Cowboy Confessional

Hillary and Obama’s bad day is coming at the GOP convention, and it has nothing to do with John McCain.

Down the road in Silicon Valley (yes, this ex-cowboy lives just north of the Land of the Geeks) the libertarian mindset is in full swing. The tech industry is largely unregulated and thus thrives while other sectors of the economy falter. Aside from making a bunch of bucks, the swarm of valley technoids rightly believe they are changing the world. After all, no oppressed people can remain that way forever once they have an unfiltered Internet connection.

More than a few interesting folks have sprouted from silicon hyperactivity. Oracle’s Larry Ellison is slightly more maniacal and frightening than Osama bin Laden, though somewhat less lethal (the old joke in The Valley is that the difference between Larry and God is that God doesn’t believe he’s Larry). And the missed Scott McNealy was a fountain of entertaining flamboyance and acerbic verbal mayhem.

Little noticed however have been the women in technology. Long assumed to be the bastion of maleness, Techland has seen a number of fierce, often brilliant, and occasionally cute female executives who have advanced or retarded the state of mankind (depending largely on what you think about computer technology in general).

Two of the more (in)famous are Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. Carly headed global technology behemoth Hewlett-Packard. Though decried by HP employees who felt the Ice Queen had corrupted HP’s internal culture, some hail her as the company’s savior for realigning their core computer works and taking the lead in the industry.

Whitman founded eBay. Enough said.

Today we learn that both women will address the Republican convention. Now I disdain gender and race politics. A person’s pluming or melanin content should hold no sway in choosing a candidate. In this instance though, I suspect more than a handful of female voters will think kindly of the GOP due to the women themselves.

Carly and Meg are strong women. Steel-eyed and straight spoken, they personify what feminist used to cite as the “self-made woman”, a character to be admired or worshiped depending on how seriously you take yourself. They project to women everywhere that singular character that scares most men — independence. They are an emblem of what relying on yourself and your own talents can achieve. It is the antithesis of the Democrat/Obama mantra of dependence on a nanny called “the state”.

Will disenfranchised Hillary supports suddenly bolt for McCain? No. Undecided women however will see in the GOP support for individual success. Strong women (cowgirls count twice) will get the message very clearly.

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