February: a rough month for women

LISTEN, I HAVE a joke for you:
Anna Nicole Smith is dead.

Funny, no?

Let me try another:

What’s orange and white and carries a gun?

Everyone’s favorite nutty astronaut, Lisa Nowak!

Really, though, what could be funnier than the stories of these broken women?

Imagine: the spurned space-travelling lover and a former-model-turned-TrimSpa-advocate-turned-39-year-old-mother-turned-grieving-mother.

It’s Thelma and Louise for the 21st century — or February 2007, at least. Except one is dead.

And I can’t neglect mentioning the ongoing saga that is the Britney Spears story — she is currently either in or out of rehab.

Let’s face the facts — besides the obvious and inevitable upswing of Valentine’s Day that came in the middle, it’s been a bad month for women in the public sphere.

My primary problem with the whole thing isn’t the virtual nonstop coverage of these stories — events that have little relevance with respect to the average person — though it does bother me.

In writing this, I realize that I’ve probably gotten away without really offending anybody, despite the obvious tastelessness of the “jokes” I began with.

And that, in essence, is exactly my problem — nobody seems to be taking any of these stories seriously, and perhaps we should be.

The public’s reaction to these stories is largely devoid of any sympathy, despite the clear tragic elements that underscore all of them.

So is this indicative of a cultural misogyny or just an indifference to tragedy?

In any case, it’s no laughing matter.

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