Who’s Endorsing Obama?

She scares me!

This is hilarious.

And one more.

VP Debate, Issues that Matter

Well, did you all watch? Do you agree with the “MSM” that she won–not because she won, but because expectations for her were so low, and she managed to fill the air with words while smiling the whole fucking time? No matter that she flat didn’t answer questions, talked about a mysterious General “McClellan,” and couldn’t/wouldn’t come out and say that no, she isn’t for civil rights for gays and lesbians. And for all those hard-working teachers and the like out there: your reward will be in heaven. Just ignore how shitty your life is now.

I watched the debate at the 20th Century Theatre last night, along with a few hundred other Democrats. At least two of the local snooze stations were there, and when I came home to see the coverage, I learned that Republicans were right across the street in Oakley having their own watch party.

How did I not know this at the time? There were only about thirty people there.

Do you think the news mentioned this basic fact–that hundreds turned out on the left, and dozens on the right? Not a word. Oh, they showed pictures that told the story, sure, but there were intermingled, so if you don’t know the interior of either place, you wouldn’t know who had the big turnout. Yeah, it was the Democrats. About 10 times the number of people were there. Good reporting, folks. Heckuva job.

It was nice being around a large group of “like-minded” people last night. I use the scare quotes knowing full well that the like-mindedness is largely a myth–a hopeful one, but a myth nonetheless. My political views are much further left than the Dems, and I even felt sympathy for the Nader supporter standing outside the theatre telling us “Open up the debates! Don’t let Obama steal the progressive vote!” Well, he’s stealing mine, but circumstances are simply too dire for anything but a pragmatic vote.

I voted for Nader in 2000, thinking that (A) someone as stupid as George W. Bush could never actually be elected; and (B) we need to break the two-party hegemony. Naive? Yes. I was 20; I apologize. I have nothing but admiration for Ralph Nader, but I think he’s a more powerful force for change outside of formal politics. Take Al Gore as an example: Since losing the election* his cultural capital has risen dramatically. He can potentially do more for environmentalism outside the White House than he ever could’ve inside. So I couldn’t vote for Nader again, but I still wish my vote was going to a genuinely more progressive ticket.

That said, I like Obama. I like Biden. As individuals, I think they’re a good force for change. I’m monumentally disappointed in the Democratic Party, overall, but the thought of another four years of the same conservative garbage makes me ill. This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, so let me speak to some specifics.

Health care. Since primary season began, my top issue has been health care. I supported Clinton in the primary mainly because her position on universal health care was stronger, and I believed (and still do) that she had the experience and knowledge to really do something about our crumbling health care system. Obama’s position–without mandates for adults–is weaker, but is still so much better than the McCain plan that it’s hardly fair to even compare the two.

McCain wants to do for health care what the conservatives have done for banking. And we see how that’s worked for them.

Taxing health insurance benefits from an employer as income. Giving Americans a $5,000 check–wait, scratch that–giving insurance companies a $5,000 check in your name, forcing you to buy an independent policy if you lose your job or your employer drops health insurance coverage.

Pre-existing conditions?

Do you know that one visit to a psychiatrist to deal with anxiety issues will cause an insurance company to deem you uninsurable? It happened to my boss’s husband. Their 4-year-old daughter is uninsurable because she was born with–and has already has surgery to fix–a cleft palate. They both own their own businesses. They have no health insurance. They can’t afford to offer employer health insurance benefits, and they can’t afford to pay for an individual family policy–which wouldn’t even cover all of them, because of pre-existing conditions.

Yeah, a tax break should help. Let’s open up the health insurance market.

Health insurance and health care are too connected in America to really talk about them independently. You can be denied health care if you don’t have health insurance. That’s legal in America. If you try to get health insurance but have received some kind of health care in the past, you can be denied coverage. That’s legal in America. If you have health insurance but become ill and receive some kind of health care, your health insurance company can significantly raise your premium or entirely drop your coverage. That’s legal in America.

So, what’s the Republican plan, again? Regulate insurance companies, forbid them from discriminating against the seriously and kinda-sorta-maybe ill? Create real competition, by allowing Americans to buy into a government policy if they choose?

Tax your current benefits and give money to the insurance companies?

You choose.

*Is it fair to say that Al Gore lost the election? If the Court hadn’t intervened, he probably would have won. But he didn’t win his home state of Tennessee. He should’ve done that, at the very least. Still, it’s tough to say, with certainty, that he lost.

Debate Schedule

 

*From the NYTimes

15 Minutes…

Is all the time you need to contact the Department of Health and Human Services to express your opinion (outrage) about the proposed rule to “protect” health care workers,” while seriously undermining a patient’s right to unbiased medical opinion and treatment. I’ve pasted today’s Op-Ed below, though it doesn’t tell you how to contact the department.

But how to contact them? The department hasn’t exactly made it easy (a sure-fire sign they don’t really want to hear from you). You can send a message through the ACLU here, or directly to HHS here (note: it looks like a comment page for the usability of the website, but is actually the only way to send the dept. a comment). Or, give them a call at 202-619-0257 or 1-877-696-6775. Better yet, do both. It’s too late to mail a letter–there are only 6 days left of the open comment period.

September 19, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor

Blocking Care for Women

 

By HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON and CECILE RICHARDS

 

LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic senator from New York. Cecile Richards is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Groggy Morning Notes

My brain works in bullet points on mornings I haven’t had enough sleep but, for whatever reason, can’t go back to sleep. Consider this a cleaning session.

• Gross-out: My dog woke me up by vomiting. On my armpit.
• Every time I see the word “Pain” I first think I see “Palin.” Oh, the beautiful irony.
• I said a very stupid thing in yesterday’s blog post. In order to be optimistic and/or happy about a single public issue, I apparently need to block out everything else. Like the banking crisis which, I presumed, didn’t really affect me. Riiiight. What I had was a failure of comprehension. It didn’t really make sense to me at that point, and I didn’t understand that the Fed taking on bad debt (or even the rumor of it) is another example of cronyism and bailing out the big guys. Does the fed step in to save a failing small business, or all those near-mythical family-owned businesses destroyed when a big-box store comes to the neighborhood? No–only when mega-conglomerates implement extremely poor business practices and operate at the edge of a proverbial cliff, and that cliff crumbles beneath them do the feds step in. And yet there’s no consensus about what caused this bubble. Who is running this f-ing government, anyhow? At least Krugman’s article in the Times today shows a basic understanding of the financial system–and the government’s involvement in it–so start there, I guess. I don’t understand!

See? That’s my brain waking up, and there’s typically anger involved in the clearing of the fog. Kind of like learning.

Okay, now I need to edit, edit, edit, work, get hair cut, go to library, go to bank, etc. etc.

Congress Does Something!

I know, shocking, isn’t it? The Times is full of good articles today*, including one on an amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act from 1990. The way the law was originally set up placed the burden of proof of disability on the disabled person, and if that person managed her disability well–with or without the aid of medication or other services–the government could argue against the claim of disability, particularly in a case of employer dicrimination. Here’s a brief exerpt from the article:

Lawmakers said that people with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other ailments had been improperly denied protection because their conditions could be controlled by medications or other measures. In a Texas case, for example, a federal judge said a worker with epilepsy was not disabled because he was taking medications that reduced his seizures.

In deciding whether a person is disabled, the bill says, courts should not consider the effects of “mitigating measures” like prescription drugs, hearing aids and artificial limbs. Moreover, it says, “an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.”

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the chief sponsor of the bill, said: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity, a Catch-22 situation. The more successful a person is at coping with a disability, the more likely it is the court will find that they are no longer disabled and therefore no longer covered under the A.D.A.”

This is such a positive step. Much of the body of laws and agencies set up to protect and assist people who need help are skewed against those who want to help themselves, but still need a safety net. Representative Jim Langevin calls the bill “one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation of our time.”

Hooray for good news!

*I know, the financial crisis. I don’t have a damn dollar invested in these failing banks, mutual funds, etc., and like high gas prices, this development will only be good in the long run. Read Roger Cohen’s Times article today, titled “The King is Dead,” for one perspective on potential effects of the meltdown.

Bitch Magazine Needs Your Help

Newsflash

Thanks, KC!

Day 2.5

Is everyong going to watch Palin tonight? I’m going to try. Even though conventions are just pep rallies, and the debates are the public appearances that matter, her convention speech is still her official introduction. I don’t think a large amount of people watched the speech she gave when she accepted the Republicans’ offer (lest we remain comfortable with the notion that McCain chose her; he wanted Lieberman, but the party people said they’d throw their full support behind him only if he chose Palin).

I tried to watch some last night. PBS is, without a doubt, the only station to watch. Not only do they cover all of the speeches (at least in the evening; I’ve never checked to see if they run anything during the day), but they avoid the endless garbage coming out of the mouths of most of the network folks.

Anyhow, I turned coverage on during GW’s satellite speech and, well, noun-verb-9/11. Then came Fred Thompson’s speech, which made me run from the room and hide behind a closed door. He was the initial GOP candidate who scared me during the primary–until he showed even less spunk than McCain.  He still freaks me out; I know it’s irrational, but ET still freaks me out, too. The speech (even though I couldn’t see it, I could still hear it) wasn’t very good, but Republicans don’t like good speeches–they don’t trust anyone who might be smarter than Joe the cable guy–so it was a roaring success. While watching the Dems at their convention, I often wondered at these “true believers” in the crowd, but the true believers in the GOP are a whole other beast. And I mean that quite literally; these people are absolutely alien to me. Barack Obama will eat your babies!

And then came Lieberman. Not a baby-eater, but one weird dude. I sat and watched his whole speech, tepid applause and all. I found myself not disagreeing with many of the ideas he mentioned, things like putting country before party, and caring about our fellow citizens without the encouragement of a natural disaster, but these aren’t values the GOP stands for. He got virtually no applause for the mildly Democratic notions he put forth, but rousing applause whenever he raised the volume of his voice and said “McCain!” or anything about defeating Obama. I can’t help but feel that racism is the entire foundation of the GOP. Maybe I’ll explore that idea in another post.

Happy watching!

Pro-Life, Ideally

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be Pro-Life. Like a lot of conservative rhetoric, the position means something other than the words used to describe it. Pro-Life, in practice, is decidedly Anti-Choice. But it’s not enough to say that. We need to understand why—beyond taking away a woman’s right to choose whether or not she’ll carry a pregnancy to term—Pro-Life is such an issue right now.

The issue is certainly in the news, for two major reasons. The first involves a Bush administration proposal intended to protect health-care workers from treating patients or dispensing drugs that do not support their religious beliefs. This is a relatively small group of individuals who fear legal action. One component of the proposal changes the definition of abortion to include any kind of birth control (condoms, however, are not included). The basic birth control pill, thus, would come under the umbrella term “abortion,” and doctors could refuse to prescribe it, or pharmacists could refuse to fill the prescription.

The second reason that the Pro-Life position is in the news is the election, and the way the conservative religious right has a stranglehold on the Republican Party. To be Republican is to be Pro-Life. Instead of focusing on domestic issues like the management of the economy and national security, many people choose party allegiance based on the moral issue of abortion. I have, in the past, ridiculed individuals who vote based on a single-issue position like abortion. However, I’ve recently discovered that I cannot ridicule such people, because I could never, ever, vote for an Anti-Choice politician.

Here’s why.

I fully support an individual’s choice to never have an abortion. If a person believes that there is no situation in which an abortion would be the best choice, not if a woman was raped, if a woman was a victim of incest, or if carrying a child to term would risk a woman’s life, then fine. That is an individual’s personal belief. If someone refused to support a family member or friend who chose to have an abortion, that is the individual’s right to personal belief. I don’t agree with this position, but I believe in the right to subscribe to these beliefs.

However, this is not the Pro-Life position. The Pro-Life position isn’t about personal opposition to abortion. Pro-Lifers seek to end abortions. But not through better sex education, better access to contraception, or changing cultural values about sexuality and pregnancy. They want to make abortion illegal. They want to take away rights and choices.

Personally, I would be happy if the number of abortions went down. An abortion is a difficult experience—physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s not something I want to see a lot of women have to go through. But there will never be an end to abortions—they happen every day, all over the world. Before abortion was a safe and legal procedure, women were permanently disfigured and even killed by unsafe, illegal abortions. If made illegal, we would see a return of these dangerous procedures.

Pro-Choice is about protecting women. It’s about keeping the procedure safe and regulated. It’s about protecting a woman’s domain over her own body. It’s about keeping the State out of our uteruses.

But the Pro-Life position is even more complicated when you consider the class dynamics of our society. Imagine if a woman who lives a middle-class or better lifestyle were sexually assaulted and became pregnant as a result. She can’t go to a clinic and have an abortion, but there’s a good chance she might personally know a doctor. Maybe she has a family member who is a doctor, or even the friend of a friend. If even a semi-wealthy and well-connected woman wanted to terminate her pregnancy in a society where the procedure is illegal, she might have the resources to still obtain a safe abortion. She might even have to leave the country to have a medical abortion, but she’d be able to afford this expense. She might put the plane ticket on a credit card, but she has a credit card. And if the situation were even more dire, if her health was at risk, then her personal wealth just saved her life.

Imagine if a woman without financial means is in the same situation. It’s doubtful that anyone in her peer group is a licensed medical professional. She couldn’t afford to leave the country for a safe abortion, and even if she could, she might work a job in which she doesn’t have vacation time, or can’t take the time off, or doesn’t have anyone to watch her children. What if this woman knew her own life was at risk if she carried a pregnancy to term? What then?

Pro-Life isn’t just about state control over a woman’s body, or about legislating moral beliefs. It’s also about oppressing women without wealth and means. It is class warfare, disguised as a belief in the sanctity of life.

The sanctity of life is an interesting concept, and a term that’s bandied about quite a bit in the abortion debate. It means that “life” is something that is worthy of religious veneration. “Sanctity” isn’t hard to understand, but “Life” is a bit more difficult to define. Whose life? What kind of life? When does it begin? When does it end? There are no simple answers to these questions, but in the spirit of “sanctity,” I’d like to offer what Pro-Life should mean.

Pro-Life, Ideally

A person who calls herself Pro-Life believes that all life is worthy of respect and protection. She is a fierce opponent of the death penalty, as she believes it is not the duty of humankind to decide what persons—no matter how heinous their crimes—deserve to live or die. She is a strong supporter of universal health care, as she believes all children and adults have the right to live up to their potential, and that medical problems shouldn’t be an obstacle to that. She believes that there is no “life” without “quality of life,” so she is also a strong supporter of workers’ rights, especially the right to unionize. Unions are a necessary protection against rogue individuals and corporations who put profits ahead of their employees’ health and safety. She also strongly opposes industrial agriculture, notorious for gross, inhumane treatment of animals and mistreatment of employees—often illegal immigrants without the protection of law—in the name of large profits. She supports the government’s full funding of public education, including sex education programs and a wide availability of contraception, as she knows that an unwanted life will not have quality of life. She opposes abortion, and hopes that no woman will have to have the procedure, yet she knows that there will always be abortions. She seeks to keep them safe, legal, and rare.

If this were really the Pro-Life position, I could consider voting for a candidate with these personal beliefs. As long as the position means Anti-Choice, Anti-Woman, stronger government control over my personal health and safety, and the privilege of the wealthy and well-connected over the rest of society, I can never support any candidate who declares himself or herself to be Pro-Life. This candidate does not share my definition of life, or my values, or my belief about the role of government.

Beyond All Comprehension

Who is Sarah Palin? Here’s some basic background:

• She was elected Alaska’s governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.
• Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.
• She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000.
• Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.
• She’s doesn’t think humans are the cause of climate change.
• She’s solidly in line with John McCain’s “Big Oil first” energy policy. She’s pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won’t be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.
• How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.

I don’t know much about her beyond these points. I’m shocked, insulted, disappointed, appalled, horrified…you get the picture? The things she said in that acceptance speech made me sick to my stomach. How dare she speak of the cracked glass ceiling. Shame, shame, shame on them.

I’ve not been the biggest Obama supporter, and I still stand by my belief that Sen. Clinton would’ve been a better choice for the nominee (not to mention the VP). However, I’ve never even considered voting outside my party, and I believe these “hard-core” Hillary supporters that the right is courting are largely a media creation. This latest move by the GOP–this deeply, deeply cynical move–makes me want to campaign for Obama.

In the words of someone I admire very much, “No how, no way, no McCain.” Especially not now.

Women’s Equality Day

Second-Place Citizens

 

By SUSAN FALUDI

 

Published: August 25, 2008

San Francisco

MUCH has been made of the timing of Hillary Clinton’s speech before the Democratic National Convention tonight, coming as it does on the 88th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Convention organizers are taking advantage of this coincidence of the calendar — the 19th Amendment was certified on Aug. 26, 1920 — to pay homage to the women’s vote in particular and women’s progress in general. By such tributes, they are slathering some sweet icing on a bitter cake. But many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are unlikely to be partaking. They regard their candidate’s cameo as a consolation prize. And they are not consoled.

“I see this nation differently than I did 10 months ago,” reads a typical posting on a Web site devoted to Clintonista discontent. “That this travesty was committed by the Democratic Party has forever changed my approach to politics.” In scores of Internet forums and the conclaves of protest groups, those sentiments are echoed, as Clinton supporters speak over and over of feeling heartbroken and disillusioned, of being cheated and betrayed.

In one poll, 40 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s constituency expressed dissatisfaction; in another, more than a quarter favored the clear insanity of voicing their feminist protest by voting for John McCain. “This is not the usual reaction to an election loss,” said Diane Mantouvalos, the founder of JustSayNoDeal.com, a clearinghouse for the pro-Clinton organizations. “I know that is the way it is being spun, but it’s not prototypical. Anyone who doesn’t take time to analyze it will do so at their own peril.”

The despondency of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters — or their “vitriolic” and “rabid” wrath, as the punditry prefers to put it — has been the subject of perplexed and often irritable news media speculation. Why don’t these dead-enders get over it already and exit stage right?

Shouldn’t they be celebrating, not protesting? After all, Hillary Clinton’s campaign made unprecedented strides. She garnered 18 million-plus votes, and proved by her solid showing that a woman could indeed be a viable candidate for the nation’s highest office. She didn’t get the gold, but in this case isn’t a silver a significant triumph?

Many Clinton supporters say no, and to understand their gloom, one has to take into account the legacy of American women’s political struggle, in which long yearned for transformational change always gives way before a chorus of “not now” and “wait your turn,” and in which every victory turns out to be partial or pyrrhic. Indeed, the greatest example of this is the victory being celebrated tonight: the passage of women’s suffrage. The 1920 benchmark commemorated as women’s hour of glory was experienced in its era as something more complex, and darker.

Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, not merely a cause in itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American law, its retinue was turned away.

In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women’s voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the women’s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor inroads into elected office, and women’s advocacy groups found themselves at loggerheads. “It was clear,” said the 1920s sociologist and reformer Sophonisba Breckinridge, “that the winter of discontent in politics had come for women.”

That discontent was apparent in a multitude of letters, speeches and articles. “The American woman’s movement, and her interest in great moral and social questions, is splintered into a hundred fragments under as many warring leaders,” despaired Frances Kellor, a women’s advocate.

“The feminist movement is dying of partial victory and inanition,” lamented Lillian Symes, a feminist journalist.

“Where for years there had been purpose consecrated to an immortal principle,” observed the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, her compatriots felt now only “a vacancy.”

Even Florence Kelley, the tenacious progressive reformer, concluded, “Keeping the light on is probably the best contribution that we can make where there is now Stygian darkness.”

The grail of female franchise yielded little meaningful progress in the years to follow. Two-thirds of the few women who served in Congress in the 1920s were filling the shoes of their dead husbands, and most of them failed to win re-election. The one woman to ascend to the United States Senate had a notably brief career: in 1922, Rebecca Felton, 87, was appointed to warm the seat for a newly elected male senator until he could be sworn in. Her term lasted a day.

Within the political establishment, women could exact little change, and the parties gave scant support to female politicians. In 1920, Emily Newell Blair, the Democratic vice chairwoman, noted that the roster of women serving on national party committees looked like a “Who’s Who” of American women; by 1929, they’d been shown the door and replaced with the compliant. The suffragist Anne Martin bitterly remarked that women in politics were “exactly where men political leaders wanted them: bound, gagged, divided and delivered to the Republican and Democratic Parties.”

Male politicians offered a few sops to feminists: a “maternity and infancy” bill to educate expectant mothers, a law permitting women who married foreigners to remain American citizens, and financing for the first federal prison for women. But by the mid ’20s, Congress had quit feigning interest, and women’s concerns received a cold shoulder. In 1929, the maternity education bill was killed.

Meanwhile, male cultural guardians were giving vent to what Symes termed “the new masculinism” — diatribes against the “effeminization” that had supposedly been unleashed on the American arts. The news media proclaimed feminism a dead letter and showcased young women who preferred gin parties to political caucuses.

During the presidential race of 1924, newspapers ran headlines like “Woman Suffrage Declared a Failure.” “Ex-feminists” proclaimed their boredom with “feminist pother” and their enthusiasm for cosmetics, shopping and matrimony. The daughters of the suffrage generation were so beyond the “zealotry” of their elders, Harper’s declared in its 1927 article “Feminist — New Style,” that they could only pity those ranting women who were “still throwing hand grenades” and making an issue of “little things.”

Those “little things” included employment equity, as a steady increase in the proportion of women in the labor force ground to a halt and stagnated throughout the ’20s. Women barely improved their representation in male professions; the number of female doctors actually declined.

“The feminist crash of the ’20s came as a painful shock, so painful that it took history several decades to face up to it,” the literary critic Elaine Showalter wrote in 1978. Facing it now is like peering into a painful mirror. For all the talk of Hillary Clinton’s “breakthrough” candidacy and other recent successes for women, progress on important fronts has stalled.

Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

Women’s real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions on women’s ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.

Women’s numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929 for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20 percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers and their children uncollected.

Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of “new masculinist” misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton’s campaign coverage). Again, the news media showcase young women’s “feminist — new style” pseudo-liberation — the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so “beyond gender” that they don’t need a female president.

As it turns out, they won’t have one. But they 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?

“I am sorry for you young women who have to carry on the work in the next 10 years, for suffrage was a symbol, and you have lost your symbol,” the suffragist Anna Howard Shaw said in 1920. “There is nothing for women to rally around.” As they rally around their candidate tonight, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters will have to decide if they are mollified — or even more aggrieved — by the history she evokes.

 

Susan Faludi is the author, most recently, of “The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America.”

The Wire

Estimated arrival for season five: tomorrow. Here’s one of my favorite scenes from the series (from season four), where Snoop buys a nail gun. The Wire is definitely one of the best TV programs ever, if not the best. Nice to see the show received a writing nod from the Emmys, but its lack of attention still baffles me.

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MV Week II – Day 7

It only took me three weeks to finish this week. If only real life worked that way.This one’s just for fun. Not musically the greatest Stones song, but still one of my faves. Miss You.

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