My friend, like me, married young – at least by today’s standards. We are in our late forties. And our generation seems to be one in which women are making this decision in droves, turning the old stereotype of the male midlife crisis on its head, leaving behind hurt and often clueless husbands who are incredulous that this is happening to them.

It didn’t strike me till recently that eight of the ten divorces I’ve been aware of among my circle of friends and colleagues in the last five years have been initiated by women. In every case, these have been women with children who have been devoted to their families for years. None is wealthy, none is leaving on a caprice after which they reinvent themselves with cosmetic surgery and a convertible. And none is a pop-culture cougar, pursuing her own youth via a younger man in a new version of the classic life upheaval.

For all these women, divorce means that comfortable family homes in which they have lived for decades have to be sold, the material accoutrements of lives pruned and retooled to cram into an apartment with a daunting monthly rent. Many are struggling to bring old resumes into the 21st century digital job-seeker realm. Some have prepped in advance for this day, already lining up a couple of low-paying jobs – front office at their kids’ school, piano accompanist for the school choir – before taking the plunge.

Child custody is negotiated, usually jointly, and kids start shuttling back and forth between mom’s and dad’s new residences. And for the majority of these women who have not left their marriages for someone else, most will be facing singlehood as they approach or enter their fifties. There is the online dating realm to wade into some months later, with a steady stream of not-quite-right E-Harmony candidates to fit in dates with around the kids’ soccer games and prom dates and SAT tutoring sessions.

It’s not a very romantic picture.

Granted, while the situations I am pondering are anecdotal and each is distinct, I’ve done enough casual research since my surprising ‘discovery’ to identify a trend. It’s not just here in my Boulder, Colorado bubble that midlife women are the ones choosing to upend and move on.

Several years ago AARP magazine reported that the number of people ending marriages after 50 is increasing. Two-thirds of those divorces are requested by women. And, the article notes, while women do the walking, men don’t see it coming.

In 2008, Oprah.com ran an essay by Ellen Tien called “Confessions of a Semi-Happy Wife,” in which the author suggests her “Mid-Wife Crisis” is that of Everywoman stuck in a “thumpingly ordinary” marriage who yearns for freedom, novelty and alone time.

In “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” Sandra Tsing Loh wrote in The Atlantic last summer of ending her 20-year marriage, garnering criticism for universalizing what some saw as a selfish, petty move to jettison a good guy (and dad). Yet she seems to speak for many women who look ahead to a second half of life in which they no longer wish to settle for tedium and mediocrity, even if it means venturing into a vast, unknown sea tossed with some frightening gales.

I remember asking my grandmother, as part of a college oral-history project, how it was that she and my grandpa had managed to stay married for 47 years, and her best friend across the street for nearly 50, when each had at least one child who had divorced.

“I don’t suppose we thought we had a choice,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

That’s clearly not the case today.  So what is going on?

I have a theory.

I call it the gender-generation gap. Here’s what happens: you start with a woman who’s a Gen-Xer or at the tail-end of the Boomers, who came of age in a rather heady era in which she imbibed feminist visions of possibility trumpeted by her predecessors, women who had burned bras and pushed ceilings, lobbied for daycare and flextime, hashed out a new vocabulary in which ‘head of household’ and ‘housewife’ were swapped for visions of ‘co-equal’ partnership.

The young men they married in the 1980s, however, weren’t reading advice for career girls or ‘how to have it all’ in Glamour magazine, let alone Gloria Steinem in Ms. The greater numbers of girls who had joined them in college classes was an added bonus, not a social trend to scrutinize. And when they went home on weekends, typically they re-entered a nest in which their needs were cared for by a traditional mom who fed them, kept them in new clothes, did their laundry and probably made their beds.

What we are seeing some 20 or 30 years later, I think, is a glaring gap in gendered expectations of what marriage would – and should – be.  The men who are husbands in their 40s and 50s today — despite being a decade into the 21st century, despite feminism existing in the minds of their children as a history-book relic, despite taken-for-granted rhetoric of equality – are grappling with a world framed by legions of June Cleaver moms – or at least Carol Brady — yet shared with wives who thought they’d be Claire Huxtable.

And when these wives realized, rather quickly after the kids came along, that TV show images were just that, most seemed to resign, buckle down, and get on with the task of getting babies raised and keeping a family in order. All that partnership stuff they expected? Even the best-intentioned husbands seemed to be good at “helping,” for which they are commended by their wives’ more traditional female friends, suggesting they not be taken for granted. These husbands were, after all, a good step more progressive than Ward Cleaver.

But 25 years down the track, it doesn’t seem to be enough. One thing these divorcing women friends of mine have in common is years spent begging their husbands for help in improving things. To listen to them. To divide duties and manage details. To summon empathy. To support their goals and passions. To take them seriously.

In virtually every case I’ve observed, when a woman finally files for divorce she believes she has exhausted all other possibilities for a life of meaning and satisfaction. By this point, her desire to save her marriage is over. She’s already moved on, when her husband is at long last just waking up, slammed out of inertia by this utterly unexpected step – even when she’s raised or threatened it before.

“I want a divorce” falls on male ears as inscrutably as if she had been speaking Estonian or Swahili.

Tien, who like Loh has reaped plenty of criticism for seeming to advocate leaving perfectly good, well-intended husbands, has this to say:

As one girlfriend remarked, it’s the age of rage — a period of high irritation that lasts roughly one to two decades. As a colleague e-mailed me, it’s the simmering underbelly of resentment, the 600-pound mosquito in the room…

In the beginning, we felt obliged to join the race to have it all; being married was an integral part of the contest and heaven forbid we should be disqualified. Flash-forward to 10 years later, when we discover that we can get it all but whose harebrained scheme was this anyway? We can get jobs, get pregnant, get it done. We can try — with varying levels of success — to get sleep, get fit, get control, and get those important Me-moments where one keeps a journal with thought-provoking lists that go ‘I’m a woman first, a mother second, a laundress third.’ We get upset, we get over it. What we don’t always get is: Why.

Conventional wisdom decrees that marriage takes work, but it doesn’t take work, it is work. It’s a job — intermittently fulfilling and annoying, with not enough vacation days. Divorce is a job too (with even fewer vacation days). It’s a matter of weighing your options.

For more and more women, it seems the option of chucking the drudgery of ‘tried and true’ for untried potential is a risk worth taking. Life isn’t over for women at 40 or 50 anymore; as Tien remarks, “We are still visually tolerable if not downright irresistible when we’re 30 or 35 or 40. If you believe the fashion magazines — which I devoutly do — even 50- and 60-year-olds are…pretty hot tickets.”

What worries me, though, is what sort of social legacy will be left by this growing heap of crumbled marriages. There is the inevitable splitting up of holidays at multiple parents’ and stepparents’ and then grandparents’ homes (for some kids – as was my case – parents don’t stop at just one divorce). There is the financial fallout. For every divorce, you’ve got families trying to get by on half (or less) of the resources that were once there, and almost twice the energy and environmental impact generated by dividing those material essentials into two households.

One of two things has to happen, I think, for marriage to revitalize its future and become appealing to women again. Either a current generation of young people needs to get in synch with their respective expectations for gender roles in a marriage, or marriage needs to be rethought and redefined, as Loh provocatively contends, to permit more autonomy and less demand for fidelity, if we’re talking how to sustain a 60- or even 70-year commitment.

As a mother of a 15-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter, I am comfortably situated in one of those ‘stable, utilitarian’ marriages.  I worry about what lies ahead for my kids as they consider such a commitment one day. While I’d like to think my son will be a different sort of husband – a genuine partner, a true equal in all things domestic and relational – he is nonetheless being influenced by parents who fit the generalities I’ve outlined above: an aspiring, frustrated mom and a decent, hard-working, well-intentioned dad who nonetheless strives against the apron strings of his own traditional upbringing.

It distresses me that young men today still have visions of that gratifying lifestyle in which they go off to a great job and come home to a doting wife who makes their domestic realm an oasis. Researcher Barbara Kerr, who studies gender differences in gifted students, observed in a 2000 speech called Gender and Genius that most young people, even those with superior intelligence and higher goals, succumb to society’s conventional image of what constitutes achievement.

Kerr cites responses to a study she did on gifted students’ “perfect future day” fantasies, a favorite vision of what they might be doing in 10 years. I will quote her at length because the results are telling, and disconcerting:

A typical college male’s fantasy goes something like this: I wake up and get in my car — a really nice rebuilt ‘67 Mustang– and then I go to work, I think I’m some kind of a manager of a computer firm, and then I go home and when I get there, my wife is there at the door (she has a really nice figure) she has a drink for me, and she’s made a great meal. We watch TV or maybe play with the kids.’ Here is the typical college female’s fantasy: ‘I wake up and my husband and I get in our twin Jettas and I go to the law firm where I work, then after work, I go home and he’s pulling up in the driveway at the same time. We go in and have a glass of wine and we make an omelet together and eat by candlelight. Then the nanny brings the children in and we play with them till bedtime.’ What’s wrong with this picture?

Women dream of dual career bliss, while men still seem to nourish the hope that they might find a woman who wants to stay home and take care of them and the children. Despite extraordinary changes in the career expectations of women, many college men have yet to acknowledge the changes in gender roles that women’s expectations imply.

Kerr adds that “it is likely that even more men who publicly endorse equity in relationships secretly wish for a more traditional lifestyle. On the other hand, college women have as their goals romantic yet egalitarian relationships for which they have no roadmaps.” Just as their mothers did, who are now driving into a new wild blue yonder with no GPS.

How do we, as a culture, create these new roadmaps?  How do I teach my teenage son what it looks like to be a partner with women — and more importantly, to want to be?

Loh suggests we need to contemplate entirely new avenues, some that may verge into French (and other) territory in which the ideal of lifelong fidelity is put out to pasture to accommodate the vicissitudes of long relationships and the realities of day-to-day life that simply cannot sustain the romantic — and utterly unrealistic — demands we place on it.

One thing seems certain amidst all this uncertainty: now that women have a choice, marriage is going to have start adapting if it is going to survive.

Mamasita! Mamasita! Psst! Psst! Psst!

Taunting, yet playful faces of men passed me by on uneven sidewalks, working diligently to make eye contact. I was lost, again, on a street in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica, walking quickly, head down. Only a few months in to my year-long stay as a business English teacher in the country, the unpredictability of the road and transportation systems continued to challenge even my most adventurous side. When I finally arrived at my destination, three hours into what should have been a 30-minute walk, I sat down and cried one of those long, cleansing cries. I felt dirty from a steady stream of what we North Americans might refer to as aggressive cat-calling or ogling. I was drenched in sweat and tears, and I was painfully conscious of my light skin, blue eyes. Worst of all, I was immersed in a kind of fear that most of my countrywomen never have to face here on the streets of America.

For two steady days, I analyzed it, over and over. Since I could not control them, I turned the focus on myself. Here’s how the conversation went:

Was it the way you were dressed?

Hmm. I don’t think so. I was wearing jeans, a high-cut dress shirt and shoes with no heel.

Were you making an inviting or flirtatious face?

Definitely not. I was scared and trying to act like I wasn’t.

Ahh, so they knew you were scared. That made it worse.

Yep, it’s my fault. Got to stop acting like a Gringa. Walk like a Tica.

How do Ticas walk?

Well it’s different, but I’m not sure how. I’ll have to study it more….

This is only one story. I have many others, more positive and redeeming stories about the privilege of sharing a year with some of the happiest people on earth, the Costa Ricans, or Ticos, as they call themselves. For every bad experience, like the one above, I have at least five good stories to tell of gracious families, patient bus drivers, selfless store clerks, and especially of the hard-working, intelligent students whom I came to love and respect.

But it’s human nature, a primal defense, for fearful experiences to insist on a place in the forefront of our recollections. So when I read the news of Laura Chinchilla becoming the first female president of Costa Rica, I was confronted by both joy and pain. And while I wished for the joy to be so much stronger than the pain, they were equally split. It’s wonderful that this landmark event ushers in an opportunity for Ticos and Ticas to see a woman in a position of power and leadership. But the pain persists because I understand the persistent ‘Psst’ that Ticas have tolerated. They’ve put up with it for so long, in fact, that they gave me funny looks when I mentioned it.

I pay attention to international news. I notice when women get elected into positions of authority. I celebrate to myself, maybe make a passing comment to co-workers or my students. Period. End of thought. But the more you know, the less you really know for sure.

I shut down my computer, as I do every day, but today my thoughts refuse to shut down along with it.

In the U.S. we’ve come to understand that, despite the best efforts of clever election posters and music videos, the skin color of our president still matters a great deal to a lot of people, and the same holds true for gender (just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won the election instead of Barack Obama). So please don’t read a passing headline concerning a country that most people couldn’t place on a map and assume it’s proof that women in Latin American countries are movin’ on up in the world. The fact is that they still face a climate where their worth is too often a function of sexual allure and family-making ability.

After replaying that little street incident in my head several times and coming up with no good answers, I did what I would often do when struggling with cultural differences; I talked to my students. We spoke regularly about language and behaviors in the context of their culture, U.S. culture and international business. When I related the incident and later used it as a classroom discussion topic, there were mixed reactions and nervous laughter. Some were embarrassed that their teacher felt uncomfortable for even one minute in the country they adored. They explained that it was a compliment. (This made me cringe, even though I knew it was coming.) And they pointed out that I kind of looked like a light-skinned Tica because I wear nice clothes and jewelry. They won’t say it, but Costa Ricans are like many internationals – they often think of Americans as overweight people in sneakers and sweatpants. So I received the cat-calling treatment usually reserved for Ticas. Go figure. Other students were silent for a moment, ashamed of the cultural reality and not knowing how it could be fixed (or even how to articulate their feelings on such complex subjects in their first language, let alone in their second).

That discussion paved the way to a safe place where we could openly talk about other tough subjects. Why were there job ads that openly advertised for people between the ages of 19 and 29? Why was it so hard for a woman to be hired into a professional position if she was over 35? Why did the mannequins in the clothing stores have triple-D sized breasts and a whole lot of ‘junk in the trunk’ (an American idiom they heard someone joking about in the office)? Could a woman really be effective as the president of the country? Was she in a lose/lose situation? Was she being elected just because she had the support of Oscar Arias? What if Chinchilla was unattractive? Would she have a chance at winning then?

And here is what we might have talked about today in class: Why does the most-read daily newspaper in the country announce Laura Chinchilla’s presidential victory on the cover and include at least three photos of pin-up girls on Page 3?

Slowly, a few of my students would find their voices. They knew what was happening. They felt trapped by the complexities of their own culture. They said they knew it wasn’t okay and that they were examples of men and women who didn’t believe or act that way. They were right.

So today I offer a bipartisan Salud! to Laura Chinchilla and Barack Obama for aspiring to positions of leadership despite their difficult minority status. I choose to believe still that these are important evolutionary moments in the progress of our world. There’s not a quick fix, and it certainly doesn’t mean we ignore the decisions they make – women and racial minorities make mistakes, too. But I’d like to send out an even bigger Salud! to my students, who remind me that it is still everyday folks talking about tough questions and serving as their own role models who will help us eliminate, eventually, the cat-calling, name-calling, blame-gaming and fear-mongering.

Leave it to the Ticos, a people free from a wealthy nation’s propensity for pontification, to remind us that life can be that simple even in its complexity.

Shelley Jack returned to the U.S. in August of 2009. She now works as a freelancer and adjunct professor specializing in digital marketing, her career path before the Costa Rican hiatus.

I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. I further believe that their right to express their group disapproval stops absolutely short of causing their chosen bugaboo any actual harm… as in, breaking the laws enacted by the larger secular state in order to protect all its citizens.  Those laws, we hope, evolve in specificity and efficacy as our understanding of what constitutes demonstrable societal or individual harm evolves as well. The American legal system has always possessed the power to control, modify or ban religious practices on these grounds: for example, in direct contradiction of Biblical precedent and many current religious beliefs, women are no longer owned by their husbands, twelve-year-old girls are off limits and public stoning for adultery has been replaced by Facebook flaming.

Another example: the general population, excluding certain Louisiana JOP’s, has eventually come to understand that a union between two people of differing overall skin pigmentation does not lead to apocalyptic plagues or children with multiple heads (also, that allowing humans to own other humans is a damaging economic construct, not to mention leading to some rather hard feelings in general). Had the original Southern Baptist Conference (and by “original,” I mean the SBC from 1845 until 1995) been able to retain a state-sanctioned grasp on the laws of the Southern states, slavery would still be legal, “miscegenation” would still be a crime and hundreds of thousands of lawn jockeys would still be on proud display across the land of Dixie. The Southern Baptist Conference was created to support these ideas: in defiance of the views of other Baptist congregations, but with the full support of Messieurs Leviticus and Nehemiah, to name only two. The Old Testament is all for concubines, slaves and massacres, but not intermarriage among tribes. Is this our best authority on human relations?

And what about the endless variations on marriage sanctioned by religions just as legitimate as Decent Christians Everywhere Inc? Why aren’t we respecting their traditions? Why are we letting widows remarry, those whores (Hinduism)? Why aren’t we letting Islamic American men who can afford it collect the four wives to whom they’re entitled? Who’s in charge here? The Founding Fathers, those whacked-out Deists, should have left us some instructions about which religion is right so we would know whose tenets to make law… oh. Wait. They did mention it. NONE OF THEM.

In a democratically-based society, the general idea is that we don’t let small groups dictate to everyone, in the belief that time, evolving understanding and the collective better judgment of a larger group of citizens usually works out better for everyone.  When small groups, or large groups, or individual states or Bible-beating rednecks do attempt to tar and feather someone, we can take their asses to courts which represent successively larger segments of the population and hope that somewhere along the line, better judgment and better education will prevail.

I don’t give a damn what happens in anyone’s church if the law isn’t being broken, if children aren’t being abused, if the Kool-Aid is untainted. And if a particular religious sect decided that I was by nature a lesser human being, I think I’d leave. Wait, make that I know I’d leave – that’s essentially why I don’t consider organized religion a tool that’s safe for most people to play with.  Any system of thought which approves and allows the dehumanization of certain other humans is risky stuff.

No religion owns marriage: the concept, the reality or the word itself. Religions have their own variations on the theme and every right to them. Marry (or don’t) anyone that you like (or hate (or sadly but firmly condemn)). Your religious definition, Ms. Christian or Mr. Sikh (and you do NOT want to go to the dictionary on this), is yours to live by. But please try to understand: pair-bonding predates religion; stable, wealth-creating, ably-parenting households are the true and demonstrable societal benefit of such bonds; and there’s not one iota of real evidence that a pair of the same gender doesn’t work just as well… and your talking shrubbery or flaming cow, while inspirational and possibly entirely real, is no excuse for ignoring science, history and simple justice.

I’d like to be writing about clean energy or debating health care policy. I wish I could add something astute to the discussion about the future of democracy in Iran. But to do so would mean investing the time to follow these issues closely enough to have something worthwhile to add. And then there’s the time needed to actually write something. I’ve already got four or five unfinished posts languishing on my laptop.

Yet, in the words of my 14-year-old son this morning, who is angry at my asking him to pitch in around the house prior to the arrival of weekend guests, and who can’t understand why I won’t just drop everything to pick him up from the lake with his friends later today, I don’t have a “real job” — so why can’t I be like a good stay-at-home mom and craft my life exclusively around his? If I didn’t have work to play at, I could keep the house up by myself and still have time to provide unlimited taxi service. He can’t understand why, if Dad is a doctor, I still “have to work.” (Never mind that my husband is a family physician in a small, self-owned private practice in a very affluent community – which makes us solidly middle-class amid the wealth of Boulder). My son thinks I ask him to do too much in exchange for offering too little – at least in comparison to most of his friends, whose mothers are not so audacious as to work.

No doubt his barbed comment struck too sharp a chord in me. It is too often I who question whether I have a “real job.” I mostly freelance, as a copywriter and editor. This past year, it’s been full time, which is why I’ve had to shortchange this blog, despite the gratification it’s provided for me intellectually and as a really-wanna-be journalist. On top of that, I teach off and on as an adjunct at the University of Colorado, where I finished a Ph.D. over a decade ago. No, I don’t have a “normal job with an office,” as my son pointed out. Nor benefits. Despite protestations, I don’t even get an “exclusively mine” desk at home – everyone’s always encroaching on it. Unlike more highly esteemed grad school peers, I did not pursue a tenure-track position, since I did not see how it could possibly fit with the life I had by the time I graduated, with a toddler and an infant and a husband who was often on call and never gets home till 6:30 or 7:00.

As a high school political junkie I had a T-shirt that said “A woman’s place is in the House…and Senate.” I grew up in the heady feminist days of the 1970s believing that, and believing that I could be a success in the house (small “h”) and the public sphere as well. Both, I felt, were integral to the life I wanted to craft as a woman.

I’ve done my best to cobble together a sorry-looking version of “having it all,” which means a half-assed pseudo-career; a lot of guilt about being a mother who is only half there, half the time, for her children; a house that despite my best, often solo, efforts to keep semi-ordered, usually looks like a small tornado blew through – and a chronic level of stress and sleep deprivation, not to mention perpetual frustration over not being able to do any of what I do as well as I could have if I were more singularly devoted.

Why didn’t I get a full-time nanny so I could pursue the full-time career? Which, theoretically, I might make enough at (though likely not, as an academic or journalist) to afford a housekeeper to do all the scut work I resent? I didn’t, because I chose to be a mom, and I felt it was better for my kids if they had at least one parent available to them at more than just breakfast and bedtime. And since my husband makes substantially more money than I am able to, it makes sense for him to be the primary earner. But what I didn’t know, when I made that seemingly obvious choice back when to “do it all,” is how hard it would be, and how little valued I would feel on every front, not least in my own estimation. (And yes, I realize these are the quandaries of a privileged Western woman – but that is my culture.)

The struggles that American women – and we are still talking primarily about women — continue to face as they pursue a multiplicity of identities, particularly parent versus professional, are every bit as relevant, entrenched and seemingly insoluble as they were when I graduated from high school nearly three decades ago. My conclusion, almost 15 years into parenthood, 11 years post-Ph.D. and the entirety of that time spent negotiating the “juggling act,” is that little has changed for women. I bought that whole ‘80s bill of goods that you can have it all and do it all well, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a load of crap. The reality is, in the vast majority of situations, that as a woman today you still must foreground either family or work or suffer the fallout of trying to combine them.

My husband gets to leave the house every day and go to a job that, while taxing, is still gratifying and comes with a good measure of status. He doesn’t worry about whether there’ll be clean underwear for the next morning or (imagine!) whether the kids will have clean underwear. He doesn’t think about what they’ll eat for lunch or negotiate daily battles with them over fruits and vegetables versus pop and ice cream. He doesn’t have to interrupt his day multiple times to admonish them to turn off the TV or the computer and do something more productive, or summon the emotional energy necessary to brace for yet another conflict if he dares ask them to unload the dishwasher, vacuum the cat hair off the sofa, or wipe the splatter off the bathroom mirror. He doesn’t stress about how he’ll make his 5:00 deadline if he has to leave to go pick up his son who accuses his mother of being a “micromanager” if she has the gall to ask him to pin down what time his social occasion might wind up, so she can work around it – even though she doesn’t really “work,” in his youthful appraisal.

I’ve had well-meaning individuals give me two versions of advice. The more traditional set says, “This is just a season. The kids will be grown before you know it (they will – and that’s also why the attitude issues and constant conflict hurt so much); make them your focus, don’t worry about work – there’ll be time for that” — as if it’s just a little hobby. The others say, “Just don’t do it.” Let the house go. Let them worry about their own laundry. Let them eat as much junk as they please. Forgot about monitoring grades; it’s their future. Don’t worry if your husband’s parents get birthday cards or Christmas presents – it’s not up to you.

There is truth in both perspectives. But I can’t seem to embrace either. I remain torn in a maelstrom of expectations: to nurture these children I’ve brought into the world and to keep a semblance of domestic order, since I have this flexible schedule and work at home. And also to use this able brain I was born with, this analytical mind, this creative energy that, even if I were to try to subordinate, will not be repressed. Despite my son’s puzzlement, I don’t work because I “have to,” to make ends meet. I have a luxury in that regard (though he might not be skiing and traveling like his peers, were that not the case).

What I’m holding out for, I guess, is that it won’t be all over for me by the time I hit 50. Once my kids are off to college, my time-balance should shift. What I’m clinging to is the hope that society might have changed enough since the early days of feminism so that midlife women can make fresh, vital contributions and be rewarded for them with the pay and status they deserve, even if they’ve chosen, by default, the silly-sounding Mommy Track.

Am I a fool to have such faith? If the past 30-40 years of feminism’s limited accomplishments are any indicator, maybe so. As long as we live in a culture in which privileged 14-year-old boys see their mother’s choice to work as self-indulgent, progress seems elusive. But I’m also holding out hope that by making the choices I have – not to abandon my children, as so many in my generation were through divorce or neglect, and not to forsake my own gifts and goals – my son and his younger sister may grow up to see the value of both sets of commitments. Whether society will evolve to support women so that they can combine them more effectively is another matter.

Wendy Redal hopes to post more regularly in the future, with a focus on the politics of everyday culture.

This extraordinary woman has dedicated her life to seeking the truth for the benefit of all humanity. Often described as the First Lady of American journalism, Ms. Thomas has practiced her profession for sixty-seven years. She has been a pioneer – the first woman appointed Chief White House Correspondent for United Press International (UPI) and the only female print journalist to accompany President Nixon to China on his historic trip in 1972. Ms. Thomas was also the first female officer of the National Press Club, first female member (later president) of the White House Correspondents Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club. After 57 years with UPI, she resigned to join the Hearst Newspapers as a columnist writing on national affairs and the White House.

The senior member of the White House Press Corps, Ms. Thomas has known and questioned every president since Kennedy in 1961 and written four books about her tenure. She holds the distinction of having the only chair in the White House press room labeled not with the name of her employer, but with her own name.

Helen Thomas’ amazing career has not been without controversy. She is known for direct and pointed questions. After a lifetime censoring her own opinions, she gave an off-the-record comment to the Daily Breeze in Torrance, California, calling George W. Bush the “worst President in American history.” When then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer confirmed she had said it, she lost her prestigious front-row position in the press briefing room and was moved to the back row. Ms. Thomas’ ostracism came at a very crucial moment in 2003 as President Bush gave a press conference in which he told the reporters that America was on the verge of war. Ms. Thomas recalls that no reporters within view of the President asked him why, and the President did not call on her from the back of the room.

Ms. Thomas wrote a polite note to President Bush apologizing for calling him the worst President. He graciously replied, then called on her at the next press conference. True to her profession, she took the opening and asked him then, “Why did we go to war?” After that, she said, she was put in the deep freeze.

Ms. Thomas has also spoken candidly about what she sees as the degradation of the White House press itself. A famous incident came in April 2008 when the White House finally acknowledged the US had tortured suspected terrorists. When not one reporter questioned why President Bush had earlier denied using torture, Ms. Thomas asked her fellow reporters, “Where is everybody?”

She received 50 bouquets of flowers and cards from her colleagues saying, in effect: we’re here, we’re here.

“Look, you said this yesterday, and you’re saying this now,” expressed an exasperated Ms. Thomas. “How can you approach the American people with this? We’re supposed to be an informed people. We can handle the truth.”

Ms. Thomas has also been quoted as saying the only truism in life is change. She feels sure the press will wake up, come out of their coma and, when she retires, take up the work she has started.

Helen Thomas you deserve the spot atop our masthead because you have lived your convictions. Your words and questions bear witness to the power of truth. You have always asked why. We salute you, Helen Thomas.

Hear Helen Thomas in her own words

We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas. – Natalie Maines

I don’t even know the Dixie Chicks, but I find it an insult for all the men and women who fought and died in past wars when almost the majority of America jumped down their throats for voicing an opinion. It was like a verbal witch-hunt and lynching. – Merle Haggard

Last night over dinner the subject of The Dixie Chicks came up, and I got mad all over again. Which is unfortunate, because when you think about artists that talented the last thing on your mind ought to be anger. But still, it’s been six long years now since “the top of the world came crashing down,” and I can’t quite free myself of my rage at the staggering ignorance that led so many Americans to piss on the 1st Amendment by attempting to destroy the careers of Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robinson. Frankly, I don’t know how Natalie can make it through a performance of “The Long Way Around” or “Not Ready to Make Nice” because I can barely listen to the songs without wanting to take a folding chair to every goddamned corporate radio executive and program director in America responsible for driving them from the airwaves.

No doubt that this makes me a lesser man than I should be. I can’t imagine that the Chicks would approve of my violent impulses (which, I have to admit, are a little too literal for my own comfort), given the grace with which they have navigated the turbulence surrounding their lives in recent years. In truth, they haven’t taken the long way around so much as they have taken the high road, and I regret that I’m not quite worthy of the example they have set for those of us trying to lead civilized lives in the midst of so much willful ignorance.

In recognition of their willingness to risk their careers speaking truth to power and for their courage in facing the backlash (which included death threats, let’s remember) that’s all too frequently aimed at uppity women in the less advanced corners of our nation, Scholars & Rogues is proud to honor The Dixie Chicks as our latest Scrogues and accord them a place in our masthead of fame.

And, if it isn’t obvious, then I’ll apologize in advance for not being up to the standards that Natalie, Martie and Emily have set. They’re not to blame for my tribute to them.

What Did the War on The Dixie Chicks Teach Us About Our Freedoms?

Some time back I read a story in the international press about the rise of fundamentalist Islam in one of Europe’s leading nations – I believe it was the Netherlands, but can’t recall for certain. They’re apparently facing the prospect that one day this minority could grow to the point where it could go to the polls and, using the legitimate engines of the democratic system available to it, vote to eradicate the nation’s religious freedoms. A politician was asked what should be done in this case. His answer was that nothing should be done – it must be allowed, since it would be the result of a democratic process.

Quite a conundrum, that. What to do when democracy is used to dispose of democracy? Obviously America is under no immediate threat from organized Islamist voters, but we do have our own Christian Taliban problem, don’t we? What should we, here in the Land of the Free^®, think about those who do not value actual freedom of religion? How many Americans would we send off to die to preserve the free speech rights of those who’d squelch the free speech rights of their fellow citizens? What should a true patriot do when confronted with the reality that the tools of liberty are being used against Lady Liberty herself?

My own code of ethics has always said that you cannot allow a barbarian to use your civilization as a weapon against you. A man who insists on fighting according to a set of honorable rules while his opponent is using a tire iron to liquefy his testicles deserves what happens to him. In my angrier moments I’ve said that no, you don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with a flamethrower.

But that’s just me, and you’ll recall from earlier that I’m perhaps not to be taken as a role model. Still, we do live in a nation with many who do not share our respect for Constitutional freedoms. Exactly how many I can’t say, but I feel comfortable with “millions and millions.” It’s certain that without such people we’d not have had to endure eight years of Bush/Cheney thuggery.

I’m Not Ready to Make Nice

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

This was the message – “shut up and sing.” You’re not being paid to think, you mouthy little bitches, you’re being paid to entertain us. Now dance, girlies. God Bless America.

History will validate, with a minimum of controversy, the sentiments Natalie Maines expressed at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire theatre on March 10, 2003. Hopefully the record will point to our present moment and note that already the momentum had shifted and that within a generation people would have an impossible time imagining how such an affront to freedom was ever possible. Hopefully.

For the time being, “mad as hell” doesn’t begin to describe the indignation that those of us working to move this culture forward by promoting genuinely intelligent and pro-human values ought to feel, even now. I won’t tell you how to think and act, of course – you have a conscience and a brain, and you can be trusted to take in the information and perspectives around you and form an opinion that you can live by.

But for my part, I have a message for the “shut up and sing” crowd: I’m not ready to back down and I never will be. Your values are at odds with the principles upon which this nation was founded and true liberty cannot survive if your brand of flag-waving ignorance is allowed to thrive. You will not be allowed to use the freedoms that our founders fought for as weapons to stifle freedom for others.

You have declared a culture war, so here’s where the lines are drawn: I’m on the side of enlightenment, free and informed expression and the power of pro-humanist pursuits to produce a better society where we all enjoy the fruits of our shared accomplishments.

What side are you on?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first thing to acquire would be a rhyming dictionary. I use one bought in 1950, published by Permabooks. Its slick yellow covers have long since fallen off, but the rhymes are still there. Then you will need an anthology of love poems to see what the competition has done. You don’t want to palm off lines like “Come live with me and be my love” or “Go, lovely rose” as if they were your own, in case your loved one was an English major. Then equip yourself with a supply of heavy tinted stock–nobody likes to receive a love poem written on notebook paper with a row of torn holes along the margin. Dusty-rose or dove-gray are notoriously aphrodisiacal tints.

As you sit to write, try to be sincere and particular but not overly so. Love is a synthesizing emotion, an emotional union with the chemical madness that compels species to propagate, so don’t feel obliged to particularize every birthmark on your beloved’s backside or include her middle name if it’s a long one. On the other hand, don’t make the poem so general that she thinks this could be a generic poem you use on everybody. It has to be her and should divide its energy equally between her attributes and your longing for them. You need only her, remember. Go easy on the irony and classical allusions, in the high-seventeenth-century manner; those poets were functioning in a culture more print-literate and dualistic than ours. Our brains are becoming more and more like computers, and you don’t press two keys at once. Actually, you do, but don’t try it in a love poem.

Before you plunge into that rhyming dictionary, in fact, you might consider whether your love object might be turned off by a poem and find the image of you hunkered at your worktable with a box of dusty-rose stationery ridiculous. Maybe a brief fax would do, if she’s a career woman. Or a bulletin on the Internet, if she’s a subscriber.

Israel’s Ynet reported the story in an article sensationally titled Dodging IDF paid off big time. First, it pointed out that to take advantage of an exemption from mandatory military service, Ms. Refaeli married an acquaintance who she later divorced. Worse, she said:

I really wanted to serve in the IDF, but I don’t regret not enlisting, because it paid off big time. … That’s just the way it is, celebrities have other needs.

While she may not have served her country, at least did her part to confirm the dumb model stereotype. But, to be fair, like Americans who evaded the draft decades ago, Ms. Refaeli seems to have acted out of a combination of self-interest and opposition to war.

Why is it good to die for our country? … Why should 18-year-old kids have to die?

It might be an issue in Israel, where its militarized society is indisposed to try to understand the motives of those who don’t serve. In fact, if hindsight is 20/20, Ms. Refaeli comes off as prescient for avoiding possible complicity in the IDF’s latest barbarity (Gaza, of course).

To Americans, meanwhile, who don’t have to deal with the draft, it’s less of an issue. Besides, you can make a case that the role of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit cover model is the print equivalent of a USO tour.

Then where’s the controversy? One look at Ms. Refaeli’s cover picture and you might come to the same conclusion as commenter Pat A at Huffington Post:

God didn’t give her those breasts. God gave an engineer somewhere the ability to make a sac that holds a huge amount of silicone and then he helped some doctor learn how to put those babies on gullible women.

Because of her robust build, you could make a case that Ms. Refaeli’s breasts are natural. But the similar size of the breasts of most of the other models in the issue — laborious research reveals — defies credulity. Especially if you watch the TV show Project Runway, which, in large part, is about the challenge of making clothing that flatters young women whose starved bodies seem to have cannibalized the fat in their breast.

Still, the breasts in this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue don’t seem as inflated as those of last year’s cover model, Marisa Miller. Presumably, like the excesses of wealth, ostentatious bra cup sizes are now out of favor (except in pornography).

But silicone implants are not exactly breaking news. Why, you ask, make a big deal out of them now? In a February 9 Sports Illustrated story, Selena Roberts and David Epstein reported that baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez tested positive for anabolic steroids in 2003, the year he won both the home run title and MVP for the Texas Rangers.

See where I’m going with this? How can your biggest story of the year expose an athlete for using artificial supplements, while your biggest issue of the year features models who likely used artificial implants?

Looking at these women is the same as watching Major League Baseball players you suspect of doing steroids. They’ve all taken extreme measures which both give their bodies an unfair competitive edge and expose them to unhealthy substances.

Sports Illustrated needs to cancel its subscription to hypocrisy. If it decides trimness is of the essence, feature models with breasts proportional to their hips. If large breasts are deemed more important, use models with hips proportional to their breasts.

Sports Illustrated needs to understand that the swimsuit issue is not just starter pornography for young men (and a showcase for the swimsuit fashion industry). Young girls, too, are examining it for cues on what attracts boys. Does Sports Illustrated really want to be complicit in encouraging the use of implants?

In a June 1st, 2003 article by Catherine O’Mahony, published by The Sunday Business Post Online, Joey Mason, founder and managing director of Eumom is quoted as saying,

“This is really going to make us a player. For advertisers, we want to get higher quality interaction with the women they are targeting. We want them to be able to choose when and how they speak to their target customers.” He further says, “We know we are a new kid on the block and that we need to prove ourselves.” (emphasis added)

Where will Mr. Mason’s firm be a player? In 2003 Eumom was awarded a three year contract worth at least €2.4 million to provide promotional materials to Dublin’s three maternity hospitals. Eumom replaced the 25 year veteran Bounty Euro RSCG.

Speed ahead to February 2, 2009 when Michael Brennan of The Independent reports that the largest maternity hospital in Dublin now allows marketing representative from Eumom access to the maternity ward. Coombe Women’s Hospital has entered into a financial agreement that accepts a per-child fee for every mother and child signed up by Eumom’s marketing representatives. The actual figure is in dispute, but the total fees collected by Coombe Women’s Hospital could be €245,000 during 2003-2008 based on the average 7,500 births per year at the hospital.

Is this clever marketing, creative financing or a horrible violation of trust?

Let’s look at Eumom’s own words and practices. The Independent also provided a story outlining the guidelines for conversations with new mothers. Never mind the overall layer of sleaze associated with the disingenuous comments like “oh look at all this pink – it must be a girl…” look at the last dot:

V important to reassure mom that: a) Eumom is custodian of her details; b) Eumom uses it in collaboration with partner companies; c) Eumom’s collection and usage of data complies with data protection office guidelines.

Should the Mom still say NO – one final question: Do you have private health insurance? If so, VHI/Quinn/Hibernian? If asked why we need to know — we are conducting a survey. (emphasis added)

Survey, I bet. Whose next at those hospital room visits…

So with hospital maternity stays in most of the west as short as 12 to 24 hours, why would any woman want to spend any of that time answering your marketing questions? As a curious exercise I asked some women I know to respond to this policy. Comments included the words: abhorrent, invasion of privacy, pissed off, crosses the line and gross. One woman speculated on the effect to hospital security by having non-family members present in the maternity ward. I’m guessing these aren’t the answers Eumom or Coombe Women’s Hospital would hope for in a focus group.

Having a child myself I can attest to the value of information from reliable suppliers. There is a time and a place. Give me that bag of information after the Lamaze class and I’ll welcome it.

Talk to me after labor and childbirth and I’ll remember you for all the reasons you don’t want… and I have a very long memory.

In a pair of recent opinion pieces, Lind asserts that we shouldn’t let women and gays in the armed services because if we do, “men who want to prove they are real men will not join.”

Lind’s relative manliness doesn’t necessarily add to or subtract from his opinion’s validity, but unnamed sources who knew him when assure me that the closest he ever came to wearing a uniform was dressing his G.I. Joe doll in one.

Gays and Dolls

As one might expect a social conservative to do, Lind laces his positions with a number of intellectual subterfuges, not the least of which is filing gay men and women in the same pigeon hole. The go-to argument against women serving in the military is that they are, on average, smaller and weaker than their male counterparts and they can get pregnant, a consideration that doesn’t apply to gay men.

If you think that gay men are intrinsically less physically capable than their heterosexual counterparts, and you want to take a trip to the emergency room, I invite you to walk up to a homosexual member of the American Ballet Theater and call him a faggot. I doubt if there’s a segment of the population more physically prepared for direct placement into elite commando training than male dancers. (There are such things as heterosexual male dancers, by the way, and they generally don’t lack for the companionship of women who wouldn’t give either Lind or me the time of day).

But there’s more required of a fighter than physical toughness, according to Lind. “Throughout history,” he prates, “some armies have fought a lot harder than others. The specific reasons vary widely, but one way or another they all come down to human factors.” The most important human factor, Lind assures us, “is that men fight to prove they are real men.” Their membership in fighting organizations is a “badge of honor” that says, “We’re not sissies or pansies. We are men who fight, serving alongside other men who fight.” An infusion of sissies and pansies among the company of real men, Lind warns, could damage “military unit cohesion.”

Mr. Lind has a selective sense of military history and/or a blind notch in his Doppler gay-dar.

As a carrier skipper I served with said when President Bill Clinton enacted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, “Sailors have been rubbing heinies since Sinbad reported to boot camp.” Soldiers have been sharing pup tents just as long.

The ancient Greeks believed that physical love between soldiers improved morale, bravery and overall battle efficiency. Plato, the philosophical father of the American political right, considered it utter stupidity to ban physical relationships between soldiers. “Wherever, therefore, it has been established that it is shameful to be involved in sexual relationships with men,” he wrote, “this is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice in the part of the governed.”

In a song honoring the Lelantine War, Plato’s pupil Aristotle wrote that, “love…thrives side by side with courage.”

The Roman historian Plutarch noted that tribal ties were of little value “when dangers press, but a band cemented by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken.”

Lind cautions that gay and straight men can’t mix in “very close quarters” without “serous friction.” I’ve got news for Lind: gay and straight men have been mixing in very close quarters in the American military without serious friction since forever, including those World War II John Wayne types that conservatives like Lind have such a school girl crush on.

They’re queer, Bill. They’re here, Bill. Now drop and give me fifty pushups (heh).

G.I. Jane

The notion of women serving in the military is hardly new either. Plato favored it. He wrote in Republic that women must be taught the “art of war, which they must practice like men.”

“Is she capable of sharing either wholly or partially in the actions of men, or not at all?” he asked. “And is the art of war one of those arts in which she can or can not share?” Then “let [women] share in the toils of war and the defense of their country… Only in the distribution of labors the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same.”

Lind’s specific objection to letting women serve is that they might be allowed into “ground combat arms.” I’m not sure what he means by that. Women are and will be assigned to war zones in combat support capacities. So what? He may suppose that women inherently lack the “right stuff” for combat, but those Israeli Security Force babes who pull the trigger on those remote control machine guns along the Gaza Strip don’t appear to be lacking anything in the killer instinct department. If Lind is worried that women will elbow their way into Delta Force, he is, in Plato’s words, “plucking a fruit of unripe wisdom.” I don’t know of anyone who is seriously trying to make women into commandos, or of anyone who would take the notion seriously. Maybe Lind is confusing that movie where Demi Moore becomes a Navy SEAL with reality. Confusion about reality is, after all, a leading occupational hazard of conservatism.

I don’t claim that integrating women in the military has been a tribulation-free experience. In my day, the incidence of young single sailor girls getting themselves pregnant to get out of duties they didn’t care for was completely out of hand. We developed a pretty good solution though; all the single mommy strikers got discharged and sent home.

I’ve also known a fair number of female officers who benefitted from reverse discrimination, but not nearly as many as the number of male officers I knew who got where they got thanks to Uncle Admiral or Governor Grandpa or a godfather who had a village in the old country named after him. And never forget that whatever wartime leadership qualities George S. Patton possessed that allowed him to get away with his vainglorious shenanigans, he was also one of the richest dudes in the Army.

Lind’s bottom line isn’t that women and homosexuals serving in the military will impair America’s war making capability. He’s concerned about “cultural Marxism,” which is a code phrase narrow shouldered white male bigots intone when they sense that cultural Darwinism is about to bust them another pay grade or two down the social pyramid. By Lind’s criteria, emancipation was cultural Marxism, as was the ban on feeding Christians to lions.

There may be good arguments for barring women and gays from military service, but Lind doesn’t make them, and I haven’t heard any that make an ounce more sense than his do.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Scott Horton’s interview with Jeff at Antiwar Radio.

Tearful discussions about your insecurities or your feminist principles will not stop a man from looking at porn. That’s why the best advice for straight women is. … If you don’t want to be with someone who looks at porn. . . get a woman, get a dog, or get a blind guy. … telling women that the porn “problem” can be resolved through good communication, couples counseling, or a chat with your pastor is neither helpful nor realistic.

But Douthat writes:

This isn’t to say the distinction between hiring a prostitute and shelling out for online porn doesn’t matter. … But if you approach infidelity as a continuum of betrayal rather than an either/or proposition, then the Internet era has ratcheted the experience of pornography much closer to adultery than I suspect most porn users would like to admit. [Emphasis added.]

Read Douthat’s insightful article for why he believes that. Meanwhile, the argument can be dragged out ad infinitum. It’s possible to buy Savage’s viewpoint, but still be troubled by how much time and money are spent respectively with and for porn.

While one’s reflex is to claim that it’s up to the individual to decide, that’s kind of a cop-out. Our readers are asked to help decide with their comments whether a line should be drawn and at what point.

Specifically. . .
1. Do you agree with my distinction (that the more time and money porn incurs, the closer the viewer hews to infidelity)?
2. How much is too much: a. time spent b. money spent — viewing Internet porn?

• “Well, she didn’t answer any of the questions, but she held her own.”
• “She didn’t make any major mistakes.”
• “I think she did a great job of not swallowing her tongue.”
• “She avoided long answers, which minimized her chances of saying something insanely stupid.”
• “At least she didn’t promise to invade Russia.”
• “She won because she didn’t lose tragically.”

To sum up, Talking Points Barbie was selected for the ticket because she’s pretty and holds political and religious views so far to the right she’d make Judge Hathorne nervous (never mind that she couldn’t outwit Kandi from Two and a Half Men). And tonight we’re celebrating how far women have come in America by praising her for not drooling on herself or forgetting what country she lives in?

Fuck all, people – if we wanted to set the bar any lower we’d need a backhoe.

Congratulations. You’ve come a long way, baby.

That’s the debate I’ve been having with an old college friend whom I’ve recently reconnected with. He’s become a Catholic since we knew one another back in the ‘80s, and is a deep-thinking, deeply principled man. He will not be voting for Barack Obama in November. Nor will he be voting for John McCain. He will vote, but he will cast a blank ballot. He urges me, if I am serious about my moral commitments, to do likewise. Neither candidate, in his opinion, cares enough about ‘life issues’ to merit an affirmative vote.

The New York Times reports that other Catholics are struggling with what do with in the upcoming election. The most troublesome issue for many remains abortion. Some, like Joe Biden, believe we must make accommodations for differing views in a pluralistic society, despite his own embrace of personhood at conception. Others, like my old friend, see Biden’s support for legal access to abortion as no different from espousing the Holocaust – if not in deed, then in complicity.

Can a Catholic possibly vote for a Democratic candidate who has regularly received a 100% approval rating from Planned Parenthood and indeed, as a state senator, voted against an Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection bill passed by Congress? Can I, as a person of faith who believes all life is sacred? I am going to answer ‘yes,’ and in so doing, proclaim myself also a utilitarian and a realist, with all the moral conundra that pragmatism involves.

If you’ll stay with me in this somewhat lengthy exposition, I’ll do my best to lead you through my reasoning. Along the way, I want to call liberals and conservatives alike to a fresh engagement with these most critical of issues, questions of the nature of our humanity and our obligations to one another, scrutiny of our mutual hypocrises, and a renewal of our willingness to tackle these profound dilemmas in a manner that can help us reach “common ground for the common good,” an expression used often at the inaugural Faith Council caucus at the Democratic National Convention, and at the DNC panel discussion of Democrats for Life. Only by refusing platitudes and rejecting ideology will we ever begin to achieve progress on these divisive concerns that continue to rend our body politic and erode our civility.

Although I am not Catholic, I am drawn to the “seamless garment” perspective that proclaims a holistic reverence for all life, and calls for a consistent pro-life ethic that seeks to protect life wherever it is threatened, whether by abortion, war, poverty, racism, capital punishment or euthanasia. I share the goal expressed by Consistent Life, a network of progressive pro-life interests, that what we are trying to achieve is “a revolution in thinking and feeling, an affirmation of peace and nonviolence, an infinite gentleness, a value for the life, happiness and welfare of every person, and all the political and structural changes that will bring this about.”

Within that overarching moral framework I see complexity, particularly when the pro-life interests of individuals conflict. Which is more deserving of protection, embryonic stem cells, or an adult suffering and ultimately dying from Parkinson’s disease? Is it ever justifiable to sacrifice thousands of civilians in a war to resist an evil regime that would otherwise kill even more innocents? Can one insist on the birth of all conceived babies while at the same time support, even laud, the use of capital punishment in a race- and class-biased system where innocent people are wrongly killed? Are the lives of babies lost to abortion more important than the lives of AIDS orphans in Africa lost to poverty and disease and warfare? Is one murder by intention and the other murder by neglect, and are there therefore moral distinctions between the two?

The challenge for shaping public policy in a manner that honors life amid such philosophically complex and often conflicting “life interests” does not lend itself to cut-and-dried, black-and-white terms or positions. What does “pro-choice” really mean? Does the fetus get a choice? Does it deserve one? Are conservatives willing to create a social structure in which a mother can choose life and be confident that the quality of her child’s life is also part of that ethos? Are liberals willing to examine the moral inconsistency of a worldview in which prairie dogs are accorded more value than unborn human life? There are plenty of folks in Boulder, Colorado, where I live, who regularly campaign for the welfare of the proliferating rodents yet refuse to recognize that a woman’s “right to privacy” involves a private choice to kill developing human life, which is what happens when you “terminate a pregnancy.” Their opponents on the right, however, disdain the importance of protecting the very ecosystems on which all life relies, failing to recognize, for instance, that the prairie dog is a keystone species whose presence contributes to a rich diversity of life that sustains us. Often, those who are first to speak against abortion are the same people, like Sarah Palin, who are also quickest to advocate destruction of the very environment that a Christian worldview deems God’s sacred creation, to be stewarded with care for all generations (for more on this, see Tom Yulsman’s 9/17 post).

The irony, the non sequiturs, the hypocrisy, are enough to turn anyone into a cynic, or at least further jade an already polarized society unwilling to engage one another in good faith on these enduring concerns that continue to split our electorate. Is it foolish to speak of “common ground for the common good”? Can we, amidst a field of always-flawed candidates, still find enough faith to vote in relatively good conscience and hope that within the parameters of our decisions, we can work toward policy outcomes that reflect at least some of our basic shared values? In this regard, should we not be able to agree on at least the fundamental premise that reducing the number of abortions in this country, or the number of lives lost to war, is a desirable thing?

To do that, we must summon the willingness, the energy, and the character to plunge into further discussion on life issues in a manner that seeks such bridge-building. The Democratic Party was right to include events such as the first-ever interfaith caucus, and to sanction Democrats for Life, as part of this essential effort. At the same time, the party is home to secularists as well, with whom we – including conservative Republicans — must co-exist.

As Jim Wallis, moderator the DNC Faith Council, said, the answer to the religious right is not a religious left, but a moral center. But few on either side seem invested in trying to get there.

My sense on the streets of Denver during the DNC was that many convention-goers were tired of, dismissive, even bored with the graphic photos of dismembered fetuses held high on signs outside the gates to the Pepsi Center and displayed in bloody, brutal relief on the sides of the Operation Rescue truck driving through downtown. Some turned away but most ignored the images, including that of a perfect, miniature hand laid against a quarter, perhaps the size of George Washington’s head. More chose to pay attention to equally gruesome photos of Falun Gong torture victims, whose faces were methodically burned by electric batons, or whose genitals were torn off.

I was arrested by all of these images, which were paraded side by side along a full block of 15th Street. Though I adamantly reject the harsh, often hostile efforts to engage passersby by many anti-abortion demonstrators in Denver (I was told by one that I was “going to hell” when I challenged him to use more Christ-like methods in his delivery), I just as adamantly believe there is a place for their message, including such photos. If liberals are going to argue against Chinese terrorist methods used in religious suppression but support the suctioning of late-term fetuses’ brains while their heads are exposed outside their mothers’ bodies, there needs to be an honest, explicit engagement with that apparent moral disconnect, and non-combative efforts to explain why. If conservatives are going to reject all embryonic stem cell research, they need to make a careful case as to why the sacredness of those microscopic cells is greater than that of my uncle who is declining with Parkinson’s and will likely see a premature end to his life as a result.

And if Senator Obama agrees that it is infanticide and a crime when a new mother discards her newborn infant in a trash can, yet supports doing nothing when a fetus survives an abortion and is placed in a medical waste can, then he needs to be forced into an engagement with the moral incongruity of that position. Obama has claimed that the reason he did not support a similar Illinois state version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that was simultaneously passed by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate is because of a concern (and I am paraphrasing here) that it would create an undue burden on the mother who sought the abortion, and would create a slippery-slope situation potentially leading to an undermining of legal abortion access of any kind.

Obama has claimed that his position on abortion is one that respects the plurality of moral views in American society. He wrote in The Audacity of Hope, “If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

With regard to the overwhelming bipartisan support for the Born Alive Infants Act, Obama is clearly outside the critical mass that deems that fully born infants should not be left to lie alone to die. Obama’s critics are correct: he is in effect saying that the potential erosion of a woman’s right to choose is more important than the life of a baby that emerges alive from an abortion. It is more important to let that baby die than to jeopardize – even hypothetically — abortion rights.

I could not disagree more. And yet I am going to vote for him in November. As my Catholic friend beseeches me to explain, “Why??” How could I?

And there is where my pragmatism comes in. On virtually every other issue that ties into the preciousness and quality of life, an Obama presidency would be more beneficial than another round of failed Republican policies and philosophies that serve the rich and powerful far more than those most in need. From the economy to health care to energy to climate change and the very future of our ability to live on this planet, an Obama administration would be more likely to effect policy change that would realize the social justice aims that are so important to many voters of faith, including my own progressive Christian faith.

One prominent Catholic is in agreement with me, and it’s gotten him banned from taking communion, just as Joe Biden has been. Douglas Kmiec is a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University and a former law faculty member at Notre Dame and Catholic University. He was also head of the Office of Legal Counsel for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He spoke on an interfaith panel at the DNC Faith Council where he provided an answer to that posed in the title of his new book, “Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question About Barack Obama.”

Kmiec has stunned fellow conservatives with his endorsement of Obama, acknowledging as he addressed Democrats of faith at the DNC that “It’s unusual to be here.” Challenging those “who are making the argument under the guise of faith that it is a sin to vote for Barack Obama,” Kmiec has come to see Obama as “the best representative of the Catholic ‘path of life’” and a man of “deep faith…great intelligence, great integrity and great honesty.”

“That label of pro-life has to be a commitment to all of life, to a culture of life,” Kmiec said, contending that such a culture includes things like a living wage, adequate shelter, access to health care, and a recognition that we must live in community together.

But how does Kmiec, or how do I, or any other voter concerned about abortion as a moral crisis, ignore Obama’s views on such a central component of a consistent life ethic? We don’t. We search for and work together for that common ground. A Catholic, Kmiec argues in his book, can support the “non-negotiability of protecting human life” through the use of “imaginative means within Catholic social teaching to supply that protection.”

Kmiec quotes Obama:

“And so for me, the goal right now should be – and this is where I think we can find common ground, and by the way I have now inserted this into the Democratic Party platform – is how do we reduce the number of abortions, because the fact is that although we’ve had a president who is opposed to abortions over the last eight years [not to mention a majority of Supreme Court justice and federal judges who are Republican appointees – my addition], abortions have not gone down.”

Kmiec continues:

“If Republican Faith Partisans [those who condemn a vote for Obama as a sin – my addition] were actually capable of protecting human life through their singular focus on overturning Roe, the claim might have greater plausibility.”

Here again my pragmatic bent enters in, yet it is not incompatible with my overarching philosophical/religious orientation: I do not believe that Obama’s extreme views in support of abortion rights — and they are extreme, if we look at a basic bell curve of American opinion, with Obama on one end and Sarah Palin on the other – are likely to gain real traction in Congress or among the judiciary. Nor, for that matter, would Palin’s or McCain’s positions be likely to be turned into policy, given the moderate views held by most Americans. I do not anticipate that the Freedom of Choice Act will be passed, nor that Roe vs. Wade will be reversed, and even if it were, how likely is it that real inroads would be made in reducing the abortion rate as a result? The matter would merely be thrown back to the states for even more contentious and vitriolic political wrangling. The approach advocated by Obama and embraced by Kmiec, to enact policies that would reduce current abortion rates, is much more likely in the realm of political reality to be effective.

Polls continually show that Americans see abortion as a complex, multi-faceted moral issue. Most make distinctions between taking a morning-after pill that would expunge a fertilized egg versus a partial-birth procedure that sucks the brains out of a potentially viable, developed baby’s head. And most see a difficult continuum of developmental stages, each with ramifications for the morality of “choice,” in between. In a 2008 Gallup poll that asked voters whether they supported abortion in “all circumstances, some circumstances, or no circumstances,” respondents came down largely in the middle.

Many Christians, even Catholics, see such a spectrum of gray. My Catholic friend does not, and I respect him for the consistency of his position. Within his moral framework, human life – human personhood – begins at conception, and to destroy it for any reason is equivalent to committing murder. We have laws against murder in our society, and they trump our right to privacy. A woman enduring domestic abuse may wish to make the private decision to murder her abuser, but society says his right to life trumps her individual choice. If one believes, as my friend and many Christians do, that abortion is no different from murdering anyone already born, then there is a moral imperative to deny the legality of such a practice. To his credit, he is consistent on sanctity of life issues: unlike far too many religious conservatives, he doesn’t oppose abortion, then turn around and vote for a candidate who supports the war in Iraq or policies that keep kids in ghettoes well stocked with machine guns and assault rifles so they can keep killing each other (the same invalid slippery slope argument Obama makes applies most of the time to gun rights advocates, too).

I cannot make that same choice not to participate. As I see it, we humans are fallen and flawed and our institutions are, too. But they are the only structures we have within which to work toward our nobler goals of justice, fairness and the common good. There is a lot we can do outside of government. But government, whether a “necessary evil” or agent of our “better angels,” is a fixture in our collective welfare, and I believe we have a moral obligation to participate in it.

When it comes to resolving the social problems that prompt so many women to have abortions, I have faith that Democrats can do more to solve them than anything Republicans are proposing, despite their claim to be the pro-life party. As Kristen Day, head of Democrats for Life, said in an interview with the New Republic last month, “Republicans do nothing to help pregnant women who are facing pregnancy…Many women don’t have the resources to sustain a healthy pregnancy, let alone a child.” Data shows that Democratic policies such as those espoused in the Pregnant Women Support Act endorsed by Obama – providing prenatal resources, expanding health care – are effective in helping to reduce abortion rates.

It is one thing to speak out about against abortion, as Republicans do, but quite another to take action that makes meaningful inroads against its prevalence. Toward that utilitarian realization of an end, as Day said, “If a voter’s top priority is reducing abortion, she should vote Democratic.”

For many Catholics, abortion is that top-priority issue. For me, the whole gamut of issues that concern our quality of life as human beings, on earth, in community with one another, are just as central. Those are central concerns to many conservatives, too. As my staunchly Republican cousin claims whenever we talk politics, “We really want the same things in the end…we just disagree on the means to get there.” In many respects I think he’s right. But where I think he is wrong is in believing that yet more Republican policies will get us anywhere near our shared desire for a more humane society. My faith is buoyed, however, that we are talking, that I am talking with my Catholic friend, that we are being honest and respecting one another while cultivating conversation. The seeds of that elusive common ground we so desperately need in this country can only germinate in the soil of civility fertilized with integrity.

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With the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Reagan revolution has at last realized the robber barons’ dream: privatize the profits and socialize the debt. Nicely done, fellas.

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.

We now see the compensation wasn’t deserved. I don’t think taxpayers want their money to go to the C.E.O.’s of these very large institutions.

— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10.

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

— from a Times story by Charlie Savage on reports filed with Congress by Earl E. Devaney, the Interior Department’s inspector general, on “wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes”; Sept. 10.

Education is obviously not the issue Senator McCain spends the most time on. He’s been a quiet and consistent supporter of parents and educators who he thinks are making a difference.

— Lisa Graham Keegan, a McCain adviser and former Arizona education commissioner, explaining the brevity of presidential candidate John McCain’s education plan but suggesting that it should not be interpreted as a lack of commitment to education; Sept. 9.

I’m really frightened. I’ve been in blizzards and tornadoes, but never a hurricane. It’s frightening, but if the Lord’s going to take you, he’s going to find you wherever you are.

— Ginger Saracco of Galveston, Texas, after watching a storm surge from Hurricane Ike slam into a seawall; Sept. 12.

That project is moving right ahead. The money for that project was not diverted anywhere else. … So (for her) to say she said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks….’ I would say she said, ‘Thanks!’

— Tony Knowles, who served as governor of Alaska from 1994 to 2002; an Anchorage Daily News story by George Bryson says Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin “still supports spending $400 million to $600 million on ‘the other Bridge to Nowhere,’ the Knik Arm Crossing, which would provide residents in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla faster access to Anchorage” according to Gov. Knowles; Sept. 11.

[Gov. Sarah Palin] strikes me as a target-rich environment.

— Saturday Night Live writer James Downey; Sept. 12.

He was on the wrong side of the rope line. It is a decision that is hard to comprehend.

— Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., about former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s visibility as Republican pitchman for Sen. John McCain; Sept. 9.

YouTube was being used by Islamist terrorist organizations to recruit and train followers via the Internet and to incite terrorist attacks around the world, including right here in the United States. I expect these stronger community guidelines to decrease the number of videos on YouTube produced by al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist terrorist organizations.

— from a statement by Sen. Joseph Lieberman exhorting YouTube to ban videos that “incite” violence; YouTube agreed to ban some content in response; Sept. 12.

Your prayers reached where they were meant to reach. The truth prevailed.

— Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress, as his theme song, “Bring Me My Machine Gun” played, after a South African judge threw out “racketeering, corruption, money laundering and fraud [charges] related to a multibillion rand government arms deal in the late 1990s”; a New York Times story says “A court in Durban convicted Mr. Zuma’s business adviser of funneling about $170,000 to Mr. Zuma in exchange for help in winning contracts”; Sept. 12; emphasis added.

[I will not] respond to the garbage from the American empire.

— Tarek El Aissami, appointed Venezuela’s interior minister on Monday, responding to a report by The Times‘ Alexei Barrioneuvo that “[a] conspiracy to cover up the intended recipient of a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash found in Argentina last year reached the highest levels of Venezuela’s government, with President Hugo Chávez ordering the head of his intelligence service to handle the situation” according to court testimony; Sept. 9.

These settlements are a major step forward in cleaning up an industry where false and misleading advertising practices have been all too rampant. It is unconscionable for lenders to entice students into loans that are not best for them.

— Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general, on a settlement with seven student loan companies that outlined a code of conduct and required that “a total of $1.4 million [be placed] into a fund to help educate students and their families about financial aid,” reported The Times‘ Johnathan D. Glater; Sept. 9.

That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United State Constitution.

— from a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court today striking down the commonwealth’s “anti-spam” law after reconsidering the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., the first person tried under the law, convicted of sending tens of thousands of e-mails through America Online servers, and sentenced to nine years in prison; Sept. 12.

Q: With another anniversary of 9/11 upon us, how does the President feel about the failure to find Osama bin Laden?
MS. PERINO: President Bush has been working and directing thousands of men and women across our intelligence community to help us find Osama bin Laden, his deputies, and to disrupt plans to attack America again, wherever they might be plotted. He has not let up on that, and that fight and that hunt will continue to go on until he is brought to justice.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House briefing; Sept. 10.

The Republicans talk a lot about experience. When you’re the author, architect and enabler of eight years of devastating foreign policy mistakes, that’s not experience. It’s very bad judgment.

— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., arguing that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lacks the temperament and judgment to be president; Sen. Reid said, “Our dangerous world calls for leaders with sound judgment, not those with a temperament prone to recklessness. Our country deserves more than token shifts and lip service to change. We need to take decisive action to reverse eight years of foreign policy mistakes”; Sept. 12.

Now let me review some of the descriptive phrases that have been used by some of you that have made my own personal interfaces with the Press Corps difficult: “dictatorial and somewhat dense,” “a liar,” “a torturer” “does not get it.” In — In some cases I have never even met those that use those comments. Yet they felt qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world. My experience is not unique and we can find other such examples as the treatment of Secretary Brown during Katrina. In my opinion, this is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor, and integrity.

— from an address to the Military Reporters and Editors Forum Luncheon by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ricardo S. Sanchez; Oct. 12, 2007.

Q: Is Osama bin Laden as important now as he was seven years ago?
MS. PERINO: I think that what we have tried to do is disrupt any area from becoming a safe haven where terrorists could plot and plan attacks. The leadership of al Qaeda has largely been replaced over the years, but they have more people that keep coming up through the ranks and are trained to plot and plan against us. I think — the President believes it’s important for us to hunt and track down and bring to justice Osama bin Laden. And it would be important for Americans, but it’s important for justice most of all.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House briefing; Sept. 10.

The rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology, and give momentum to reformers across the region. This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power, and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.

— from an address by President Bush at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.; May 24, 2004.

I’m sitting at Eros, a Greek diner on Seventh Avenue, loving my omelette as I seek shelter from the rain, when I see a busboy remove a container of dirty dishes — with a copy of my review in today’s paper on top. Get it while it’s hot, I guess.

— from the “On The Runway” blog of New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn; Sept. 9.

photo credits:

• Hurricane Ike hits Galveston: Associated Press
• Sen. Joseph Lieberman leaving stage: Damon Winter, The New York Times
• Sen. Lieberman mug: Alex Wong, Getty Images
• Steve Jobs: Daniel Acker, Bloomberg News
• Gap models: Marcio Madeira, Style.com

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

“Feminism (here we go) is a discourse that involves (endlessly variable) movements, theories and philosophies (immensely important though often migraine-inducing) which are concerned with the issue of gender (and sex, because, hey, biology exists) difference (if that’s not too divisive), advocate equality (or equity, or parity, or some therapeutic ball-busting) for women , and campaign for (and argue about) women’s (or womyn’s, or humyn’s (I didn’t make that up)) rights and interests (including women of any color, any religion, and any orientation, but expect all estrogen hell to break loose if anyone says the words “class” or “race”).” *

So much for helpful. How about “women are human?” Let’s go with that…

1. A “feminist” is a person who holds some version of the beliefs I have just utterly failed to define. Like any catch-all label, “feminist” is mostly meaningless and highly emotionally charged at the same time, guaranteed to end a date or break up a book club. Frankly, anyone whose primary self-identification is anything ending in “-ist” is probably writing a thesis, flogging a book or applying for grants. I use “feminist” the way I use “narcissist” or “hedonist”: to describe my various sublime parts, of which the glorious whole is far, far more than the sum.
2. Ergo, a man can be a feminist. Real men always are.
3. Feminists who are women can like men. It’s allowed. We can like big men, small men, short men, tall men. We can like them in a box. We can like them with a – well, you get the idea. We can also dislike men… and women, and obnoxious children, and yappy little dogs, and we can do so on an individual and situational basis. If we are adult and reasonably sane, we do not indiscriminately hate half the species because they have a funky chromosome. That would be sexist, sick and simply wrong. Trust me: if I hate you, it’s because I have decided that you, yourself, as an individual human being, are an asshole. It’s personal.
4. Feminists can wear makeup. We can also decline to debate our choice to comply with patriarchal standards of feminine beauty or refuse to discuss the roots of our deep-seated self-loathing. Talk to me when you’re forty, kid.
5. Feminists act as a single-minded cohesive unit about as often as do, say, Christians. Or Democrats. Or Pee Wee soccer teams.
6. Feminists are not required to support female candidates, applicants or competitors simply because they, too, are female. In fact, Kim Gandy and NOW, I thought that was rather the point of the entire exercise; that we attempt to level the playing field as much as possible and then let the games begin. Yes, I know we’re nowhere near that state of nirvana. However, endless e-mails about what a bad feminist I am if I don’t support Candidate XX because she’s a woman are not only antithetical to my own beliefs, they really, really piss me off, and I’m far from alone. That giant sucking sound is your membership swirling down the bowl.
7. Feminists can really, really piss other feminists off. In fact, it’s our official pastime, or would be if we could agree on the rules, the scheduling or the uniforms.
8. Any woman who wants equitable pay, owns property, votes, uses birth control, decides when to have sex, goes to college or has custody of her children is a feminist, whether or not she has the ovaries to own it or the brains to realize it.
9. If you agree with anything in number eight, you are a feminist, too. Own it. Touch it. Love it.
10. And of course, feminists in general are mind-blowingly, overwhelmingly, sublimely fanfuckingtastic in bed. A meeting of equals has many, many rewards. Give it a try.

*amorphous non-definition by Wikipedia, asides by me

]]> http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/09/06/feminist-confidential-sexy-secrets-of-the-ladies-on-the-left/feed/ 9 http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/09/06/if-shes-a-feminist-we-should-be-able-to-ask-who-cares-for-sarah-palins-kids/ http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/09/06/if-shes-a-feminist-we-should-be-able-to-ask-who-cares-for-sarah-palins-kids/#comments Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:26:08 +0000 Guest Scrogue http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/?p=3779 by Lynn Schofield Clark

I woke up at 4:30 this morning in a tense sweat. It wasn’t due to the usual university professor stresses of a new school year, though, or worries about my kid’s various activities. Today, my concerns weren’t about my own overcommitted life: they were about Sarah Palin’s.

Here’s a woman who, according to the Republican pundits, should be celebrated by working women like me. She’s juggling kids and a demanding job, like me. She’s competent, articulate, and clearly ambitious. She has a wonderful family and beautiful kids. Lots of women I know fit that description. She, pundits would lead us to believe, will understand our life experiences. But actually, I find Sarah Palin rather frightening.

This woman strikes me as more autocratic in her leadership style, more self-centered, and more mean-spirited than many of her male counterparts – and she is using her femininity to get away with being this way.

Sarah Palin seems to relish looking as if she can “do it all” — and in the true (and truly false) American ideology of individualism, she seems to like to look as if she can do it with no help. Make no mistake, though; this is not a feminist position. This is against everything that feminism has noted about how much our SYSTEM makes it difficult to juggle the demands of home and family for both women and men. It’s not that men working and women caring for the household is the natural order of things, as fundamentalists would have us believe; it’s that the system demands such full-fledged attention of its workers that it’s almost impossible for us to have any other arrangement.

That’s why I think asking about who cares for her kids is a valid question, and not an anti-feminist one: feminists acknowledge that SOMEONE needs to do the caregiving. The feminist point is that it doesn’t have to be the mom, or the mom alone. It can be the dad, and the grandma, and others, too. In other words, as Hillary Clinton has said, IT TAKES A VILLAGE. The fact that Sarah Palin refuses to acknowledge the village that makes her own life possible is what makes her anti-feminist, in my view. The fact is, if she had to acknowledge it, she’d be asked uncomfortable questions, such as why doesn’t she extend to others the same benefits of support that she herself enjoys – say, to single mothers, and disadvantaged families? Why shouldn’t women (and men) who have had less good fortune have support when they run into difficulties? Such questions would point to the fact that Sarah Palin’s views and policies are not only anti-feminist, but are deeply self-centered and callous. And those are not attractive qualities in anyone, female or male.

I’m shocked that the same people who mock Michelle Obama can somehow find something redeeming in a woman who discounts the importance of community. How in the world could a woman like Sarah Palin do all she does without a community organized behind her? But I’m especially angry that the Republicans are able to pretend to be so feminist in supporting a woman, and yet they cautiously avoided any images of her husband holding the new baby (it was Cindy McCain who held him during her speech). The worst thing for them would be if Palin came across as emasculating. And yet, isn’t it possible for men to support women without sacrificing their manhood? Isn’t that, too, a feminist position?

This is central to I think what makes Sarah Palin scary. Her very support system is a secret. Who does she listen to? We don’t know. How does she manage her various roles and commitments? We don’t know. There’s a lot we don’t know about this woman. But one thing I know so far: she’s no feminist.

Lynn Clark is an Associate Professor at the University of Denver’s Department of Mass Communications, where she oversees several research teams and teach courses for aspiring journalists, journalism educators, and media researchers in media studies, new media, media history, civic engagement, service learning, qualitative (interview-based) research methods, and the music industry. She’s also Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media, where she spends a lot of time writing (as you can see on the Estlow Center Web site ).

James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, has come out strongly in support of Palin, even acknowledging that her addition to the ticket has moved him to renege on his former statement that he could not support John McCain as the Republican nominee. And while I agree with him — and with Barack Obama — that Bristol Palin’s plight shouldn’t be the subject of such intense public scrutiny, the disingenuousness in conservatives’ ardent embrace of Palin must be interrogated. Dobson’s organization is clearly in the camp that believes families are better off when mom stays at home. The section on motherhood on Focus on the Family’s website has links for stay-at-home moms, but few resources for working moms. And no such distinctions at all for dads.

Responding online to a reader who asked, “Is it important for mothers to stay home during the teen years?”, Dobson said, “Many will not agree with my opinion on that subject, but it is borne of experience with thousands of families…the heavy demands of child rearing do not slacken with the passage of time. In reality, the teen years generate as much pressure on the parents as any other era…Someone within the family must reserve the time and energy to cope with those new challenges. Mom is the candidate of choice. Remember, too, that menopause and a man’s midlife crisis are scheduled to coincide with adolescence, which can make a wicked soup! It is a wise mother who doesn’t exhaust herself at a time when so much is going on at home.” (Find full text here.)

As a 40-something part-time working mother of a teenager myself, I can appreciate the reader’s question, and the challenges Dobson acknowledges. But what galls me is the enormous shift in perspective that is engendered by prioritizing party first. Hillary Clinton was attacked years ago for not being a mom who stayed home making cookies, and who didn’t apologize for it. Now, Sarah Palin, who apparently put speech-making ahead of getting to a hospital to ensure her premature infant’s welfare, is the darling of the right. Where are all those critics who would otherwise be asserting that Bristol got pregnant as a bid for attention, because her parents, especially her mom, was otherwise engaged? Where are the arguments that if Sarah Palin had spent more time around the family house rather than the state house, maybe her daughter wouldn’t have made a choice that led to a child? You know that if Ms. Palin were of a different partisan stripe, such questions would be flying around the conservative blogs and airwaves thicker than a cloud of North Slope mosquitoes in July.

And if Sarah Palin were a man…well, we wouldn’t be having these conversations at all. At least not beyond whether a year and a half governing the state of Alaska qualifies a former small-town mayor to be vice president of the United States.

Yes, I know.

Whatever the private depths of American bigotry may be, one thing is clear. In publicly sanctioned discourse, a powerful black man is no longer anybody’s nigger, but a powerful woman is still every misogynist’s bitch.

Yes, I’m angry about that. No, I don’t plan to get over it, shut up about it or stop working to change it. It seems you’re even angrier than I am, because your rage has evidently destroyed any principles or intelligence you may once have had. Hillary Clinton tried to show you the big picture, but if it’s only about women’s issues for you, let this woman point out what your resentment vote for John McCain will buy you and me and all of our daughters and sisters and friends for the next eight years or so.

• Federal funding and required insurance coverage for family planning, contraception and preventive women’s health care will disintegrate.
• Supreme Court justices will be hand-picked to overturn Roe v. Wade.
• Tax dollars will continue to pour into abstinence-only sex education, which will continue not to work.
• Emergency contraception will be outlawed or made impossible to obtain.
• Fair pay for women? Ignored, if McCain’s past record is any indication. And it is.

John McCain belongs to a club that never has and never will want you as a member. Why the hell are you trying to join?

As a Democratic woman, I breathed a big sigh of relief last night. Hillary did what she needed to do.

She stepped up with class and grace when the moment demanded it. Plenty of Democrats were nervous as they entered the Pepsi Center last night, and a camera cut to Mchelle Obama’s face as her husband’s one-time rival started speaking indicated she might have been among them. But Clinton quickly allayed doubts with an unequivocal endorsement of Barack Obama as “my candidate,” which elicited cheers amid a sea of bobbing signs proclaiming “Obama” and “Unity.”

It was a poignant occasion for Hillary supporters, and even women like me who have been on board with Obama since the beginning. After a video tribute set to Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” Chelsea introduced her mom as her hero and referenced the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling that her mother had broken open for women. I found myself getting a little choked up listening to this smart, savvy, dogged trailblazer of a woman.

Of course her campaign wasn’t only about the nation – Hillary’s nothing if she isn’t ambitious – but she was pretty damned convincing about how crucial an Obama victory is to the nation’s collective wellbeing. There’s no question in my mind that that’s more important to her than her own aspirations, and if it isn’t to her remaining legions of resentful backers, then they are betraying all that her candidacy stood for, and not least their own self-interest.

The key point in Clinton’s speech was a set of questions she posed to her supporters: “I want you to ask yourselves, were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?”

To answer that it was just for Hillary – despite all she symbolizes for women – is a breathtakingly selfish response. To vote for John McCain, or to not vote at all, is beyond juvenile and stupid, it’s a breach of integrity. And I write not, as Susan Faludi opined in the New York Times on Monday, as one of the “daughters of a feminist generation that seems pleased to proclaim themselves so ‘beyond gender’ that they don’t need a female president.”

I’d love to see a female president. I have my reasons for thinking that Hillary might not have been our best hope at this particular moment, when a brand-new generation of voters, female and otherwise, are yearning for a thoroughly fresh direction.

Faludi, who harks back to the history of women’s suffrage and its ultimately disappointing political returns, continues that the daughters of that feminist generation, like me, “will still have all the abiding inequalities that Hillary Clinton, especially in defeat, symbolized. Without a coalescing cause to focus their forces, how will women fight a foe that remains insidious, amorphous, relentless and pervasive?”

Where I take issue with here is that women have no coalescing cause without Hillary. Our coalescing cause, as Democrats, is justice, fairness and equality – for all people. Barack Obama is also committed to those principles. If our nominee had been Hillary and not him, would we no longer have a rallying point to fight racism, because the black candidate was the runner-up?

It’s essential for Democrats to recognize that that which unites us is far greater than that which divides us. And to do that, we don’t abandon our desire and our quest to see a woman in the White House. It will happen. If we can put a black man there, we can also put a woman there. Obama’s candidacy is, for me — as a female voter — reason to hope, not reason to despair.