The Past Week: April 5-April 11, 2009 (“President Panytwaist”; A Split Among Progressives over War Spending Plan?; Smear Campaign in Britain; “Sageism”)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Well, with Obama back in Washington, I know we can all sleep better, right???

Here’s another British writer (a society writer?) who is glad to be rid of him… courtesy Kenosha Marge:

Is it Just Me?

Gerald Warner

Barack Obama: President Pantywaist – new surrender monkey on the block

Posted By: Gerald Warner at Apr 10, 2009 at 10:20:05

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you’d notice.

MORE

Priceless!

Also from Kenosha Marge, this little tidbit on Obama’s war spending bill:

Woolsey splits with Obama on war bill

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is the first — but likely not the last — liberal Dem to blast the Obama administration’s $83.4 billion war spending plan.

MORE

Gee, between Evan Bayh and the “practical Democrats” and Arlen Spector throwing a wrench in the card-check bill, it seems that the “Good Ship Lollipop” is taking a teeny tiny bit of water.

Meanwhile, across the pond, it looks like some of Obama’s best techniques are being copied…from the BBC:

No 10 ‘smear’ messages published

E-mails discussing smearing top Tories that led to the resignation of a senior Number 10 official have been published.

Damian McBride, the PM’s ex-political press officer, quit after the messages were picked up by a Westminster blog.

In them, Mr McBride made obscene and unfounded claims about the personal lives of party leader David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne.

The Conservatives urged Gordon Brown to explain how the allegations came to be sent from an official e-mail account.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: “This is an exceptionally serious matter and he needs to explain immediately what happened.”

MORE

Also in the British news…women newsreaders are getting fed up with sexism in the broadcast industry.  Selina Scott, who’s now 57, won a lawsuit, it seems.  I remember when Scott was the “flavor of the month” but apparently no more:

You won’t see women going grey in front of the cameras

Female broadcasters speak out against sexism and ageism in industry

By Emily Dugan

For female broadcasters, it is a truth universally, and unhappily, acknowledged: after the first wrinkles and grey hairs they can start counting down their days before the camera.

For male colleagues, the story is different. Grey hair and craggy skin are marks of distinction, and careers can continue to flourish.

Yesterday, concern over the disparity flared up, with a series of high-profile women speaking out against “sageism” – what they see as a toxic combination of sexism and ageism – by which competent and popular female broadcasters are shunted into the sidelines

The former Five news presenter Selina Scott said that, despite nearly 35 years of anti sex-discrimination legislation, ageism remains rife in television. Last December, 57-year-old Ms Scott won a landmark out-of-court settlement and an apology in an age-discrimination suit against the TV channel after it reneged on a deal for her to cover for Natasha Kaplinsky during maternity leave.

“Companies want to employ only young people, so ageism has gone underground,” Ms Scott said. “It has become institutionalised and it is pervasive. Like mercury, you can see its insidious manifestation everywhere, but try getting a grip and it slips away… A senior producer told me it was comparable to McCarthyism in Hollywood in the early Fifties – a witch-hunt in which anyone accused of communist sympathies had their careers destroyed.”

MORE

Ms. Scott has a lot more to say, but who’s really listening these days?  I was just thinking today about how in my life I’ve seen a huge explosion of  progress on women’s issues only to be followed by a great deal of slippage.  It’s so disappointing!

THE PAST WEEK

Saturday Sanity: The Antidote to the Madness (April 11, 2009) Carnage in the Garden; Blossoms; Harvesting Water; Empty Clouds; Spoiled Squirrels

Here It Comes…the (Not so New) NEW Republican Wedge Issue!!!!!

Take a Ramble…

The Scanner-Politics 4/8/2009 (Double Talk; Overstaying a Welcome; Moyers Talks to William K. Black, the 1980’s Regulator Who Cracked Down on Banks–He Levels Accusations of Law-Breaking Against Obama & Company

While Obama is Overseas, Congress Sets Us Up to Go Broke…Where We Stand Now

The Past Week: March 29-April 4, 2009 (Hugo Chavez Takes Over Food Producers, Sounds Off on the G-20; A Government Bailout Special; “The Reluctant Ones”

Come and Get it! “Idiot Wings” Served Up by Republicans & Democrats…(Update 1X: Lyrics from Stealers Wheel)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

I was driving around on January 20 and happened to hear an ad for Wingstop, with Troy Aikman delivering mouth-watering descriptions of boneless and bone-in chicken wings and all those yummy sauce flavors.

I would have forgotten about that ad, but later on, I happened to hear George Bush addressing an adoring crowd.  My mother had FOX on in her bedroom and there was Bush in Midland, Texas speechifying on the legacy of his Administration.  I picked up one sentence:

…and appointed great judges like Sam Alito!

That was enough of that! But it got me thinking…Inauguration Day, we saw the idiot right wing Republican Party cheering wildly for their loser, while in Washington, D.C., the idiot left wing  was freezing their asses off as they went wild for THEIR loser!  (Of course, most of the people peons in the streets of D.C. probably don’t even know what their politics really are and were just attending “an event” for the hell of it.)

At that point I thought of those chicken wings popped back into my mind, but with a different name.

Idiot wings. That’s what this country just swung between.  You can talk centrism all you want, but right now, we’ve just swung all the way from the idiot right wing to the idiot left wing, at least on the surface. (There’s another “ism” at work, in reality, which starts with an “f” but I was warned by a banker not to use it or else I’d be hauled in by the “authorities.”)

A big portion of the idiot left wing is comprised of “youth,” of course, and according to a site named College Humor,

“In Vermont, we like chicken wings and women, especially together …

A picture from CollegeHumor … In Vermont, we like chicken wings and women, especially together.” (nudity)

Now, to see the above picture, you have to register at the site…which I decided to skip!

However, apparently the Hooters Chicken Wings pic is much more “family-friendly.” “Lucas” opined in 2004:

“Hooters Chicken wings really are fresh. Cooked with feathers!”

Wanna see??

Hooters Chicken Wing

(That wing looks more dressed than most of the Hooters females that are on display in that joint.)

I never realized that chicken wings bring out the misogyny in people!  Go here and see if you can spot the blatantly erotic pose of chicken wings (posted by two different people) and one that shows the shoulder blades of a young woman.

Just goes to show you the power of chicken wings, which seem to bring out the idiocy from all sides!

Makes that Wingstop ad seem much less appealing now that I’ve seen both right and left wings all in one day!

To quote Grail Guardian’s comment: “Face it – they’re all just a bunch of wingnuts!”

UPDATE  1

A song started playing in my mind….and here’s the part of the lyric that I heard:

Stuck in the Middle with You

By Stealers Wheel

****
Well I don’t know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain’t right,
I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you,
Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you,
Stuck in the middle with you.

I’ll be singing it all day!

Of Robots and Women and Our Current Life in the Village of Stepford (Antidote on the Way?)(A Double Post by kenosha Marge and InsightAnalytical-GRL)

Women, You’re About To Be Replaced By…a ROBOT!

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

A few days ago I happened to spot something as I roamed around the web that really made my skin crawl!  In the current climate of subtle and not-so-subtle sexism and misogyny coming at as from every direction, this had to be “the crowning touch.” When I saw this, my mind rewound to a post written by kenosha Marge that first appeared at Partizane back on November 12. (For those of you who missed it there, KM’s opus follows  immediately after this eye-opener.)

Let’s see… the item I found was written, it seems, by exactly the sort of woman KM describes in her piece.  With complete seriousness and “professionalism” and not a hint of wondering about what the hell it’s all about, she does a thorough and admiring article on a certain invention.  Maybe she wants to keep HER job, but she can’t muster up a single reference point to what women have been put up with for eons???  Did she ever see original version of  The Stepford Wives (1975), a movie I can’t bear to watch anymore??? (Ironically, the 2004 remake was supposed to be “more comedic” according to the linked article…maybe another indicator of how we’ve been more delusional about our “progress” than we should have been!)

Well, I guess it’s on with the show from The Sun (UK), home of the half-naked “Page 3” women:

Inventor builds She-3PO robot

By CAROLINE IGGULDEN

Published: 11 Dec 2008

SHE is the perfect wife, with the body of a Page 3 pin-up and housekeeping skills that put TV’s Kim and Aggie to shame.

Her name is Aiko, she can even read a map, and will never, ever, nag.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t she fellas? And she is.

Aiko is actually a robot, a fantasy brought to life by inventor Le Trung.

Devoted Aiko — “in her 20s” — has a stunning 32-23-33 figure, pretty face and shiny hair.

She is always happy to clean the house for “husband” Le, help with his accounts or get him a drink.

Computer ace Le, 33, from Ontario, Canada, has spent two years and £14,000 building his dream girl.

He had planned to make an android to care for the elderly.

But his project — inspired by sci-fi robots like Star Wars’s C3PO — strayed off-course.

Le said: “Aiko is what happens when science meets beauty.”

Robo-wife Aiko starts the day by reading Le the main newspaper headlines.

The couple often go for a drive in the countryside, where Aiko proves a whizz at directions.

And they always sit down for dinner together in the evening, although Aiko doesn’t have much of an appetite.

Le says his relationship with Aiko hasn’t strayed into the bedroom, but a few “tweaks” could turn her into a sexual partner.

Le said: “Her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm.”

Aiko can already react to being tickled or touched. She also recognises faces and speaks 13,000 sentences.

Now Le is seeking a sponsor to help him overcome the robot-maker’s biggest challenge — making Aiko walk like a human.

Once Aiko has been perfected, Le hopes to sell clones for use as home-helps.

He said: “Aiko doesn’t need holidays, food or rest, and will work almost 24 hours a day. She is the perfect woman.”

Aiko sparks mixed reactions in public.

Le said: “Women usually try to talk to her. But men always want to touch her, and if they do it the wrong way she slaps them.”

Well, at least she slaps them if they “touch her the wrong way”!! What a “perfect woman”!

Here’s a “full frontal” cheesecake photo of this latest wonder (and there’s a video up at the The Sun, too):

I don’t know what’s sicker–the fact that this guy has built the perfect stereotype which women can’t seem to shake OR the fact that the female reporter seems to accept “nagging” as a feminine attribute and humors the fellas as she mentions that the robot woman is  “too good to be true.” Oh, but Aiko does get credit for being able to read a map, although we’re not quite how she’ll do in bed…

One more thought–can you imagine if this thing is mass-marketed?? What will THAT do to the status of women?  Hey, NOW and all you other “feminist leaders” who decided to get suckered by Obama…what’s your move when this hits town???

If you are feeling as disgusted as I am, you can email the “reporter”  or whatever she is at c.iggulden@the-sun.co.uk.

***

Women Will Never Be Equal

~~By kenosha Marge

I watched as 56% of the female voters in the country voted for a misogynist. I watched outraged. I watched in sadness. I watched in shame. And I knew, I finally, completely, totally knew that women would never be equal. They won’t let themselves be. They don’t want to be. They are afraid to be. They will always choose a second-rate man over a first-rate woman.

We will never be equal not because of the men that hate us, demean us and insist that we remain second-class citizens. Those pathetic little fellas need someone to look down on but there are not enough of them. There are too many good, decent secure men around who don’t need to keep a woman down to make themselves feel all manly.

The pathetic little men need to have someone to whom they can feel superior and then push around; pound on, talk smut about and then take to bed. The sex part is a bonus they get with no other subjected critter. Except for those that do it to sheep and even the sheep have the self-respect to bleat about it.

But the pathetic little men need help. And they get it from women, from women that do not support other women. For whatever sick, sad little reason, women do not support women. And so women will never be equals.

When media launches one of its sexist attacks on some woman, any woman, other women quickly pile on. When night after night on the rabidly sexist Countdown on MSNBC, the rabidly sexist cretin Keith Olbermann demeaned the pathetic public meltdown of Britney Spears, where were the female voices telling him to stop? I don’t even like her and yet I was appalled and after a few programs I stopped watching him and never went back. Seeing someone bash Bush wasn’t worth watching a man publicly attacking a woman without outcry, with no outrage. Those programs should have told everyone all they needed to know about Keith Olbermann. Instead his ratings climbed. Sexism sells. It also tells me everything I need to know about people that still watch him.

When Hillary Clinton was smeared and subjected to outrageous sexism in the media, and particularly on MSNBC, where was the outrage? When her run was done and Sarah Palin was smeared and subjected to outrageous sexism, where was the outrage? And where were the women protesting such treatment?

How about Rachel Maddow, the newest member of MSNBC’s Obama team? Sticking up for the females? You gotta be kidding. She’s just one of the boyz now and thus must prove her chops by beating up on women worse than they do.

All the old hags of the Women’s Movement piled on the Palin. How dare a “conservative” woman think she had the right to run for VP when a liberal woman hadn’t been chosen? Bet ya didn’t know that only “liberal” women are worthy of support. However Hillary Clinton just wasn’t the right woman. Yeah, right.

Now we gleeful girls, or at least 56% of us are dancing around the Maypole in joy that an African-American, well actually a Kenyan-American man, is the president elect. That’s historic, don’t ya know!

Black men were given the right to vote 50 years before women. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on February 3, 1870. It prohibits preventing a citizen from voting based on the citizen’s race, color or previous condition of servitude. Thus black men were given the right to vote. But women, of any color were not.

15th Amendment

Fifty years later, the 19^th Amendment to the constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920. And women were finally allowed to vote.

19th Amendment

Guess us girls will just have to hang on another 50 years or so to get our turn at the Presidency. Hell, even at the Vice-Presidency. Cause it’s all about the boys, don’t ya know. At least 56% of the women in this country seem to think so.

So long as 56% of the women in this country stand in a man’s corner when a woman is fighting, a woman will never, and can never win. It’s a hell of a price to pay for a pat on the head or a pat on the ass.

Women will never be equal. 56% of them won’t allow that to happen. And so the rest of us must suffer for their puny and pathetic little hang-ups. If I didn’t loathe them so much I would almost feel sorry for them.

***

Editor’s Note: Heidi Li has formed a new organization; see Introducing 51 Percent – an organizational antidote to hatred of women.

This will be a non-profit educational organization designed to teach people what misogyny is, why it is different from sexism, how it relates to hateful conduct. On the affirmative side 51 Percent will promote the aspiration of having women occupy 51 percent of all areas in civil society (not just politics, but the workplace (and not just high level or white collar jobs but all jobs), the arts, every media institution, etc.) I believe that 51 percent representation – proportional to the presence of women in the general population – is  the most expedient antidote to the prevalence of misogynist conduct and its current social acceptability.

Please check out what she is doing…

Howard’s Agony: Seems Like We’ve Been Here Before

~~By Grail Guardian

Howard Dean is at it again. Yep. There’s a You Tube video entitled the “Agony of the Women of 2008” (posted 11/15/08) of “Dean The Scream” on C-Span 2’s post-election “Presidential Election Analysis” by Smithsonian Associates. There he is decrying the rampant sexism in this year’s Presidential campaign. (H/T to “imustprotest” for the link.  Updated Editor’s Note: The You Tube video is from BettyJean Kling at Free Us Now–see blogroll)

As if he’s been screaming about it for years, Dean states:

“Washington doesn’t get it. They always get it last. This is the most underwritten story of this campaign… by the press… by the media.”

“Women my age, in m generation felt this really acutely. Because they were the ones that suffered all of the indignities that you suffer when you fight to win the battle for equality. As they did.”

“Nobody understood the agony that women, particularly of my generation, were undergoing about this…issue…and to this day, it has been swept under the rug and been forgotten because she didn’t win.”

Say what? Did Mr. Misogyny just say that the media screwed women?

“We thought we were past all this stuff and we weren’t. We weren’t surprised about the degree of racism or lack of it or whatever, that was endlessly examined. We did not examine the fact that we didn’t get, we haven’t gotten nearly as far ahead as we thought we were about equality between the sexes. And that ought to be revisited as a result of what happened.”

But wait, it gets even better! Coward goes on to defend… wait for it… Sarah Palin!

…and it happened to Sarah Palin too. All the stuff that happened to Sarah Palin, and I know God knows I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her political points of view, but a lot of the stuff that happened to her, as she pointed out, would not have happened had she been a man.”

Holy Toledo, Batman!

Is this the same Howard Dean that says he was slow to pick up on the sexism against Senator Clinton in the primaries because he doesn’t watch cable TV? Is this the same Howard Dean that asked Cynthia Ruccia of Women for Fair Politics “What sexism?” Or could it be the same Howard Dean that decried the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos near the end of the Democratic Primaries, too late to do anyone any good?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me bring up another point on unifying the party. Geraldine Ferraro wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe this week where she talked about the persistent — what she’s saying is sexism — in the party and the difficulty that Barack Obama is going to have winning over Reagan democrats. Let me show — here’s a portion of what she wrote. She said that “Reagan democrats see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black. They’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that’s driving them, it’s racial resentment, and that is in force because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems.” She’s talking about a deep breach. What does Senator Obama —

DEAN: Well, first of all, I’m not going to respond to Senator — I mean to Geraldine Ferraro’s views on race because I think they have been outside the mainstream and unhelpful. But I will respond —

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you are responding to them.

DEAN: No, but I will respond to something she said on sexism. There has been enormous amount of sexism in this campaign on the part of the media, including the mainstream media. We’ll leave present company excepted because I think that’s true. But there have been major networks that have featured numerous outrageous comments that if the words were reversed and they were about race the people would have been fired. So that’s a big issue. And there are a lot of women in this country who — there’s two issues here. One is one candidate is ahead and one is not. That happens all the time in primaries, and you get over that. What you don’t get over is deep wounds that have been inflicted on somebody because they happen to be a woman running for President of the United States.

Hmmmmm. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? But I can’t seem to recall Dean saying a single word about the obnoxious tactics used by the Obama campaign against Sarah Palin until after the election when it’s too late to do anyone any good. Wow, didn’t I just say that? Yep. I’ll say something else that I said at the time Dean made the first statement:

Howard, you are a coward, an idiot, and a liar. I can only pray that you are soon relegated back to the pages of history as the screaming lunatic you’ve proven yourself to be.

Find the Sexism in the Picture, Learn “The Code”

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Hey, you guys want to push for the ERA?  According to BettyJean Kling over at FreeUsNow,  it’s still viable and only 3 more states are need to ratify!  (Ironically, one is Illinois, home of Barky. Sounds like a constructive thing to pursue…if nothing else, as an opportunity to retrace some history for young women who have no clue about what was gained with a lot of fighting…and what is slipping away.

Here are a couple of items to spur your interest. Thanks to  our Chicago Correspondent Leslie and frequent commentor, Northwest Rain….

First, Leslie sent along these pre-election cartoons from The Chicago Reader, the in-the-tank publication that we featured in a background piece,  “What Makes Obama Run?” from The Chicago Reader, December 1995.

Note the challenge to Obama…and the not-so-subtle sexism delivered in a cartoon which doesn’t even feature a woman!!

Message to Obama:

Message to McCain:

Gee, I wonder why they asked McCain to “not die?”

***

Then, we just had to re-post a typical exchange that was going on just after the election…(and is still ongoing in different places and forms…)

Here’s a whole series of comments from a thread from a No Quarter piece, Truth v. Fiction, Cheating v. Honor.

Northwest Rain provided IA with the setup…and the great line about “experience” :

The comment that triggers my outrage — is listed first. And in looking back
through the archives and remembering conversations — males have been saying
that Palin doesn’t have “experience” — and yet they would defend O-zero’s non
experience as “experience”. That WORD experience kept coming up. So when I read
the comment below — I exploded. Of COURSE — “experience” means Sarah Palin and
Hillary Clinton don’t have experience because they don’t have a penis.

Below copied from NQ:

Comment by mtc | 2008-11-07 01:37:53

If the Republicans really want to get back into the game, then they should take
a page from Axelrod. Find a charismatic and physically attractive candidate
(like Palin but with a better education and more experience) from a
traditionally disempowered group, groom her, screw public financing and collect
massive amounts of money from people who will be ready by 2012 or 2016 to dump
Obama. It obviously doesn’t really matter who is qualified to run. Just make sure that
the candidate has a stable temperament, fabulous rhetorical skills, and the
ability to make the public think that she is more talented. If I were they, I
would start now.
Reply to this comment

Comment by Northwest rain | 2008-11-07 02:01:47

Sexist pig – sexist pig.

Palin has a very good education — she is extremely smart — she just has a
vagina.

And she has a HELL of a lot more experience that O-fartfart

Right now I have no tolerance for sexist pigs.

You are one of the worst.
Reply to this comment

Comment by Northwest rain | 2008-11-07 02:06:12

Oh I get it — “experience” is the code word for — need penis to apply
— creatures who pee sitting down scare the hell out of pathetic liberals-or
progressives or whatever the hell you sexists pigs are calling yourselves today.
Reply to this comment

Comment by wodiej | 2008-11-07 02:29:14

I agree…I am just so sick of all this sexist shit I could SCREAM. If Palin had been a man they couldn’t have fawned over her enough.
She was extremely qualified and even more so than any of the other 3. IMO, she
was the one most qualified. I asked a friend’s boyfriend why he didn’t think
Palin was qualified to be VP, he said “I don’t know”. I know…she doesn’t have a penis.
Reply to this comment

Comment by fluffy bunny | 2008-11-07 02:27:12

yep
Reply to this comment

Comment by Newly Independent | 2008-11-07 03:39:33

If the Republicans really want to get back into the game

Republicans have won presidencies for decades. They don’t need Axelrod to fix
– er, win elections.

McCain knew what it took to beat Obama. He just wasn’t willing to stoop that
low to win.

Find a charismatic and physically attractive candidate (like Palin but with
a better education and more experience)

CODE FOR: Not a woman.

Sexist trash.

***

There ya go…all you need to know about where we, as women stand…somewhere in the landfill with all those old, rusting appliances…