More On Abstinence Education

A new report looks specifically at how women and girls are affected by the cross-your-legs policy that the Bush administration has so eagerly supported. I have written earlier about some very carefully done studies which show that abstinence education does not work in terms of decreasing sexual activity among the target population of teens, but of course the real test of the policy is whether it works politically by keeping its supporters well funded from the public pockets.

I have downloaded the report but haven't read it yet. The e-mail it came with included this quote from a teenage girl who had participated in an abstinence education program:

Because we didn't have accurate information about what was healthy and what wasn't, I endured some awful situations because I didn't know the difference. We didn't talk about respect, boundaries, and sexual communication. So the myth of 'boys push and girls resist' informed everything. We never talked about consent because with abstinence curriculum you shouldn't consent.

Of course you shouldn't consent! That's the whole point! Though I find it interesting that boys are still expected to push, just as if there had been no abstinence education for them at all, and that girls are supposed to gate-keep. It's the very old double standard, the story about the hunter and the hunted, with the interesting variation that all blame lies with the prey.

All-male social clubs (by Suzie)

         Tampa has a Mardi Gras knockoff called Gasparilla. Two brothers from a prominent family recently resigned from an all-male krewe in an imbroglio over a DJ yelling at a woman to lift up her shirt and show her "boobies" for beads.

        I would love to see more men demand changes and refuse to participate in sexist nonsense.

        Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla hosts the "invasion" by boats and the subsequent parade. The host krewe was forced to integrate racially, but it still refuses to admit women. The event has grown to include all-female krewes and krewes with both men and women. But the Krewe of Gasparilla still has the most clout and offers invaluable networking to wealthy businessmen. 

      A similar issue arose over the all-male membership of the Augusta National Golf Club. 

      Some of you may say: Who cares if rich women get excluded? But I think it's bad for all of us when powerful men have a desire to lock out women. 

On Gender Stereotypes

Drake Bennett has written an interesting piece in the Boston Globe, asking whether gender stereotypes are harder to address than racial stereotypes. Bennett quotes a lot of research which suggests that it's harder to get rid of the hidden sexism in the mind than the hidden racism. I don't have the knowledge to tell whether this impression is the correct one. Perhaps there are other studies which suggest something different? Or perhaps not.

But I noticed, once again, the interesting assumption lots of people unconsciously make that research done in the United States or in Canada or in Britain is representative of general human nature and not just of the Anglo-Saxon cultural inheritance or related biases. The context in which I mostly see this error is in the assumption that the American teenage trauma called "the high school experience" is how all humans grow up, but even here it's useful to point out that studies done in different cultures would probably unearth somewhat different types of sexist beliefs, and either more or less of them, and the same would have been true of studies like this done, say, a hundred years ago in this country.

All that is meant to say that when psychologists study something like gender or racial beliefs they can't just study some innate and isolated part of the human mind; they study the totality of the junk we have in our heads, a lot of it brought in from the movies and the popular culture and so on.

Why am I talking about this? Because Bennett also introduces a "biological" explanation for the enduring nature of gender bias: those prehistoric tribes which locked up our brains against any further evolution:

Tooby takes a more biological view. As he argues, in the prehistoric environment in which our brains evolved, race had no meaning -- no one could travel far enough to meet anyone who didn't look like them. Gender, on the other hand, meant a lot. It predicted what someone's status would be, what their priorities were, whether they were a potential rival or a potential partner.

It's not a "more biological" view, given that we don't have any actual biological evidence. It's speculation, and speculation based on some time and place of which we know practically nothing. But Tooby still believes that race then had no meaning, but sex had. And what was the meaning of sex? It told about, say, what someone's status would be.

And what was the status of women in those tribes? We don't know that, either, of course. This is why I'm unhappy with the kinds of "biological" explanations that are advanced by some. They don't provide us any additional evidence but certainly serve to reinforce various pop-evolutionary soundbites.

And for those suffering from primary-season allergies: Warning! The article is based in the context of Clinton vs. Obama.

Prognosis is Poor Without Health Insurance

A study reports on something which is also the common-sense conclusion to come to: If you have no health insurance and little money you are less likely to see a doctor regularly or early when symptoms appear. So you go and seek treatment much later than would be good for you:

A nationwide study has found that the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid are more likely than those with private insurance to receive a diagnosis of cancer in late stages, often diminishing their chances of survival.

The study by researchers with the American Cancer Society also found that blacks had a higher risk of late diagnosis, even after accounting for their disproportionately high rates of being uninsured and underinsured. The study's authors speculated that the disparity might be caused by a lack of health literacy and an inadequate supply of providers in minority communities. The study is to be published online Monday in The Lancet Oncology.

Previous studies have shown a correlation between insurance status and the stage of diagnosis for particular cancers. The new research is the first to examine a dozen major cancer types and to do so nationally with the most current data. It mined the National Cancer Data Base, which began collecting information about insurance in the late 1990s, to analyze 3.7 million patients who received diagnoses from 1998 to 2004.

...

When comparing blacks to whites, the disparities in late-stage diagnosis were statistically significant for 10 of the 12 cancers. Hispanics also had a higher risk but less so than blacks.

The study's authors concluded that "individuals without private insurance are not receiving optimum care in terms of cancer screening or timely diagnosis and follow-up with health care providers." Advanced-stage diagnosis, they wrote, "leads to increased morbidity, decreased quality of life and survival and, often, increased costs."

The study cites previous research that shows patients receiving a diagnosis of colon cancer in Stage I have a five-year survival rate of 93 percent, compared with 44 percent at Stage III and 8 percent at Stage IV.

"There's evidence that not having insurance increases suffering," said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer.

Note that not having health insurance has an impact on continuity of care, but that being black or Hispanic has an extra impact on top of that. The reasons for the extra impact might be the ones the quote suggests. My guess would be that it has to do with lack of doctors in overwhelmingly low-income areas. Such areas are also often racially or ethnically segregated. In short, a white uninsured person with no money might live closer to sources of regular medical care because of less housing segregation, whether voluntary or not.

Despite the importance of this article, I have trouble with the way screening is sold here. Consider some disease that can be spotted by screening and suppose, just as a thought experiment, that early treatment actually has no benefit at all. Suppose also that the disease takes five years to progress from Stage I to Stage IV and then one year to kill. Given this, people who are diagnosed by screening in Stage I would live an extra six years, people who are diagnosed by advanced symptoms in Stage IV would live one year. But in reality all these people are living exactly the same length of time with the disease; it's just that some of them know they have it earlier.

This is why I'm not too satisfied with the use of the five-year survival rates as a measure of how good the treatment is.

Of course the above is just a thought experiment, and no way am I saying that early detection has no benefits. It obviously does, in every case where early treatment improves the final outcome. But screening in itself is not a treatment.

JAWS by Suzie

   

      I promise to settle into my Friday writing spot, but now that I've figured out some of the mechanics of posting, I'd like to go ahead and tell you about Tad Bartimus winning the Washington Press Club Foundation's lifetime achievement award.

      My career was spent in journalism. As a teenager, I admired Tad, the first female bureau chief for the Associated Press. She wrote about people and places with empathy, as if she were at home. She wrote so well that you forgot her writing. You thought only of the story, not who was telling it. 

      Later, I realized that it matters who does the telling. Different storytellers, different voices, enrich our understanding of the world.

     Tad founded the Journalism and Women Symposium. I was giddy to go to my first JAWS, imagining that I would be going to my home world, full of feminist journalists who would welcome me into the sisterhood. Instead, the women were like my real sisters, each one different, each one with her own ideas. I sent home a postcard, saying I feared I'd feel alienated even in a convention of clones. 

        I found my connection during a night of wine tasting. Earlier, a businessman fondled one of the JAWdesses as he walked past. That evening, we saw him, went after him, surrounded him and made him get down on his knees and apologize. It was sweeter than a late-harvest riesling. 

     That was 1996, when JAWS was held in Napa, Calif. 

    May we all find people to inspire us and come together to confront injustice.

Happy Feminist News

Thanks to Dan S. in the comments for alerting me to this story:

Kansas activities officials are investigating a religious school's refusal to let a female referee call a boys' high school basketball game.

The Kansas State High School Activities Association said referees reported that Michelle Campbell was preparing to officiate at St. Mary's Academy near Topeka on Feb. 2 when a school official insisted that Campbell could not call the game.

The reason given, according to the referees: Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's beliefs.

Campbell then walked off the court along with Darin Putthoff, the referee who was to work the game with her.

"I said, 'If Michelle has to leave, then I'm leaving with her,'" Putthoff said Wednesday. "I was disappointed that it happened to Michelle. I've never heard of anything like that."

Fred Shockey, who was getting ready to leave the gym after officiating two junior high games, said he was told there had been an emergency and was asked to stay and officiate two more games.

"When I found out what the emergency was, I said there was no way I was going to work those games," said Shockey, who spent 12 years in the Army and became a ref about three years ago. "I have been led by some of the finest women this nation has to offer, and there was no way I was going to go along with that."

It's not absolutely clear that Campbell was not allowed to referee the game because of her gender. But if that indeed is the case, we are all reminded of the work that still remains to be done in feminism (as if you needed reminding; I'm just pontificating here).

But isn't it sweet and wonderful how the other referees had her back? I got a tear in my eye reading that part. Because on some deeply primal emotional level this is what equality and fairness is all about: being accepted as a full member of the team.

Today's Deep Thought

I was surfing the liberal blogs yesterday, trying to avoid vacuuming, and came across a troll comment saying roughly this about Hillary Clinton:

No white bitch will rule over me. Obama or nothing.

Now, it's primary time and emotions are heated and many believe that the White Bitch is the trademark of Hillary Clinton (thank you, sexists in the media for that), and the troll won't get "nothing" if neither Obama nor Clinton gets elected the president of the United States. The troll will get John McCain.

But it occurred to me that the first sentence in the quote is a good rough definition of anti-feminism. If you replace the adjective "white" with, say, "fat" or "ugly" or "old" or "rich" or "greedy" or "frigid" or "black" or "yellow" or whatever nasty things women are supposed to be you get a fridge magnet for all those Men's Rights lads. The definition is rough both in the sense that the language is crude but also in the sense that a full definition would include something about the lads ruling over the bitches instead. Perhaps that's the reason why the occupation of a pimp has reached mythological levels of admiration in all sorts of odd places (Peoria?).

I'm not making some jaw-gaping new observations here. But it's useful to remember that many anti-feminists like women just fine (preferably naked and cooking). It's the uppity women they hate.

"We Can Do Nothing."

Women in some tribal areas of Pakistan could not vote, because the tribal elders decided that their culture does not allow such activities:

Peshawar district mayor Ghulam Ali said voting had to be discontinued in Maryamzai, Budaber and other areas on the outskirts of Peshawar, which is close to the Afghan border where Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants are active.

Men and women vote at separate locations throughout Pakistan, an Islamic republic.

"I have reports that elders in the area decided that voting by women is against our culture," Ali said.

"This is their tradition. We can do nothing."

This problem is not any greater than the other problems of voting in Pakistan. But I find it fascinating how it is so easy to "do nothing" when it comes to women, and how this attitude appears to be pretty global.

Monday's Little Bit Of Fun

Go and read Bill Kristol in the New York Times. Go on. It won't kill you and he's actually quite funny today.

He begins by linking Rudyard Kipling to the current Republican party via George Orwell:

Browsing through a used-book store Friday — in the Milwaukee airport, of all places — I came across a 1981 paperback collection of George Orwell's essays. That's how I happened to reread his 1942 essay on Rudyard Kipling. Given Orwell's perpetual ability to elucidate, one shouldn't be surprised that its argument would shed light— or so it seems to me — on contemporary American politics.

Orwell offers a highly qualified appreciation of the then (and still) politically incorrect Kipling. He insists that one must admit that Kipling is "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting." Still, he says, Kipling "survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly." One reason for this is that Kipling "identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition."

"In a gifted writer," Orwell remarks, "this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality." Kipling "at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like." For, Orwell explains, "The ruling power is always faced with the question, 'In such and such circumstances, what would you do?', whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions." Furthermore, "where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly."

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell's argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

Get it? The ruling power is the Republican party, and they are really good at running the government because they have spent so much time asking themselves: "If such and such were to happen then what?" For instance, lots of this self-examination took place right before the Iraq invasion, I'm sure, and also when deciding on how the government should respond to the disasters caused by hurricane Katrina, and also when the Republicans decided to make the Food and Drug Administration go on a starvation diet, just in time for all the dangerous foods and medications entering this country. All that careful thinking, all that responsibility! Though the responsibility tends to come with retroactive immunity these days.

I never realized that Kristol is a comedian. Perhaps that's why the Times hired him?

The Media On Mass Killings

I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about all those families now trying to hold grief from totally destroying their lives, all those parents whose young adult children will never come home again, all because some mentally ill and severely selfish person decided to take a retinue with him or her to the land of the dead. And I also couldn't sleep because of the way these mass killings are covered in the media.

It's beginning to look pretty clear to me that some would-be killers commit these disgusting acts in the very hope of getting their posthumous fifteen minutes of fame and glory. Just think about the usual coverage of these massacres: After many descriptions of the panic and the horror of the actual slaughtering the stories always settle down to giving us several "up close and personal" glimpses of the butchers. And more and more stories, asking friends or relatives about the killer, wondering what the motives could possibly have been (hint: the person is mentally ill), publishing pictures of the killer at various ages, hunting for past girlfriends. For someone who wants attention and doesn't care how that is obtained or is willing to ignore the uncomfortable fact that the dead don't watch television , well, what's there not to like?

If I sound angry here, I am. In many countries the media doesn't report on suicides because such reporting always results in lots of copycat suicides. I understand that the media can't NOT report on mass killings. But surely it would be possible to focus the story on the victims, to make their lives seem real and valuable to us, and to leave the killers to the shadow-land they belong.

Sunday Night Marcel Aymé Blogging posted by Anthony McCarthy

Le Passe-Muraille

The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls

Objective journalists vs. partisan police (by Suzie)

      

       TV writer David Bauder discusses the plight of MSNBC's David Shuster and Chris Matthews, who had to apologize for sexist statements about Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. "Web sites and bloggers" are "obsessive," which "foster a hypersensitivity over words and deepen the nation's partisan divide," writes Bauder.

       Let me get this straight: Bauder is NOT obsessive about television because he's paid to watch it all the time? The mainstream media does nothing to deepen the partisan divide?
       We knew, didn't we, that it would be only a matter of time before someone called us hypersensitive.

Not Just Burying The Lead But Killing It by Anthony McCarthy.

This would be analysis of the nomination contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by Drake Bennett is fatally flawed for many reasons. The first among those is its reliance on a mishmosh of behavioral sciences for its would be explanations of how voters are voting. I’ll get to that in a minute but it’s impossible to analyze anything about Hillary Clinton without taking the foremost fact of her political life into account.

Bennett ignores the sixteen year campaign of hate against Hillary Clinton by the media, fundamentalist religion and the known, well-financed campaign of lies and vilification by the likes of billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and Jerry Falwell. No lie was left untold, including accusations of murdering one of her close friends, Vince Foster. Every non-issue was inflated into a criminal conspiracy. And this hate campaign used every single aspect of sexism in its war against Hillary Clinton. Her enemies are the purveyors of sexist stereotyping in this issue. Pretending that her potential supporters and not her enemies are the real story of sexism in this nomination contest is to continue to do their work for them.

Hillary Clinton’s success in overcoming the wall to wall smear campaign against her on the basis of her own competence, dear Drake Bennett, “journalist”, is the most salient fact of her political career. To ignore that in favor of social science of who knows what validity, renders your piece useless. To deny that she still has to answer for the invented “Clinton era scandals” such as “Filegate”, which the corporate media won’t ever admit was no scandal at all, should be enough to impeach any would be ‘journalist’.

In order to concentrate on the psychobabble instead of the facts it is necessary to do what just about no serious voter does, it transforms two distinct individual candidates into generic abstractions for the purpose of inventing reasons for how people vote. People who vote in primaries and caucuses tend to be a lot more rational than this journalistic fiction would have them.

I’ve talked with scores of Democratic voters and have heard one after another say that they would love to vote for Hillary Clinton, some of them torn over the chance to put a vastly competent and accomplished woman in the office, but who are afraid that she can’t overcome the years and years of the well financed hate campaign against her.

The media hates Hillary Clinton. You get the feeling that for many of them it is not a matter of disdain for her history or even her personality. For most of them it is a matter of being seen to repeat the received viewpoint of their chosen class. A "journalist" who refutes the lies about Hillary Clinton? How many of them are there as compared to those who pass on lies about her? Well, you don’t do so unobserved. Did you think that Democrats who like Hillary Clinton AND Barack Obama can’t tell who is going to have the more hurdles to clear before they can assume office?

Don’t forget where Democrats have been. We saw the corporate media go after the Clintons hammer and tongs on behalf of their wealthy owners and advertisers. We saw an objectively clean administration, as compared to Reagan’s and the Bushes, mired in a series of phony scandals promoted by the Republicans and every media organization from FOX to C-SPAN and NPR. We saw Al Gore have the presidency stolen from him by one of the most corrupt actions ever taken by a Supreme Court for clearly partisan reasons. And we saw John Kerry likely denied a victory by a corrupt election process in Ohio and other states all with the compliance of the biased media. We have your number, we know that our candidate will have to overcome the press.

I’ve talked to people who didn’t stand up for Clinton in our caucus who are fully aware that she has the longer record of achievement and that, against high odds, triumph over the character assassins. She was elected to the Senate after one of the longest and most aggressive media campaigns in modern history. But that campaign is continuing and none of its lies ever falls on the weight of massive refutation.

One woman I talked with was in tears because she knew she was giving up the best chance of seeing a wonderfully qualified woman as president during her lifetime. She had every confidence that Barack Obama is an excellent candidate who will certainly be better than any Republican and that a Democrat must win this election and assume the office. She decided to stand up for him only because she made a rational decision, taking the continuing campaign to demonize Hillary Clinton into account. I have also talked to men who have made the same decision on exactly the same rational basis.

No one in the media should be allowed to hide behind a bunch of social science mumbo-jumbo in order to deny their part in Clinton's possible defeat for the Democratic nomination. If the United States is deprived of having someone as accomplished and competent as Hillary Clinton for president, it is because of the corporate media doing the bidding of her enemies.

"There's a greater chance that I would dye my hair green and get tattoos all over my body and do a rock tour with Amy Winehouse than there is that I would run for the Senate, so let me put that to rest. Somehow, just imagine me, green hair, on tour with Amy Winehouse, ain't happening, not running for the Senate, done deal, absolutely no way." Mike Huckabee

Having never heard of Amy Winehouse before she was denied a visa and having heard nothing that about her that isn't horrifically tragic and appalling, does it get any sleazier than having Rev. Huckabee using her like this? Is he paying a price with the 'values voters'?

Amy Winehouse doesn't just belong in rehab, she belongs in long term custodial care. The people promoting "Rehab" and providing yet one more excuse for people who are hard enough to get to treatment without these lines should be lined up against the wall. But the pop-culture industry has never suffered for promoting violent and self-destructive behavior yet and you doubt they will as long as they can make lots of money that way.

Posted by Anthony McCarthy

Against The Beast by Anthony McCarthy

Do I have this right? There’s yet another Rambo movie being released? The extension of chemically enhanced, Hollywood, fascist chic this far into what John McCain enthusiastically forecasts as a hundred years war in Iraq goes well beyond being a symptom of the outsized power of aged non-talents in the intellectual capital of the degenerating American Empire.

I also hear as well that the crypto-fascist, survival fantasy “Jericho” is being revived by what we are told was popular acclamation. As it happens, I saw exactly two episodes of this wretched program before it was canceled last time. Why “Jericho”? Wasn’t it discontinued due to viewer disinterest in the first place? I’ve got a suspicion that the revival of this junk has more to do with its absurd assertion of survival after a nuclear war and the rest of its message than it does quality entertainment. Its revival in an election year has to be seen as the promotion of a political viewpoint.

The cliche that the worst in pop culture represents America to itself and the world is too true. With the series of Republican presidents that have been brought to power by TV and radio and the most insanely irrational wars and foreign policies they have produced, only someone in complete denial would assert that it isn't the predominant product of our culture. It is the marriage of free speech absolutism and profit making under a corporate state system, worlds away from what free speech would mean under a true democracy. The context under which speech happens, the potency given to the messages favored by wealthy corporations when they own the amplification system, can only be ignored by the most willfully blind. Pretending that all speech is equal speech under present day conditions is a rejection of reality. Speech fueled by broadcasting, money, in other words, is not equal in power to speech produced by a single person in any realistic political analysis.

There is other speech in the United States but its rationality and potency is swamped by the media phantasmagoria that is intended to only excite and distract as it misinforms.

William Bolcom has been against the machine for decades now. Going back to before his brilliant Piano Quartet and Piano Concerto from 1976, the Buycentennial of the United States, he has been producing some of the most important statements of rejection of the worst of America. From yesterday’s Boston Globe:

Bolcom says that the symphony was surprisingly easy to compose, in part because he composed the opening - a dramatic setting of the line "Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air" - more than 40 years ago, when he was a graduate student at Stanford. That line is from Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," from which the symphony's final text is drawn: "For every thing that lives is Holy."

To Bolcom, that line is far from being just watery sentiment. In a recent issue of Symphony Magazine, he wrote that that idea "could not be more relevant to today's miseries: I do feel very strongly that America's shedding of a long, overprotected, and overprotracted adolescence is the only way toward our nation's survival."

"It's a culture that nurtures the infantile," he elaborates. "So our tastes are those of children, we think like children, we got into this last war as if we were children. We have a notion of machismo for handling the world around us . . . and that's a very bad image for us. It's going to kill us."

William Bolcom's work is an example of the best of American democratic culture. He isn’t going to be a household name any time soon.

The Patriarchal Ode To Sexual Love

This is a little too late for Valentine's Day, but Glenn Beck just gave a lovely shorthand version of the way one type* of conservative guys seem to view love (the other type consists of fundies who think that God made women as their domestic servants and their sex slaves):

BECK: I mean, here are some other reasons. "You're ugly." Hello! I'm not a sex expert but I'm -- you know, I'm thinking, you know, you're ugly and, you know, that's a tough one to overcome especially if you're a woman. If you're a guy, that's not hard to overcome. I'm sorry. That's just the way the world is. Have you -- how many ugly guys have hot wives? Take me, for example. I don't know why she married -- I think it was low self-esteem. I do. No, really I think it was low self-esteem. I got in -- you know, you buy when the market is low. You know what I mean? While everybody else is selling, you buy. And I think I got in there right at the right time. Low self-esteem, low, wait a minute, could go a little lower, she might come down to my price. Hang on, OK, sold! Now her self-esteem is going up. And if my income wasn't going up, she would have ditched me long ago. She would have gone, "Wait a minute, I think I was depressed when I married you." I'm just -- look. I'm not Tania, but I am a thinker. I'm on to you, Tania!

The bolds are mine.

It's a joke but it isn't really a joke. The thinking goes something like this: Women want money and men want sex. So all women are in the market for a rich guy and all men are in the market for a beautiful woman. Then they trade. And that is called love, I guess. Of course, once you lose your looks or your money you also lose the love...

This is the idea that much of the pseudo-evolutionary-psychology reflects. Though usually the guys there insist that no, women aren't after your money, they really truly honestly find older wrinkled bald guys very hot, and they also argue that even if women earned as much as men it would still be true that nothing is as awesome as someone like that.

It's very sad, really, as anyone who has experienced real love knows. Yes, an older, wrinkled bald guy can be the hottest guy on earth, but not because he is older, wrinkled and bald.


-----
*Not that there aren't other kinds, even kind ones. But these are the two types of conservative men who write about women.

And Some Friday Fun

I inspired Suzie Madrak to write this.

Not Understanding. Demanding, Domineering, Nurse Ratched Kind of Thing.

That is Rush Limbaugh's definition of Hillary Clinton and also his explanation for why white men don't want to vote for her. She's the wrong kind of woman, reminds them of all the white bitches they have met in their lives. A real woman is understanding, soft and cuddly, you know? Of course such a woman is also quite incapable of running for the president of the United States, so Rush has neatly sewn the bag shut. No escape for any woman, ever. Either you are a stuffed toy animal or you are a castrating toothed vagina. Neither of those will get the votes of Manly Men.

For similar sexist takes on the Hillary Clinton phenomenon, you can go to mensdailynews.com, where at least one writer argued that the downfall of Clinton shows how nobody should ignore the most important voting bloc: white men. The writer notes that, sure, white women are a bigger blog, but they're too ill-informed and too uninterested to matter in politics.

Why do I bother to tell you all this? Because these things are growing out there, like mold on an old shower curtain, and because we in the feminist circles debate each other on questions such as whether the time has already come when the gender of a candidate matters not one whit.

I personally think that we need at least, oh, let's say, three female presidents in the history of this country before we can assume that gender wouldn't enter into those calculations for many voters. And preferably a female Pope or two, too. That Utopian time is not one any of us will ever see.

Blog News

This here blog is going to get a new blogger! Suzie has agreed to write something for us, mostly on Fridays. She will introduce herself when she starts posting, but let me just say that I admire her very much and that you are all in for a treat.

Of course Anthony McCarthy and me will also stay, though I'm tempted to fire myself.

Government Drowning in the Bathtub

The dream of Grover Norquist was to make the government small enough for that, as you may remember. But a government unable to carry out some of those essential tasks is not such good news for us ordinary chumps:

A Chinese factory that has not been inspected by the Food and Drug Administration is the source for the active ingredient of a critical blood-thinning drug whose production was suspended this week after 350 patients reported ill effects from it.

At least four people died after being given the drug, heparin.

An F.D.A. spokeswoman, Heidi Robello, said Wednesday that the agency was making plans to inspect the Chinese factory as well as a finishing plant in New Jersey "as soon as possible."

She said that "it was yet to be determined" if the Chinese plant was the source of the problem that led to the spike in reports of problems with the drug's use.

Heparin is made from pig intestines. Ms. Robello said that she did not know whether the pigs used to produce the suspended product, made by Baxter International, came from China.

Heparin is used widely in dialysis, heart surgery and chronic care hospitals. Baxter manufactures half of the nation's supply of the drug, and the company's suspension of its production of multiuse heparin vials is expected to lead to shortages.

A Baxter spokeswoman, Erin Gardiner, said her company bought the active ingredient for the drug from another concern, which she would not identify. She said that company had plants in the United States and China.

The Government Accountability Office recently reported that at its current inspection pace, the F.D.A. would need at least 13 years to inspect every foreign drug plant that exports products to the United States. The office, an independent arm of Congress, also found that the F.D.A.'s computer systems were deficient and it had little idea how many plants had been approved for exports to the United States.

How do you like that struggle in the tub, Grover? Note that people needing heparin are usually quite fragile already.

There are two separate issues that trouble me here. The first is the fact that the FDA's ability to protect us from dangerous drugs appears to be close to nil. Remember when we were told that buying medications from Canada might endanger our health because who knows what their quality might be? Now it turns out that the quality control of the U.S. delivered drugs is sorely lacking. We'd probably be much better off with all Canadian drugs.

The second issue of concern is how most everything these days is manufactured in China. I have nothing against the Chinese, but it's not a safe policy to have one country specialize in the production of the majority of the foods we eat and of the drugs we take, especially when countries outside China have very little ability to affect the quality control inside that country. We urgently need some internationally enforceable rules about quality control, environmental protection and worker safety.

Today's Action Alert

Saudi Arabia is going to execute a woman for witchcraft:

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

Hecate gives the necessary contact information. As always, remember that a polite and respectful message is more likely to work:

Contact information for the Saudi Embassy:

Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037

Main Number: (202) 342-3800
Consulate/Visa Section: (202) 944-3126
Medical Office: (202) 342-7393
Commercial Office: (202) 337-4088

You Can Haz Dildo in Texas

In LOLcat language. In your ordinary everyday English this post means that the sale of sex toys is no longer banned in Texas:

A federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.

"Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices," said an opinion written by Justice Thomas M. Reavley of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, "government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution."

The link is originally via JR who noted that the decision came just in time for Valentine's Day. But there's something sad and lonely about writing a card to a dildo, methinks.

Will You Be My Valentine?

Some Nina Simone for the day:





For an interesting variation on Valentine Day, check out what res ipsa loquitur does to celebrate the day.

Feminism, Scheminism

The general public has a fairly poor understanding of the different schools of feminism. I have recently heard that Katha Pollitt is a radical feminist, for instance, or that Hillary Clinton is one. I hope that someone else wants to write another piece on the main schools of feminism, because I sure will not do that for no money here. How's that for being reader-friendly and helpful?

Instead, I've been thinking of rebranding feminism into choice-feminism, feminism-lite, feminism-non-fat, feminism-extra-creamy-and-serious and so on. My type of feminism would be called "makes you fall asleep in the middle of an orgasm", but someone has to do that type, too. Which is perhaps another way of saying that I'm the go-to-place for the overthinkers, insomniacs and crossword enthusiasts among feminist readers, the goddess that will lift the heavy rocks nobody else wants to, for fear of what might crawl and slither under them. Me, I think those creepy-crawlers might be edible.

I'm also usually about three days late or three days too early on any interesting topic, but that's probably part of my charm. At least it's something that differentiates my brand of feminism.

(What's the point of this post? It's pointless, just a writing exercise, a desperate plea for my muse to come back home before Valentine's day, a prayer to have writing taste good and not just crunchy and nutritious again. Please, Erato, my love, come back, wherever you are? I'll let you wear my dresses.)

Dowd In A Feminist Coma

Don't you think that Maureen Dowd has been hit by that large truck which says "feminist anger" on the side and that as a consequence she realized that a different way of mocking Hillary Clinton was called for if the important job of grinding Hillary into little bits under that red Prada heel was to be completed? Too much venom and childish insults didn't work quite as well as Dowd thought, so she put on her feminist hat (with the castrating scissors hanging off the sides), set her tongue in the middle of her mouth and started scribbling:

Many women I talk to, even those who aren't particularly fond of Hillary, feel empathy for her, knowing that any woman in a world dominated by men has to walk a tightrope between femininity and masculinity, strength and vulnerability.

They see double standards they hate — when male reporters described Hillary's laugh as "a cackle" or her voice as "grating," when Rush Limbaugh goes off on her wrinkles or when male pundits seem gleeful to write her political obituary. Several women I know, who argue with their husbands about Hillary, refer with a shudder to the "Kill the Witch" syndrome.

In a webcast, prestidigitator Penn Jillette talks about a joke he has begun telling in his show. He thinks the thunderous reaction it gets from audiences shows that Hillary no longer has a shot.

The joke goes: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month."

Of course, jokes like that — even Jillette admits it's offensive — are exactly what may give Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even ones who don't want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated — again.

That must have been so hard to write, except for the pleasure of putting in that "white bitch" joke (I have seen it several times already).

Indeed, I must tip my own feminist hat (with better and longer castrating scissors as the tassel) to Maureen. I'm not sure if I could write an anti-feminist piece as well, and that would be the comparable assignment for me. Though naturally Maureen has some help from the fact that the point of her column isn't that different from all the earlier "I Hate Hitlery" columns she has penned. It's not to get Hillary elected to anything because she is a horrible monster. Only this time Maureen explains carefully why agreeing with Hillary's monstrosity will not make you a bad feminist at all.

Dowd ends her column by arguing that Hillary's much-anticipated public humiliation will not be a humiliation for all women, just for Hillary, because Hillary is not a woman worthy of feminist support.

What I'd really like to know is this: What would be required of a powerful woman for her to be worthy of the support of one Maureen Dowd?

Today's Action Alert

This has to do with the FISA act, and requires you to call your Representatives so that the House version wins over the bad Senate version. See this post for more information.

Mom The Nutritional Gate-Keeper

An article in the Washington Post tells us in no uncertain terms who should be responsible for making Americans slimmer: the moms, or rather the women in families who are already responsible for buying the food and for cooking it. This is the idea of Brian Wansink, the new head of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion at the Agriculture Department. And what does Mr. Wansink want?

Now he wants to recruit mothers to help him whittle the widening national girth. Project M.O.M. is a new USDA campaign that targets the nutritional gatekeepers in every household who call the shots on nourishment.

Society may have changed enormously in the past 50 years, but some things have not: Regardless of social status, income, education, the ability to cook from scratch or to find the closest fast-food restaurant with GPS, "the reality is that the bulk of purchases about food are done by mothers in the household," Wansink says.

Money for nutrition education at the USDA is tight. So Wansink plans to stretch those dollars: Rather than trying to "convince every person in the U.S. to eat better," he says, why not "get the nutritional gatekeeper . . . the one person who makes the decision" to change?

This is one of those examples where "the reality" and "what is fair" diverge from each other. It's certainly true that women do the bulk of grocery shopping and cooking, even those women who work as long hours in the labor market as their male partners. Indeed, women do most of the unpaid work (in hours per year) that having a family entails. So why not just add another moral requirement for that overworked group: the responsibility for the weight of all the family members, including the other adults in the family.

It's wonderful that the government aims to save money by only educating the mothers. This all but guarantees that men won't learn how to eat in a healthier manner, of course, but never mind. The mom will always be there (after a long day at work, in most cases) to make sure that everybody eats enough spinach.

I probably should add the usual warning here: I am not opposing the idea that nutritional information wouldn't be important to disseminate. I'm opposing the unquestioning assumption that it is women who should be the nutritional gate-keepers for everyone else.

And Another Action Alert

The Senate caved in on the FISA law (thank you very much, Harry Reid):

The Senate voted Tuesday to shield from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After nearly two months of stops and starts, the Senate rejected by a vote of 31 to 67 an amendment that would have stripped a grant of retroactive immunity to the companies. President Bush has promised to veto any new surveillance bill that does not protect the companies that helped the government in its warrantless wiretapping program.

So the Senate agrees with George Bush that he, George Bush, can break any law or demand others to break it for him and that there will be no negative consequences from any of this. Why bother having laws in the first place, then?

Now, this is the Senate version of the bill. The House version does not have retroactive immunity for lawbreakers in it. The action alert consists of you telling the lawmakers that you want the final bill to look more like the House version than the Senate version. Go here.

The Liberal Decadence

Atrios linked to this post on Open Left:

Erick Erickson, editor of the popular conservative megablog RedState, conceded that progressives currently enjoy an advantage over conservatives online-though he attributed it to an asymmetry in free time, since conservatives "have families because we don't abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism."

It could be a joke, though not a very good one. But it's also a good example of "othering", of stripping the political opposition of any characteristics which might make them look like part of the same human species. If progressives all have an abortion the first thing in the morning, even before brushing their teeth or calling that limousine with the latte service to take them to the unemployment check office, well, then it might be ok to hate on them. They are not real Americans, real patriots. Soon they won't look like real people at all.

"Othering" is a tempting political strategy. I have been guilty of gentle advances in that direction myself, mostly because "counter-othering" sometimes seems to be all that's left after years of reading and hearing me and people like me described as the cancer on the body politic. When I have never even gotten a speeding fine (well, of course the police would have to catch me first for that, but the point remains).

Yes, it's tempting to use "othering" (and what fun would it be to write those stories about the conservatives), but ultimately it is very bad for this country and its politics. I can see the appeal of Obama's calls for unity from that angle. I only wish that Erick Erickson also finds those calls appealing, because if he and others like him do not, "unity" in practice will be just continual "othering" by one side.

Today's Action Alert

Has to do with MSNBC's political coverage and especially their embrace of sexist and racist commentary as part of a clever marketing plan. You can tell them that you don't like this plan. (I wonder when we get to protesting against Fox News? Or would that be like rabbits demanding that the foxes stop eating them?)

On Hillary Hating

Fear not. I'm not going to write another long diatribe on the question why Hillary Clinton is so hated. Instead, you can go to Shakes and read through her series of all the posts on sexist coverage of Clinton's campaign. The NYT has a good blog post on the topic, too. It attempts to categorize and name the different reasons for the hatred:

Comments like these would seem to lend support to the view (voiced by many respondents) that sexism is what ultimately motivates the Clinton bashers. "A woman who doesn't apologize for who she is. What's not to hate?" (79). "Any woman who is anything more than a wallflower will always be attacked" (105). "People just can't tolerate a woman in power" (111). "Why not get right to heart of the matter? It's sexism. Most women on this planet face it every day" (168). If so, they face it from women as well as from men, at least on the evidence provided here. Carol Maloney (158) reports that many of her intelligent women friends are unable "to discuss Hillary in a logical manner." Kat (23) wonders why "women seem to be on the Hillary hatred bandwagon." Carol (359) says "What I find most disturbing is the amount of hatred spewed at Hillary by those who are so much like her … It is very odd. Is it really self-hate?"

One might ask, can it really be sexism if it is women who are practicing it? Sure it can. If sexism is defined as the conviction that women are unsuited by gender to perform certain tasks or hold certain positions, that conviction is as available to women as it is to men. Still, sexism doesn't seem an adequate explanation of the Hillary-hating phenomenon if only because so much of the venom in the comments is directed at the Clintons as a team. The idea is that nothing but evil can emanate from them; they are a moral blot on the nation's escutcheon, a canker-sore on the body politic, and they must be removed (perhaps by any means necessary). No doubt sexism is a component of such sentiments–a number of women respondents accused her of riding on her husband's coat-tails and lambasted her for not leaving him–but sexism doesn't really account for an anger that sometimes borders on the homicidal.

I disagree with that last sentence. Homicidal rage is pretty much how extreme misogyny shows itself. To regard the strength of the hatred as evidence of its non-sexist origins is not a mistake a woman would make.

Yet I agree that the Hillary hatred is not just about sexism. Bill and Hillary Clinton have become a mythical Most Evil Couple Ever, and whenever I try to gently ask for anecdotes to explain how they gained this status I get a recounting of how horrible the Clinton persecution years of the 1990's were, and how the Clintons should not have caused those years to happen. It almost seems as if the Bush Reich has been preferable to some of those expressing these views, and it is this dislocation in reality that I find interesting to probe. But, alas, my probing gets the reaction it would if I was sticking my finger into someone's infected tooth.

To be absolutely clear, I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton shouldn't be criticized on her past political decisions, on her hawkishness or on her triangulations. Neither am I saying that it's not ok to hate the idea of dynasties in a democracy or that Bill Clinton's sexual escapades aren't worth discussing. I'm talking about the quality of the anger, not its existence, about its unreasoning, dark and, yes, in some cases murderous intensity. And it is the reasons for that quality I want to understand. Because I suspect that repressed sexism does lie deep inside that hatred if you dig deep enough.
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P.S. Here's the daily nutritional supplement of sexist Hillary commentary for you.

Some Janis Joplin

Kristof on Women Rulers

Nicholas Kristof often writes columns in the New York Times about how he is single-handedly saving the women of the world (which is very considerate of him and also based on him being unable to Google "feminist organizations and the work they do"). Thus, it shows what honest and neutral goddess I am to say that he actually has a point in his most recent column about why women tend not to fare well when a governing system is first democratized:

While no woman has been president of the United States — yet — the world does have several thousand years' worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men's to shame.

A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I'm neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it's still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.

Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven't even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.

I have a pet theory about what's going on.

In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.

In one common experiment, the "Goldberg paradigm," people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.

Alas, I am very familiar with the many studies which show that just putting a woman's name on some scientific piece of writing, say, will immediately lower the evaluations it gets, from either men or women evaluators. But Kristof's deeper point is also an important one: Democracy is not an automatic way of getting rid of prejudice or bigotry. Indeed, it can strengthen both of those if the population getting the vote is bigoted and prejudiced. Dare I mention Iraq in this context?

But Kristof's story about the experiences of Indian villages which required women to have a role to play also demonstrates something important about this prejudice: It can disappear when the lack of information it was based on also disappears:

Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.

Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.

Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. "Exposure reduces prejudice," Professor Duflo suggested.

Interesting, is it not? This is why the traditional sexual division of labor can maintain prejudice. In an earlier post about the Indian rights in Mexico I quoted a man who argued that the women there don't deserve to have the vote because they don't work hard enough.

Hard enough? When any outside observer might argue that the women in those villages work at least as hard as the men, probably harder? But for the man who made that comment the women's work has become invisible, not viewed as "work", and not viewed as valuable. Sharing that work might change the minds of men like this one. Sexual segregation in societies stops this kind of learning and allows prejudices to go on living.

To return to the feminist implications of introducing democracy: The experiences in Russia and Poland suggest that just introducing democracy doesn't necessarily improve women's lives. Rather the reverse in some cases. Women's earning levels collapsed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, discrimination in hiring became commonplace (only young and pretty women wanted) and female unemployment rates soared compared to male unemployment rates. Fewer women got elected to public offices.

At the same time, public support for the traditionally female areas of responsibility in the society, the ones that had to do with the care of children and of the elderly, also collapsed, and calls for women to return to the kitchens increased. Poland has made abortions difficult to obtain. And none of the ex-Soviet-bloc countries has had a real feminist awakening yet.

It will come, though. Initially democracy often looks like mob rule, or "democracy for me but not for thee", especially when the necessary democratic institutions and habits of the mind are missing. As the system matures and as people learn to work democracy previously mistreated groups demand their share in the cake. I think that the time of women in those countries will come. Well, I hope so.

A Feminist Mental Health Tip

Do you get upset, sad or angry when you read bad news about the rights of women or when you come across yet another misogynistic joke or tidbit? If so, what do you do about those grimy feelings?

One of my solutions is to kick holes in my garage door or to split planks of wood with my karate hand (well, to be honest I did that last thing only once), or to make really frightening faces at myself in the mirror (screw your eyes up and make a lion's maw with your mouth to start, then go by your instincts). But a more useful mental health tip is this:

Whenever you cannot shake off something misogynistic you have seen, read or heard, send a small check to your favorite feminist organization. If you have no money to send, e-mail a thank-you letter to one of those unsung hero(ine)s doing the hard work on behalf of world's women.

I love this, because the more the woman haters foam, the more money and emotional support the feminist organizations get. And you will feel better, too.

Caucus Report by Anthony McCarthy

We had a record turnout, with Democratic candidates and their representatives reporting record turn outs all over York County, a county that often votes Republican. We had an even split for Clinton and Obama delegates, just about an even split in those caucusing. Everyone was enthusiastic and excited about taking back the country.

Those tables and chairs get heavier every four years.

Now Here’s A Thought. by Anthony McCarthy

Going off to set up chairs for the caucus, still not sure about who I’ll stand up for when the time comes.

Maybe it’s time for Democrats to insist that whichever candidate comes in second be asked to stand as Vice President. It seems to be an idea with huge support among Democrats, maybe we need to draft a combination ticket by popular demand.

Washing Hands. by Anthony McCarthy

This piece in today’s Boston Globe Magazine is about Monica Sprague’s disastrous C-section delivery and the subsequent attack of flesh-eating bacteria which came close to killing her and which has left her with no limbs. It is very hard reading, mixing the story of her family with technical information about the problem. Maybe the second part in next week’s magazine will talk more about the general problem and its prevalence in the recently hospitalized.

Nick Daneman, an infectious disease consultant at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, studied all the literature on outbreaks of the bacteria from 1965 to 2004. He found outbreaks that involved as many as 56 patients, lasting from one day to three years. Most people became infected after a surgery or delivery. The most common ways people got it were from another patient or from a healthcare worker who was unknowingly infected. Adding to the mystery is how the infection takes hold differently in different people. "There's a lot to be learned," Daneman says, "about why some people will get simple strep throat and others severe fasciitis."

As you listen to the blather about Republicans’ “health care” policy think about this part of the article.

In a study Daneman published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last August, he reviewed 2,351 cases of invasive Group A strep from 1992 to 2000, of which 253 resulted in necrotizing fasciitis. He found that just 12 percent of all the patients caught their disease in a hospital - most picked it up in the community. Of the 291 who acquired it in a hospital, 10 percent were part of an outbreak and 90 percent were isolated cases.

"Once you have necrotizing fasciitis," says Stephen Zinner, an infectious disease specialist at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, "the treatment really is heroic type of surgery." He describes the disease as a "chance event," and he says doctors seeing it for the first time might even be puzzled initially. "It's a subtle diagnosis," says Zinner, who was not involved in Monica's case, "not initially so clear that every doctor would say, 'Ah, that's what it is.'"

Since the corporate sector will be attacking either Hillary Clinton’s or Barack Obama’s health care plans with all guns as the year goes on, we need to look into a previous defense of our indefensible for-profit system. That was the reaction to Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko”. That attack centered on the British Health Service’s record as the worst in Europe for MRSA infections. Unsaid by most of our media, bought and paid for by the insurance and drug industries, is that a lot of the problem in Britain is due to Republican style ‘reforms’.

The Thatcher governments privatization strategy in the 1980sthe introduction of competitive tendering and the contracting-out of servicesled directly to an escalation in MRSA rates. Over the next decade, efficiency drives saw the almost total destruction of the NHS culture, with nursing staff forced onto short-term contracts and cut to inappropriate and dangerous levels.

Prior to this, in the 1970s, cleaners were employed directly by the hospital. Each ward had its own cleaners who were part of the ward team. Porters, maintenance staff and cleaners had pride in their wards, and many worked for most of their careers in the same place.

The NHS Trust hospitals that emerged from the creeping privatization process are under enormous pressure to cut costs, and will invariably pick the cheapest option in choosing their contracted-out services. This almost necessarily leads to contractors cutting corners and subsequently to a less efficient or thorough job being undertaken. The cleaning companies operate on tightly drawn contracts, where every task is listed and timed, which leaves no place for anything not on the list, including accidents. An attitude of apathy and disregard for cleanliness pervades.

The pressure on hospitals to cut costs has also led to other factors that help spread infections. For example, in the past, hospital workers were issued uniforms for use only on the premises, and these were laundered on siteoften boil-washed. Nowadays, staff are responsible for their own uniforms, which they wear to and from work, via public transport, etc. Uniforms, therefore, gather many germs from the environment en-route, and are then probably often washed at home on normal domestic low-temperature washes, which do not kill many germs.

A journalist from the Daily Mail who worked undercover for Rentokil Initial, one of the firms with contracts to clean hospitals, revealed that he received only a 90-minute induction course and had no relevant experience. He reported finding bags of blooded bandages and plaster casts left overnight in the fracture clinic. He also found 2-inch (5-cm) insects, and heard of cleaners failing to clean areas properly because of their workload. The areas he was allocated were to be checked just once a month by the hospital trust and once a week by his Rentokil Initial supervisor, if she had time.

Privatization for profit, who would ever have expected penny pinching and corner cutting to be a part of that brilliant idea? Maybe it’s all right for cleaning government offices, though I’m sure neither Thatcher nor Blair skimped on their creature comforts, but it just doesn’t work where people are being operated on.

No Republican will provide a safe or affordable health care system in the United States, no ‘reform’ of the type done in Britain over the past Conservative and New Labor governments will either. You have to take the system out of the for-profit system, that is what has given us the system we have, that is what endangers public health care in countries that had put People ahead of profits. While neither Clinton nor Obama’s plans will get rid of the corporate cannibal that feeds on our bodies, both of them are at many steps away from the perennial Republican tax rebate fraud.

There are some other points to consider in this article.

Incandescent Meditation Over Class Enforcement

or, Tis’ agin’ nature. by Anthony McCarthy

In an interesting coincidence, the night before his death was announced my brother and I were discussing the weird story about Ron Paul’s concentration of financial support in Fairfield, IA, the U.S. base of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It turns out that the MMY was a big supporter of “Natural Law Parties” here and abroad. How enlightened it is to support any third party in the United States is a moot point, in all but the rarest cases it is a harmless eccentricity. The idea that any political formulation constitutes “natural law” sounds like asking for trouble. Any idea people have is natural only in the sense that people can be said to be a natural occurrence. Our ideas are at best representations of what we take to be nature, subject to all of human folly, never more than when we forget where they really come from and attribute atavistic potency to them . Perhaps keeping this in mind might eventually lead, by some kind of wacky metaphysics, to the Ron Paul connection.

The next morning, in the BBC’s coverage of the death of the MMY, something was said that raised my blood pressure a lot more than my usual six cups of coffee. It was, of course, all about The Beatles short lived discipleship in Transcendental Meditation. Dan Damon and the would-be hard bitten journalist he was talking to started going on about how foolish it was for “working class lads from Liverpool” to be looking past their proper lower class interests to seek enlightenment. Well, why shouldn’t four “working class lads” from anywhere look into whatever form of whatever they want to? Is enlightenment, even of the 60s jet-set Jnana sort, off limits for people from the working class? Even those who, by that time, were some of the richest people in Britain? How much money held for how many generations is required before you can step out of your place to seek after something more elevated than fish and chips and football fanaticism? You got more than a distinct impression that Damon and his guest thought the lads had gone beyond their station in life. The Beatles had violated the rules of their caste.

Fortunately, ridicule is about the only price to be paid for doing that, provided you’ve got enough money. Is it now the BBC's policy to discourage the underclass from getting above themselves?

Indecision 2008 by Anthony McCarthy

It’s been a really interesting experience, having so many good Democrats running for the presidential nomination. Tomorrow I’m going to have to choose who to stand up for in caucus. It's the first time in my life that I'm undecided this late in the season.

Kucinich was closest to my positions, though he certainly didn’t have a chance at the nomination and disappointed me with his lack of political acumen. His New Hampshire recount, in the absence of real evidence that there were problems with the vote and with no chance that it would change anything about the outcome, was ridiculous. I hope he survives the challenges for his Congressional seat and learns something from the experience, though that is a matter for his constituents to decide. Dennis. Love you, but symbolic candidacies are counterproductive.

Chris Dodd. What a shame that this serious and intelligent candidate didn’t have any chance of gaining traction. His failure is just more evidence of how the corporate media system actively destroys some of our best candidates through ignoring them. He would have made a very good president.

Joe Biden. I would have supported him in a general election if I had to, but it was clear from the beginning that wasn’t going to happen. He lost my support for the nomination in the 80s.

Bill Richardson made a very credible case for him being taken seriously as a member of the short list for VP. He also would probably have been a good president.

John Edwards was my early favorite among those who had any chance. His position in the best tradition of egalitarian populism and his passion mixed with sheer intelligence would have made him an excellent president. He would have been what Carter and Bill Clinton might have been. He had better policy positions than either of them ended up with and was cagey enough to be able to get more of it into law. He was the most prepared to avoid the dangers of Insider Washington and able to read history and the present. His credibility is why he was the target of the lying media from the beginning.

And now we have two very good candidates but can only choose one.

Hillary Clinton would be a very good president. I’ve said that Bill Clinton was the most intelligent president in our history but often not the wisest. Hillary Clinton has proven that she is more than his match in intelligence and much wiser. Her case that she had learned from her experiences as the lightening rod of the corporate media and the Republican lie machine as well as her own mistakes in national healthcare is rock solid. She is one of the indispensable people in the Democratic Party. My reservations about some of her past votes, especially the authorization given for Bush in Iraq, are valid but in politics you don’t get to vote for perfect candidates. There has never been one, not even Kucinich, with a perfect record.

Hillary Clinton’s election would also mean that it had been done, a woman had been elected President of the United States. That is not in any way insignificant, it would change things for women as few things have in recent years.

Barack Obama is not the same kind of candidate as Hillary Clinton, he brings other qualities to consider. He matches Hillary Clinton in many things, though in some doesn’t come up to her experience, at least not yet. I don’t know if that lack of DC experience is all that much of a setback considering what having it can mean. One thing that he alone brings is the level of interest in his prominence in areas of the world such as Africa and the Middle East. It is possible that his election could do a lot to mitigate the damage done to the United States by the Bush-Cheney juntas and the Reagan years. His election would also mean that the election of an African-American had been achieved, overcoming the covertly racist policy of the Republican era.

We have to have a Democrat as President next year. The choice comes down to who seems to have the best chance to beat John McCain and I don’t know who that will be in November, it will have to be based on whoever seems most likely to defeat him tomorrow. Both of the choices are excellent incomparison to any Republican, both of them are indispensable to the Democratic Party.

Many people are wishing for some combination of Clinton and Obama on the same ticket and it would be very hard for Republicans to beat that combination. But don’t expect it to happen. Clinton - Obama is more likely than the reverse, I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton settling for VP after making such a credible run against all odds. Remember those who confidently expected little Ricky to beat her for the Senate? I might be wrong and hope I am. Wherever she ends up in government, she will be very important for the future.

I can imagine Obama accepting the VP position knowing that he would likely play a strong role as Al Gore did. His abilities and talents make him one of the most credible Democratic politicians we have today.

Whichever one is the Democratic nominee will have my support and can count me as a volunteer to get the Democratic vote out in November.

And Shuster Apologizes

You can view the video here.

Wonder how long it will take for us to be told how this apology is a sign of political correctness crushing the freedom of speech and so on? I'm sure all this is being written right about now.

My view on what Shuster said is that his statement, taken in complete isolation, might not have been worth criticizing. But it's not a statement living all alone in a tiny misogynistic hut somewhere in the Arctic. It's a statement fairly representative of the free-wheeling and jokey misogynism which has ruled the public airwaves for quite a while. Remember Don Imus and the "nappy-headed hos" statement? Remember all those hundreds of stupid things which germinate in Chris Matthew's mouth, especially when it comes to Hillary Clinton but also when it comes to women in general?

It's really this population of cool and flippant misogyny, the humorous disrespecting of women in general, that is the problem, and its presence inside the brains of so many pundits. Sadly, the only way of addressing that population is by picking out specimen samples and by holding them against some sunlight. I say "sadly", because the opposition will focus on those specimens, because the opposition will pretend that each of those specimens is unique, and because the opposition will insist on its inalienable right to hate on women.

The Law of Unintended Consequences?

The Indian Rights movement in Mexico has had some successes, at least if we limit Indians to only men:

Women in this Indian village high in the pine-clad mountains of Oaxaca rise each morning at 4 a.m. to gather firewood, grind corn, prepare the day's food, care for the children and clean the house.

But they aren't allowed to vote in local elections, because — the men say — they don't do enough work.

It was here, in a village that has struggled for centuries to preserve its Zapotec traditions, that Eufrosina Cruz, 27, decided to become the first woman to run for mayor — despite the fact that women aren't allowed to attend town assemblies, much less run for office.

The all-male town board tore up ballots cast in her favor in the Nov. 4 election, arguing that as a woman, she wasn't a "citizen" of the town. "That is the custom here, that only the citizens vote, not the women," said Valeriano Lopez, the town's deputy mayor.

Rather than give up, Cruz has launched the first serious, national-level challenge to traditional Indian forms of government, known as "use and customs," which were given full legal status in Mexico six years ago in response to Indian rights movements sweeping across Latin America.

This is a real dilemma in any legal system where the laws were all decided a long time ago, including the Islamic sharia law. Medieval law-makers didn't have today's views on equality and neither, it seems, did the old Zapotec traditions.

At the same time, it looks like Cruz has a good case:

The law states that Indian townships may "apply their own normative systems ... as long as they obey the general principles of the Constitution and respect the rights of individuals, human rights, and particularly the dignity and well-being of women."

Despite this specific protection, about a fourth of the Indian villages operating under the law don't let women vote, putting human rights groups in a dilemma: Most actively supported recognition for Indian governance systems, and few have therefore taken up the women's cause.

Note that last quoted sentence and then sigh.

I'm not sure how human rights groups can think of the word "human" as not covering women. But then I'm a feminist, I guess.

Friday Fluff Post

How hard it is to turn from the topics of my last two posts to something fluffy. Hard but also necessary, because I can't begin a weekend with all that pain on my mind, and I don't want to leave only sad and painful posts at the top of the front page. Yet doing the necessary reversal in one single post seems tasteless and shallow. But so it goes.

Let us then go all fluffy and shallow. Float comfortably in your chair or on your bed and pop in a piece of chocolate. Did you have a good week? Are you the same person you were a week ago? Any new gray hairs? Do your eyes look shinier now? Did you notice that the sun suddenly smells of spring?

I have a plan for something to sell on this here blog, by the way. I'm going to knit woolen chastity belts (from sizes XS to XL), and the front will have a picture of a nicely slithering snake. How much could I charge for those? I figure that each would take about eight hours of knitting and/or embroidery.

I bet they wouldn't sell, though. The alternative get-rich-quick-scheme is to make my most profound posts into little autographed booklets (perhaps with a lip-print from me on the cover) and to sell them on the blog for, say, 20 dollars each. That wouldn't work, either, but it's fun to imagine which posts would be included and why.

Or I could start an Echidne Advises series. You could send in all your most embarrassing questions and I could give you sage advice which would make no sense at all. "Yes, Clueless in Cleveland, your husband is quite right. They do stay outside during the act." Except that Dan Savage already has that covered.

Read any good books, lately? I just finished unSpun, by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. It's all about how not to get cheated in this world of disinformation. I was planning to review it until I realized that it's not so cool to review a book on something that you are somewhat of an expert yourself, because what irritates you about the book is not really relevant for most readers. So I didn't review it (or rather, didn't post the review), but it's probably worth a read if you want to know the 47.5 ways politicians lie to you and how not to fall for those lies. I suspect that there are only three ways politicians lie, though, and that rewriting the book that way might have been more useful. And no, "he-said-she-said" is not neutral, and neither is an attempt to make the lying into a completely bipartisan problem. But other than that and a few fact check problems I liked the book just fine.

Was that praise lukewarm enough for you?

Henrietta the Hound is not doing too bad. She will never climb stairs unassisted but barking, that's something she can do without my help at all. As I can hear right now.

Have a nice weekend.

Today's Action Alert

Iran is planning to stone several people to death because of adultery charges:

The head of Iran's Judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, should immediately revoke the sentences of death by stoning imposed on three persons convicted of adultery, Human Rights Watch said today. In separate cases, two sisters from the town of Shahriar in Tehran Province and a man from the town of Sari in the province of Mazandaran, are all at imminent risk of execution.
"The Iranian government is set to execute three of its citizens in a horrendously brutal manner," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The Judiciary must act now to end this inhuman form of punishment once and for all."

In February 2007, authorities arrested sisters Zohreh Kabiri, 27, and Azar Kabiri, 28, on charges of having "illegal relationships" based on accusations made by one of their husbands. According to Iran?s Islamic Penal Code, "immoral" relationships such as those between men and women who are not married, may be subject to criminal punishment. One month after their arrest, Branch 128 of the General Court of the city of Karaj convicted and sentenced the sisters to 99 lashes.

Six months after officials handed down and executed the sentence, additional accusations by the husband of one of the sisters resulted in a second trial on more serious charges of adultery. Branch 80 of the Karaj Penal Court of the Tehran Province convicted the sisters on these charges and sentenced them to death by stoning. The Supreme Court has approved the ruling and the sentence may be carried out at any time.

The Islamic Penal Code of Iran allows execution as a punishment for adultery, and allows it to be carried out by stoning for this offense. The practice involves throwing stones at the convicted individual, who is buried up to the waist (if he is a man) or up to the chest (if she is a woman), until the individual dies from impact of the blows.

Jabar Solati, the lawyer for the two sisters, told Human Rights Watch that since the sentence has already been approved by the Supreme Court, only intervention by the country's highest judicial official, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, can prevent the stoning from being carried out.

Abdullah Farivar, 49, also faces execution by stoning. In December 2006, authorities in the northern town of Sari arrested Farivar on charges of adultery. A year later, Branch Two of the Penal Court of Sari convicted Farivar and sentenced him to death by stoning. The Supreme Court has approved the sentence. According to statements attributed in the media to Farivar's family, local authorities informed them last week that the sentence would soon be carried out.

According to the Human Rights Watch, only intervention by the highest judicial officer, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, can prevent the stoning from being carried out. You can find his e-mail address and other possible addresses here. Remember that a polite letter works better.

Stay At Home And Keep Your Mouth Shut

This might be the best summary of the patriarchal message to women in general, and those in Basra, Iraq, in particular:

The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."

Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

...

The killers enforcing their own version of Islamic justice are rarely caught, while women live in fear.

Boldly splattered in red paint just outside the main downtown market, a chilling sign reads: "We warn against not wearing a headscarf and wearing makeup. Those who do not abide by this will be punished. God is our witness, we have notified you."

...

Sawsan, another woman who works at a university, says the message from the radicals to women is simple: "They seem to be sending us a message to stay at home and keep your mouth shut."

This, too, is part of the new liberated Iraq: People who have decided to be the judges and executioners of others, people who torture in the name of God, those people are now wielding real power. Got democracy?

The Fox Dyslexia

It's an odd little feature of Fox News, that tendency to reassign Republican politicians they don't like to the Democratic Party. They did it with Mark Foley during the Congressional page scandal and now they have done it with John McCain. McCain is not a well-liked candidate among the Republican base.

But why would someone bother to play this "R to D" game? It's so very childish. Or does Fox actually have an employee who can't tell the letters apart? And if so, why are they never mixed in the other direction? Or are they and we don't hear about that?

The whole matter is a trivial one, but it explains the difficulties I have with the desire for bipartisanship in the Congress. I am not at all convinced that the Republicans are going to play that game at all. Why else this silly letter game or the equally silly custom of refusing to call the Democratic Party by its proper name and instead shortening it to the Democrat Party? Such practices are not an example of bipartisanship or even of adult politics.

Nasty

More here.