Filling Diversity Gaps - Joe Biden's Search For The Virgin Mary

Bill Clinton started this whole diversity thing when he said that his Cabinet 'would look like America', and in so doing ignored talent and welcomed members selected for the most inconsequential reasons. Recruiting women for their sex meant that their history of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, a life of pots and pans, diapers, ladies teas, and charitable causes had something to bear on the affairs of state; and that because women see the world through a different lens, a more compassionate, caring, and nurturing view, they will bring people together. 

Feminists were nonplussed.  It was a good thing that the President was making a bold effort to change the calculus of power; but his championing the very hackneyed, patriarchal, discredited notions of femaleness ignored feminists' contention that there is no difference between men and women.  Women can be riveters and garbage collectors or solve Fermat's Theorem.  Choosing women just because they are women was satisfying - it was about time that women got their due - but such a policy stated an inconvenient truth - women cry a lot, are less aggressive, and more sensitive and empathetic.

If women are no different than  men, then open the lottery to all.  If they are different, say it. Say we need women around the table who will challenge men's boisterous aggression and rein in their desire to bomb, shoot, and maim.  Clinton did neither.  He rounded up and corralled good women and picked the friskiest mares. 

The same was true of his recruitment of black people. They are either no different from any other American, as capable as any; or their legacy of servitude - broken families, single fatherhood, Nat Turner rebelliousness, insolence and hatred of the white man - would stand them in good stead  for righting the racial ship, restoring racial balance through a Huey Newton confrontation. 

Clinton did neither and opted not quite for Uncle Toms nor Stokely Carmichaels, but some bland place in between. 

Clinton, for all his righteous posturing was recruiting people only for their race, gender, or ethnicity - to create a nice Benneton poster of happy inclusivity; and in so doing he set the Left off on its current mission of radical social reform. No longer satisfied with a simple palette, progressives had insisted on a Jackson Pollock tableau.  Just a woman would not suffice.  She had to be black and transgender, an inclusivity trifecta.  Gay men had less value because, despite their coming out of the closet, were still men after all; and Latinos of either sex hadn't enough radical cachet - Cesar Chavez was a bit old hat.

The entire Biden White House is now a potpourri of this strange assembly of former fringe members; but Cabinet meetings are not the inclusive, respectful, collaborative affairs the President had hoped for. Diversity was based on identity, and identity was based on solidarity. Color meant everything in the racial struggle for equality.  Sexual choice was equally political, for the fight against sexual orthodoxy was as challenging as that against racism; and the few Latinos squeezed into the room felt bound and determined to expunge the faded notion of farm working, illegal immigrants. 

So the internecine squabbles were something to see.  Although all Cabinet members and White House staff were under gag orders to keep their differences 'within these walls', they leaked their complaints to the press in the hopes of generating public sympathy for their causes.  A straight, blond, white, former Marine was brought in to restore order. 

'What don't we have?', asked the President of his DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Advisor.  The Advisor wanted to expand the big tent to include all oppressed minorities and had been approached by both the Barnum & Bailey crowd and the few well known dwarves in Hollywood for positions in the Administration. 'Little people must have their say", said a former side show manager who had risen through the ranks. 

The Advisor was under pressure by the LGBTQ+ community to move past the obvious transsexuals to include demiflux, muxe, and neutrois people among other choices on the fluid gender spectrum, but had ruffled feathers when she said, "If I choose one, then I have to choose all", a not unreasonable conclusion given the fact that sexual addenda were daily occurrences.  'Then pick a doozy", said a tumtum. "Let's make 'em squirm". 

"What about a nun?", asked the President, thinking of Sister Marie Joseph who had taken a shine to him in his catechism class.  There was something special about Sister that reminded him of the Virgin Mary, not the least of which were the habits chosen by the Vatican eons ago to recall the robes and finery of the Blessed Virgin.  Something, well, was virginal about this young woman who despite her vows was as attractive a woman as he could imagine.  Her devotion to God and her marriage to Christ were only challenges to what the young Joe thought would be an unbelievable sexual experience.  Of course he was too young to know what was what, but still.

 

A nun was truly a distinct, remarkable character now oppressed by the Church.  Vatican II in so many words dismissed them.  Minor characters though they were in the Catholic hierarchy and beholden to priests, they were still in Jesus' favor and now they were no more than ordinary women.  A good, virginal, obedient, and prayerful nun would be a good addition to the tent.  'The only virgins in Washington are in the womb' was the meme on the Potomac, and nothing could be truer; so the recruitment of a nun would be its own, particular trifecta - a real woman, a virgin, and a believer - none of which were even remotely seen at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

The President had a statue of the Virgin Mary in the Oval Office to which he prayed often.  Kept under wraps because of Church and State clauses in the Presidential contract, she was always within reach, and saying a Hail, Mary to her when times got tough was a source of infinite solace and strength; so having a real acolyte of Jesus' mother in the White House would be a way of outing his love and respect for the Church and the Blessed Virgin without causing waves. 

"But then you would have to have a rabbi', said the DEI Advisor, shaking her head in distaste as she thought of a yarmulke-wearing, humorless Jew at the table; but once the President got an idea in his head, there was no dislodging it. And so it was that a Sister of Charity joined the staff, and offered her pretty little homilies at meetings.  She was ignored by most - in progressives' reformist secularism there is  room for religion - and given only a nod as she took her seat; but the President smiled at her often, and invited her to tea.  

The diversity agenda has been completed, and the President was happy.  As much as Sister rankled and upset the rest of the staff - particularly lapsed Catholics who were forced to give a second thought to their leaving the Church -  she made the President, now well in his dotage and spending more and more of his day in memories of a simple, innocent Catholic childhood, happy.