Are You Saying Women Are Stupid?

That’s a provocative headline, but it's the only conclusion I can draw from an article I stumbled upon at Huffpo. This article had five “powerful women” tell us what advice they would have given their 22 year-old selves if they could. This is part of LinkedIn’s “If I Were 22” series and it was an opportunity to really show off the wisdom these highly successful women have gained. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. To the contrary, it left me wondering, “just how stupid were you as a 22 year-old?”

● Elizabeth Warren: Let’s start with the best. Warren is a US Senator and still possible challenger to Hillary from the left. She also ran Obama’s consumer protection agency, where she proved to be a hard-left ideologue. Presumably, she’ll tell us some truth about the haves versus the have nots, about main street versus Wall Street or about the nature of political success, right? Let’s see:

“Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected. . . that you are unwilling to entertain the improbable opportunity that comes looking for you. . . [that] you don’t have the fortitude, grace and resiliency to rethink and regroup.”

Well, that's underwhelming, but as advice goes, this isn’t bad advice. Unfortunately, it’s pretty obvious that everyone knows that you need to be flexible in life, that you will never get 100% of what you want. You kind of learn that every day of your life. And those who don’t know that will soon be disabused of their wrongheaded notions. So this is really telling people what they already know. Still, if we take this in a more broad sense, then it is good advice to remind people to always remain flexible in their views and plans and to constantly rethink everything they think they know. Sadly, this is the best you're going to get from this crew.

● Suze Orman: Orman is a television personality and she got rich handing out shockingly basic “financial” information to morons... “Don’t spend more than you can afford.” Suze is also a recently uncloseted lesbian, though she was tripping people’s gaydar as far back as high school. So what choice advice would Suze give her 22 year-old self? Would she tell her how to exploit suckers to sell self-help books? Would she tell her to forget the impossible quest of finding a hot lesbian? No.

“Money will never define you. You define your money. . . . It’s not about how much you make, but the life that you make with the money you have.”

Gee. Who knew? Seriously, do people need to be told this? This is the kind of generic advice that all graduation speakers give and everyone ignores because it's obvious except to that one rich frat kid whose going to go to jail for insider trading in a few years. Is this really the pearl of wisdom that your 22 year-old-self needed to hear?

● Martha Stewart: Martha built a massive business empire teaching women to make their own goose liver pate and doilies for their toilets. She literally built a billion dollar empire based on domestic arts, and then she went to prison. Think about the things she’s experienced. The hurdles she overcame, the trying times, the lows of failure and the highs of success. I’ll bet Martha has some truly amazing advice to give. Let’s see what she offers her younger self:

“Stick with it. Don’t give up. Defend your ideas, but be flexible. Success seldom comes in exactly the form you imagine it will."

Are you kidding me? Stick with it? That’s just the opposite of “don’t quit.” Amazing. I’m sooo glad she’s here to tell people that. Oh, and “be flexible.” Really? So you’re saying that holding out for all or nothing is not a means to success? Does anyone really need to hear this? What exactly has she said here that every human being doesn’t already know instinctively? Advice is only useful when it's something people don't already know.

What she should have said is something like this: “When you present your ideas to people, make sure you have every angle thought out in your business plan” or “take classes in psychology, they come in surprisingly useful” or even “If you’re going to suitcase a shiv, make sure you wrap the handle in leather so you have a strong grip to let you pull it back out.” Telling people “stick with it” is so basic it’s insulting.

● Helen Gayle: Gayle is the CEO of CARE. Call me crazy, but I'm losing hope. Let's just see if Helen offers something other than a stupid platitude:

“Find your passion and hang on to it. Never forget what motivated you to get to where you are today.”

Nope. This is the generic platitude to end all platitudes. It's also asinine advice because few people will be able to pick and choose what they do to find something they will love, and constantly quitting jobs until you find the perfect one is pretty much the perfect way to build a resume that will forever keep you from finding the job you love.

● Sallie Krawcheck: Finally, we come to Sallie Krawcheck. Krawcheck is the former head of Merrill Lynch and owns a professional women’s network. So she worked her way to the top of the male-dominated financial industry. I’ll bet she gives her young self some keen insight into how to handle working with a bunch of nerds who think they’re alpha males! Let’s see!

“Keep a running note of what works and what doesn’t work for you, what you like and what you don’t like, what you’re good and what you aren’t. . . . The chance of the stars aligning on these fronts in your first job, or even your first couple of jobs, is very low, so you’ll have to keep searching.”

//slaps forehead

Seriously? Keep a running note of what you like and what you don’t and then try to find a job doing what you like?! I’m not even sure what to say in response to this. Wow. Seriously, what is the very first question everyone asks themselves when they start looking for a job? “What do I think I’d like to do and what would I be good at?” In fact, I can’t imagine anyone starting a job search or picking a college major or even selecting elective classes in high school without first asking themselves these very questions. Does she really think that this is the advice that her 22 year-old self needed to hear?!! Was her 22 year-old self that dumb that she randomly launched herself into the world?

Holy crap. How about “face time trumps competence at big firms” or “however many hours your boss works, work more” or “finance sucks, get a philosophy degree”? Any of that would be more helpful than “try to figure out what you’d like to do for a living.”

You see what made me write this article, I trust? These are supposed to be some of the top women in the world and here is their chance not only to show the collective wisdom women these top women have gathered, but to demonstrate this supposed "different" way that women supposedly approach the world. Yet, they spit out the same stupid platitudes that every other graduation speaker ever spits out. Moreover, this advice is so basic and so obvious and so well-known already that they aren't saying anything that shouldn't already be apparent to a 22 year-old. What a waste!