Some Interesting News

Colin Powell on the missing WMD in Iraq:

"The open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go. And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?"

Good questions, especially in the second sentence. Especially as we went to war over not having the correct answer to that one.

Dick Cheney on the selection of the quote in his family Christmas cards:

"Lynne Cheney was responsible, the vice president said, for the quote from Benjamin Franklin on the family Christmas card: "If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid"?"

According to Cheney

"The quote reflects Franklin's musing over the importance of God in the affairs of men, the vice president said. "It did not refer, or should not be taken as some kind of indication, that the United States today sees itself as an empire"."

Whooah! Now that's a relief for the rest of the world. I think?

The Pope on the media portrayals of marriage and family:

"Infidelity, sexual activity outside of marriage, and the absence of a moral and spiritual vision of the marriage covenant are depicted uncritically, while positive support is at times given to divorce, contraception, abortion and homosexuality. Such portrayals, by promoting causes inimical to marriage and the family, are detrimental to the common good of society."

Assuming that the basic unit of the society is a creature called 'the marriage and the family', and assuming that these are interpreted very traditionally, perhaps yes. But what happens if the basic unit of the society is a creature called 'a human being'? Things aren't then always anywhere near so clear-cut. I can't help thinking that the Pope's own existence as an unmarried childless man makes him perhaps not the most expert of judges in this field. But what do I know? I'm just a pagan goddess.

After reading through this and the last few posts, I think that I need lessons on benevolent writing and sunniness. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" and all that stuff. I think that when life gives you lemons,you squirt them in your enemy's eye. Something seriously wrong here.

Are Women More Prone to Injuries?

"Are women more prone to injuries? It's that time of year when many people start trying to get into shape, but it may be more difficult for women than men. In fact, when it comes to beginning an exercise program or trying out a new sport, men and women may not always be created equal."

This is what my screen revealed when I clicked on the link to CNN.com for its Headline News.
To learn more about these injury-prone women, I clicked on the 'full story' link, eager to find out exactly what makes women so fragile or clumsy-footed.

But of course I was disappointed. The 'full story' refers to two military studies, one done in Britain and one in the U.S.. The British study found that female recruits were eight times more likely to be discharged for injuries once men and women were put on the same basic training program. The research concluded that

"...differences in strength, bone mass and the length of their strides put women at a greater risk of getting hurt."

Bone mass, strength, length of stride? In other words, smaller people were found to be more at risk for injuries in a program that most likely is extremely demanding and geared to the bone mass, weight and length of stride of larger people. Now, women are, on average, smaller than men, but most women who initiate an exercise program are not going to pick up the British military training manual and blindly follow it as the ideal daily routine. Keep in mind the preface to this story: "It's that time of the year when many people start trying to get into shape..."

The American military study had similar findings, but found out that the injury gap narrowed as training proceeded. This made the researchers suggest that

"...the level of fitness matters more than gender, and that women, on average, start out at lower levels than men."

And what can we conclude from this story? Its author believes that it is

"If you're starting an exercise program or a new sport, take it easy. You'll be less likely to get hurt, and when you've reached the level of fitness that you want -- go get 'em!"

Ok, sort of, though this conclusion has nothing to do with the way the article lured us in to begin with. And it is not all that we are going to take with us after reading it. We are also going to have a slightly greater belief in women's greater injury-proneness, whether such injury-proneness exists or not. After all, it was in CNN news!

The manner in which this story was sold is common for reporting of this ilk: first hint at great new revelations about what makes women women and men men, then go into a summary of various, often half-baked, research findings, but always, always finish with something that lets the gender that's been getting the bad rap (usually women) to feel that they have not been getting such a bad rap after all. This sells, I guess. But it doesn't change the basic message of such writings.

I, for one, expect more from writers who pretend to tell people how to live their lives, including how to exercise safely. Some proper research into the field, applicable to average individuals and their average circumstances would be good. Avoidance of pitting one gender against another would also be good, and tying the message of the piece to its title and preface would be excellent.

I, for one, will probably expect forevermore, at least with regard to writings aimed at strengthening and manufacturing women's many insecurities.
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And whatever blogger says, this IS a Saturday's post.
PS: Read this excellent article on why women's bodies attract so much more interest in the medical subspecialty of "Feeble, Weak and Withering" when there are no real reasons for this.
Thanks to Amy (in the comments) for the link.

My Favorite SOTU Assessment

..is this one:

Meanwhile, Bush was running the same old plays in his State of the Union Address: fear, threat, danger, terror, war, enemies. He even trotted out the weapons of mass destruction again, just as though they had actually existed. And the media accuse Howard Dean of being negative!

Read the whole thing here.

Echidne goes girly

Why? It's a long story, but the gist of it is that I slipped into the body of someone who was having a migraine attack. At first I feared that I could actually die from this thing, then I feared that I would not die. Afterwards, I felt a strong need to spruce up my appearance, what with the death-ringed eyes and the translucent teeth.

So I dug up my library on beauty care. It spans a long way back. Here's instructions from an 1873 Young Ladies' Journal on how to wash the hair:

It is occasionally necessary to thoroughly cleanse the hair. One or two precautions must be taken, however. Never use soap if you can avoid it; if you do, let it be the very mildest and unperfumed. Avoid so-called hair-cleansing fluids, and use rain-water filtered. The yolks of two new-laid eggs are much to be preferred to soap; they make a beautiful lather, and when the washing is finished, and the hair thoroughly rinsed in the purest rain-water, you will find, when dry, that the gloss will not be destroyed, which an alkali never fails to do. The first water must not be very hot, only just warm, and the last perfectly cold. Dry with soft towels - but do not rub till the skin is tender - and afterwards brush. Be always careful to have your brushes and combs perfectly clean and free from grease.

If this is too much girliness for you, take this quiz. It tells you which famous Western feminist you most resemble. If you are a man, you must first take a few deep breaths, imagine yourself to be a woman, and then rapidly answer the questions. I am Simone de Beauvoir, with a dingleberry named Sartre dragging behind me. Link to the quiz via Going Dutch.
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Postscript: I just realized why the water must be so cool: Imagine your hair with a couple of egg yolks in hot water! Anyone who's thickened a sauce with egg yolks would know what would happen. Wet hair encircled by slimy globs of semi-cooked egg!

Behind the Veil

France is contemplating banning the veil, the Yarmulke and large Christian crosses in schools. This can be seen as a consequence of the strict separation between religion and state in France, a tradition which has its roots in the state's fight for supremacy against the once-powerful Catholic church. But it is also a response to the growing French fears about islamic fundamentalism in a country with five to seven million muslims. The effect of the proposed ban is, of course, to limit the individual's scope for the free practice of religion.

This has provoked demonstrations in France but even more fervent protests abroad. Now some in the French government question the advisability of the ban. Here's the foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin:

"De Villepin told fellow ministers that the planned ban "puts France in a very delicate situation on the international stage," a well-placed government source who was briefed on the talks quoted him as saying. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Particularly, bans against wearing the veil put France "on the wrong foot with Arab nations, but also with the United States, which is for the respect of individual liberties," the source quoted de Villepin as saying."

Meanwhile, the top islamic cleric in Saudi Arabia, an Arab country, has criticized the atmosphere at an economic summit in Jiddah for the intermingling of the sexes:

"What we saw at that meeting of the mixing of men and women, and the women's appearance without their hijab (head scarf), which is ordered by God, is forbidden," Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik said in a statement released Tuesday.
He said he was troubled by photographs from the meeting published in newspapers Monday, saying the women's dress violated Islamic law. He also said he was worried about the moral state of Saudi Arabia.
"My pain is increased by such shameful behavior," he said. "God curses the woman that imitates a man, whether in appearance, clothing or in the lifting of her voice. So how can she walk among them, mix with them, uncovered?"

The Saudis have always taken a firm approach against any relaxation in the women's dress code. When the U.S. military decided to no longer require that American servicewomen in Saudi Arabia wear abayas (black head-to-toe robes) while off-base:

... the Saudi Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a government office, announced that the women would not be allowed in public without the abaya regardless of their U.S. citizenship or religious opposition. Saudi officials called the change in U.S. policy an affront to Islamic law that challenged Saudi sovereignty. Officials were also displeased that the U.S. did not consult the Saudi government before changing the policy.

It seems to me that the U.S. holds France to a higher standard of behavior than, say, Saudi Arabia. Though France is proposing restrictions to religious freedom, these would only apply in the school system. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, disallows the public practice of other religions. Surely those that are concerned about the freedom of religion should first address the more egregious violations, or at least criticize them with an equally loud voice. But then, of course, the Saudis are the friends of the U.S., whereas the French are... you know, Old Europe and all that.
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And what about the feminist analysis of the veil that I'm duty-bound to present? That, unfortunately, must wait until I have more time. Lots more time.

Matchmaking Between You And The U.S. Presidential Candidates

I'll write anything to make you look... Actually, this is a quiz which helps you find out which candidate you might want to elect. The results might surprise you. I was surprised by mine. Too bad that I'm not allowed to vote in this anti-goddess society.

Liberal Anger

An oxymoron? So it seemed until quite recently. As Molly Ivins points out,

Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time ago--attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a point there."

Conservatives, on the other hand, are excellent haters. They have had the hate arena mostly to themselves for the last decade, after all, and practice does make perfect. Liberals are no match for voices such as Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, though they are the targets, naturally. So puny has the left resistance been in these games that some right-wingers have had to turn to attacking their own to stay in training. Here's David Frum, a neo-conservative, on the paleoconservatives of his own party:

They began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.
War is a great clarifier. It forces people to take sides. The paleoconservatives have chosen — and the rest of us must choose too. In a time of danger, they have turned their backs on their country. Now we turn our backs on them.

Well, things are looking up for Frum and other underemployed conservative pugilists. Several recent articles have declared that liberals have finally turned angry. "I hate Bush" begins Jonathan Chait in last September's New Republic, and he notes that he's not the only one:

There seem to be quite a few of us Bush haters. I have friends who have a viscerally hostile reaction to the sound of his voice or describe his existence as a constant oppressive force in their daily psyche. Nor is this phenomenon limited to my personal experience: Pollster Geoff Garin, speaking to The New York Times, called Bush hatred "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling." Columnist Robert Novak described it as a "hatred ... that I have never seen in 44 years of campaign watching."

Not only does the conservative columnist Novak find this hatred unmatched in the last forty-four years of campaing watching (he must have had his back towards his own troops), but other commentators on the right also find it 'puzzling', 'a mystery'. Liberals have no such trouble understanding the root causes of Bush-hatred. Here's Chait's summary on the issues which have turned your average kind-hearted Liberal into a bloodthirsty wannabe-warrior. He sets out the scene by reminding us that the year 2000 election results made all reasonable observers expect that George W. Bush would govern from a moderate, bi-partisan position:

Instead, Bush has governed as the most partisan president in modern U.S. history. The pillars of his compassionate-conservative agenda--the faith-based initiative, charitable tax credits, additional spending on education--have been abandoned or absurdly underfunded. Instead, Bush's legislative strategy has revolved around wringing out narrow, party-line votes for conservative priorities by applying relentless pressure to GOP moderates--in one case, to the point of driving Vermont's James Jeffords out of the party. Indeed, when bipartisanship shows even the slightest sign of life, Bush usually responds by ruthlessly tamping it down. In 2001, he convinced GOP Representative Charlie Norwood to abandon his long-cherished patients' bill of rights, which enjoyed widespread Democratic support. According to a Washington Post account, Bush and other White House officials "met with Norwood for hours and issued endless appeals to party loyalty." Such behavior is now so routine that it barely rates notice. Earlier this year, a column by Novak noted almost in passing that "senior lawmakers are admonished by junior White House aides to refrain from being too chummy with Democrats."

When the September 11 attacks gave Bush an opportunity to unite the country, he simply took it as another chance for partisan gain. He opposed a plan to bolster airport security for fear that it would lead to a few more union jobs. When Democrats proposed creating a Department of Homeland Security, he resisted it as well. But later, facing controversy over disclosures of pre-September 11 intelligence failures, he adopted the idea as his own and immediately began using it as a cudgel with which to bludgeon Democrats. The episode was telling: Having spent the better part of a year denying the need for any Homeland Security Department at all, Bush aides secretly wrote up a plan with civil service provisions they knew Democrats would oppose and then used it to impugn the patriotism of any Democrats who did--most notably Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a triple-amputee veteran running for reelection who, despite his support for the war with Iraq and general hawkishness, lost his Senate race thanks to an ugly GOP ad linking him to Osama bin Laden.

All this helps answer the oft-posed question of why liberals detest Bush more than Reagan. It's not just that Bush has been more ideologically radical; it's that Bush's success represents a breakdown of the political process. Reagan didn't pretend to be anything other than what he was; his election came at the crest of a twelve-year-long popular rebellion against liberalism. Bush, on the other hand, assumed office at a time when most Americans approved of Clinton's policies. He triumphed largely because a number of democratic safeguards failed. The media overwhelmingly bought into Bush's compassionate-conservative facade and downplayed his radical economic conservatism. On top of that, it took the monomania of a third-party spoiler candidate, plus an electoral college that gives disproportionate weight to GOP voters--the voting population of Gore's blue-state voters exceeded that of Bush's red-state voters--even to bring Bush close enough that faulty ballots in Florida could put him in office.

But Bush is never called to task for the radical disconnect between how he got into office and what he has done since arriving. Reporters don't ask if he has succeeded in "changing the tone." Even the fact that Bush lost the popular vote is hardly ever mentioned. Liberals hate Bush not because he has succeeded but because his success is deeply unfair and could even be described as cheating.

Add to this the anger boiling due to the administration's unusual approach to environmental protection, its contempt for women's rights, its unilateralism and most importantly, its pre-emptively defensive war against Saddam Hussein, and most of the ingredients of the liberal Molotov's cocktail are mixed. The only thing that's surprising about this anger is how slow it has been in coming together.

So, now that we are all angry together, will the country benefit? The answer depends on whom one asks. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times deplores this trend:

Considering the savagery with which the Snarling Right excoriated President Clinton as a "sociopath," blocked judicial appointments, undermined U.S. military operations from Kosovo to Iraq, hounded Vincent Foster and then accused the Clintons of murdering him, it is utterly hypocritical for conservatives to complain about liberal incivility. But they're right. Liberals have now become as intemperate as conservatives, and the result - everybody shouting at everybody else - corrodes the body politic and is counterproductive for Democrats themselves.

Anger may well corrode the body politic; in fact, the conservative anger has already done so. But why is anger counterproductive for Democrats when it seems to have served the Republicans very well? Kristof implies that the kind of anger that gets you votes is not the liberal sort:

My guess is that if the Democrats stay angry, then they'll offend Southern white guys, with or without pickups and flags, and lose again.

Hmmm. And if the Democrats swallow their anger and smile, will the Southern white guys vote for them in droves? Please say that it is so, Nicholas.

Given the above analysis, the Republicans should welcome the anger of liberals everywhere. They don't seem to do so, of course. Rather, they act as if their own behavior in the last decade or so has been worthy of ten Nobel Peace Prizes. You know, feigned assaulted innocence.

Consider the reactions from the right to the MoveOn Organization's recent ad competition where one of the entries had Bush morph into Hitler. RNC chairman Ed Gillespie called this "the worst and most vile form of political hate speech" and "a despicable tactic". And no doubt it is. However, using nazi-terminology to describe ones political opponents appears to be much more common from the other side of the aisle. Here are Michael Savage and Norman Liebmann on the topic of nazis:

"I once wrote that 'Vac'm in the Vulva' Barbara Boxer was the reincarnation of Adolf Mengele in drag, the Nazi Angel of Death. I meant it. ... The spirit of Mengele knows well to start at the weakest point and work from there – with Clinton, Singer, Boxer or any other willing host."

"The difference between Clinton's fascists and Hitler's fascists is Clinton's have no paradigm. The trickiest to identify are the fascists in Arkansas, but only because the people there found the Nazi salute too intricate a maneuver for them to master."

Conwebwatch gives thirty-four such examples of the use of nazi imagery by right-wing pundits in the last five years.

No sane person would defend such slurs from either political party, but in the absence of these extremes, could rising liberal anger actually be a good thing? Paul Starobin in the Atlantic Monthly thinks so:

The clash between angry secular liberals and angry religiously motivated conservatives sometimes seems to generate little more than media din. But the rising partisanship of the American voter is probably a positive development. A country as big and diverse as the United States cannot avoid contentious fights over public-policy issues. A broad sorting of voters into a Red team and a Blue team—a trend harking back to the intense partisanship of the nineteenth century—is better than a European-style fragmentation of the electorate into numerous small parties, able to govern only after patching together fragile coalitions. The same Pew Research Center survey that found—tut-tut—a surge in the intensity of partisan feelings also turned up a decline in cynicism about government.

I'd feel more comfortable with Starobin's arguments if his excitement didn't give me mental images of beer-drinking fans rooting for the two sides in the Superbowl. Does he want two big teams because their clash would be more gigantic, and therefore more fun to watch? Or because he seems to see the art of compromising as nothing but the 'patching together of fragile coalitions'? Would this country indeed be better off with more open anger on both sides?

And might the liberals themselves be better off now that they are finally angry? How will they negotiate this volatile emotion? Its dangerous zones are at both ends of the scale: in sullen, inward-turned bitterness and apathy on one hand and in self-destructive foaming-at-the-mouth rage on the other. Neither of these are attractive campaign promises for the Democratic candidates. But there is a third way: anger used as fuel for long-term organizing, campaigning and negotiating. This is anger as a small warming flame firmly under control of reason; anger with a smiling face if you like.

I believe, on balance, that the new liberal anger can be a great opportunity when carefully handled. It isn't even that new, historically speaking. What could be more liberal than the righteous anger one feels when injustices are committed? That, my friends, lies at the very heart of liberalism.
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See Carol Tavris' Anger. The Misunderstood Emotion for more ideas about how to use anger productively.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

Martin Luther King, April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee:

Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life - longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not go there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

All About Me!

The blogosphere has been sweet to me! I have been raised to the proper divine place!
First, this blog is among the nominees for the Koufax award for the Best New Blog! And look at the company I keep! I'm humbled and elated at the same time...

Next, the Great Voice of ms. musings has picked my blog from among the multitudes of very good blogs as one to be praised! And once again, look at the company I keep!

Enough with the exclamation marks already. I'm a very pessimistic goddess, and immediately noticed that there's no way in hell I can win the Koufax award, given all the professional and famous and otherwise excellent competition. And then I noticed that the Ms. magazine writeup mentioned that I blog daily, and yesterday I DID NOT blog, as I was asleep.... And then the pressures started building up: there's nowhere to go but down now... and I've barely begun! What if I run dry? Why is everything always so hard?

Ok. Now I feel more normal, and can extend my sincere, from-the-very-bottom-of-my-heart thanks to everybody who's been so nice to me, and everybody who hasn't been so nice to me but still reads here once and a while. And my sincere, admiring thanks to everybody whose blogs I mine daily for good data and ideas (you know who you are). And to everybody else, including the people who give me material by their very existence...

The only logical way to stop this would be to say that I am quitting blogging now while I'm still doing good, but I won't!

Maureen Dowd: Marriage and Career Counseling for Politicians

Maureen Dowd is a New York Times columnist who inherited the 'one-woman-only-in-a-prominent-position' job from Anna Quindlen. In fact, it's said that Anna herself fished Maureen's writings from the slush pile and brought them to the paper's attention. I so wish she had let them stay in the slush pile.

Based on her picture, Dowd is a woman, and I dare conjecture that she's supposed to cater for the female market in political readership. And what does she think might interest women readers of the Times?

The answer: argyle sweaters on men, inability of being a 'good wife' in women. Both of these topics are applied to Democratic candidates for the job of the president of the United States. Apparently our nation's future is hanging by a thread of argyle wool which a careless wife could easily snap. So.

Her latest assault on wives concerns the role and career of one Dr. Judith Steinberg, the wife of Howard Dean. Dowd begins her article suggesting that the Deans are in urgent need of George W. Bush's new initiative for propping up the conventional marriage. Why? Because Judith is not sitting in the front row when Howard gives speeches; widening her eyes into admiring opaque circles at the wonder and wit of this man that she suddenly finds herself married to. Instead, she's back home in Vermont taking care of her patients and the Deans' school-aged child still at home.

This MUST mean that the Deans marriage is in deep trouble. On the other hand, of course, if she indeed had chosen to sit in all the front rows on her husband's campaign tour, what would Maureen and others like her have thought about that? Shall I guess? Perhaps Judith would have come across as a political groupie, a woman who wants the limelight more than she wants to help her poor suffering patients. A woman who chooses to wine and dine with celebrities while her poor child is all abandoned in the middle of the frigid snow fields of Vermont.

Wives just can't win. Guilt is a fine tool in even clumsy hands as Maureen shows us:

"What will she tell their grandkids?" wondered one political reporter here. "Yeah, Grandpa was once a front-runner for president with crowds all over America cheering him but I was too busy to go see it?"

Too busy. Or too selfish. Or too cold. Or too clingy. Or too independent. Or too lumpish. Yes, I've heard them all about political wives. Poor things, they can't do a thing right, and as a corollary neither can any other wives. Is this what Maureen thinks that women like to read about in the mornings, just before donning their hairshirts and taking up the daily self-flagellation?

Why couldn't she stick to argyle shirts? Oh, but I nearly forgot! She does discuss the fashion sense of Judith:

In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side — the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.

No! How terrible! She's actually dressed like most women in real life! This won't do. Put her back in corsets and high heels, give her a dolly face with makeup and puff up her hair. Then wind up the key and off she totters, to walk properly just three steps behind her husband: the perfect political Barbie. The guilt and blame programs come with the basic version, and all socially conservative potential Dean voters can breathe a long sigh and relax: we can still win this thing, Dean now looks like he's supposed to: a package deal where we get a butch leader and his Suitable Spouse to fight another butch dealer with a suitable spouse.

According to the ever-unreliable source of the Drudge Report, Maureen isn't even done with Deans yet. Supposedly Howard forgot to give her a promised telephone interview, and she's promised to write about it tomorrow. Ah, the suspension! There is a hint, though, if Drudge is to be trusted (I wouldn't, personally). Dowd told him (he says):

"A race rooted mainly in attacking the president may not take Dean far enough. Voters want someone who's been through the fire. They care about character. They want to know the evolution of the man, even if it's a myth."

Myth? If Dowd wants to be the mythmaker, Echidne save us all. And she can't.
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Postscript: And what did she write?

But a race rooted mainly in attacking the president may not take Dr. Dean far enough. Voters want someone who's been through the fire. They care about character. They want to know the evolution of the man, even if it's a myth.

And I want to know why she reads her columns to Matt Drudge before they are published.

Fighting Fat - The Bush Administration Approach

The World Health Organization just issued a report on the world-wide obesity problem. It estimates that 300 million people are obese and 750 million overweight. Even 22 million children under the age five are regarded as overweight. The WHO wants people to start eating differently and their governments to support this change:

The WHO report recommends eating more fruits and vegetables and limiting fats and salt. It also suggests governments limit food advertising aimed at children and encourage their citizens to eat healthier foods. Taxes and subsidies could be used to reduce the price of healthy food and make them more attractive to consumers, the report said.

The U.S. administration response was swift. HHS official William Steiger argued that the WHO findings were based on faulty science. I guess he also didn't like any of the onus put on governments or the business interests:

"The (U.S. government) favors dietary guidance that focuses on the total diet, promotes the view that all foods can be part of a healthy and balanced diet, and supports personal responsibility to choose a diet conducive to individual energy balance, weight control and health," wrote Steiger, special assistant for international affairs at Health and Human Services.

Now, personal responsibility is all fine and dandy, and exercize is also an important part of a healthy life. But personal responsibility is something that's a lot easier to practise when the grocery stores offer many affordable alternatives of healthy foods, when the cheapest filling thing to eat isn't a Big Mac with fries from McDonald's, and when the television isn't constantly blaring messages about the desirability of fast foods and soft drinks to its watching audience. If these messages didn't work, advertizers wouldn't be willing to pay for most of the tv industry.

Wiener's response isn't surprising, of course, given that the Bush administration wants pregnant women to assert individual responsibility in avoiding mercury that might possibly lurk in quite a few saltwater fish species, while the fishing and power plant industries (which put the mercury there) are not held to the same standards of individual responsibility.

Would you like to have lunch with me here at the headquarters of Snakepit Inc.? The menu: tuna salad with dill and mercury, freedom fries with saturated fat and a soft drink beverage with phosphoric acid. After lunch, we'll don our bulletproof vests and go for a brisk walk through the nearby delapidated area, admiring en route the individual initiative demonstrated by the drug dealers peddling at every street corner. Even the poorest American can do this much!

Frittering Away Your Life

Which is sometimes the only thing to do. Here are two interesting ways:

1. Play basketball. Warning: this ain't easy, so it's a great way to fritter away large chunks. Credit due to the Grand Reptilian.

2. Find out which world leader you most resemble. Idea stolen from Bronson's website. He won't mind as he's a lawyer! Note: you can do this test with four different numbers of questions, and the answers might change, so many minutes can be whiled away. (Though I always came out Gandhi-like, which casts grave doubt on the validity of the test.)

Enjoy!

The Short Version of News on Women in Afghanistan and Iraq

Afghanistan:

Women can now sing on the television:

Deputy Culture and Information Minister Abdul Hamid Mubaiz:"There should be no discrimination between man and woman. Therefore, we wanted to have them appear on television to give them the same rights as men."

Or maybe not:

Afghanistan's Supreme Court has protested the video, stating that they "are opposed to women singing and dancing as a whole...this is totally against the decision of the Supreme Court and it has to be stopped,"

Women are now citizens with equal rights and duties to those of men:

Afghanistan's new constitution is a success for the country's women. It deserves commendation for guaranteeing women what appears to be an equal rights clause, something that still eludes women in the United States.

Or maybe not:

The final constitution could be used to implement Taliban-like Sharia law. Before the equal rights clause appears, Article III of the constitution states that in Afghanistan, "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam."

Iraq:

The Bush administration pledged its support for the inclusion of women in decision-making bodies. The result: three women on the Iraqi Governing Council, one woman on the Iraqi cabinet and no women appointed to the 24-member constitutional committee. The proportion of women in the Iraqi population is 65%.

The nice interpretation:

Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. Iraq must start somewhere. Besides, we aren't going to interfere with another country's social traditions. We only interfere with political traditions!

The not-so-nice interpretation:

...the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is treating a growing human rights crisis for women as an extracurricular issue at best, leaving women at the mercy of thugs on the streets and the religious parties that have rushed into the political vacuum.

and

Over dinner in the palace cafeteria one night, when I discussed the accelerating crisis for women with two high-ranking American officials in the Interior Ministry--which oversees police and security--I was told with shocking candor as my pen perched over my reporter's notebook: "We don't do women." It's hardly a dirty secret that our government abroad views women's rights as at most a secondary concern, yet it was thoroughly sobering to hear this lack of interest so casually discussed.

============
Postscript:
The Talibanization of Iraq: It's beginning:

The provisional government in Iraq has removed the Saddam-era family law from the legal books and replaced it with the use of sharia to be administered by local religious leaders.

The order, narrowly approved by the 25-member council in a closed-door session Dec. 29, was reportedly sponsored by conservative Shiite members.

Paul Bremer hasn't approved this change yet. Will he? And whether he will or not, what's going to happen after June? One guess:

"This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages," Hakki said. "It will allow men to have four or five or six wives. It will take away children from their mothers. It will allow anyone who calls himself a cleric to open an Islamic court in his house and decide about who can marry and divorce and have rights."

Is this what we went to war for? Is this what freedom means for the female citizens of Iraq?
Gag me with a spoon.

And: No, Afghani women canNOT sing on television. Link courtesy of upyernoz.

The ACLU is Fascist. Now You Know...

From Bill O'Reilly's opening comments January 9:

Now the ACLU is free to come to your town and sue the heck out of it. And believe me, that organization will. The ACLU doesn't care about the law or the constitution or what the people want. It's a fascist organization that uses lawyers instead of Panzers. It'll find a way to inflict financial damage on any concern that opposes its secular agenda and its growing in power.

From Mediawhoresonline.

Travel Writing

Everybody does this: a tour of the blogs, with insightful comments thrown in between short takes on the main stories of various blogs. If everybody does it, how come I, a genuine trade-marked goddess, find it so hard?

It started very promisingly. On Alas, A Blog I liked almost everything, but especially the Masculine and Feminine in 1844. Interesting ideas about what's 'natural' to our genders. Sappho's Breathing has an excellent article on the reasons why it may not be a good idea for women to relinquish their own last name at marriage. Respectfulofotters has a good essay on needle exchange programs for drug addicts, and Trish Wilson discusses a new study which shows that the dearth of women in science is not due to a shortage of female doctorates. Barkbarkwoofwoof is lucid on the question what blogs are, while edwardpig is equally discerning on why it's not such a great thing to go to Mars, right now, and Rubber Hose has a great rip-apart analysis of William Saphire's political ineptitude. Elayne has an always relevant reminder that it's cheap and wrong to attribute the success of politicians we don't like to the voters' supposed stupidity.

Pretty professional, so far, isn't it? But note that I've already used up all sorts of civilizedly cheering adjectives: interesting, good, insightful, discerning, lucid, relevant. Besides, my travels had barely started at this point. Two blogs wouldn't let me in without blowing up my Explorer (The Fulcrum and And Then), so they'd have to be left for a later blog. This made me feel discouraged and all the funny writing I had read made me feel even more discouraged. (We goddesses are ambitious sorts and don't like competition, especially if it seems to beat us.)

And then I decided to include a picture that shows two dogs fighting from Clonecone's blog Craptastic, instead of all the relevant, insightful and discerning stuff that was also there, for no other reason except that I found it funny. Well, then it was just a short step to go through the rest of the blogs on my travel plan looking for equally funny stuff. Here is some of it:

Deep, Insightful, Political Comments by LC bloggers:

Farmer on Corrente in When Losers are Winners - and Vice Versa:

Except for all those Howard McGovern hippie type throwbacks from some decade or another. Boy are they losers. I'll bet they'll make the mistake in 2004 of voting for a loser again and the entire nation will once again be a winner when they select a silver spoon fed born winner and liar and crook and national disgrace to four more years. But who cares. That'll just make Dick Cheney a three-time winner and all real-Murican patriotic "pre-feminist" Christian sorts love a winner.

Gotham City 13 on election debates (Hypothetical Situations):

The way I see it, if anyone comes at Bush hard in the debates, he's just going to make a smug face and say some programmed response like: "Gee willikers, (Dem candidate).. I'm just a simple Southern boy, I don't like get angry.. I like to sit down and discussitude the issues."

Andante on Collective Sigh in More Ownership Society - Bush Style:

When I hit the meat counter at the local grocery, I've been known to drool and dream over T-bones or filet mignons before heading over to the ground beef. It's a matter of practical necessity.

The prospect of anyone drooling over job retraining, health care, and a secure retirement brings one phrase to mind - "third world country".

"Born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" comes to mind, also. Those who haven't even had a chance to get into the batter's box stand very little chance of socking away the savings, with or without tax credits.

Chris on Chrisbrown, while commenting on the administration's plans about the moon and Mars (Fly Me to the Moon):

We have a President saying "visionary" things like giving illegal aliens work visas, establishing moonbases, and flying to Mars. Any day now I expect him to say that he's a jelly donut, or Berliner. BushCo is now the evil doppleganger to JFK. He's the anti-JFK. What next? Bay of Pigs II: Electric Boogaloo?

The next two comments might not be quite purely political, but they are too funny to be omitted. Here's Invisiblelibrary (Supply Side Jesus and the Sermon on the Hill):

The reckless liberalism of Jesus Christ cannot be allowed to take hold of the Christian values this great country has fought so hard to preserve.

and BlogAmy (hope you're feeling better, Amy) in Guest Commentary Proves My Theory:

By the way, this person is not a normal journalist of the paper that printed his musings. Abusings. Accusings. Bruisings. Oozings. Mind losings...I could go on, but I won't. Boy, they'll put anybody into print these days. Maybe I'll be next?

And the last two comments are even less clearly about politics. The first one is by Stradiotto who is not in good health right now. While I really want him to feel better fast, there's nothing wrong with his blogging talents. This is how he gracefully says that he must blog a little bit less for a time:

My heart would be heavier about the latter were there not a sufficiency of drug addled commentary readily available for those whose surfing habits include rubbernecking intellectual meltdowns.

Dohiymir provides the perfect final quote:

Offline...
...for a few hours. Talk amongst yourselves.

Monday's Dog Blogging - The Highbrow Version

Greetings, my fellow canines and our humble human servants!

My maid, the snakewoman, didn't wish me to blog as she thinks nobody cares about what dogs think. Typical specieism! Down with humans! Well, not down with them; rather, let them stay in the roles they have been naturally allotted!

Everybody knows that dogs and humans are different. Even the most rabid humanist must admit that now. We all can see that dogs are faster and more beautiful. Dogs have more legs and much better leadership abilities. This can be easily explained by evolutionary science: as humans huddled around their puny campfires, we dogs were out there, exploring and hunting; and only the dogs with most legs survived! The survivors then passed on their precious genes to the next generations, who refined them even further! If you don't believe this, you are a creationist and a disgrace as a scientific thinker.

Humans are meant to open cans. Why else would they have thumbs? Other than that, humans are pretty useless creatures and the world would be a better place without most of them. The same is true of gods and goddesses. The snakewoman might be an exception as she buys me fresh Parmesan cheese to grate on my kibbles. But I'm not sure about this. Come the revolution, she, too, might have to go.

I have nothing but scorn towards last week's dog blog. That blockhead, Hank! She's not a bad dog, really, but so limited in her reading. She keeps wondering why I beat her in wrestling every time, and never connects this to the fact that I am a subscriber to all the martial arts sites on the internet. She can't even spell properly!

Henrietta the Hound
PhD, CE (Chien Extraordinaire), CEO of Snakepit, Inc.

Fashion Tips For The Uninformed

Argyle sweaters are a no-no. This according to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. She doesn't like Wesley Clark's apparent attempt to appeal to women by trying to soften his image.
Dowd notes:

Is his staff watching "What Not to Wear" or "Style Court"? It's discouraging to see presidential campaigns succumb to the makeover culture. Obviously, appearances count, but clothes don't make the man. Sometimes, they unmake him.

But much more often they unmake a woman. Some news from the city of Kuala Terengganu in Malaysia. The city government:

...has banned non-Muslim women from wearing mini-skirts, tight fitting dresses, and even moderately revealing clothes such as short-sleeved shirts and tight jeans to work. Muslim women are being called to wear a headscarf known as the tudong, which has to be tightly drawn about the face.

This is supposed to drive out 'indecency'.

Two very different stories about clothes. One is about voluntary choices which may or may not be silly, the other about forcing people to dress a certain way. Yet I suspect that the first story provokes more outrage in its readers who expected serious political commentary from Dowd, yet received something which makes Clark look like a female politician: someone to be judged by the clothes she wears.

The second story actually is about women being judged by the clothes they wear, so perhaps its readers feel less dissonance. But it's the horrible one out of the two.

Today's Political Blog

This is really funny, if it works. Half the time it does, the other half it doesn't. Nevertheless,
it's worth a try!



A picture is worth a thousand words! If this didn't work, or even if it did, you can get more political pictures in here.
But the pictures are too tiny, and Athena is busy with orchestrating maximum strategic chaos in the Iraq occupation, so she won't help me yet. Credits due to www.elcadillo.com.mx.

No Doesn't Mean No?

Atrios links to two worried men's articles on the question of proving that rape has taken place.
The National Review's James Bowman pines for the old days when:

Pre-feminist common sense suggested that a woman who comes alone to a man's hotel room late at night has already consented to sex with him.

and Gregg Estabrook is similarly concerned about how to interpret women's fuzzy signals of sexual willingness or not:

Because men know this--because in the real world "no" does not always mean no--speaking the word "no" is not the ideal way to communicate to a man that what is happening has changed from persuasion, or pressure, to compulsion. Men not only want sex, the male mindset holds that overcoming the woman's "no" is part of manliness. Few men will rape if that's what they think they are doing. Many try to push past "no" and tell themselves that what they are doing is manly persuasion of the naturally hesitant female. "Had we but world enough, and time/this coyness, lady, were no crime:" Andrew Marvel, circa 1650.
There has to be a better way than the word "no" to communicate to the man that he has crossed the line, and that better way must be widely agreed upon. Here's my proposal: If the line is crossed, women should say, "This is rape!"

So in the real world "no" does not always mean no, according to these gentlemen. Where does it then? According to Bowman, this place is the courts:

No means no — even though no one else hears it, even though everyone knows that it may mean yes — because feminists want to reserve to women the right and freedom to be indiscrete (sic).

What's a guy to do (Bowman and Estabrook seem to say)? It's manly to push past the 'no', but then you get sued for rape. Those darned feminists have really spoiled the sexual games, haven't they?

My suggestion for these two: Accept the 'no' for a no. Then if she really didn't mean it, she'll be the one missing all the goodies and won't make the same mistake again. In fact, she might be the one cajoling you next time, trying to forcibly push past your nos. And you didn't rape anybody by accident.

Otherwise I quite like Bowman's idea about the prefeminist rules: Anyone entering my hotel room has consented to sex with me! Room service waiters, cleaning staff, people I've invited in for a business meeting. Yeah! Life is sweet for us goddesses....

Rara Avis, Part III (Laura Schlessinger)

I really have to make the effort to blog about somebody sane and fairly nice. But not yet! Today I want to talk about our Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the beloved radio prophet and advice giver to the right-wing female hordes as to how to keep their husbands happy, their closets clean and the gays and lesbians firmly locked away in the same closets. She's not really a curious bird, though it does boggle the mind how a doctorate in physiology makes her qualified to give psychological advice. Maybe 'physiology' sounds enough like 'psychiatry'?

She sees herself fully qualified by the fact that she has committed all the female sins she now preaches against: she divorced her first husband, engaged in premarital sex and actively sought a professional career. She still has a professional career, though, which she uses to rant against other women with professional careers.

Your average conservative talk-show star, perhaps, but there are deeper levels to Laura. For one, she's an interesting example of a female woman-hater. This is a fascinating thing to be, especially when there appears to be no lack of simultaneous self-adoration. How does she do it? And why? It probably has something to do with her unsatisfactory relationship with her mother. Still, it's bit of a stretch to seek vengeance on the whole female half of the species just because she didn't like her mother.

As evidence of her misogyny, I present Dr. Laura's new book, titled The Care and Feeding of Husbands. In it she gives women the keys to the secrets of a happy marriage. These have already been handed out in Marabel Morgan's Total Woman (1975), but just to summarize, this is what the Publishers Weekly review says about Laura's book:

...this controversial marriage and family therapist claims that every woman can achieve a deeply satisfying marriage if she adheres to certain fundamentals men require. Preparing dinner, caring for the children without complaint, greeting her husband with a kiss and engaging in sexual intimacy instead of "tearing down a husband's necessary sense of strength and importance" can result in the harmonious marriage women crave.

Dr. Laura also suggests that wives should not withhold sex. As one reader review so aptly noted:

I've read several criticisms of Dr Laura's position that it is a wife needs to meet her husband's sexual needs even when she's not in the mood. Dr Laura compares it to how irresponsible it would be for a husband to not go to work just because he's too tired or doesn't feel like it.

So now we know. Sex is wives' work!

And what do women get for following all this sage advice? Is there going to be a book titled The Care and Feeding of the Wife which men can leaf through to find the secret formula for women's happiness in marriage? No! See what happened when she was asked this very same question in an interview:

Are you going to write the book for men on the proper care and feeding of wives?

Nope. Men are born of women and between girlfriends and then a wife; men spend their entire lives in the tutelage of women. What women accept or reject is largely the guiding force for what men will and won't do. When they are treated with the Three A's, they naturally, and in gratitude and affection, give their women the attention, regard, respect, support and love they want.

The three A's referred to in this quote are affection, approval and appreciation. Nothing wrong in arguing that these are important characteristics of happy marriages. But what is odd is that women must learn to show their affection, approval and appreciation by such concrete acts as cooking, childcare and sex, while men just seem to 'know' how to show their affection, approval and appreciation. But only after women learn their lesson.

I don't buy this, and neither does Dr. Laura, really. She writes this book for women because men wouldn't buy such books. So it's all about money, as one might expect. The book won't work, and in a few years she can write another money-maker for the submarket of unhappy conservative wives. Nice work if you can get it.

Though The Care and Feeding of Husbands is a treatise based on woman-hating, there is something more to it; a tinge of contempt towards men, starting with the title which reminds me of a how-to-book in animal care. Dr. Laura may tell women how to be properly submissive, but she is telling this in the disguise of female power:

Women seem not to understand, or underestimate, the profound power they have over their husbands. Men are very emotionally dependent upon women from the day they are born to the day they expire. This book teaches women to use this power benevolently – which will definitely result in them being happier with life and love. (From the book.)

This whiff of misandry is strengthened when one learns that men are very simple creatures:

All through the book you say "men are simple" ... isn't that an insult?

Not at all! In fact, most all of the many hundreds of responses I received from men in preparing this book confirmed just that: "Men are only interested in two things: If I'm not horny, make me a sandwich," and "As a man, I can tell you our needs are simple. We want to be fed, we want our kids mothered, and we want lovin'."

Though not comparable in intensity to her misogynistic messages, I'd go as far as to say that Dr. Laura doesn't much care for men, either. In fact, it seems that Dr. Laura finds everybody quite lacking, with the possible exception of herself.

And what does she try to achieve with this book, other than the obvious increases in her stock market investments? I suspect that she seeks male approval, the comforting lap of daddy when mommy doesn't understand. Will she get it? I doubt it very much. Here's one man's comments on the book's author:

And for all her talk about the joys of domesticity and motherhood, she is principally identifiable as a psychologist, author, and talk-show hostess. How much time did she actually spent (sic) raising her family?

Besides, she's a black-belt in karate, and athletically-inclined females have terminal penis-envy. They are not bastions of pro-male sentiment.

Poor Laura, perhaps. Though not at all compared to the troubled callers in her shows and the worried readers of her books. It is they that deserve our real compassion and pity.