Media
SHE Should Talk At TED: 5 Ways to Get Started
I get so excited I can hardly stand it when I see women embracing their “power-to” leadership and using the 9 Ways power tools I share in No Excuses.
When it comes to defining our own terms and creating a movement to take action for TEDparity, my “heartfeldt” belief is that women are beyond merely offering an opinion that TED should be more inclusive. We are the majority of population, voters, people with college degrees, and purchasers of consumer goods. We don’t need to be supplicants. And for sure there are plenty among us who have big and exciting ideas. Please share yours here and on twitter @SheTalkTed and the She Should Talk at Ted Facebook page.
If you’re in NY, there’s still time today to register for and attend the TEDWomen/TEDx636_11thAve follow up round table this evening, sponsored by the New York Women Social Entrepreneurs, to discuss action steps with panelists
Read MoreIs This Election Day Good for Women or Bad for Women?
OK, so this is a little blatant self-promotion, because I’m very honored to have been quoted extensively by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz in her column “On Balance, Progress for Women” today.
Connie called me Sunday evening fretting about the Gawker kerfluffle about Christine O’Donell’s sexual and shaving practices. Personally, I said, I’ve declined to write or talk about it because I don’t want to make either Gawker or O’Donnell more important than they are.
So we quickly moved on to how this election day will reflect upon women in politics and impact progressive women’s agenda priorities. Here’s our conversation as she reported it, quite accurately:
Read More“Gloria,” I said. “Gloria, Gloria.”
Patiently, she waited for a verb.
“What do we make of this sexist coverage of women? Why does it persist — even from supposedly liberal guys? How do we change this?”
I could hear Feldt take a deep breath.
Aniston-O’Reilly Tiff Mirrors Gender Disparities on Women’s Equality Day 2010
Posted today on Truthout:
Jennifer Aniston sparked a classic Bill O’Reilly firestorm when she said a woman doesn’t need a man to have children and a perfectly fine life, thank you very much.
Defending not her personal situation but the character she plays in “The Switch,” her hit movie about a single woman who chose to be impregnated by a sperm donor, Aniston opined, “Women are realizing…they don’t have to settle with a man just to have a child.”
O’Reilly retorted that Aniston trivialized the role of men, saying she was “throwing out a message to twelve and thirteen-year-olds that ‘Hey, you don’t need a dad,’ and that’s destructive.”
Read MoreThe Politics of Elder Blogging
Susan Swartz is a retirement-resistant journalist friend who has written a book and now writes a delightful blog, both called “Juicy Tomatoes.” They extol the virtues and occasionally give a nod to the vices of the second half-century of life.
I ran into Susan at the Blogher conference her in New York earlier this month, when she ran up to me after I appeared on the closing keynote and asked me if I’d ever heard the term “elder blogger.” I had not, though admittedly blogging in general has the air of youth about it.
Read MoreWho Do You Nominate for the Bum Steer Award?
They say you can always tell a Texan, but you can’t tell them very much. Or at least some have said that about me.
Though I’ve been away from the state of my birth for almost as many years as I lived there, I have continued to subscribe to the Texas Monthly wherever life has taken me. It’s a great magazine in general, but I especially look forward to their annual “Bum Steer” awards, in which they skewer the high, the low, and the absurd. The intro to the just published 2010 awards reads, in TM’s typically diffident (and alphabetical) fashion:
Read MoreWho Do You Nominate for the Bum Steer Award?
They say you can always tell a Texan, but you can’t tell them very much. Or at least some have said that about me.
Though I’ve been away from the state of my birth for almost as many years as I lived there, I have continued to subscribe to the Texas Monthly wherever life has taken me. It’s a great magazine in general, but I especially look forward to their annual “Bum Steer” awards, in which they skewer the high, the low, and the absurd. The intro to the just published 2010 awards reads, in TM’s typically diffident (and alphabetical) fashion:
Read MoreIt was a year of accomplice apes, bedraggled Bugattis, Christlike Cheetos, dim-witted deli-owning Democrats, egregious errata, fatal foreplay, gun-toting golfers, heartless high school hoopsters, ignoble implants, jackass judges, killer Kims, laughingstock legislators…shameless Stanford, territorial T-Boone, useful urine, vituperative vixens…and zero tolerance zealots.
Daylight Lessons from Letterman’s Late Night Escapades
Guest post By Ellen Bravo, originally published as a Women’s Media Center exclusive.
The author, an expert on the prevention of sexual harassment and other issues of women in the workforce, suggests that human resources professionals and corporate executives take the occasion of David Letterman’s revelations to revisit their companies’ policies with the understanding that “sexual favoritism is sexual harassment.” I’m posting her commentary here because I think it is one of the best and most realistic about 21st century sexual mores for the workplace that I’ve read on the Letterman affair(s). Your thoughts? Read on…
I don’t know David Letterman or any of the staffers he had sex with.
I believe fidelity is the business of only one person, the philanderer’s partner.
Extortionists aren’t whistle-blowers—they’re criminals, and should be put away.
But whenever I hear the justification, “I didn’t violate company policy and no one complained,” my hackles jump up.
Let’s talk about why it’s bad business for the boss to sleep with subordinates.
Read MoreDylan Ratigan’s Women’s Moment
I was feeling better about my neck.
I went to a physical therapist about the neck pain I’d been experiencing. So a few days ago, I was distracting myself by watching Dylan Ratigan’s “Morning Meeting” on MSNBC while I practiced the boring exercise regimen Melissa, my therapist, prescribed. Ten reps three times for each exercise holding light hand weights as I hang over the bed.
The segment led with a rhetorical question about whether this could be the breakthrough time for women. La la. Heard that one before.
Dylan reported the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit was going on out in California. That’s a yawn—I went to the Fortune Summit five years ago. And that was supposed to be the time for women. Though I didn’t remember it making a media splash like this before.
Read MoreBefore Oprah, There Was Molly
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Before Lucy Ricardo, before Oprah Winfrey there was Molly Goldberg, powered woman and media mogul. In this Women’s Media Center exclusive, Emily Wilson interviews prize-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner, whose documentary brings to life the star, writer and producer of the first TV sitcom, “The Goldbergs.” Yoo hoo, readers–Trust me, darlings, when I say you should go to the nearest theater where “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is playing. You’ll find a fascinating story that weaves together global events with feminism, anti-semitism, and the American Dream through the prism of one groundbreaking woman’s life. Enjoy!
Filmmaker Aviva Kempner, in town to receive an award at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, has a lot to say. She tells stories about a photographer who complimented her about her earrings, muses on why her hotel room has a little jar of stones (“Are these supposed to center me? Because I’m in San Francisco?”), and when her brother Jonathan pops in she greets him enthusiastically. Most of all, she wants to talk about her latest documentary, Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the story of television and radio pioneer Gertrude Berg, which she says would make a perfect date movie.
“Don’t go see The Hangover, go see Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” she says. “It’s a great uplifting story for young women.”
Read MoreHow Do You Rate Media Coverage of Sotomayor?
A colleague asked me whether I thought this Washington Post article by Amy Goldstein on soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is sexist. I read it over twice–it’s long!–and thought it was quite engaging. It told me a few things I hadn’t seen elsewhere about Sotomayor’s life and personality. It reveals self-doubts that might not…
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