It seems a bunch of high profile women, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Beyonce, Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham and even Michelle Obama, have determined that people – and by people they mean girls – should not be called bossy. They believe the word should not be used. That seems a bit, you know, bossy. Being told what words I should or shouldn’t use by a Spice Girl is akin to getting tips on my golf swing from Charles Barkley.
Apparently when a bossy girl is called bossy, that is gender discrimination of the worst kind. When boys are bossy, they aren’t referred to as such. No, they are actually called much worse and are usually quite lucky if they don’t walk home bleeding profusely from the nasal area. As kids, boys don’t take kindly to being bossed around by other kids. As adults, men don’t really pay that much attention, especially during football season, basketball season or baseball season.
But when one gets right down to it, being bossy is actually nothing more than progressivism. Progressivism is built on the premise that the self-proclaimed experts (the progressive kind, naturally) know so much better than the lowly miscreants (we call them citizens) how everyone should live their lives. Every bossy person believes themselves to be an expert, usually about everything.
You want bossy? Recall former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to ban big sodas. Or baby formula. Or guns, especially guns. He even formed an advocacy group called Mayors Against Guns. The problem is that Bloomberg was so bossy that many mayors resigned from the organization. In fact, I think several joined a competing organization – Mayors Against Michael Bloomberg. (Now there’s a cause we can all rally around!)
You want more bossy? Try climate change on for size. They now tell us that if we don’t buy into climate change we shouldn’t own Apple stock and must get out of the way of Virgin Airlines or something. But climate change is a 3-D movie, according to John Kerry, so that’s a plus. No word on whether or not we can keep the glasses.
Then there is Obamacare. It practically bleeds bossiness. No, you can’t keep your insurance because it’s substandard and doesn’t offer all of the great benefits of an Obamacare mandated policy. Oh, wait, now you can keep your sub-standard policy, at least for a while (i.e. until after the next election).
The IRS, its entire mission is to be bossy. As I have stated before, the IRS targeted conservative groups who tend to believe that the federal government is oppressive and overbearing, thereby demonstrating that the IRS is oppressive and overbearing. In a word: bossy.
Here is one last example of bossiness. According to The College Fix, a news and commentary website dedicated to higher education, the University of California at Santa Barbara has an extremely bossy professor. Recently, a pro-life demonstration took place on campus. The demonstration included several extremely graphic photos of aborted fetuses. Professor Mireille Miller-Young took exception to the demonstration. Ms. Miller-Young is a feminist studies associate professor at UCSB whose area of emphasis is black cultural studies, pornography and sex work. She enticed a small group to confront the demonstrators and chant “tear down the sign”, and then she grabbed one of the posters and took off with it. Um, that seems a little bossy.
First, let me state that there have been many women throughout history whose “area of emphasis” was, ahem, pornography and sex work. Seldom did they feel a college degree necessary to perform their regular job duties and responsibilities. Second, perhaps Beyonce, Sheryl Sandberg and that Spice Girl are correct. Maybe Ms. Miller-Young’s actions shouldn’t be called bossy. Now that the police are involved, maybe they should just be called criminal.
Calling bossy behavior by another term doesn’t change the action. Having said all this, I must now declare that I really don’t care. Well, only for the next three weeks I won’t care. The NCAA college basketball tournament starts shortly and anyone anywhere can be as bossy as they choose and I won’t be paying attention.
