Roe’s Midlife Crisis
Today, January 22, 2008, marks the 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade. If you’re reading my blog, you almost certainly know that’s the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion based on the right to privacy in matters as personal as childbearing.
We’ve kept Roe alive despite a constant tack backward by courts, state laws, and a federal abortion ban that’s been upheld by the Supremes. Meanwhile, in pop culture–movies like Juno and Knocked Up for example–abortion has become increasingly cast, if at all, as some clandestine act that nice people would never engage in.
If this trend continues, then life will imitate art and abortion will become clandestine again.
Read MoreHillary: Get Over It So You Can Get On With Winning
I was going to call this “The Importance of Being Hillary,” but the Iowa caucus results seemed to call for something else. So I did a third “Memo re Hillary”, this time to Hillary herself telling her to “Loosen up, Girl” if she wants to win the next round of primaries. But do read the rest of it here and let me know what you think. Better yet, put a comment at the end of my commentary on HuffPo.
Deborah Siegel, posted an interesting analysis of women and men voters in the Iowa Caucuses on her Girl with Pen blog. I want to share it with you here too because dollars to donuts you’ll never see this information in the New York Times. It’s dated January 4 and the author is sociologist Virginia Rutter; the post title is “Who Votes Their Gender.”
Read MoreHeadline as Haiku
The headline summed it up so accurately it made my teeth hurt: “Republican Unity Trumps Democratic Momentum.”
Robert Pear and Carl Hulse wrote the article that sums up Congressional Democrats’ 2007 accomplishments, or lack of them, in the New York Times, December 21. But whoever wrote that headline gets my vote for the Pulitzer. In fewer syllables than a classic haiku, he or she described perfectly the essence of American politics since the extreme right has held sway over the Republican Party.
The Democrats might have better ideas and public opinion on their side right now, but the Republicans–even when they’re in the minority—still run strategic circles around them.
Read MoreYou Looking at Me?
This is on Huffington Post, too. Some days it seems like journalists don’t have enough to do with their time so they create conflicts out of whole cloth as a form of entertainment. Fortunately for me, I make no claim to be objective. Let me know what you think. Better yet, go to HuffPo and put your comment there.
You know Hillary is no longer seen as the inevitable front runner in Iowa when Maureen Dowd (almost, at least till she gets to her punch line) writes something positive about her.
In response to the latest Drudge-Limbaugh-sexist bloggers’ echo chamber campaign to denigrate Hillary for—gasp!–looking like a 60-year-old woman, when men of that certain age or even—gasp again–older are seen as distinguished and wise, Dowd observed: “Women are still scrutinized more critically on their looks, which seem to fluctuate more on camera, depending on lighting, bloating and wardrobe.”
Read MoreWhy Oprah and Hillary are in This Election Together
Her exquisitely lacquered red nails clasp the lever confidently, six fashion-statement gold bangles punctuating her slender wrist. Though you can’t see the rest of her, if you read women’s fashion magazines, you might guess this is
the smart, sophisticated Marie Claire http://www.marieclaire.com woman.
There’s a good reason why the word “voting” is clearly painted under the lever, with an arrow pointing to it. This woman might well be one of the 35 million eligible women who didn’t vote in the 2004 presidential election. And single women http://www.wvwv.org , we are told by the article, are less likely to vote than their married counterparts.
Read MoreClinton, Couric, and Chris Matthews’ Sexist Spin
When it comes to Chris Matthews’s interpretation of Hillary Clinton’s words—any of her words—she’s damned if she yeas and damned if she nays.
After gloating that a new poll found Hillary losing in a matchup with any one of five Republican presidential candidates, Matthews later in the same program spun her November 26 interview with Katie Couric, in which–like any candidate with half a brain and a quarter of a spine–Clinton showed confidence in her ability to win the Democratic nomination.
Read MoreBest of the Web?
In the you-never-know-what’s-going-to-catch-them category, I was surprised to discover this morning that the Wall Street Journal, of all places, took umbrage at my clever rendition of Rudy Giuliani’s well reported cross-dressing appearance, and cited a blog lambasting me and others as “gay baiters” in their “Best of the Web” section. Well, OK, just spell my…
Read MoreRudy and the Hooker Principle
With some politicians, there’s not a question what they are; it’s just a matter of negotiating the price. In accepting Pat Robertson’s endorsement this week, Rudy Giuliani would have been advised by one the wisest and wittiest of my college professors, the late Bob Rothstein, to apply what he called “the hooker principle”: first, get paid.
Even John McCain, who was at the exact same moment assuming the position in order to snag the endorsement of the more dangerous but less flamboyant Sen. Sam Brownback and establish his own creds with the hard rightwing, extreme anti-choice, anti-gay Republican base, was rendered speechless at the news about the unholy alliance between Robertson and Giuliani. For bald face political two-step, Giuliani has out danced them all.
Read MoreWhen Sex and Politics Collide
My goodness, I go away for a week and miss all sorts of happenings in the world where sex and politics collide.
I returned from my high school reunion, then a week with family in Arizona without my computer or New York Times subscription, and found messages asking for comment on the Portland, ME, middle school that has added prescription contraceptives to its health clinic services. You can imagine the twitter from the self-righteous right who believe no one would ever think about sex if we pro-sex education and pro-contraception people didn’t call it to their attention. They have apparently forgotten their own adolescence (I suggest they attend their high school reunions to revive those repressed memories).
Fortunately, many parents spoke up with exactly what needed to be said: while they rightly prefer that their kids abstain from sexual activity at such a tender age, they want even more for the school to help them keep their kids safe from disease and pregnancy if and when they do become sexually active. The school board voted to keep its policy of providing the full range of contraceptives in its health care formulary.
Read MoreWorking Mothers: Who’s Opting Out?
Friends – Here’s a very timely program starring some of my great friends and colleagues who’ll set the record straight about women, work, and family–who’s opting out or not, who’s staying in and why, and what the media has got right and wrong.
- WORKING MOTHERS: WHO’S OPTING OUT?
Tuesday, October 16, 7 p.m., $8 admission
The New School, New York City
Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
You’ve read the articles–and gotten angry at the debate. Are vast numbers of working mothers bolting the career track–or dreaming of doing so? Are elite women betraying feminism by staying home with their children? Or do the Opt-Out stories rely too heavily on anecdotal evidence–while shoving aside actual labor statistics and working families’ needs?
Read More