Thursday, January 31, 2008 - Posts
-
sponsorship
Now this is interesting; I see where a focus group of Republican women has declared Mike Huckabee the winner of last night's debate. These undecided, right-leaning women thought Mitt Romney came off as phony, arrogant and "a snake''—and one woman who described herself as a strong Republican wondered if a guy that rich would really look out for the little guy. (Do you want to break it to her, or should I?) Others expressed discomfort with his Mormon faith and bridled at his lack of support for Sandra Day O'Connor, whom he suggested he would never have appointed to the Supreme Court.
John McCain also got a big thumbs-down from the group, which included 11 California women of various ages, races, and wings of the GOP: He's so snide, they said, as if that were a bad thing. But Huckabee they found caring, real, and in touch with their concerns. So much so that seven of the 11 declared him the winner, and four who'd been leaning toward other candidates decided to support him as a result. Maybe they liked how he patted Nancy Reagan's hand?
-
sponsorship
On the legal front this week, we have Michael Mukasey's can't-pin-me-down testimony of yesterday, as Dahlia reported. And also this dismaying report, via his lawyer and the LA Weekly's blog, that a Guantanamo prisoner has contracted AIDS in the camp. If this is true, it's an awful example of the individual harms the Bush administration has caused with its grim insistence that the rule of law and the war on terror shall not mix.
-
sponsorship
C'mon, John, there was one great moment in last night's GOP debate: When Mitt Romney sneered that John McCain couldn't be too darn conservative or else the New York Times wouldn't have endorsed him, hehhehheh, and McCain flipped him his riposte—something about then how come both of Romney's own hometown papers, including the superconservative Boston Herald, had endorsed McCain, too, huh? The killing part was not what McCain said, but how he returned Romney's phony laugh, hehhehheh, soooo sarcastically, and right up in Romney's face. So that for a couple of seconds, as they were nose-to-nose doing this and wagging their heads back and forth, I was actually hopeful that the whole thing might end in a head-butt. Alas, that was not to be. But Romney still looks shocked anew every time McCain answers him, so maybe that's why he failed to move in for the kill. And wouldn't you have loved to have seen the thought bubble over Nancy Reagan's head when Mike Huckabee took her arm—thank goodness someone did, because I was afraid she was going to fall—and then spent ages patting her hand?
-
sponsorship
Thanks, Dahlia, for your response to my post the other day, and for raising the good question about whether women, especially young women, are more "politically checked out" than their male counterparts. Such questions are one reason I get so amped about overly simplistic feminist rants—they just get tempers flaring and obscure the problems that we can actually work on.
Looking back at the two columns you referenced—a piece wondering if feminism was out of style and the ombudsman's (ombudswoman's?) column in the Washington Post—I have to say that, once I get past the hand-wringing in von Hahn's column, I can relate to her concern more. She seems to be worried that women are paying more attention to low-brow pop culture than concerning themselves with big issues, while Deborah Howell of the Post thinks that we gals would read the paper more if only it had nice stories about parenting and relationships. (Apparently, she missed our discussion of that Page One piece about yuppie parents a while back.)
If men are generally staying better abreast of the political news, I'd bet they're also more politically active, and as such, more likely to have their voices heard. And the squeaky wheel gets the grease, yadda yadda. So therein lies a concern for women. As for what to do about it, it's hard to say. We can't go all Clockwork Orange and strap women into chairs with their eyes peeled open to make them read the A-section. Could we make the hard news more anecdotal, with more personal stories about how the war or congressional legislation or Supreme Court decisions affect everyday people? There's already plenty of that out there, and politicians have bogarted that technique (let us not forget the S-CHIP brouhaha) to such a degree that it's now a tired cliché. I can't offer any solutions myself, but I'd love to hear ideas.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?