Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Patricia Arquette got it all wrong for several reasons

First of all, there is no longer a pay gap—and hasn’t been for a number of years.  A 2009 report commissioned by the Labor Department that analyzed more than 50 papers on the topic found that the so-called pay gap “may be almost entirely” the result of choices both men and women make.   In fact, in a number of cities, young college educated women are out-earning young college educated men.  Someone should complain.

Secondly, although I don’t see a lot of movies, I know they are based on the box office draw of certain stars.  If the women aren’t a draw, they don’t get the lucrative contracts—and they all have agents who do the negotiating. In the movie I watched last night Diane Lane made $6,000,000 for this movie, more than what’s her name who played her sister, or the guy who was John Cusak’s buddy. She probably made more than Cusak, since in 2005 she was a bigger draw. Most actors will fall into the $10 to $30 an hour range with the large part of that is around $16 hourly.  That’s a long way from $6,000,000 ten years ago. Tom Hanks made about $800 for a film he was in in 1980.

And third,  Meryl Streep (net worth $45 million) sitting in the front jumped up and stole her thunder, grabbing the camera’s attention, and thus the nation’s.  What is the pay difference between Streep and Arquette?  Is it fair?  Why always compare women to men.  Why not women to women?  There are great pay gaps there.  Nancy Pelosi is worth millions and Tina who works the cash register at Panera’s will probably never have much more than she has now. Patricia Arquette (net worth $24 million) sure makes a lot more money than veterinary medicine librarians—all of them put together.

“Women don't get equal pay in America, says actress Patricia Arquette, and she blames the Founders. "To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights," Arquette said in her Oscar acceptance speech. "It's time to have wage equality once and for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America." The supposed pay gap has been largely discredited, but never confuse a liberal (especially one from Hollywood) with facts. Worse, Arquette went on to blame the men who fought to secure Liberty and who authored our Constitution. "It's inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries when we don't have equal rights for women in America," Arquette lectured. "And we don't because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn't intend it for women." In the Heritage Foundation's Guide to the Constitution, Tiffany Jones Miller explains, "Contrary to popular belief, the United States Constitution of 1787 is a gender-neutral document. Throughout the original text, the Framers refer to 'persons' -- as opposed to 'male persons' -- and use the pronoun 'he' only in the generic sense. The word 'male' did not even appear in the Constitution until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868." In other words, Arquette suffers from something common to men and women on the Left: ignorance.” Patriot Post, Daily Digest, Feb. 24, 2015

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