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When I first saw this news on TPM:

Lieberman Off the Hook?
The Obama transition team signals to TPM Election Central that Joe Lieberman is safe.
"We don't hold any grudges," Obama transition spokesperson Stephanie Cutter
tells us.

... I was cranky, because I've been just dying to see Traitor Joe ridden out of town on a rail, frog-marched out of the caucus, tarred and feathered, etc.

But then I got thinking some more... and I think this may be another absolutely brilliant move on Obama's part.

Why brilliant, you ask?

Well, because it makes Obama a bigger guy than Lieberman. Lieberman, clearly, DOES hold grudges--which is a big part of what's gotten him where he is today. At the same time, Lieberman is, as we've said a thousand times, a sanctimonious son of a bitch who likes to think he's better than everyone else. But this clearly indicates that he's NOT better than Barack Obama.

Seriously, this is like some of those other really sly ways that Obama has managed to drive certain people (like Bill Clinton) absolutely batshit crazy without ever saying anything that anyone else would interpret as a bad thing to have said.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But I think Joe was angling to be deprived of his committee chairmanship and kicked out of the caucus so he could once again blame the Democrats, talk about how the party has left him, and play the martyr. This deprives him of that opportunity. How does he keep his head from exploding if Barack Obama is a better man than he?

McCain, that is.

I'm nitpicking, I realize, but as a demographer, I think I do get to correct errors like this when I see them.

In an otherwise on-target post about McCain's pathetic and desperate choice of the woefully inexperienced Palin as v.p., Trapper John over at Daily Kos writes,

And he's presented Americans with the prospect of electing a dangerous neophyte
to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, behind a man whose life expectancy
is less than two presidential terms.

If John McCain had been born yesterday, this statement would be true. The life expectancy at birth of a white man in the United States as of the 2000 lifetables is 74.8, or far less than 8 years from McCain's present age (as of today) of 72.

But McCain, instead of being born yesterday, was born 72 years ago today. The life expectancy at age 70 of a white man in the United States is 13 more years, for an age of 83. So actually, McCain would be expected to survive 2 terms based on the mortality of people who've made it as far as he has.

Mind you, that's not taking into account his history of cancer or the ways in which the deprivation he experienced as a POW may have prematurely aged him and affected his health.

As I said, it's nitpicking, because obviously McCain's chances of dying in office, were he elected, are far greater than Obama's, and besides, we hold should all presidential candidates to the standard that their vice presidential picks should be ready to assume the Presidency if necessary...

I just hate to see life expectancy misrepresented.

The main headline from the New York Times this morning:

Clinton Delivers Emphatic Plea for Unity
Betrays No Anger in Backing Obama

What made that a "plea" for unity? There was nothing pathetic about it. How about a "call" for unity? Or even a "clarion call"? Or a "resounding call"?

And what's with the subtitle? Did they really expect her to "betray" anger? That assumes she's feeling it and was just doing a good job of hiding her "true" feelings. But everything we know about Hillary Clinton and what she has worked for all her life suggests that indeed, she meant every word she said last night.

These people are so enamored of their Democrats-infighting story, they can't see what's right in front of them.

It seems to me that the key point about the whole Wes Clark debacle is that the McCain campaign and their media enablers have now neutralized Clark as a spokesman for the Obama campaign and assured that he won't be Obama's choice for V.P.

Surely this was part of the purpose to the bleating on the right (repeated so readily by the talking heads) about Clark's supposedly mean, nasty, vicious attack on McCain?

The Republicans knew Clark could be effective in neutralizing McCain's so-called advantage based on military experience (how many stars did Clark have? kinda trumps whatever McCain did... even if Daddy was an admiral), so they had to take him down quickly as soon after he endorsed Obama as possible. Clark had been saying these things about McCain for a while, so doesn't it seem interesting that it's only now that the very same statements suddenly become so very objectionable?

Now maybe Clark as V.P. was never in the stars, and therefore it doesn't matter... And maybe the fact that Obama's gang threw Clark overboard so fast, rather than defending him (and pointing out how absurd and untrue the complaints from the Republicans have been), is a sign that they were never all that interested in him for V.P. in the first place. But I read this as a very well-carried-out maneuver by the bad guys, and not a very savvy response by our guy.

But feel free to tell me why I'm wrong.

It turns out that others who read the Lisa Belkin piece on women leaving science & engineering were annoyed, as I was, by its placement in the Fashion and Style section of the Times. The issue came up on a feminist sociology listserve to which I subscribe, and one of the sociologists in question wrote to Belkin about it. Here is Belkin's reply (which, as you'll see, she invited distribution of) with emphasis added and a few reactions interspersed:

You certainly are not the first person to ask this question. And I really am touched by the number of outraged women jumping to my defense. But this really isn't a matter of big-bad-sexist New York Times so much as its a matter of how-newspapers-work and how the internet has unexpected side effects.

The "big-bad-sexist New York Times" is just a figment of your over-heated, hysterical imagination, in spite of what you might read in your rabid radical bra-burning publications. It's about "how newspapers work," which you, as a person with a PhD in sociology, couldn't possibly understand.

I write a column. It appears in the same place every other week. The general topic of the column is Life and Work (hence its title, Life's Work) and it is a good fit for Thursday Styles if you think of the word, as I do, in terms of LifeStyle (and yes, I completely agree with Trip Gabriel's description of the section in his original response to you.)

If you turn yourself inside out, and look at it cross-eyed and backwards, the way I do, there's nothing at all trivializing about the Styles section... Indeed, I just pretend that it's something that it's not, and then it doesn't seem bad at all.

The content of the column varies, but often involves the role of women in the workplace. And the location of said column doesn't change depending on the topic, and certainly no one tells me that I cant cover meaty and newsy topics because I'm in section likely read mostly by women (now THAT would be sexist...)

See, I can recognize what sexism really is. So don't you worry your silly, radical, hysterical self.

So periodically there is a bit of a disconnect. It is more jarring, I think, if you come to the column from the internet, where all you see is the section title "Fashion and Style" than if you come to it through the physical paper, where it looks very much like a column. And I do think that maybe there is a lesson for the Times to learn there, that we should find a way to place stories on the web-page by content, rather than section, in circumstances like these.

But the outrage out there whenever this has happened in the case of my particular column is interesting. Do you really think that the powers-that-be sat around and said, "oooh, this is about girls, lets put it in the girl section"? It saddens me that the conclusion jumped to so quickly by so many is that this is a disservice to women, rather than just one woman writing one article that happens to run in one spot.

Um, yeah. Maybe not in this particular case, but I do actually think that the powers-that-be very often sit around and say, "ooh, this is about girls, let's put it in the girls section." Have you noticed what happens to fiction written by women these days? It's now all marketed as "chick lit," regardless of its actual content. See again the piece in Bitch if you want to be reminded how systematic this kind of thing is. And it "saddens" her that we "jump" to these conclusions? She sounds like a classic concern troll...

By the way, I should mention that this same column ran in the Business section for nine years. I suspect (but of course have no way of measuring conclusively) that the letters I get like this one are from people whose attention I never managed to catch when I was in that very serious location.
I asked for the move to Style because it meant twice the number of words and about twice the number of readers. I figure if I am going to write about these subjects -- and I plan to do so often -- I want to reach all the people I can...

By the way, I think you're a stupid, trivial, frivilous twit who would never have read the business section of the New York Times, and since I really want a readership of stupid, trivial, frivilous twits, I switched to the Fashion and Style section... Gee, Lisa, maybe you never got letters complaining about where your column was located when it was in the business section because it was in the business section and people didn't think that was a trivializing place for articles on women and work to be.

Thanks for caring so much about this. And please feel free to distribute to your list-serve. I'd love to continue this conversation with whoever there might be interested.

Thanks for caring, but I don't really need your concern, because you see, I don't really have your silly second-wave issues, and I'm just fine here with my good buds at the NYT, who aren't the least bit sexist, ever.

I take back anything nice I said about Belkin in my previous post.

Maybe I'm just an over-sensitive, rabid, bra-burning old-school radical type (as Belkin seems to imply the readers who objected to the story's placement all are), but to me, Belkin's reply was about as dismissive as if she'd just come out and said, "settle down, now, ladies."

Fred didn't see it that way at all. He read her reply as thoughtful and respectful. Go figure.

I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a snappier title for this post... But honestly.

Lisa Belkin had a piece in the Times* yesterday reporting on what looks like a good, new study by Sylvia Hewlitt's** organization about the attrociously sexist culture in many branches of the sciences, particularly engineering & computer science, and how it contributes to women's exits from those fields. As she notes, the proportion of women getting trained in those areas has increased substantially over the past 20 years, but women also leave in greater numbers than they do from law or investment banking.

The reasons for women's exodus that are emphasized in the article have to do entirely with the behavior of the men in these fields--men who engage in crude, locker-room humor, withhold valuable work-related information from female colleagues, and fail to act as mentors for junior women.

But when a company that desperately needs these smart, talented women decides to institute a retention program, what is the nature of that program?

The program at Johnson & Johnson, called “Crossing the Finish Line,” tutors
women in leadership skills.

It's a program to change the women, as if they're the problem. That's it--they're leaving because they don't have enough "leadership skills," not because they're being harassed, hounded, left out of the loop...

God forbid that anyone should ever try to change men.


*Note that the article is in the Fashion and Style section, for lord's sake.

**See? I'm willing to be gracious. I may ream Hewlitt for Creating a Life, but if her organization publishes something worthwhile, I'm willing to give her credit...

Fred and I got talking again this morning of the possibility of Obama and Clinton ending up on a ticket together.

Even now, however much animosity the most active of their supporters may be feeling, I suspect that many, many rank & file Democrats would respond as the audience at the debate in Texas (was it Texas? my mind is going) did and be ecstatic.

I had previously been pretty skeptical of the idea of the combination with Obama at the top, just because the age and experience issues (and, admittedly, Clinton's somewhat overinflated view of herself) seemed to make it unworkable.

But Fred points out that she really is young enough to be v.p. for 2 terms and still serve 2 of her own.

And more importantly, from my perspective, it occurred to me that bringing Clinton onto his ticket would offer Obama a very important "out" of some of the stupider things he's said so far in the campaign.

One of the real challenges of supporting Obama, for me, has been that I simultaneously agree with almost everything Paul Krugman has said about his shortcomings on domestic policy and his use of Republican talking points--particularly his ridiculousness on health care mandates and the stupid stuff he said about a social security crisis.

So here's the thing. If Clinton ran as Obama's Vice President, it would give him a second chance on those issues. He gets to say that in order to unify the party, they've met in the middle, or made some accommodations to each other, and that gets him off the hook for having to defend those indefensible positions in the general election. He could even, as Fred suggested, spin it even more positively, saying how "blessed" he is to be running with someone who has her experience on the health care issue...

Imagine it as Kennedy-Johnson. They didn't love each other beforehand, but each brought something important to the ticket. The only difference would be that instead of giving Clinton the mushroom treatment* (I have to credit Fred for putting it that way), as Johnson was, you would actually (as Fred has blogged before) give her a portfolio of important domestic issues to be in charge of.

Also, during the general election, we have him floating along with his feet not quite touching the ground, inspiring people, while she takes out the opposition with her sharp left hook... She'd be a much better attack dog V.P. candidate than Edwards was (which isn't actually saying much, much as I am fond of Edwards for his poverty positions). I don't care who McCain picks as a running mate--I think we could count on Clinton to demolish him or her in the debates.

Also... I never liked the people Clinton surrounded herself with (the Penns and Wolfsons and the rest), with the exception (most of the time) of Bill, but at the same time, I've never stopped liking her. If she's the running mate, her people don't really get to decide the direction or tone of the campaign, presumably. So we get to ditch the overpaid blowhard consultants with terrible judgement that she seems determined to surround herself with, but we still get Clinton herself.

* I assume everyone knows what this is, but just in case not... Kept in the dark and fed shit.

Yesterday, I stuck an Obama sticker on my lapel and signed up to knock on doors on Saturday. I started out with Edwards because of poverty, and it's been a slow and painful adjustment since Edwards left the race. I still prefer Clinton on several aspects of domestic policy, which is usually more important to me, so that has made it particularly hard.

I'm going to vote for Obama--and if I'm going to vote for someone, I'll work for him or her as well--but I take no glee in watching Clinton go down. Indeed, the past few weeks have been extraordinarily painful.

This morning on NPR, they were interviewing voters in Texas. One woman said, about Obama, that she was excited about him because she thought it would just be so wonderful for kids to grow up in a world in which the president looked like that (paraphrase).

Can someone remind me, please, which one of our last 43 presidents was the woman? Because when I look them over, they're all looking pretty XY to me (although I suppose Millard Filmore could be a chick in drag). Doesn't anyone think there might be some ways in which it would be wonderful for kids to grow up in a world in which the president was a woman?

I know it's not a contest, who's more oppressed. I'm not trying to go there. And obviously, given my decision, I believe there are serious problems with this particular woman candidate. But I still feel as if it's almost as if people are acting as if (is that enough as ifs?) there's already been a woman, as if (there's another) that's no big deal anymore.

After interviewing the Obama supporter, NPR went on to the other side of Houston to talk to conservatives in a bible group. They were Huckabee fans, some of whom were reluctantly supporting McCain. One woman in the group said she admired how far Clinton had gone, but that she couldn't support her because she believed women need to submit to men, and that only a man should be a leader. The pastor of the group agreed and re-confirmed the idea that only men should be leaders.

We haven't really come such a long way, baby.

In the current post on her New York Times blog, Judith Warner describes a conversation in which two married male friends, middle aged & older, discuss in her presence the "kinds of women they’d go out with if they were single."

It turns out both men say they'd like to date "babes" who are much younger and childless. When she suggests they might be happier with women with whom they have more in common (age and interest-wise), the men are incredulous and start mocking her. She then describes how, when she told her husband of the exchange, he said he didn't understand what she was getting "all worked up about."

Warner then goes on to describe the rage she finds herself in. But instead of presenting this as a perfectly justifiable rage, instead of telling her male friends that married men who talk about the kind of women they'd like to date (regardless of the age of the imagined babes) are assholes, and that those who talk about wanting to date much younger women are revealing themselves to be not just assholes but immature, shallow assholes, she goes on to mock her own rage and assume that we readers will be mocking it, too, like her husband:

Perhaps you’ve already laughed yourself into red-eyed delirium....

And then, after talking self-deprecatingly about how she started identifying with bumper-sticker feminism of the "a woman needs a man..." variety, her solution to this rage is:

I need a Girls’ Night Out.

A girls' night out? She earlier says that her denial of the existence of bra-burning was a lame rejoinder, but this is seriously lame. What exactly does she think gets accomplished by going out with other women--forgive me, girls--and complaining about men?


I'm starting to notice that Warner often comes right up to the edge of being right about things, but (as here) she chickens out.

It seems to me that the appropriate response to a conversation like this--particularly for someone like Warner who is lucky enough to have such a platform as a NYT blog--would be to publish her male friends' names in this post. Such attitudes deserve to be outed and shamed and ridiculed. Her friends' wives should know that this is what they sit around talking about when they're away from home. Any men in their social circle who are closer to being decent human beings than Warner's husband (whom she does out in the piece, note...) should let them know that they think they're idiots.

There are distressingly few men willing to donate their bone marrow for experiments that may someday yield cures for cancer.

There are distressingly few people willing to undergo spinal taps for experimental research.

There are distressingly few women willing to donate their eggs for experiments at the frontiers of this promising science.

One of these three statements appeared in a New York Times editorial. Can you guess which one, and why it honks me off?