Our society has a lot of prejudices, many different standards to which we are all supposed to conform. One of those is that men, especially those who would lead, must have a deep voice. This also serves to make it harder for women to be perceived as leaders, because as a society we train each other to respect deeper voices over higher voices, to think of women with deep voices as mannish and unattractive, and any woman who projects her voice as shrill and screeching.

It's unfortunate, and I wish it weren't so. At any rate, Bradley Schlozman, testifying before being roasted alive by the Senate Judiciary Committee today, certainly wasn't helped by the sound of his voice:



I'm not making fun of him. But his constant denials of any knowledge of what Leahy is talking about coupled with his, er, unusual voice presents a rather pathetic picture.

Of course, I'm also not too sympathetic to a man who happily targeted minority groups and organizations with bogus "voter fraud" cases in order to put Republicans into office. Maybe I should make fun of him.

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