Thursday, July 1, 2010Opinion

The Brownsville States-Graphic

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Girls Just Want to Have Funds

Calvin's Corner

By Calvin Carter, Staff Writer

Saturday brought some exciting World Cup action both locally and internationally. Lo-cally, restaurant Los Amigos held their own version of the World cup, with a local team claiming the country Honduras as their ban-ner, winning the match. Amazingly, even as the threats of thunder-storms and rain seemed to loom later in the af-ternoon, the football gods seemed to be smil-ing that day.

I n t e r n a t i o n a l l y, you’ve probably al-ready heard that the U.S. lost its match against Ghana Saturday. Of course England lost its match—although very controversial—against Germany who are of-ten regarded as a top competitive team every World Cup.

Not quite sure why that makes me happy. I have no ill qualms against England. Heck, I couldn’t even begin to count the number of musicians, bands and artists over there that I enjoy on my fingers and toes.

I don’t know, maybe part of me is still angry over this bloody Harry Potter craze. You know I actually thought about spoiling the ending of the last book to a group of readers once in a Barnes and Noble. My plan was to have sup-posed to happen during the midnight release of that last book in the se-ries.

However, an ex-girl-friend managed to hin-der my grand plan when hatching the game “Hey where are Calvin’s keys at?”

So that never hap-pened.

In retrospect, Ameri-ca did give birth to this whole Twilight “fiasco,” so really, I guess we could just call it even.

But getting back on subject, with America’s loss, it’s interesting to see if the mainstream American interest in the World Cup this year has waned. Perhaps it was my own skewed view, but it seemed that America took an un-precedented interest in the World Cup this year initially before the U.S. team started drawing and winning.

Look, I think we can all agree that the U.S. was not the favorite to win this year. In fact most of us were prob-ably surprised that we did as well as we did. And maybe that’s the appeal. As Americans,

we love the tale of the miracle or the under-dog.

If you think about it, our whole romantic idea of the American Dream is built on be-ing the underdog. It’s about being backed against the wall, with little chance to achieve, and with no one expect-ing anything out of you, and yet by hard work and the grace of God, we still overcome.

And I’m sure, as bro-ken and cracked as this country has become lately over oil spills, a depressed economy and bubbling racial re-lations that are getting ever closer to a boil, we could have used anoth-er miracle story to heal us, even if it would only served as a small band-aid to a really big boo-boo.

Is this the reason there was bigger media coverage on the World Cup? Maybe a little. But I’d like to believe that another reason stems from the expansion of media itself.

With social media tools like Facebook at everyone’s fingertips,

advertising anything World Cup related is a cinch.

Getting it to the masses is not only easy, but reeks of variety. For example you could have watched games online. And if you have no idea how this whole wacky World Cup thing works, well you could always hit wikipedia while game footage on your computer contin-ues to buffer.

And then again, it’s also a generation thing. Soccer, as us yanks (globally speaking) call it, has been on the rise as a popular sport for the last twenty or so years. For every four or five basketball goals found on urban or city cor-ners, the suburbs have answered with one or two soccer fields. And I feel that number is still rising. It’s still not on the level of mainstays like Baseball, Basketball and Football, but it’s definitely much more popular now then it was during say, the 80s.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see what another ten years will bring.

Sarah Palin, the former office holder, (governor of Alaska) who stays in the headlines far more now than when she held office, is the subject of yet another controversy. No, I’m not talking about the ac-cusation that she has had cosmetic surgery, although several gallons of ink have been wasted discussing the question.

No, the latest controversy involves a statement she made the other day on The Today Show. She referred to herself as a conservative feminist.

You would think she had claimed to have invented the Internet. Reac-tion from self-proclaimed feminist spokeswomen was fast and furious. “How dare she call herself a femi-nist?” was the tenor of almost all the criticism. “She’s not pro-choice!”

Some critics went so far as to call Palin and other republican women who have risen to prominence this year “faux feminists.” They have benefited from the feminist move-ment, so goes the argument, but they have questioned some of the sacred tenets of the sisterhood. They are not democrats, they don’t see men as enemies and they are pro-life.

Of course, there is no shortage of critics on the right side of the politi-cal aisle on this issue either. Palin’s defenders called her critics “Step-ford feminists” after the women who unquestioningly, and adoringly, did their husbands’ bidding in the mov-ies, The Stepford Wives. Doctrinaire feminists, so goes this line of criti-cism, can’t even think about devi-ating from classic, liberal, feminist orthodoxy.

That’s why, they say, profession-al feminists are fuming with anger over this year’s pantheon of female republican stars.

Which brings up the question, what, exactly is feminism? Is it a philosophy? A doctrine? Or does it simply refer to the idea that women should be treated fairly, which they, historically, have not?

Well, apparently the definition depends on whom you ask, but one thing’s for certain. Forty years after the movement’s beginning, survey after survey shows that women are unhappier than ever. Why? Again no one seems to know. Perhaps it is that they, like men, are work-ing harder, much harder, than ever before. Maybe some of them have found that the men’s jobs they used to be closed out of are not nearly so fun as they appear to be on televi-sion and in their fantasies.

Or maybe they are unhappier be-cause the “choice” they fought so hard to win turned out to be a word, and not an option, when it comes to work and child rearing. Maybe

because for far too many of them, “having it all” turned into “paying for it all.”

Life may be fairer, but it is also harder than ever before for women these days. So hard, in fact, some women are looking longingly back at the bad old days when everybody pretended that father knew best. That may be why a new book, Smart Girls Marry Money, has created such a stir. The authors, both women, one a physician, the other a televi-sion producer, met on a playground when their children were two and a half. They noticed, they say, that among the mothers there, only those who had married men with money could afford to spend as much time with their children as they really wished to.

Their solution? Marry men who are financially secure. Romantic love, they argue, is a form of mad-ness that lasts, at most, two years. After that, the financial aspects of a marriage determine, more than any-thing else, whether or not it will suc-ceed.

They point out that it is only in the last 200 years that parents have allowed their children to marry for romantic attraction, and that when the trend began, critics predicted, with eerie accuracy, that the divorce rate would skyrocket to as high as 50%.

The reason? If being in love is a valid reason to marry, then logically, no longer being in love is a reason to divorce.

Psychologists tell us women al-ready marry for money, so to speak. Women, they say, are hard wired to look for mates who will provide se-curity for them and their children. Once that meant the strongest war-rior, but now it may mean the man with the best 401K plan.

“It’s not,” as one woman who was unashamedly looking for a wealthy mate, put it, “that we’re all gold diggers.” It seems that nearly all women agree that a man who makes a decent amount of money and is responsible with it will always be more attractive than others.

But not everyone agrees. “Mar-riage,” said a critic of the book, “is exhausting enough with someone you love — imagine doing it with someone you don’t!”

But as more and more people are becoming really wealthy, it seems more and more women, and men too, are checking for impressive bank balances of their prospective mates before saying “I do.”

Reminds me of something my dad once repeated to me; “The man who marries for money earns every penny he gets.”

Goal!!!

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