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.