Steve Earle and Condi, Condi

I was going to make this just part of my last post but I think I'll let it stand alone. I'm having a lot of trouble liking Steve Earle's song Condi, Condi . Now, I genuinely like Steve Earle. I went to see him at the anti mass media tour with Billy Bragg, and he was awesome, and blew me away, as did the whole thing, and then I kissed Billy Bragg on the cheek and that made my evening, if not my life. If I hadn't spent all my money on a bad-job-angst drunken bingeout with my friend D on Tuesday night, I'd even go see Steve Earle again on Friday (oh yeah, and if the one man in Asheville I never want to see again wasn't almost guaranteed to be there, there is that too, okay, I admit that.) I own one of his CDs and I'd like to own more. And I do not like Condoleeza Rice; I think she's a power crazed, lying attack dog on a not short enough leash. The kindest thing I can say about here is maybe she's just stupid and misled, and I think that's probably part of it, but only part.

However. This song is bugging me: basically, I think it's sexist. I don't think it's appropriate to protest a woman in power by turning her into a purely sexual figure, and that is what I'm getting from the song. I haven't heard or read any interviews with Steve Earle; I don't know what he meant, but that's my take on it. FWIW, I have a broad sense of humor and I rarely cry sexism, but this time I am being made vastly uncomfortable. I would love to find out I'm wrong, but I don't think I am, and that saddens me. I admire him less for it. I think, hope, he's smarter than that. But there is too long of a history of dismissing women with power by mocking them sexually, by claiming that they are nothing but their sex, for a song like this to be funny to me. And I have nothing against "women are dumb & evil" songs for the most part, hell, I laughed hysterically once at the Gray Eagle at a song about duct taping your girlfriend up in the trunk of your car - but this song is truly making me unhappy. Damn.