November 13, 2008

Camille Paglia, in the November Salon.com issue, has this to say about Sarah Palin in a lengthy piece that also deals with Barack Obama and a lot more:

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan -- nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.

Years ago, I read Paglia's books -- blogged about her version of feminism here. Paglia almost always takes the devil's advocate position on issues -- which always stimulates heated (but worthwhile) discussions.

While I don't really agree with Paglia's assessment of Palin's political potential, I understand that there's always a possibility. Who really knows what fuels Palin at her core; she was played and used by her party and the press.

And, it turns out, it wasn't just Palin who was played. According to the New York Times, both the press and the public were played into believing the lies about Palin put forth by a fake expert and phony think tank.

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

There you have both the power and the terror of the Internet.

Given Paglia's comments and the hoaxers' success, I'm much less inclined, now, to look at Palin as a bubble headed hockey-mom. Granted, she was not ready to be vice-president. But, if she really has any smarts, she has learned from the fiasco of her campaign, and she has learned something about whom to trust and not to trust. Certainly, she had all kinds of cards stacked against her this time.

Meanwhile, here are some links to articles about the phony baloney web site and the tricksters who pulled it off.

Huffington Post
The New York Observer

And don't forget the Times article link above.

The hoaxers' website is here. When you go there, you will see that "Einstadt" claims that he really exists and is not a hoax.

And so we're confronted with the dilemma of whom to trust out there on the Internet.

Whom do you trust/believe of those you read on the Internet, and how do you know their trustworthy?

Maybe it's all just phony baloney. Like the stock market.

October 27, 2008

Got this in an email. Don't know its origins, but I liked the message:

October 21, 2008

Over the years, I've accumulated a following of various catalogs. Clothes, especially, but there are other kinds as well.

But the catalog I got in the mail today is one of a kind in my long list of order offers. And I don't know how or why they got my name. I can't help wondering if someone put my name on their mailing list just to annoy me.

I mean, this is what this slick catalog is selling:

-- a 20 CD set of lectures entitled "The Hand of God in the History of the World."

-- a read-aloud series for children: "How God Sent a Dog, Stopped Pirates, ande Used a Thunderstorm to Change the World."

-- a book: "Passionate Housewives Desperate for God."

WTF!!! I guess their marketing guru never got a look at the sidebar of this blog.

Oh, and then there's "The Wise Woman's Guide to Blessing Her Husband's Vision."

Now I'm grinding my teeth!

In between all of this, pages of miltary, detective, construction, outdoor, and battle costumes and tools for boys. And what do the girls get? Equal pages of cutsy dresses and dolls, baking sets and aprons, tea sets and crochet gloves AND a book on "How to Be a Lady."

Groan. Nausea. Twitches.

And. AND. This, and I quote from the blurb on "Return of the Daughters":

For the first time in America's history, young ladies can expect to encounter a large gap between their years of basic training and the time when they marry...if they marry. Now Christian girls all throughout our country are seriously asking: What's a girl to do with her single years?

This documentary takes

... viewers into the homes of several young women who have dared to defy today's anti-family culture in pursuit of a biblical approach to daughterhood, using their in-between years to pioneer a new culture of strength and dignity -- and to rebuild Western Civilization, starting with the culture of the home.

I have to admit, the writing in this catalog is good, the presentation skilled. And that even makes it more scary. I am not linking to its website because I don't want to give it any additional visibility.

Finally, the back cover:

A Creation Celebration. ... each episode will build your appreciation for the brilliance of God's design and will teach you how to dispel evolutionary myths...

Evolutionary myths!!!

This is one catalog that I'm going to feel great pleasure in throwing into the recycle pile. That is, after I rip off the address label and stick it in the mail with an order to take my name off their !@#$% list.

September 15, 2008

I found the link to what follows, at Women Against Sarah Palin.

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations--how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?--the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

Please do read the whole article by Katha Pollit, "Lipstick on a Wingnut," in The Nation.

"No matter that patriotism
is too often the refuge of scoundrels.
Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising
remain the true duty of patriots."

September 10, 2008

Two young women started a blog

If you feel the way we do, send them your comments..

September 4, 2008

Phyllis Schlafly. Hearing that name still makes me cringe.

This gives you some idea of who she is, still at age 81:

For four decades, right-wing icon Phyllis Schlafly has been an anti-feminist spokeswoman for the national conservative movement.

......Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their "inherent physical inferiority."

......Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape," she said..

She was everything we 70s equal right supporters feared: a woman who had the resources to spread the anti-woman notions of "fascinating womanhood."

The only differences between Palin and Schlafly are age and the fact that Schlafly preached that a woman wouldn't raise a family and have a job at the same time. Of course, Schlafly did not practice what she preached in that case.

Gloria Steinem, in her L.A. Times opinion piece, makes the point:

This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

and

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

The L.A. Times piece also says this about the Sarah Palin:

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

Palin's speech last night was scary because it was a perfect combination of content and delivery. She came across as, indeed, your neighborhood hockey mom who wins popularity as a cute, funny, and entertaining dinner speaker. What she says is not deeply thoughtful; but it is entertaining. Her delivery is so engaging that even non-conservatives might be sucked in by her natural charm and sarcastic wit.

I hope today's women are smarter than that.

Phyllis Schlafly. Hearing that name still makes me cringe.

This gives you some idea of who she is, still at age 81:

For four decades, right-wing icon Phyllis Schlafly has been an anti-feminist spokeswoman for the national conservative movement.

......Schlafly asserted women should not be permitted to do jobs traditionally held by men, such as firefighter, soldier or construction worker, because of their "inherent physical inferiority."

......Schlafly also contended that married women cannot be sexually assaulted by their husbands.

"By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape," she said..

She was everything we 70s equal right supporters feared: a woman who had the resources to spread the anti-woman notions of "fascinating womanhood."

The only differences between Palin and Schlafly are age and the fact that Schlafly preached that a woman wouldn't raise a family and have a job at the same time. Of course, Schlafly did not practice what she preached in that case.

Gloria Steinem, in her L.A. Times opinion piece, makes the point:

This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

and

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

The L.A. Times piece also says this about the Sarah Palin:

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

Palin's speech last night was scary because it was a perfect combination of content and delivery. She came across as, indeed, your neighborhood hockey mom who wins popularity as a cute, funny, and entertaining dinner speaker. What she says is not deeply thoughtful; but it is entertaining. Her delivery is so engaging that even non-conservatives might be sucked in by her natural charm and sarcastic wit.

I hope today's women are smarter than that.

August 31, 2008

Sure, I like the idea of a woman as president or vice-president. And, since I thought that Hillary Clinton had enough competencies and credentials to be a decent president, I was rooting for her.

But I would never vote for a woman just because she's a woman. And I would never vote for a particular ticket just because there was a woman running on it. And I believe that women across America who try to live by Liberal ideals will use their vote to try to ensure that the next president is one who champions those ideals.

I know that pundits, and others, are speculating about Barack Obama losing the votes of women who wanted Hillary Clinton to get the Democratic presidential nomination -- or, at least, the VP slot.

It just goes to show you how little these speculators must think of the intelligence of women. If we believe that the current administration has been an abysmal failure on every policy front, we are not going to vote for a Republican ticket that would continue those policies, even though that ticket includes a woman.

I will admit that, if the case were such that a competent, credentialed, charismatic man were running against an equally competent, credentialed, and charismatic woman, I would probably vote for the woman.

But such is not the case with the upcoming presidential election.

And, especially in this case, just because you're a woman doesn't mean that you champion the ideals that Liberal women hold dear. And, conversely, you don't have to be a woman to champion the ideals that Liberal women hold dear.

Feminists and other Liberal women who had originally supported Clinton, will vote for Obama. Wait and see.

And, while you're waiting, read this great post on that issue on Don't Gel Too Soon.

August 13, 2008

"You say hellraiser like it's a bad thing."

Nancy Miller, the creator of the TNT series, Saving Grace writes:

...Grace, that part of you that is fearless, that questions everything, that lives life unconditionally, gloriously, giving in to a freedom of expression so raw and primal that sometimes it leaves you breathless.

According to the website (same link as above):

SAVING GRACE stars Holly Hunter in an astonishing performance as Grace Hanadarko, a top-notch, forceful investigator whose wild personal life translates into a no-holds-barred approach to her detective work......Grace's mesmerizing journey involves facing both the internal and external demons that stand in her way.

I have never been a fan of Holly Hunter because most of the time I couldn't understand what she was saying. But either my ears and tv reception have improved, or Hunter has had some elocution lessons between last season and this one. I gave up watching it last summer. Now, I'm addicted to it.

You go, girl!

Embrace Your Grace

You can watch full episodes by going here.

August 2, 2008

Thanks to Jim Culleny for his daily poetry emails.

July 9, 2008

Nope, not Rachel Ray. She's sort of the antithesis of the Rachel who has really impressed me recently.

Rachel Maddow, who has her own program on Air America, and has been on MSNBC's Countdown as a political analyst, recently has stood in for usual host, Keith Olbermann (who, by the way is the one man with whom I'd like to be stranded on a deserted island.)

Maddow has the presence and the personality of a true news media star. She's brilliant, articulate, appealing, confident, and down-to-earth. She's also openly gay, and the way she presents herself visually reflects that fact in a very professional way. She has developed her own female -- but not particularly feminine -- style, and it works.

I suppose, if I had to be stranded on a deserted island with a lesbian, I'd just as soon it be Rachel Maddow.

April 28, 2008

Myrln is gone, but his spirit remains with us in the power of his words:

Fathers and Daughters

Little girls are nice,
but we do them wrong
fussing with their hair and dressing them up
like dolls –
teaching them from the start
they are decorative playthings.

Better we should feed them
words and numbers and tools
to remind them
that before women, they are people.

Teach them love and caring and nurture, yes,
but not as the entirety of their being,
else those qualities
become walls and prisons.

Give them, as well, wings
and teach them to fly –
in case later in life
someone builds walls around them.

Little girls are nice,
but daughters who are their soaring selves
are better.

Fathers and Sons

All the time they’re growing up,
sons try hard to please their fathers.
They play ball, follow dad’s interest in cars,
or in building things,
or in fishing –
whatever it is that pleases dad.
Mostly learning how to be a man.

If they’re lucky,
they’re not required to embrace any of those
for a lifetime.
If they’re lucky,
somewhere along the way,
they’re let loose
to strike out after their own interests
and to please themselves.

And fathers,
if they’re smart,
realize that somewhere along the way
is a turning point:
a time when sons become teachers,
and fathers can learn
what their sons became on their own,
how manhood is not a fixed concept.
And say to their sons,
“Good job.”

Then both will know
they did right
in pleasing each other.

William A. Frankonis, 1937 - 2008

March 13, 2008

I think that Hillary Clinton would be damned by public opinion no matter how she ran her campaign. If she had Barack's eloquence, charm, and public persona, she would have been damned for being to theatrical, too smooth, not tough enough etc. etc. Oh yes, she's made too many mistakes in her campaign, but I don't think that's the reason there's so much animosity toward her.

Many American's love the idea of good vs. evil, the bad vs. the good, and they've been handed a perfect opportunity to set up a METAPHORICAL (not racial) black vs. white battle. No grays here (except creeping in on Hillary's battered head.)

And, despite all of the backlash against Ferraro, I believe that if a white male with Barack's change agenda AND LACK OF EXPERIENCE were running, he wouldn't have made it this far.

Oh, wait a minute. A white male with Barack's change agenda AND CONSIDERABLE EXPERIENCE was running and didn't make it.

Perhaps what it all just means is the time is right for someone like Barack -- a moving, persuasive orator, a symbol of radical change from the status quo (symbolized by his bi-racial ethnicity), someone from a new generation who appeals to the new generation. If he could be canonized by us liberals, he would be called Saint Barack, patron saint of idealists.

So often, timing is everything. And, as we saw on Ellen, Barack's got the timing down pat.

And late middle-aged, thick waisted, experienced, tough broad Hillary be damned.

But not by me.

February 16, 2008

I have not been a supporter of the Hillary Clinton campaign, but I was given a good smack on the head by an article by Robin Morgan, which, among other things, makes this point:

So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?

Morgan pointedly criticizes this campaign...

... where he has to pass as white (which whites—especially wealthy ones—adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were black or he were female we wouldn’t be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn’t stand a chance—even if she shared Condi Rice’s Bush-defending politics.

And she reminds me of why I am a devoted feminist:

Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men—though not all the same as one another—and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Morgan's lengthy piece brings the issue of electing Hillary Clinton into focus.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There’s not a woman alive who, if she’s honest, doesn’t recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media’s obsession with everything Bill.

And she ends with:

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.

As for the “woman thing”?

Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.

The above excerpts can't really capture the force and fury of Morgan's article. Go and read the whole thing here.