What That RNC Aide’s Equal Pay Blunder on MSNBC Says About Her Party

[DonViejo]

Michael Tomasky

It’s not Kirsten Kukowski’s fault she only had gibberish to spout about workplace gender fairness. It’s the fault of her party and its culture—and the GOP will pay for it with women.

Just a wild guess, but I have a hunch that Kirsten Kukowski is glad Tuesday is over. Kukowski is a press aide at the Republican National Committee. I do believe I’ve spoken with her on an occasion or two, something to do with credentials. She seemed nice enough.

And so I almost felt a little sorry for her Tuesday as I watched her performance on Jansing & Co. on MSNBC, hurtling herself into enemy territory, burdened with the task of defending her party’s record and posture on women. Kirsten, I’ve been there. All of us who’ve done television have—those moments when you know you’ve got nothing, so you keep talking and talking, saying nothing, larding your sentences down with “you know”s and “uh”s, wondering if the viewers can see your face turning red, praying that any second now you’ll hear the host say, “Sorry, we’re out of time.”

OK, I don’t feel sorry for her. She made her bed, as they say. Besides which, knowing she was appearing on the liberal cable channel and would surely be asked the obvious question of what the Republican Party’s women-centric policy ideas consisted of, she damn well should have had a better answer than that we should study “corporate best stand...best practices. How are, are some of these large companies going about, um, you know, paying men, paying women? And, and let’s have this conversation and be transparent about the need, um, to close this gender gap, but I think it’s the way the Democrats are going about it and it’s just in a dishonest fashion.”

OK, on reflection, I do feel a little sorry for her. That she had only gibberish to spout in response to that question isn’t really her fault. It’s the fault of her party, all those men in her party, all those Southern men and their Southern beliefs and ways. One is tempted to believe that Republicans vote against things like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act because of the demands of their corporate contributors, and that’s undoubtedly true, to some extent. But it isn’t corporate benefactors who make Todd Akin and some of these other men say the batshit crazy things about women they say. That’s culture.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/09/what-that-rnc-aide-s-equal-pay-blunder-on-msnbc-says-about-her-party.html

[irisblue]

1. what do Republicans do with all the brains they suck out of humans?

geez....

[BlueStreak]

2. "Let's find the best practices" of the companies that are paying 77%?

Last edited Wed Apr 9, 2014, 09:37 PM - Edit history (1)

What the hell does that mean? There aren't any best practices when that is the result.

And what is this nonsense about the WH pay? If I understood her rambling, the WH is much closer to fair pay than the economy at large, so what is dishonest about not talking specifically about the WH pay structure when the subject is pay equity in the broad economy?

I couldn't listen to this woman all the way through. Somebody tell me. Did she ever present a plan of action for addressing the things she acknowledged as problems?

[lovemydog]

8. No plan of action

For remainder of the segment she repeated herself. She said some stuff about Harry Reid & the Senate & the President is being dishonest about this and the Democrats are being dishonest about that and let's have an honest conversation about it. As for a proposal or plan of action, no.

[joeglow3]

3. Honestly, our side hasn't looked much better

Sometimes I think the best and brightest in our nation AVOID going into politics:

[Cal33]

9. You may have something there. The brightest, in my opinion, are those who are into the hard

sciences, like physics, engineering, chemistry. Not many them get into politics, I'd agree.

[Roland99]

4. It *is* culture, more than corporate donors

Corporate donors own a fair share of Dems in Congress, too, let's not forget that.

[rock]

5. Why not reduce all males salaries to 77% of their current salary?

Everybody wins! The GOP gets what they want, the 1% get what they want. Er... Let me rephrase that: Everybody important gets what they want!

[Wounded Bear]

6. Just shows to go ya...

if a host/questioner actually presses them for a real response, all they have is Palinesque word salad gibberish and buzz words along the "freedom" line, generally followed up with a tangential comment on something only vaguely pertinent in an effort to change/obfuscate the subject.

They never have solutions, because, well, see below v v v. They're too busy making money off of the problems to think they even need solutions.

[valerief]

7. +1

[dionysus]

10. she grimaced badly at the very beginning, and stammered and stuttered her way through that piece.

must have been embarrassing... she knew she had nothing.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

11. I expect nothing less from these troglodytes.