Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’
But hey, it was a youthful indiscretion. I mean, McCain was only 49 years old at the time.
My first thought would be to tell the knuckle-draggers to drop head. Come to think of it, that would be my final thought on the debate as well. Some in the church argue that it's not the right time to add women. Uh huh, that's right. Shoulda been done centuries ago.
Divisions appeared to widen yesterday between senior Church of England clergy on opposite sides of the debate over the consecration of women bishops, as the issue dominated the agenda at the General Synod.
The Synod has already agreed to the principle of women bishops, but has yet to decide what should be done to appease the 1,300 clergy who are threatening to leave the Anglican Church over the issue. A debate on what special arrangements might be made for objectors to the idea has been tabled for tomorrow, but a final decision was looking unlikely last night as bishops called for further research to be carried out.
Now that Hillary is back in fundraising mode, in an effort to pay off her tens of millions of dollars in debt she wracked up by continuing her campaign to damage Obama long after she'd already lost the race, Hillary and her people are putting out this talking point that Hillary took on the "highest and hardest of glass ceilings." I don't buy it. Maybe because I grew up in Chicago, but blacks had it far worse than women where I lived, and they still do where I live now. That doesn't mean women don't face prejudice, but compare a 16 year old black guy to a 16 year old white woman and tell me who in America faces a higher and harder ceiling? I don't like to compare suffering, and debate who is more worthy, but this talking point is a little offensive to blacks and anyone else still fighting for the rights in America (last time I checked, Hillary could get married.) Also, this totally misrepresents Hillary's campaign, and why she lost. She wasn't the feminist candidate until she saw that she had lost the race and needed a Hail Mary. And she didn't lose the race because of the glass ceiling, she lost because of a failure to plan, and hubris. Name one state in which Obama did better than Hillary because she was a woman and he was "only" black? I had promised myself I wasn't going to let her annoy me any more. Ugh.
Much too often the role of women in the developing world is dismissed or ignored in the Western media. On the ground you see a story that is stark contrast to the preconceived ideas people have about poor countries. It's often women tilling the fields in Africa or Asia. It's women working in factories, such as Bangladesh or Vietnam. It's women weaving carpets in the Middle East or Asia. Jobs that provide the backbone of family finance or food are very often women. Unfortunately, being the bread winner hardly equates with social equality. To that end, it's the women that are leading the "Rice Revolution" in Bangladesh.
Last month, about 20,000 garment workers defied a government ban on demonstrations to demand higher wages and protest skyrocketing food prices, especially on such staples as rice, which have doubled in price since last year. Some of the workers, mostly women, hurled rocks and bricks at police and vandalized factories in what the local media dubbed the start of the "Rice Revolution."
Troops from the Bangladesh Rifles, a paramilitary force that normally patrols the country's borders, now operate and guard the crowded government-subsidized rice shops. Dressed in fatigues, they send the stern message that the government wants to ensure stability.
Bangladesh is among at least 33 countries, many with shaky governments and destitute populations, that are at risk of serious political unrest if food prices keep rising, according to a recent World Bank study.
This beating up women thing is becoming a bit of a pattern for John McCain. Temper temper. Calling his second wife the c-word. Leaving his first wife after she was permanently injured in a car accident. And now constantly beating up on Michelle Obama when the race is with her husband - I mean, what kind of a man gets into a fight with a guy and instead beats up his wife? What is John McCain's problem with women? What is his problem with his own manhood?
What a slug. Leave it to a knuckle-dragger like Berlusconi to attack the positive changes in Spain. Berlusconi might also take a look at the Scandinavia countries who have much more equal representation in government and business. My wife just attended a seminar last week (hosted by a global, prestigious consulting firm) that showed companies with three or more women on the executive board outperform male dominated firms both organizationally and financially. Looking at the depth of problems in Italy - both organizationally and financially - perhaps Berlusconi should be taking a closer look at how women can play a larger role in Italy. For that matter, we could do a heck of a lot better in the US as well.
Berlusconi on the new Spanish cabinet:
"[He] has formed a government that is too pink," reads one. "That's something we cannot do... because there is a prevalence of men in politics and it isn't easy to find women who are qualified for government. Now he's asked for it. He'll have problems leading them."
Zapatero does it again. The Scandinavian countries have been leading the way for years but Spain is shedding its old conservative imagine on numerous social issues.
Spain's re-elected Socialist Party Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has broken his own record for sexual equality by appointing a predominantly female cabinet for the first time in the country's history.
His nine female ministers not only form a majority in a 17-strong cabinet, which assumes office today, but also occupy heavyweight positions, including for the first time the Defence Ministry.
Keep digging. Actually, this is quite interesting since the author of the piece in question, and the author of that quote, is a woman. Can a woman be sexist against other women? As a guy, I'm curious what the women out there think. (Background on this issue here.)
For a period of time, the Bush Administration promoted the war in Afghanistan as (among other things) a place where Western powers could promote better treatment for women. Visits by Laura Bush, in secure and remote bunkers far from the real world, highlighted the new Afghanistan where women were active participants in modern society. Whether there was any truth to those stories is hard to say and not even relevant considering how the forgotten country has drifted backwards in so many ways. When a country invades and occupies another country, it should be assumed that you accept responsibility for its people. The failing country has booming poppy crops, issuing death sentences for journalists and women are worse off today than even during the Taliban. We own this and it's shameful.
Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages.
Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.
One can imagine the level of education provided with this kind of attitude towards women. Hats off to the other refs who refused to go along with the demands of the school to only allow male referees. Knuckle-draggers of the world, unite.
The Kansas State High School Activities Association said referees reported that Michelle Campbell was preparing to officiate at St. Mary's Academy near Topeka on Feb. 2 when a school official insisted that Campbell could not call the game.
The reason given, according to the referees: Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's beliefs.
As if Afghanistan wasn't bad enough, now stories like this from Iraq. What kind of a country are we building in Iraq? Another step in the wrong direction.
The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.
The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.
"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."
It sounds like a funny question, to ask it so starkly, but I don't think it is funny at all. A lot of Greek-Americans supported Dukakis because he was Greek. There was pride that one of our own had finally made it (well, almost). And we knew that it would help our community, break a few glass ceilings as it were, if a dark Mediterranean made his way to the Oval Office. So why not the same logic for African-Americans and women? Yes, no, maybe?
One of the ways war supporters used guilt to manipulate people into wrong-headed views about the invasion of Iraq was to exploit empathy for oppressed minorities in the nation. There are countless nations in the world that would engender the condemnation of Americans if people knew the details of their respective civil structures, and Iraq was near the top of the despicable list. In particular, Saddam's government treated women poorly (if better, one should note, than several other Arab nations), and there was much discussion -- from Laura Bush especially -- about the importance of freeing women through the war.
It won't surprise anyone, of course, to hear that women in today's Iraq are overwhelmingly worse off than before. As the conservative Shia majority gains control of the nation, rights are slipping away, and women are vulnerable to a host of problems and challenges due to the continuing conflict.
In particular, as Salon's Broadsheet notes, it's harder for women to leave the country due to a terrible law preventing women from getting passports without permission from a husband, father, brother, or uncle:
For years local authorities had let enforcement of this rule slide. But now that Iraqi authorities are trying to crack down on forged passports, all passports have to be issued through a central agency in Baghdad -- and that central authority takes the permission requirement seriously. So now women like Rezan Muhammad Ali, who was interviewed by the [Hartford] Courant, are being told that they can't get passports without a male relative's consent.
As you might imagine, this has a hugely pernicious effect upon women living without male relatives. Hmmmm . . . what might cause a woman to lack male relatives . . . oh wait, I know -- all her relatives being killed! Like, say, in a war. Or if her male relatives are off fighting in that war. Or in hiding because of the war.
An idiotic law, an awful result, and yet another consequence of a horrific conflict that should have been avoided in the first place and certainly should be ended now.
The posts are coming fast and furious today, thanks in no small part to all the entertainment of YearlyKos.
Right now I'm taking in a panel on the mainstream media and blogs, which seemed like it would be more combative than it's actually been. The panelists are Jay Carney of TIME, Mike Allen of Politico, Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, and Jill from Feministe. Mike lavished praise upon Glenn and the TPM enterprise, among others, and Jay was complimentary to the panel and the crowd. Glenn threw some grenades, making the point that there *really are* differences between blogs and MSM, and many structural failings of the latter, despite the initial love-in, and now the questioners are laying into Jay and Mike a little bit.
But you know what? The only person on the panel whose work I was previously unfamiliar with, Jill, is perhaps the most impressive. She's being bypassed a little now that the audience is challenging the MSM representatives (who, I should note, are being great sports and savvy reporters by doing the panel), and the topic is turning toward security issues (which Glenn has covered extensively) but every time she talks I find myself nodding. For example, it's a basic but overlooked point, which she made clearly, that the left wants the media to be accurate, and the right wants the media to be conservative.
So while I listen I'm going through the Feministe archives, and it's some really good stuff. I'm pretty interested in feminist issues, as everybody should be, and my regular feminism read is Salon's excellent "Broadsheet." Another one for the ever-growing RSS feed, I guess. For a sample, here's a very thoughtful discussion about the YKos conference in the context of feminist priorities.
UPDATE: Jill wins more points by making the (unpopular in this crowd but nonetheless accurate) point that it's unfair to trash the MSM for reporting White House statements -- that stuff *is news,* it just needs to be reported in context (i.e., "White House says whatever . . . experts and facts belie the statement).
UPDATE II: Allen is just getting creamed by questioners, but he's holding his own, rhetorically at least. Politico is pretty crappy; why does the guy who runs the political reporting sound so reasonable in this context? [Note from John: Because Mike Allen is a real journalist with a damn good resume working for an online publication that's a bit yellow.]
FINAL UPDATE: For those here at the conference, I'll be on the foreign policy panel starting at 2:30 (CDT) in room 404a-c.
One of the finest sporting events just became better. Tennis great and pioneer Billie Jean King laid the groundwork for this decades ago and is obviously pleased with this announcement. There is no reason why men and women should be paid differently. Who knows, maybe the corporate world will catch up one of these days as well with equal pay.
