Vice president Joe Biden’s latest blunder, handed down during an appearance on “The View,” has raised the hackles of several women who say his 1950s-era image of what women want is degrading, offensive and ridiculously stereotypical.
His words, touting Obamacare: “How many of you are single women with children with a dead-end job … there because of your health insurance.”
He went on: “You would rather have the opportunity to spend the next couple years with your children, [but] you’re not trapped in that job.”
Enter Obamacare, and he said, on The View: “You’re [now] able to make a choice. … Did you know you can get health insurance absent that job?”
And Mr. Biden’s final message to women: Obamacare “gives women a great deal more freedom” and the ability to quit their jobs and stay home with their children.
Crystal Wright, a conservative female blogger who appeared on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, called Mr. Biden’s statements ridiculous and condescending.
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“It’s ridiculous, the notion that women only work for health care or that women don’t work for driving careers … or to provide for their children,” Ms. Wright. “It’s like ’Joe, are you living in an altered reality?’”
Ms. Wright also said had the tables been turned, and a Republican made that statement, the press — and Democrats — would have been howling.
“But the thing is,” she said, “Republicans don’t say that about women. … Biden puts women as, ’I’m stuck in my dead-end job, I’m just here for my health care.’”
Fox & Friends also showed several tweets from viewers who criticized similarly.
This isn’t the first time Mr. Biden subtly suggested that women might be happier at home, instead of in the work force.
In December 2013, Mr. Biden toured a Japanese Internet company, DeNA, and asked a group of female workers if their “husbands like [them] working full time.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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