Feminism

On Monday's Morning Edition, National Public Radio offered the latest entry in its year-long series "The Hidden World of Girls," which is subsidized by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts. Naturally, any series with this title might disappoint if it didn't explore lesbians in Islamic countries, in this case, Pakistan.

Apparently, though, the definition of "girls" is quite flexible. On the October 16 All Things Considered, NPR celebrated the journey of Adam "Theresa" Sparks, running to be the first transgender member of the San Francisco City Council. 

For this story, reporter Habiba Nosheen told listeners that the names of the lesbians had been changed to protect them:

According to The Politico, EMILY's List President Stephanie Schriock will blast the Republican Party for being "anti-woman" in a speech before the Women's National Democratic Club this afternoon.

Schriock will reportedly talk about how the number of female lawmakers in Congress might decline this year, echoing a front-page USA Today headline from Monday that claimed "Elections are likely to trim number of women in Congress."

In fact, the number of women running for Congress is at a record high this election season, thanks to a significant increase in female Republican candidates. There are over 100 women running on the GOP ticket for House seats alone.

But that hasn't stopped EMILY's List from continuing to portray conservatives and Republicans as chauvinistic.

Blasting the GOP as a "party that believes that women belong in the kitchen," Schriock will reportedly say that "This year may be the first year in 30 years that the number of women in Congress decreases. And the possible result could be truly devestating: Speaker John Boehner."

Don’t read Newsweek magazine while drinking a beverage. A spit take is the obvious first reaction to a column by Julia Baird headlined “The Shame of Family Films.” On the Internet, this article is coded as “Why family films are so sexist.”

Baird's denunciation of Hollywood's fraction of decent entertainment began: “They have all been smash hits: ‘Finding Nemo,’ ‘Madagascar,’ ‘Ice Age,’ ‘Toy Story.’ Fish, penguins, rats, stuffed animals, talking toys. All good innocent family fun, right? Sure, except there are few female characters in those films. There are certainly few doing anything meaningful or heroic – and no, Bo Peep doesn't count.”

So what does feminist bean-counting have to do with whether a movie is “good innocent family fun”? Did any young girl come away from “Finding Nemo” feeling like the memory-challenged Ellen DeGeneres fish character didn’t represent female empowerment effectively? Were they offended by the oppressively archaic stereotype of Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl during “Toy Story 2"? Families can’t enjoy these films without expecting them to pass some politically correct quota exam?

MSNBC daytime anchor Contessa Brewer has recently drawn much attention for her shameless bias towards gay-rights activists, especially since she anchors an MSNBC news hour and not a talk show. But today, interviewing ultra-liberal Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), Brewer actually grilled him for his shamelessly-edited ad attacking his Republican opponent Daniel Webster.

Grayson, a freshman Democrat, has made a name for himself in the past year for his outlandish soundbites and theatrics on Capitol Hill. His latest venture into psycho talk is an attack ad accusing Webster of degrading women, calling him the "Taliban."

"So Congressman, your opponent is a fellow American, a longtime public servant of the people of Florida, and you called him the 'Taliban'," Brewer began. "How do you defend that?"

Brewer also asked Grayson to explain his editing of Webster's reference to Scripture. The commercial showed Webster quoting the Bible, "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands." However, the ad conveniently left out what Webster said before the quote, distorting the whole context of the remark.

Are "Mama Grizzlies" who oppose state children's health insurance programs (S-CHIP) and teachers' unions unfaithful to their maternal name? CNN anchor Kiran Chetry joined Newsweek's Lisa Miller Monday in wondering if that is so. Miller appeared on CNN's "American Morning" to feature her most recent piece on "Mama Grizzlies," prominent female conservatives in the vein of Sarah Palin.

"All the candidates that we – whose records we looked at, are against the Obama health plan in general, and yes, the CHIP program in specific," reported Miller, a senior editor for Newsweek. "There are rising numbers of poor children in this country, a quarter of America's children are poor. It seems like a funny way to say that you're for kids, and be against all of these programs."

Miller ultimately concluded that the "Mama Grizzlies" movement will fall short of its political goals, because "the issues facing the country are complex, and bears are not."

"Do we really want bears to solve our problems?" Miller quipped at the end of the segment.

"I've said many times before, we're all held to a high standard here."

- Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner

...except when our players are engaged in sexist conversations.

Fresh off the heels of a locker room controversy involving reporter Ines Sainz, in which Goodell referred to New York Jets players as engaging in ‘unprofessional conduct' toward a female reporter, we have a couple of star NFL players discussing their thoughts on seeing Sarah Palin pose in Playboy.

Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals have been debuting their new show in short clips on the Versus network, the self-proclaimed ‘nation's fastest growing sports network.'  The program is called The T.Ocho Show.  Ochocinco brags of the edgy programming saying.

"Versus is taking a big risk giving us this show.  It's gonna be dangerous. Watch with care."

That said, the Versus website is promoting a video clip in which the NFL stars are asked, "Would you rather see Sarah Palin in the White House or in Playboy?"

(The answer and video clip after the jump...)

On Friday's American Morning, CNN's Carol Costello followed up on her biased report from the previous day, which promoted Catholic women posing as priests, with a second report on dissenting Catholics, focusing on heterodox nuns inside the U.S. Costello promoted the claim of the nuns, who accuse the Vatican of conducting an "inquisition," or wanting to "silence nuns when they disagree with the Pope."

Substitute anchor Drew Griffin gave a brief on Pope Benedict XVI's second day in the U.K. 25 minutes into the 6 am Eastern hour, just before his colleague Kiran Chetry introduced the correspondent's report. Chetry proclaimed how the Vatican is apparently "squarely at odds with American nuns," and that many of these nuns "feel they're under siege from the Church, which is questioning the quality of their religious life." Costello picked up where the anchor left off: "[T]he Vatican is now conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns...the Vatican hopes to have a better understanding of how nuns live their lives in the United States. Nuns don't see it that way, though. Many think these investigations are nothing short of interrogations, designed to take away all they've gained."

Costello led her report by featuring Sister Maureen Fiedler, a liberal public radio host who attended the "ordination" of seven women on the Danube River in 2002. Fiedler stated during her first sound bite, "Some of my friends asked me why the Vatican officials suffer from a deep seed hatred of women." The correspondent continued by describing how "the Vatican ordered two sweeping investigations into the religious views and lifestyles of American nuns- investigations that have alarmed many sisters like Marlene Weisenbeck, whose organization represents thousands of American nuns across the country." Sister Weisenbeck was president of the Leadership Council of Women Religious until August 2010. She led the organization when it endorsed ObamaCare, contrary to the stance of the U.S. bishops' conference. Costello played two sound bites from the nun during her report.

While most media outlets obsessed over the liberal theme that Republicans keep "suicidally" nominating "ultra-conservatives," Washington Post reporter Anne Kornblut, who authored a book earlier this year called Notes from the Cracked Ceiling, noticed a different trend. Her story was headlined "GOP gains the lead in female politicians' steps forward." Tuesday's victories of Palin-endorsed GOP women Christine O'Donnell and Kelly Ayotte underline an emerging Year of the Republican Woman. Too bad the Post buried it on Page A-6 of the paper, and it hasn't been linked on the Post's homepage today, either. Kornblut began:

Democrats used to own the field of women running for higher office. Not anymore.

Nearly two years after an anticipated gender bounce - with predictions that women in both parties would rush into politics inspired by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin -- it turns out that the momentum is on the Republican side. If there is a Palin effect, it is not being matched by any Clinton effect at the other end of the ideological spectrum.

On his national radio show Tuesday, Ed Schultz took a decidedly un-liberal view on the controversy over provocatively dressed Mexican sportscaster Ines Sainz being sexually harassed by players in the New York Jets locker room.

Yeah, she's going through jock strap heaven. She's in the locker room! (Laughs) There's been sexist comments in locker rooms since the day they started having sports! What does she expect?!

But when Schultz's own network, NBC, went looking for a soundbite for the "caveman" point of view on Wednesday's Today, they turned to Rush Limbaugh for scolding instead. Matt Lauer singled out Limbaugh as the sexist pig: "Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to late-night comedians are weighing in. And much of the attention is on what Ines Sainz wears instead of the football player's behavior. And is that fair? Does it matter what she had on? We're going to have more on that just ahead."

New York Times science writer Natalie Angier talked to some women annoyed at being called “ma'am” for the Sunday Week in Review (“Just Don't Call Me...Ma'am”) and worked in a typical jab at the male of the species.

Classes are now underway at Pennsylvania State University, and Judith Kroll, a professor of psychology, linguistics and women’s studies, will soon be greeting her undergraduate students with the usual brief spiel. “I get up and say, you can call me Dr. Kroll, or professor, or Judith if you like, but do not call me Mrs.,” she said. “I am not Mrs. Kroll. I kept my name when I got married and my husband kept his name.”

There is one other honorific that Dr. Kroll dislikes and that she dearly wishes she could bar from the classroom: ma’am. Whenever a student says, “Yes ma’am” or “Is that going to be on the test, ma’am?” Dr. Kroll says she cringes and feels weird. Yet because ma’am, unlike Mrs., isn’t factually incorrect, Dr. Kroll resists the urge to scold. “My first take has got to be, this person is just trying to be polite,” she sighed.

Another day, another ma’am-ogram: you may not want it; it may make you feel flattened, desexualized, overripe and nearly through; but trust me, ma’am, we’re doing it all for you.

There are weightier problems in the world. Still, if you’re a woman born any time before the Clinton administration, chances are you’ve been called ma’am on more than one occasion -- by solicitous waiters asking whether you were “Done working on that, ma’am?” and hovering store clerks wondering if they can “help you find anything, ma’am,” and traffic cops telling you to “Move your car, ma’am, this isn’t a parking lot,” and the perky, hardworking fellows at the farmers’ market who see you week after week but will always cram so many ma’ams into every transaction that you realize there’s no turning back, you’ve been ma’amed for life.

Angier defended liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer's notoriously graceless tantrum over being called ma'am by a military man trying to show respect:

Never tell a feminist politician she's "attractive" and "a good mother." To some, that's a "toxic" insult.

Thursday's Washington Post offered a story on how "Women's groups target sexism in campaigns: Advocates monitoring what they call 'toxic' media environment." Reporter Krissah Thompson never identified the groups as "liberal," or even "feminist," or noted that one of them, the Women's Media Center, (foolishly) opposed an innocuous Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad as offensive without having seen it. Thompson began:

The list includes the radio talk show host who called a female senator a "prostitute" for cutting a deal to benefit her state, the male challenger who referred to his female rival [as] "attractive" and "probably a good mother," and the TV host who noted that the candidate's wife looked like an angry woman.

On Tuesday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty revisited one of his favorite subjects of ire, the Catholic Church, and this time called for the ordination of women. Cafferty highlighted the advertising campaign of a British organization which demands that Pope Benedict XVI allow for such simulations of ordination, and mocked a Catholic priest's defense of the all-male priesthood.

The commentator devoted his 6 pm Eastern hour Cafferty File segment to the issue of women's ordination: "'Pope Benedict: ordain women now'- that's the message that will be plastered on London buses when the pontiff heads to England's capital in a couple of weeks. A group called Catholic Women's Ordination is spending $15,000 for 15 buses to carry posters with that message around London for a month."

Cafferty then moved to the opposing viewpoint, and wasted little time before bashing it and one of its defenders: "Father Stephen Wang says women are not barred from the priesthood because of sexism....Wang says that Jesus chose 12 men, and no women, to be his apostles, and he adds that men and women are equal in Christianity, but that gender still matters. Wang compares the role of a priest to an actor, saying no one would be surprised if he wanted a male actor to play King Arthur. He then admits the analogy is weak. That's the most startling and profound thing he said in the message so far- terrible!"

Liberal Democratic strategists reading today's Washington Post are probably taking notes, preparing talking points for a future which may hold a Republican Congress in the cards.

"British women to bear budget pain" cried the page A6 headline. "Report says austerity plan mostly cuts into women's livelihoods," added the subheader for London-based Post staffer Anthony Faiola's  story.

Faiola noted that "[t]he Fawcett Society, a leading women's rights group here, filed an unprecedented complaint with the nation's high court this month, arguing that the government failed to consider the effect on women of its leaner 'emergency budget.'"

At no point did Faiola find a critic to allege that the social welfare system in Britain itself was "sexist" or at least that it victimizes poor Britons, particularly women, by creating a culture of dependency on the state.

A startling statistic was presented at the August 2 Dallas Public Safety Committee meeting: Rape there is up 25.3% over last year.

Police Chief David Brown (pictured right) was pressed on this, and here was how blogger Andrea Grimes of the Dallas Observer interpreted his remarks:

But Ms. Jasso read my mind, asking the Chief to explain the... increase.... is it that victims are reporting rapes more frequently, or that more rapes are happening? The answer, unfortunately: More rapes, says Chief Brown, specifically date rapes. And we all know what the solution to date rape is: getting women to stop drinking, because that is what causes date rape. Not dudes raping women, but women drinking.

Blogger Shelby Knox piled on:

CNN's Jessica Yellin, a one-time "prominent feminist activist," helped forward the talking points of the pro-abortion lobby by devoting part of a segment on Tuesday's Rick's List to EMILY List's new anti-Sarah Palin ad. Yellin aired their left-wing accusations against the Republican and her endorsed candidates without providing the other side and/or fact-checking them [audio clips available here].

Anchor Rick Sanchez introduced the issue by bringing up the Republican's recent "mamma grizzly" ad: "It seemed like a very effective ad that Sarah Palin had put out. I mean, professionally speaking, it was very clean, very well put together- the whole 'grizzly mom' ad that everyone was talking about- and, apparently, there's some blowback on this now. What is that?"

Late in the 7:00AM ET hour of Monday's CBS Early Show, correspondent Michelle Miller reported on the "war of words" between actress Jennifer Aniston and Fox News host Bill O'Reilly over women having children without a man. Miller remarked that Aniston had "made a seemingly simple comment supporting the concept," while the "conservative" O'Reilly "slammed the actress" for doing so.

The report included sound bites of O'Reilly: "That's destructive to our society....She's throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds, okay, that 'hey, you don't need the guy. You don't need the dad." Miller followed up by noting: "It's not the first time a political conservative has lashed out at an actress for supporting single moms. In a 1992 speech, Dan Quayle questioned the choices of fictional character Murphy Brown."

She concluded the story by touting: "Aniston fired back the latest shot at O'Reilly, telling People magazine, quote, 'Of course the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age, but for those who've not yet found their Bill O'Reilly, I'm just glad science has provided a few other options.'"

After Miller's report, fill-in co-host Chris Wragge jokingly declared: "Jennifer Aniston, how dare you?" He then argued: "I mean, it's just a movie, right, at this point? I understand, I guess, both sides, but I think it's a little much about-" Fill-in co-host Erica Hill interjected: "Much ado about nothing."

Today I am thinking about all the reasons William K. Black detests me. Last Tuesday, I reported how MSNBC promoted the findings of June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, co-authors of Red Families v. Blue Families, without acknowledging their affiliation with the Roosevelt Institute, a left-wing think tank. On Friday, Black, associate professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, devoted almost 1,500 words, in an article cross-posted to the Huffington Post, to assaulting my character, dismissing me as a "divider," positing that I "have unresolved difficulties with gays," and claiming I have "sex fantasies" about the book.

Black, pictured from an April 30 appearance on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal, is also Carbone's husband.

On Friday’s The Ed Show on MSNBC, host Ed Schultz trashed conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, repeatedly mispronouncing her name as "Schafly," for linking being a single woman and having a greater likelihood of depending on government programs, as she noted at a recent GOP fundraiser that 70 percent of single women voted for Barack Obama. At the top of the show, Schultz teased: "I`ve got some choice words for the ‘Wicked Witch of the Midwest’ tonight – and that`s what she is." He later plugged before a commercial break: "Speaking of ‘Psycho Talkers,’ ‘Wicked Witch of the Midwest’ Phyllis Schafly [sic] got off her broomstick long enough to take a shot at unmarried women of America."

Later in the show, after conservative talk radio host Heidi Harris had appeared in a segment to defend Schlafly, Daily Show co-creator and regular guest Lizz Winstead appeared for the "Club Ed" segment and bashed Harris as "that teabagging Carol Brady," advising Schultz that "you have got to slam her down when she is absolutely wrong." After the Daily Show co-creator went on to charge that Schlafly "can empty her bowels through her mouth and just exhaust horrifying crap onto the universe," an impressed Schultz laughed and cheered her on as he seemed to refer to Winstead’s rant declaring, "That’s great stuff":

Barack might have some 'splaining to do . . .

Appearing on The View, the president explained to Barbara Walters that he chose to come on the program because it's a show Michelle actually watches. According to PBO, the First Lady is "like eh" about news shows, grabbing the clicker [see screencap after jump] and turning away from them.

Was it really necessary for the President to dis his wife's interest in current events to explain his presence on the show?  Somehow I sense that a Republican president saying something similar would come in for a heap of feminist criticism.  Transcript after the jump.

Willie Geist introduced the segment on today's Morning Joe.

CNN refreshingly devoted an entire segment on Wednesday's American Morning to highlighting pornography's destructive impact on society, especially Internet porn. Guest Gail Dines detailed the harmful impact of pornography on men's sexuality, and anchor John Roberts even cited a study that found that 56% of divorces "involve one party...who has an obsessive interest in pornographic websites."

Roberts brought on Dines, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston and author of "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality," at the end of the 7 am Eastern hour. After citing the gargantuan number of pornographic websites on the Internet, the anchor first asked, "You say in your book and in studies that you've done that pornography today is not your father's Playboy, that it's mostly gonzo porn that's really changing our attitudes towards sexuality and women. What are you worried about?"

Dines answered that her concern was the "level of brutality and cruelness, in pornography's affecting the way that men think about women, and it's affecting the way they think about themselves and the way they construct ideas about sexuality. Because the more men view pornography, the more they begin to think like the pornographic world."

If only women ruled the world . . .

Striking a blow for her sex, Mika Brzezinski today claimed that the Wall Street meltdown "simply would not have happened" if more women had been in charge.

The Morning Joe co-host was reacting to news that the Dems managed to slip into the recently enacted financial regulation bill a provision--authored by Rep. Maxine Waters--that would create "at least 20 new Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion" with the power to kill government contracts with financial firms not meeting new "diversity standards."

Tina Brown seconded her sister's sentiment, blaming the financial industry's woes on "all this phallic obsession."

What's good for Wall Street is presumably good for Washington, too.  Mika Brzezinski--founder of Feminists For Palin, perhaps?

During live news coverage this afternoon, MSNBC's Chris Jansing demonstrated her apparent ignorance of the statistical maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Interviewing the authors of Red Families v. Blue Families, the daytime anchor gleefully reported the finding that states that voted Republican in the 2008 presidential election have higher rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and unwed parenthood than states that voted for Barack Obama.

"You've heard the term a lot – 'family values' – but are they actually breaking up families?" the daytime anchor inquired enthusiastically. "According to one book, the so-called liberal blue states actually have more stable family units than culturally conservative red states."

Presenting the findings as a nonpartisan analysis of statistical data, Jansing omitted the fact that the authors, June Carbone and Naomi Cahn, are contributors to New Deal 2.0, a blog of the left-wing Roosevelt Institute designed to "discuss how the Great Recession has exposed the fault lines of traditional family values."

Writing for New Deal 2.0 on March 1, Carbone and Cahn lectured:

Time magazine's Tim Padgett, who claims to be a Catholic, used the rose-colored glasses of his leftism to mercilessly bash his own church in an article on Monday where he compared Catholic bishops to "white Southern preachers [who] weren't ashamed to degrade African-Americans," labeled the Church "misogynous," and accused the institution of an "increasingly spiteful bigotry" against homosexuals.

Padgett, who wrote back in January 2009 that the communist Cuban revolution "deserves its due," launched a full-bore attack on the Church in the Time.com article, "The Vatican and Women: Casting the First Stone." Padgett wasted little time in unleashing his rage against the Church, labeling a recent Vatican document, which listed "grave crimes" according to canon law, "Rome's misogynous declaration," since, in his view, was an "avowal, as obtuse as it was malicious, that ordaining women into the priesthood was a sin on par with pedophilia."

The document in question, which revised the Catholic Church's concerning "exceptionally serious" crimes against faith and morals, does no such thing. Philip Pullella of Reuters reported on July 16 that "Monsignor Charles Scicluna, an official in the Vatican's doctrinal department, said there was no attempt to make women's ordination and pedophilia comparable crimes under canon...law....While sexual abuse was a 'crime against morality,' the attempt to ordain a woman was a 'crime against a sacrament,' he said, referring to Holy Orders (the priesthood)."

The Time writer used his mistaken premise to further attack the Church's hierarchy:

There's something very tortuous about watching some of the talking heads assembled on NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show," especially when they try to dissect former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin like she is some alien life form.

On the July 11 broadcast of his weekend show, Matthews and his panel analyzed Palin's "Mama Grizzlies" ad spot and attempted to determine what Palin's end goal was with the ad. And Time magazine's Joe Klein attributed credit to Palin's charismatic ability.  

"The most important thing about Sarah Palin is that she's a great stand-up politician," Klein said. "I mean, when you hear her talk - this is not a woman who has sat in a room with a political consultant telling her how to pronounce words. It's just her voice."

"There's something in the inflection which is provocative," Matthews replied.

In a new video out today, Sarah Palin sent a warning message to big-government liberals: "You thought pitbulls were tough? Well, you don't wanna mess with the Mama Grizzlies!"

The video, which celebrates conservative women's activism, was released this morning by Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC.

"It seems like it's kind of a mom awakening in the last year and a half," says Palin, as clips of women activists at political speeches and Tea Party rallies flash over the screen. "Where women are rising up and saying 'No -- we've had enough, already.' Because moms kind of just know when something's wrong."