campaign, we conservatives had great sport at the expense of the Obama administration’s “Life of Julia”—a cartoon explaining the cradle-to-grave government programs that provided for Julia’s happy and successful life.
The president, alas, had the last laugh. For the voting blocs that went so disproportionately for the president’s re-election—notably, Latinos and single women—the Julia view of government clearly resonates. To put it another way, maybe Americans who have reason to feel insecure about their futures don’t find a government that promises to be there for them when they need it all that menacing.
You fucking think?
Because what the hell is more menacing than Head Start and health insurance and a small business loan and receiving your earned benefits when you retire?
Someone needs to tell these men that it is possible to make an honest and useful critique of the Life of Julia, which is to say, of Obama’s policies as they relate to women.
There’s a missing /i tag in the body of the diary…
Anyhoo, when I put on my imaginary Teabagger hat, Julia sounds like a real slut who really needs to settle down and become dependent on some man in order to be complete. And she’s not makin’ enough babies.
But in reality, I know and admire many women like Julia. Hell, if I were a woman, I’d want to be Julia.
It’s gone now.
How can you tell when something is gone if it was already missing?
/smart aleck
Republicans hate it because it worked. To their mind, comparing policies is the lowest of low blows. They want, more than anything, to be the sole arbiter of ‘truth’. So they play a game, trash everything, hoping that it gets pulled, then their message is the only one heard.
‘Truth’ is what they say it is, and anything contradicting that must be destroyed as ‘untruth’.
.
I don’t know. I think you are possibly discounting the importance of Julia’s vagina.
it’s always about the vagina.
The vagina, and Julia’s naughty, naughty misuse of it. The right is angry because this was part of Obama’s winning campaign, but there’s more. They’re angry because Obama made it look like “Julia” is white, but we can deduce from her behavior that she’s probably a blah or one of those other colors, and Obama hid it from everyone. Look, her hair color changes back and forth- PROOF!
You know, getting back to the facts, there is nothing in that infographic which precludes the possibility that “Julia” married her high school sweetheart just like the traditionalists believe she should. But there’s no graphic of “Julia” scrubbing the floor or donning an apron, so it’s time for them to strap on their Stupid Presumption Hat again.
But, yes, perhaps it is a bad idea for Republicans to scream out their disapproval of “Julia”. Whatever her marital status, she is an expression of the American Dream. I take pride that “Julia” is not eating cat food in the last graphic.
Where McGurn let’s it slip out that the GOP has been lying through their teeth is when he says “To put it another way, maybe Americans who have reason to feel insecure about their futures don’t find a government that promises to be there for them when they need it all that menacing.”
Of course, the key words are “when they need it.” The GOP always talks about how the left wants to make people dependent on the government. McGurn admits that the left just wants government to be there to provide needed assistance not dependency.
The simple infographic makes it possible for even the the most “low information voter” to understand the benefits of Obama policies – a direct threat to the GOP’s dominant market share in this sector. Secondly it depicts a woman not dependent on a husband, and thus undermines the GOP’s idea of marriage. How low can you get?
Seriously.
I mean, that’s one of the points of having a government, isn’t it?
Even libertarians thinks so, though of course they draw the line in a very different place for when a government should be there for its citizens.
The idea that someone who’s name is “Julia” could matter is funny to these guys, and apparently it’s outrageous to some of them. Julia start a business? Julia contribute to her own social security? That’s har-har funny. Or outrageous They don’t need to explain it. They don’t need to say women don’t count – and in some ways, they don’t mean that. But come on, is Julia going to start a business? Get a sense of humor already.
At least, that’s my experience with my southern male relatives. Women’s names in serious contexts are jokes in themselves.