Tuesday, July 07, 2009 - Posts
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I read Liza’s summary of Mimi Swarz’s take on mature women in the most powerful workplace in the world with some interest. After all, I’d previously written on the preponderance of single women in the Obama White House,
lamenting the fact that a bold-face name like Melody Barnes put off
marriage for years, in order to run policy in an administration poised
to overhaul health care, energy action, and the economy ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Am I losing it, or does Sarah Palin have a point? I mean, when she says
that if she'd remained in office, she wouldn't have accomplished
anything because state business would have been tied up in the many
ethical charges against her? That strikes me as a hard kernel truth in
the middle of the sea of bullshit Palin is wading in (today, literally,
by giving TV interviews while out catching fish).
Palin is right that she became a different kind of politician when
McCain has picked her as vice president. Maybe that's because ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Has J. Crew pushed the boundaries of their symbiotic Obama relationship a little too far? Politico posted an item
disclosing a press release the retailer sent to reporters yesterday,
advertising the fact that Sasha and Malia Obama have been spotted out
and about in J. Crew wares. Specifically, if you must know ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Perfect kids are more likely to murder you in your sleep. At least,
that's according to horror flicks that fall into the "evil kid genre,"
inaugurated by 1956's The Bad Seed. Other warning signs: ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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I agree with you, Jess, that the poor job and internship prospects for today’s college students are more about the underperforming economy than an over-supply of participation trophies,
or any other Gen-Y generalizations on which people like to pin such
trends. But I disagree that Gen-Yers’ (that is to say, “our”)
entitlement is purely economy-driven. Following your theory, that sense
of privilege should diminish with the foundering economy. That would
mean that our peers, many of whom are getting laid off or fear they
soon will be, should right about now be tossing aside dreams of jobs
that let us save the world and stay intellectually stimulated all day
every day—all while wearing jeans and working from home when we feel
like it!—and settling for whatever jobs we can get. Instead, we’re
going to grad school.
The idea that young people choose to weather tough economic times in
the safety of university libraries is nothing new. What’s different
this time around is the opportunity costs that we Gen-Yers are all but
ignoring when we choose the post-bac path. Education is expensive—much
more so that it was for our parents, having gone up at more than twice the rate of inflation over the past two decades. The federal income-based repayment plan that kicked in this month underscores how bad the student loan trap has gotten. People are rejoicing over ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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We learned today that Rita Wilson is prepping an HBO series based on Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer-winner about a girl named Callie who grows up to become a man named Cal. In a bit of fortuitous timing, Salon has posted an interview with professor Gerald N. Callahan, author of Between XX and XY, a new book about intersex people.
Intersex people are born neither male nor female; the descriptor is "an umbrella term that includes people with a tremendous number of genetic conditions, from those born with an extra X chromosome to those with overdeveloped adrenal glands."
There are lots of interesting nuggets here—for example, Callahan's description of biological sex as a spectrum, not a binary system. (Hence the piece's title, "We're all intersex.") That's a concept that many of us are comfortable with vis-a-vis gender identity, but applying that framework ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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I just caught up with the essay in the New York Times Magazine
by writer Anne Bernays about her dismay at her grandson, David,
becoming a Marine. His decision was an incomprehensible turn of events
for Bernays. After all, she writes, she is a liberal Jew who raised her
family in Cambridge, Mass. Her children went to the "best schools."
They had "no money worries." In other words, people like this simply do
not produce Marines. At David's graduation, she has a conflicted sense
of pride in his accomplishments. But nowhere does she question ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Police arrested a North Dakota woman yesterday for breast-feeding while drunk,
and now she is facing charges of child neglect. This case brings to the
surface all of our weird notions about breast-feeding. The cops were
called in for domestic disturbance and said the whole scene suggested ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Amelie Gillette, the brilliantly crabby woman behind the Onion A.V. Club column The Hater, has pointed out one of the scourges of the Bravo network: the repeated use of the completely insulting term, "gay boyfriend." Gillette has started a Hater podcast, and on her first cast she calls the Real Housewives franchise out on their mostly demeaning ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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