Power

Politico Arena Asks:

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) plans to send House Speaker John Boehner a letter requesting that the House chamber’s dress code be more strictly enforced after Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) was booted from the House floor yesterday for wearing a hoodie.

Rush sported the sweatshirt and a pair of sunglasses to bring attention to the shooting of Trayvon Martin. However, some members argue that Rush was unfairly treated as it is fairly common practice for members to ignore attire rules.

Is this incident a sign that the Trayvon Martin case has become too politicized? If so, who is responsible?

My Response:

Between Trayvon Martin, Sandra Fluke, and women’s reaction to the Komen Foundation’s epic fail, the world is splitting open and making way for many previously untold truths about race and gender.

In decades of experience as a women’s advocate, I’ve learned people can be inspired to action by one of two things: anger or aspiration.

A roiling, boiling anger is propelling women — even many who’ve never been activists before — to embrace their “power to” to take leadership and make change. They’re making their voices heard over the din of political rhetoric they might shun under other circumstances.

There was no one trigger, rather a succession of insults. I talked with Richard Lui about them this week on MSNBC’s Jansing & Co. Here’s a smattering:

• After 30-year-old Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke was denied the chance to speak about why contraceptives should be covered by insurance…
• After the stunning optics of an all-male “expert” panel pontificating on women’s reproductive health before a Senate committee (also all-male because the women on the committee were so incensed they walked out)…
• After shock jock Rush Limbaugh denigrated Fluke, calling her a slut and a prostitute (can one be both—don’t sluts give it away?) and demanding to see videos of her having sex…
• After bills like those in Texas and Virginia forcing women seeking abortions to submit to 10″ ultrasound “shaming wands” (as Doonesbury dubbed them), an AZ bill requiring women to bring notes to their employers verifying they take birth control for health reasons not pregnancy prevention or risk being fired, and a Tennessee bill that mandates public reporting of the doctors by name and the demographics of each patient…

Women are rightly furious.

Why is this happening?

“Well behaved women rarely make history” ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I often wear a t-shirt bearing historian Ulrich’s advice because people react with a chuckle and it starts conversations. Conversations we need because women’s history is rarely given its due.

March is Women’s History Month, so designated because history has largely been framed through the male lens, recorded by male pens, and thus not surprisingly showcases men as the protagonists and the leaders; women, if noticed at all, play supporting roles (unless of course they take “male” personas, such as generals).

Yet women were everywhere, giving birth to everyone, among many other accomplishments. I’ve often wondered whether, if women had been documenting history for the last millennium, keeping peace and making things rather than making war and destroying things would be the central organizing narrative.

Then, once history is made, it seems so normal that it can easily be taken for granted. When I asked my grandson if he would vote for a woman for president, he responded “Yeaaah” in that drawn out way that made it sound as though I had three heads to ask such a dumb question.

And Sunday’s New York Times front page boasted a photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde—with little comment about what a power shift those two symbolize. Yet, as Lagarde said at the recent Women in the World conference, the global financial meltdown might not have occurred if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters—or at least Lehman Brothers and Sisters. History has consequences for the future.

Women’s History: A Revolutionary Shift

Surely Politico jests. I’m sure you can add to my examples:

Politico Arena asks:

Democrats are raising money with a petition against the “Republican War on Women.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, repeated the jibe Sunday on “Meet the Press” when asked about Rush Limbaugh’s recent comments on contraception.

Now that Limbaugh has apologized, will voters see “war on women” language as overkill? Particularly those who oppose the Obama administration’s contraception coverage policy on moral/religious grounds?

My Response: You’re kidding, right? There’s hardly even a truce.

Rush Limbaugh calling Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute as she asked her university to cover hormonal birth-control and the subsequent fury that caused many of his advertisers to abandon him (and his very lame non-apology apology) was one small skirmish in the much larger and ongoing war on women being waged by an ideologically driven minority who would much prefer that women had remained barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

Just this past week, Roy Blunt and other Senate Republicans sought to pass legislation that would allow any employer to deny preventive contraceptive health services to their employees on the basis of any religious or “moral” objections. As though women are wanton hussies with no morals or religion.

It’s Women’ History Month. Let’s make Rush Limbaugh history. Here’s one action you can take. Stay tuned, and scroll down to the bottom of the post for more every day.

Politico Arena asks:
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has been heavily criticized by the Georgetown University law student who he called a “slut” after she testified on Capitol Hill about women’s access to contraception.

“I’m not the first woman to be treated this way by numerous conservative media outlets, and hopefully I’ll be the last,” Sandra Fluke said on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show.” “This is really inappropriate. This is outside the bounds of civil discourse.”

Although Limbaugh infuriated Democrats by calling Fluke both a “prostitute” and a “slut,” he has shown no signs that he’ll issue an apology.

Should Limbaugh issue an apology? Or will the media firestorm blow over?

My Response: No apology is good enough. Rush must go. Period.

Women have had to put up with his “feminazi” epithets for far too long,

As the Senate took up the Blunt amendment that would allow any employer to refuse to provide birth control coverage to employees based on an undefined “religious or moral” objection, women and men are asking me every day what in the heck is going on—are we back in the dark ages? Why do we have to keep fighting these battles?

I recently had the chance to give my answer to that question when I talked with with iVillage host Kelly Wallace and 2012 Election Editor and Correspondent Joanne Bamberger (aka Punditmom) about the many attacks on birth control and abortion. On her own blog, Joanne wrote:

“I feel like I’m living in the time of Hester Prynne and her Scarlet Letter in light of the ongoing and escalating attacks on women’s health, especially when it comes to anything concerning our ‘lady parts.’ Some women on the right say birth control has nothing to do with our health. I say, “What?” ...are we headed back to 1850 or is this just a blip on the political radar?”

There are unfortunately some people who never made it out of the 1850′s or at least the 1950′s.

Were you as appalled at Franklin Graham’s interview on Morning Joe as I was?

Politico Arena asked:

Evangelist Franklin Graham yesterday called President Obama’s religious views into question, stating he does not know if Obama is a Christian. http://huff.to/xEEBXb

Are Graham’s comments a sign that religious voters are questioning Obama’s faith? Or will the comments lose steam before the election?

My Response: As I watched that interview with Franklin Graham yesterday, I felt I was seeing the worst of fundamentalist arrogance unfolding for all the world to see. Republicans are going to regret ever letting this man open his mouth on their behalf. Every sound bite in his disgusting attempt to create doubt about the President’t religious beliefs made Graham look more bigoted and less like the moral beacon one expects a man of the cloth to be.

His hypocritical endorsement of Santorum (and even Gingrich!) while damning Obama with faint praise showed Graham to be the morally compromised person.

Was MSNBC wrong to move Pat Buchanan out? I think that’s good news, but the better news is that Melissa Harris Perry is moving in. I had the pleasure of doing a practice run with her recently and look forward to the launch of her show this weekend. Vigilant media advocacy for fair treatment by groups like the Women’s Media Center (where I’m on the board) does pay off eventually.

Arena asks: Was Pat Buchanan’s Firing Fair?

My response: It’s time for these men, like Pat Buchanan, Foster Friess, and Rick Santorum to climb back under the prehistoric rock from whence they came.

Hahahahaha. I’ll believe this when I see it but it was fun to contemplate whether Fox will swing left any time before hell freezes over. Can MSNBC’s ratings be that high that Fox is running scared?

Arena asks:Is Fox News swinging left?

My response: Fox is starting to report the news instead of parroting right wing screed? What a thought!

Could this move be related to something in the headlines today, a new feminist channel announced by Alltopic to compete with Google’s, signaling a renewed interest in these issues? Or to the obvious national consensus that birth control is actually a basic element of health care and should be covered as such? Or has Rupert Murdock’s corruption scandal made even Roger Ailes rethink the ethics of running a media outlet on ideology rather than, well, news?

[Photo: Roger Ailes at Fox News. | Reuters ]

I’m not going to switch my viewing habits anytime soon, but it is heartening to see that worshipers of marketplace economics are susceptible to the same marketplace economics. Maybe I’ll be a little less annoyed in the future by television screens in public places blaring Fox newscasts.

Here’s the link to my original post on Politico…

My response to the question above. What’s yours?

If President Obama caves to the Catholic Bishops on contraceptive coverage, especially on the heels of his recent caving on Plan B emergency contraception, he is toast with the wide spectrum of progressive and middle-of-the-road women who elected him.

If he, on the other hand, engages this controversy wisely, he can recast the debate over contraception properly into one about women’s moral and human right to make their own childbearing decisions, as well as one essential to the health of women and children. In so doing, he will be a hero to the 99% of American women, including 98% of Catholics, who use birth control at some time during their lives to responsibly plan and space their children. And well over 75% believe that contraceptive coverage should be mandated in insurance coverage, as it currently is in 28 states and the Federal employees health plan, in addition to being the standard of care in health insurance in general.

The right is trying inaccurately (deviously?) to create a religious freedom issue with a dash of the dreaded abortion debate thrown in for good measure. Let’s get this straight: no one is trying to force religious institutions that primarily serve their own flock to do anything against their consciences. Those institutions are free to do whatever their faith dictates.

Catholic schools serving primarily Catholic students with primarily Catholic staff using private money are different from large public institutions such as hospitals that are run by Catholics but serve a broad range of the taxpaying public with a broad religious spectrum of staff and use billions of federal dollars to do so (think, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal program and research grants, etc.). Those institutions should no way be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage because they are essentially secular institutions despite being stewarded by religious orders.

But look further behind the curtain, the Bishops and anti-women’s rights members of congress are trying to roll back the clock FOR ALL THE REST OF US on existing laws that rightly require health plans to cover contraception if they cover other prescription drugs.

We women are the 99% on this one, and we’d better speak up or we are in great danger of losing all the hard fought gains that were made during the last two decades to include basic contraceptive care in health plans. It’s only fair, and it’s the standard of good health care to boot.

Read the original post on Politico Arena here.