One of the campus facilities dep’t trucks was decorated with this bumper sticker:
Why is MY oil under THEIR sand?
*sigh*. Some people are real idiots.
I’m tempted to make a minor stink about the sticker to the college administration but since I didn’t get the license plate of the truck I’ll let it slide. if I see the truck again, though, I’ll make a note of it.
There’s another flurry in the recurring cycle of “where are all the female political bloggers” going on this week, fed by a couple of posts at Kevin Drum’s site.
I don’t think there’s some sort of deliberate conspiracy on the part of Kevin Drum and his pals to keep female bloggers out of their blogrolls. But I do think there’s a particular blindness that left-leaning men enagage in. I believe they generally do care about womens’ issues and want to see women playing a more active and vocal role in the general discourse. But simultaneously, they don’t realize that their inaction is not helping that day come to pass.
Despite decades having passed since “the feminist revovlution”, this is still much more of a man’s world than it is an egalitarian one. Men in positions of authority, like the top bloggers, need to realize that they have to actually do something to help change the status quo.
I just posted a suggestion on Ezra Klein’s site to this end, and I’m going to repost it here:
How about creating a new mini-blogroll on your front page. Update it regularly. In it, you link to bloggers who ought to have better recognition but for whatever reason, don’t get it. And make a point of being diverse in your linking. To make the workload manageable, I’d suggest updates every 4 to 6 weeks and no more than 5 to 7 blogs listed in the blogroll.
Even better, try to get one or two of the other big-name Lefty bloggers to do the same thing.
I’m not the only person to make this suggestion. Several people said more or less the same thing in the comments to Kevin Drum’s post. Ultimately, actions speak louder than words. Maybe the guys will take some steps to show they do walk the walk when it comes to advancing women. Or maybe deep down they really are a bunch of sexist pigs. Let’s see what happens.
The CS Monitor has a piece out today about the role of religion in Europe vis a vis its role in America. Most of what’s said isn’t really news if you’ve been paying attention, but it’s still worth a read. Here’s a tidbit:
Luis Lopez Guerra, the Spanish government’s point man in its campaign to wrest from Catholic influence social legislation on questions such as abortion, divorce, and gay marriage, sees things differently.
He wonders why, in a country where less than half the population ever goes to church, he should have found a Bible and a crucifix on his desk, along with the Constitution, when he was sworn in as undersecretary at the Ministry of Justice a year ago.
The Spanish government’s plans to legalize gay marriage this spring, to liberalize divorce and abortion laws, and to permit stem-cell research, do not represent an attempt to impose an atheist state religion, he insists. Rather, he says, they “extend civil rights and make the law independent of Catholic dogma.”
*sigh* I really wish I had been more interested in learning to speak, rather than to sing, a second language when I was younger. Europe’s looking better and better as the years go by.
Sorry about the last few days of blog silence. I haven’t been feeling very inspired lately. However, Kevin Drum makes a good point about credit reporting.
The problem with credit reports is that they’re strictly under the control of one side of the credit transaction: businesses. If a business requests a report, they get it, no questions asked. If a business reports a problem, it goes on the report, no questions asked. The consumer never knows any of this is happening, and that’s the way the credit reporting companies like it.
This needs to stop. If a business requests a report, the consumer should be notified
Per Feministe:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
Mine: Why?
From: Writing Effective Letters, Memos, & E-Mail by Arthur H Bell. Third Edition (C) 2004.
When Republicans can lie and lie and nobody seems to ever actually call them on it …. heck, even so-called “reporters” can blatantly lie and nobody seems to care …. when it’s OK to call even former US Presidents traitors because they don’t agree with you …. when things that would have been a major scandal in the past are glossed over with hardly a peep in the press … what on earth can one small blog do to make a difference?