Secret sexism

As voters in Massachusetts head to the polls today to decide who will take over Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, pundits everywhere are casting blame in anticipation of the loss by AG Martha Coakley (D) to state Sen. Scott Brown (R). There is much talk of Coakley's lackluster campaigning skills, a dig she made at Republican former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling as being a Yankee fan, a mailer she sent out accusing Brown of wanting to deny healthcare to rape victims, and comparisons of her meager time spent gladhanding the voters as compared to Brown's. There is also much discussion of how this is really a referendum on Obama, and Democratic control, and healthcare, and can't we see that voters are pissed off?!, etc. But one thing that nobody is talking about, and that may be playing just as much of a role as any of those factors, is the secret sexism of the Massachusetts voter.

Only five women have ever been elected to statewide office in Massachusetts, one of whom is current Attorney General Coakley, who was elected in 2006. 3 different women have been elected Lieutenant Governor, but MA elects a slate rather than individual Gov and Lt Gov votes, so there is not a separate campaign and election for Lt Gov like we have here in Georgia. The first woman independently elected to statewide office in MA was Shannon O'Brien, who was elected State Treasurer in 1999. O'Brien made a run for governor in 2002, but lost to Mitt Romney. Jane Swift was elected Lieutenant Governor along with Paul Cellucci in 1998, and became Governor in 2001 when Cellucci left to become an ambassador, but Swift served less than 2 years and was persuaded not to run for Governor because of her tremendous unpopularity. Mitt Romney's Lieutenant Governor was Kerry Healey, who lost to Deval Patrick in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Massachusetts has elected no female Senators, and only 4 Congresswomen. Prior to Niki Tsongas' election in 2008, it had been 25 years since a woman from Massachusetts had served in Congress. (For what it's worth, Tsongas is the widow of very popular Senator and former Presidential candidate Paul Tsongas. Her husband's legacy undoubtedly assisted her in her candidacy.)

For all of the discussion of how "liberal" Massachusetts is, in reality the electorate is politically quite moderate. Catholic voters make up a sizeable voting bloc, and those voters are socially more conservative (particularly on abortion) than the rest of the Democratic electorate. In fact, numerous Massachusetts House Speakers in recent years have been anti-abortion. In addition, union workers make up a sizeable chunk of the electorate, and even though union workers do tend to vote Democratic on the whole, they tend to be more politically moderate as well, particularly on social issues. They also don't tend to vote for female candidates.

Yet, despite the acknowledged difficulties female candidates have faced in past statewide elections in MA, virtually nobody is mentioning it as a potential factor in a Coakley defeat today. Why are the many political pundits, all of whom have been dissecting this race for weeks and loudly declaring why Coakely might lose even before a single vote has been counted, completely silent on the potential role that sexism might be playing in Coakley's lukewarm response in MA? You would think that after the landmark year that was 2008, when female candidates and the unique challenges they face were front and center in both the primary and the general Presidential election, that reporters wouldn't be afraid to mention the fact that one candidate is a girl running in a state that traditional doesn't like electing girls very much.

But if in the past 3 weeks you have watched any political news program, read political blogs, or read the newspapers with their Coakley pre-mortems, you'll find that virtually nobody is mentioning the gender of the candidate as a factor. Maybe they're assuming to the point of hoping that we are suddenly post-gender and that being a girl no longer matters, but that would be a foolish assumption to make. It obviously still matters, in some places more than others. So why the silence on this fairly obvious contributing factor to Coakley's struggles? I find it completely perplexing.

Serious Question of the Day

Would Sarah Palin be such a political or cultural hot commodity today if she wasn't hot (i.e., more physically attractive than average)?

I consider her to be the Anna Kournikova of politics, and I find that to be a sad and potentially dangerous thing. But I want to know if my 12 readers agree, and if so what you think it says about our culture that a hefty chunk of our population has elevated a nincompoop to politically iconic status simply because she's hot.

And then there were two...

Some of the most amazing lawyers I have ever worked for have been women, and nearly half of graduates of law schools today are female. So, for the past three years it has been downright unseemly to have only one woman on the nation's highest Court. Today, that discrepancy has been rectified with the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor.

It should be a proud day for everyone, but certainly for all women and Hispanics, to see someone who worked so hard and accomplished so much in her professional life (despite coming from humble beginnings) rewarded with this highest achievement.

On the margins of the Sotomayor confirmation hearing

If you watched yesterday's first round of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (I couldn't stomach the condescension and hypocrisy from Sessions et al.), you may have noticed a woman in the gallery began yelling at one point about overturning Roe v. Wade. She was promptly removed and arrested.

She was Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe.

McCorvey's path to this point has been a strange and sad one. As a young poor pregnant woman, she became the plaintiff in the landmark case that legalized abortion. It was too late for McCorvey, who gave her own baby up for adoption because the SCOTUS case was decided well after her due date. In the 1980's, McCorvey "came out" as Jane Roe and began to assert that she had been used by the lawyers who argued her case. In the 1990's she came out as a lesbian, and wrote a book about her experiences in the case and since. She worked at several abortion clinics and was an ardent advocate for abortion rights.

Strangely, despite the general distaste among the conservative Christian anti-abortion crowd for homosexuality, McCorvey was befriended by several anti-abortion activists after her book came out. They baptized her and eventually converted her to their side, and she has since become an extreme anti-abortion activist in her own right, working with Operation Rescue. (I'm just guessing here, but the guilt angle that she had caused the legalization of a procedure that has led to millions of abortions was probably a pretty powerful tool in the Operation Rescue folks' conversion arsenal.) She petitioned the Supreme Court in 2005 to reconsider and vacate its ruling in her case, though that motion was denied. Since her conversion, McCorvey went from being a Baptist to a Catholic, and then proclaimed that she was no longer a lesbian.

Thinking about the strange twists and turns of McCorvey's life, I get a sense of a woman who never really felt like she belonged anywhere, and who was always looking for acceptance and purpose. I wish she could have found that from the women like me who want to thank her for being the face of the fight for the right we hold so dear.

My heeeero

Sarah Weddington kicks serious ass. At just 26 years old, she argued Roe v. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court and won. I had the honor of meeting Ms. Weddington in 1996 or so when she came to speak at FSU, and I have always considered her my personal hero. (True story: I was a member of FSU N.O.W., which was responsible for bringing her to campus to speak. The other members asked me to introduce her because she's always been my idol, but I was so humbled and in awe of her that I was too nervous to introduce her. I thought I wouldn't be able to contain my emotions to do her justice and would have just gotten up there and babbled. I reacted to meeting her sort of like a guy would react to meeting his favorite childhood baseball player. Let's just say I was neither poised nor dignified.)

Ms. Weddington will speak at Georgia State University on April 7, 2009 from 12:00 pm-1pm. I so wish I could get out of work that day to attend...and I might even have to play a little hooky. In addition to winning her first big case in a way that changed women's lives forever, Ms. Weddington has had a very interesting and exciting public life both blazing trails for women attorneys and advocating on behalf of causes she cares deeply about. I highly recommend seeing her speak if you are interested.

Bleh

For weeks now I have been writing and then euthanizing blog posts on a variety of topics, mostly political, that turn me on about as much as a sex scene on primetime network television. I get it half written but I just can't seem to muster the enthusiasm to care enough to edit the thing, let alone linking to the source and all the other stuff that I feel like I need to do to make a post publish-worthy. So, my blogger control panel is littered with half-written morsels that will never see the light of day, while the front page languishes with maybe one actual post per week. I am a bad blog mommy.

Today's partially digested post was about the Georgia Senate's decision to add a little poison pill to the so-called "Octomom" legislation intended to limit the number of embryos implanted during in vitro fertilization procedures. Today, the Senate amended the legislation to include a provision declaring an embryo to be a human being from the moment of fertilization (not even implantation into the uterus), and prohibiting the destruction of such embryos even upon the request of the would-be parents. Despite the obvious ramifications of forbidding the people who created the embryos to decide whether they will be destroyed, donated to stem cell research, or frozen in perpetuity, the real kicker here (as is usually the case when you see legislation that contains the word embryo) is as it pertains to abortion. While the bill purports to not affect existing laws in Georgia on abortion, were it to pass and become law the groundwork would be laid for certain legal challenges to anything that risks the harm or destruction of embryos, including procedures intended to expel or remove embryos from a host uterus. Goodbye, morning after pill. Goodbye, chemical or surgical abortion. Hello, test case to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Anyhow, I wrote this long angry screed about our dumb and duplicitous legislature that is still clearly controlled by the backwards ways of the Georgia Christian Coalition. But my heart wasn't in it, perhaps because I know that this bill will probably pass and there's not much I can do about it. The Democratic opposition is a toothless plaything to the Republican leadership right now, and the people of Georgia simply don't get fired up when it comes to preventing eradication of the right to choose. If we couldn't get constitutents to speak out against a Georgia Power bill that will significantly impact our wallets, how can we get them to speak out about this complicated and tricky issue? If people DID speak out about wanting Sunday sales pretty overwhelmingly, but the legislature still killed the bill with little if any repurcussions, why wouldn't they vote the Christian Coalition's way on this bill too? It is all very frustrating and demoralizing.

There are smart people with great ideas working to advance progressive and moderate principles in Georgia, but they are not the people in the legislature right now...or if they are, then they are being ignored. Unless and until the Georgia Democratic party can get its shit together, we will see more and more bad law come about while good people continue to do nothing. And that is depressing as hell.

So, if you really REALLY care about protecting the right of individuals to decide what happens with their embryos, and you don't mind pissing into the wind, give your legislator a call and ask them to defeat this bill. But if you can't muster the enthusiasm to follow through on the fight, I for one certainly am in no position to blame you.

I can't see Russia from my house.

Yesterday, I read that Sarah Palin had created a new political action committee, which she had christened SarahPAC. As many politicians seeking to flex their national muscle have done, Palin intends to use SarahPAC to raise and funnel money to Republican causes, to further build her national profile, and to advocate for issues of personal importance to her such as drilling ("baby, drilling"...sorry, couldn't help myself) in ANWR. She even has a pretty little website for the PAC, which can be found here.

When reading about the website, I had an impish thought. I wondered if anyone had already registered Sarapac.com, because I knew from personal experience during the campaign that many people routinely leave the H off Palin's first name. I googled, and discovered that at least one press release about the PAC had used the SaraPAC misspelling. And lo and behold, the domain name was available! I hastily reserved it, and set it up to autoforward to this here blog while I decided what to do with my new toy.

The autoforward went through at about 6:30 last night, and by midnight I'd gotten 600 hits from bad spellers and wayward typists. I decided I needed to capitalize on this rash of new interest in Sarah Palin, but to use it for good rather than evil. As much as I wanted to put up a nasty screed about Palin's politics or take any of the other many suggestions I received from friends, I knew that I wouldn't feel right about using the site in that manner. Instead, I decided to promote the good causes that this Sara, with no H, believes in. If just a few stupid Palin supporters accidentally donate to NARAL or Sierra Club or the ACLU because of my site, that will be more satisfying than any other option I could think of for the website.

Someday I might do something more with the website, including migrating this here blog to it. Or not, who knows. But in the meantime, go check out SaraPAC.com...if that isn't the errant URL that got you here in the first place, that is.

Untangling the knot

The first full year of the Roberts Court held many sad and infuriating surprises, including one that may have been lost in the deluge.

Lily Ledbetter was a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Plant in Alabama who learned after 19 years with the company that she earned far less than any male supervisor. She sued for pay discrimination based upon gender. A sharply divided Court ruled in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that women such as Ledbetter who wished to sue their employers for paying them lower wages than male employees for the same work could only bring their lawsuits within 180 days of the accrual of her claim, or it would be barred forever. While the 180 day statute of limitations isn't all that controversial, because it is the same deadline that applies to most gender discrimination lawsuits, the Court interpreted the 180 day clock to begin ticking on the first date that Ledbetter had been paid unequally as compared to her male counterparts, even though she did not learn of the pay disparity until many years later. The Court also ruled that future effects of the pay discrimination did not constitute a separate discriminatory act that started a new 180 day clock all over again.

In essence, the Court was saying if you didn't find out about the inequality within 180 days of when it began and file your lawsuit immediately, you lose. Effectively, this decision would result in the dismissal of all but a tiny fraction of pay disparity lawsuits, since almost no employee finds out right away that she is being paid much less than her male coworkers. As of right now, all an employer has to do in order to win such a lawsuit is submit payroll evidence showing the first point at which the female employee earned less than the male employee, and that that this date is more than 180 days before the filing of the lawsuit.

Congress has the power to change the federal pay discrimination statute to rectify this, but until now there was no reason to believe that President Bush would sign such legislation. Now that we can hear the drumbeat of change fast approaching, the House has just passed The Lily Ledbetter Pay Fair Act, named for the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case. This legislation would change the time for filing the lawsuit to 180 days after the employee learns of the pay disparity. The Senate is expected to pass it easily as well, and the new President will sign it.

There have been many bad things wrought by the Bush presidency and the Roberts Court, and it will take a great deal of time to untangle all of them and figure out how best to fix them. But it is very encouraging to see that the Congressional agenda for the first Democratic Presidency and Democratic Congressional Majority in 14 years includes undoing what damage we can. This is the great thing about a clean slate.

In defense of shopping

Much is being made today of the revelation that the McCain-Palin campaign has shelled out upwards of $150,000.00 for clothing, shoes, hair and makeup for Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. People think it's tacky and excessive, sends the wrong message, and makes the McCain campaign seem overly concerned about superficial things.

The problem is, campaigns for female candidates ARE about appearances, much moreso than for male candidates. Nobody notices if Joe Biden's navy blue suit and matching blue tie are 5 years old or brand new, because men's business fashion never really changes all that much. The only debate there is what colors of shirt and tie are acceptable, and making sure that the suits still fit and the shoes are nicely polished. Hell, as long as the suit is re-pressed, a male candidate can wear the same one 3 days in a given week and nobody will say a word. You men have it very, very easy.

But women's fashion is a constantly changing thing. You have not only the fabrics, the colors, and the cut of suits, but you also have the blouses that go under the suit, the belts and jewelry and bag, the shoes (my god, the shoes), and ever-changing concepts of what hair and makeup is appropriate. Staying fashion appropriate is a much bigger challenge for all professional women as compared to men. But then if you add in the inordinate attention paid to female candidates' fashion choices as opposed to their male counterparts, and of COURSE any female candidate is going to need a hefty "makeover" budget. It goes without saying.





For all of her efforts to downplay the difference between Alaska and the rest of the country, Sarah Palin herself could not deny that the fashion choices available to her were far fewer than those available to women in large metropolitan cities in the lower 48. Her clothing prior to her selection as VP candidate was unremarkable, which is about all you can expect. It certainly wasn't polished and impressive, but at least it wasn't outright tacky. Still, the day she was picked I said that someone had already been given the assignment of softening the bad highlights in her hair, getting her to back away a little from the ever-present updo she favored, improve the subtlety of her makeup, and go buy her an absolute shit ton of new clothes. It appears that this is exactly what happened.



Her first apperance with McCain after the official unveiling speech was when they toured areas affected by Hurricane Gustav. Sarah Palin showed up in a white button down shirt, jeans, and the hoop earrings heard round the world. She was reviled by pundits and bloggers for seeming too flippant about hurricane victims' plight...because of her EARRINGS. If this didn't tell you the inordinate attention being paid to her fashion choice, nothing would.





Very quickly, the campaign must have realized they had to go shopping for her pronto. Her convention speech was a few days away, and the whole world would be watching. So much scrutiny was applied to Sarah Palin's convention speech that the selection of an outfit was likely the kind of decision that numerous campaign officials had a say in. If she had chosen something too girly and flirty, she would have seemed inconsequential. If she had chosen something dowdy and out of date, she would have seemed provincial. Instead, she selected a beige quilted Gucci jacket and black skirt that hit the right notes--fashionable without being ostentatious, and not at all suggestive.



For the debate, her second big appearance on the national stage, she wore a slightly lower cut but still appropriate black Valentino suit with a tight cut to the skirt (because someone had figured out that hinting at her sex appeal helped them with white men) and a slightly lower (but still not suggestive) neckline. I actually very much liked the suit for the debate and think it was a fashion home run. I also don't think it's an accident that Palin wore her hair down, not in the traditional updo, for both the debate and the convention speech. Someone told her that she needed to lose the severity of her former favorite hairstyle, and they were right.

Now, the case could be made that while a little fashion policing of her wardrobe was certainly in order, the problem is the amount she spent on her makeover. Why buy a $3500 Valentino suit when a $600 Tahari would do? Why have Prada shoes if Franco Sarto or Joan & David would have made something just as fashionable for one fifth the price? This is a legitimate question, and undoubtedly the stylist hired to help Palin shop was not sufficiently mindful of how the public might react to the notion of spending the cost of a modest 3 bedroom house on one woman's wardrobe. But you can't deny that Palin's style has improved considerably from her days back in Alaska, and that her positive personal image is probably the only thing she really has going for her with the public right now.

I wish it were the case that women's personal appearance wasn't so important to their success in professional pursuits as well as personal ones, but it simply is. Any female attorney will tell you that jurors and judges can be swayed by something as simple as whether an attorney appears attractive and polished or disheveled and unimpressive. So, too, will businesspeople respond better to sales pitches and business presentations delivered by women who seem confident, polished and attractive rather than unconcerned about their personal appearance. It is a fact of life, and one that a candidate would be wrong to ignore or attempt to defy. Dowdy unkempt women candidates simply don't get elected very often.

While this spending is being held up as a symbol of excess in an economic crisis, let's not pretend that attempts to make over Sarah Palin's image were a bad idea. We can quibble about whether it was unnecessarily expensive, but it was something that had to happen.

And maybe now you men will understand why I spend so blasted much on my wardrobe and grooming.

Yep, we're blazing trails alright

This has gotta be a first, right? The first porno spoofing a Vice Presidential candidate? Gee I'm glad that women have come so far that they can be taken seriously for their ideas and experience now that Sarah Palin is McCain's running mate.

It would be a little funny were it not so tragically depressing. Don't mind me, I'll be over here sighing for the rest of the month of October.

Hell yes

I don't think of myself as a feminist very often anymore (a story for another post someday, maybe) but I think maybe I should adopt that label more often. This post from Amber quoting Kate at Shapely Prose is one of those things that makes me want to scream "HELL YES!" and send it to every man I know. Yes, even you guys, the ones who think you never do any of the things on this list:

every time you don’t tell your buddies it’s not okay to talk shit about women, even if it’s kinda funny;

every time you roll your eyes and think “PMS!” instead of listening to why a woman’s upset;

...

every time you tell a woman you love she’s being crazy/hysterical/irrational, when you know deep down you haven’t heard a word she’s said in the past 15 minutes, and all you’re really thinking about is how seeing her yell and/or cry is incredibly unsettling to you, and you just want that shit to stop;

every time you dismiss a woman as “playing the victim,” even if you’re right about that particular woman…

Read the whole thing, it's an excellent battle cry for women and wakeup call for men.

Chick Poker, or why I have mixed feelings about the success of Tiffany Michelle (Updated)

(Update: Tiffany Michelle was just eliminated from the WSOP main event in 17th place. Everything below was written this morning before today's action began, and when Michelle was third in chips. Ah well, it was fun to dream while it lasted.)

There's a potential new earthquake underway in the poker world, if one young actress known as "Hot Chips" can hang on to make the final table of this year's World Series of Poker main event. Tiffany Michelle, unknown to most as both actress and poker player, is currently third in chips with 27 players remaining, and is now the great hope of female poker players everywhere. Only one woman has ever made the main event final table (Barbara Enright in 1995), and no woman has ever won the main event.

During my few forays so far into playing in World Series circuit events, I have been disheartened both by the lack of female players and the lack of respect shown by our male opponents. I could recount at least a half dozen incidents of being marginalized both by other players and dealers who referred to me as sweetheart, good looking, or some other trivial tag that was not assigned to male players. I have been hit on at the poker table by both dealers and other players. I have witnessed a poker room manager who refused to run a single table satellite for the ladies only tournament because he thought it was "stupid." I have heard even men who do not appear to be sexist pigs use unfortunate terminology to describe female players who they know nothing about beyond their gender.

Most importantly, I have both seen and been victim time and time again as male players simply refuse to respect the play of female players...calling raises with bad cards, not believing that a woman might actually be playing the best hand, becoming almost reflexively hyper-aggressive when a woman is in the pot in a bizzare form of basic animal behavior. Overall, I have felt like I have made a few mistakes during my tournament play, but I have taken a lot more bad beats from players who I really suspect would not have made the same decisions to call my raises or stay in hands against me had they been facing a male player. The notion that female players are either stupid or can be easily pushed around is pervasive amongst male players, and the lack of strong female players at these events does little to prove them wrong.

While I think an influx of female players into the world of poker would be a positive development and would hopefully lessen the extent to which we feel like novelties that are never taken seriously, I don't know that an influx of the "hot chick poker player" types will be a positive development overall. For better or worse, it is easier for a man to assume an attractive woman is dumb, particularly if she is young and dressed to maximize her assets. Most likely, newcomers in the mold of Tiffany Michelle will only continue to be treated like pieces of meat who are ogled and harassed and not taken seriously. Many such women will quickly lose interest in the game after a few instances of experiencing that behavior. And the more that the new women players can be written off as "getting lucky" or only doing well because all the men want to sleep with them, the less it will help our overall image problem within the sport. Basically, we need some old, ugly women to start winning some tournaments!

Tiffany Michelle's buy-in for the main event was paid by two other individuals, and she now will only take home 1/3 of her actual winnings. She has already taken heat for her decision of which poker website to allow to sponsor her, and all it takes is reading this post about sponsorship rights over Tiffany's breasts to see that her success is not being taken as seriously as it would be were she a male player. She is a novelty, and will continue to be treated as one unless and until she either wins the main event or makes the final table AND makes it far in a few other events to prove she's not a flash in the pan. Even then, some will discount her poker skills simply because she's 24, female, and hot. The double standards are still there, and if she makes the final table I fear it may get worse for the lady poker players before it gets better. I might see a lot more women the next time I go play a WSOP circuit event, but that doesn't mean we will have earned overnight the respect that has been withheld so far, and there may be a backlash to the arrival of a wave of poker chicks.

I have played poker with some excellent female players during my three tournament experiences. I have not seen bad play out of any of them. I have seen them mistreated, disrespected, and underestimated. I know very few men who are able to overcome their natural biases and treat women as formidable foes on equal footing with their male counterparts. I would love to see a woman win the main event, and I hope Tiffany Michelle is the first to accomplish that feat. This is a year of firsts, so it seems only fitting.

Sex and the City review

Today, our female attorneys on my team (and, not so surprisingly, our one gay male associate) went to the 4pm screening of Sex and the City. Earlier today there was some Twitter traffic about whether SATC has lost its charm or its social relevance in the four years since the show went off the air. To those sorts of critiques, I quote you this:

Much has been made, and said, in recent weeks about the appeal of "Sex and the City." Social critics are wringing their hands on the sidelines, fretting. They can't understand why so many women are so captivated by the SATC world, which is, after all, a totally fantastical place in which women have financial autonomy and healthy sex drives. It's a materialistic, completely unrealistic world, the scolds tell us. Yes, of course it is. That's kind of the point. It's escapist fun.

I don't wear $600 pairs of shoes or carry $10,000 handbags. I wouldn't even if I could safely afford to do so, honestly. Nor do I give blowjobs to the UPS guy on a whim when he delivers me a package. (Though sometimes I wish I could!) But, when you strip away the obvious hyperbole of it all, there is something empowering and wonderful to be taken away from Sex and the City. If you don't get it, I can't help you figure it out. But I, and many other women, we get it. And we need, after four years, to go watch this movie with our friends and remember it.

So, the short version of the review is this: I loved this movie so much that I don't think I can adequately convey my joy. The longer version: I am blown away by Michael Patrick King's truly heartfelt, funny, and meaningful script. Each of the 4 main characters experiences her own difficult and powerful journey, but none more profound than Carrie's dealing with the ultimate nightmare scenario of her life. Sarah Jessica Parker was a revelation not only during the good times, but also in her portrayal of complete and total heartbreak. In a way, this was the story that had to be told about her and Big, with whom nothing has ever worked out as planned.

The clothes are spectacular, the jokes are hilarious, and Jennifer Hudson does a very good job playing Carrie's assistant. Some of the dialogue is a little trite, some of the plot turns are predictable, but in the end the movie is like a fantastic orgasm: it leaves you not only spent, but satisfied. It is exactly what you didn't even know ahead of time that you wanted. And you can't wait to do it again. That may be the hardest part of this movie...the knowledge that at some point, it's just over. No room was left for a second movie, no loose plot points that need to be tied up in a sequel. This is it. But I could not imagine it ending any other way.

We drank margaritas during the movie and I cried so hard I had to work not to sob. When I walked out of the theater, the first thing I wanted to do was call my friend Samantha, who I have known for going on 17 years now. In the end, it is a celebration of the wonder of lifelong best girlfriends, the people who will take a bullet for you and do whatever it takes to see you happy.

If you were ever a fan of the series, go see the movie. You will not be disappointed. This movie is going to do HUGE business.

Did she help or hurt?

In 1988, Congresswoman Pat Schroeder ran for President. When she withdrew from the contest, she was criticized for crying during her withdrawal speech because it was felt that her tears reinforced the sexist notion that women are too emotional and weak to hold positions of high political power.

Oh, what a difference twenty years makes. Hillary Clinton cried in 2008 on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, and many credit that moment with "humanizing" her and establishing an authenticity that propelled her to victory. If she had not won New Hampshire, this nomination battle in all likelihood would have been over months ago.

As she struggles to stay in the race, to explain why she should still be around, and to gin up her supporters to fight for her candidacy, Clinton and her surrogates have often played the "sexism is afoot" card to explain why she has not won this race already. I have problems with this argument, because I think Hillary Clinton's candidacy if nothing else has shown that a woman candidate CAN be taken just as seriously as a man. I say this even though I was bothered by the idea that our first major party nominee for President might be propelled into that role not on the strength of her own merit, but because her husband happened to recently be President as well. I wanted the first woman president to succeed because of who she is and what she did, just like a man would be treated.

In the end, while I still believe that Clinton started this election process as the frontrunner because of her husband's political apparatus and connections, she stayed in the race and performed as well as she did largely because of her own strong performance in debates, her political team's skill, and by casting herself as the toughest person in the race. I don't doubt that sexism still exists or that some voters never gave her fair credit or consideration because she is a woman. I don't deny that the media has engaged in sexism in some of their treatment of Senator Clinton. But the media always screws over the candidates to some extent, and the public is always biased and prone to silly decisions on traits that should be irrelevant. The fact is, from a pure standpoint of whether Hilary Clinton was treated to the same unfair process and treatment that male candidates are subjected to every year, I think the answer has to be yes.

But Johnathan Chait argues that in earning her right to be in the race, and her right to be taken seriously just like the men, Hillary Clinton may have had to pay a price that will hurt the women who come after her. It was important that she establish a hawkish, tough position on all things military and national security to combat the perception that women can't make tough choices about things like going to war. But in puffing her chest and showing her cojones, did she go too far? By rushing to establish her manly cred as evidence of her fitness for the office of president, did she inadvertently solidify the notion that presidents SHOULD be manly, and thus by definition not womanly? Did she reinforce the notion that being female is inherently a lesser, bad, unfortunate thing if you want to be a world leader too?

It's a complicated question, but one that troubles me.

No monopoly on pro-choice

NARAL Pro-Choice America endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, but you'd think they'd declared him lord and master over all women for all time the way female elected officials and feminists are freaking out. Rep. Jane Harmon called it a "betrayal." Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says she feels "abandoned" by NARAL. Emily's List head Ellen Malcolm called the endorsement "disrespectful" and complained that "[i]t certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them."

Maybe I'm missing something here, but since when is it wrong for a pro-choice organization to endorse the candidate they feel will be the best candidate on choice issues in the general election, even if he happens to be a he? Obama and Clinton are both strong defenders of the right to abortion, and the only tipping point for Clinton appears to be that she is physically capable of having one. I don't see how an endorsement of Obama by a pro-choice group constitutes any sort of abandonment, betrayal or disrespect. Of course, that may be because I have never understood the sense of entitlement that Clinton and her backers have always felt for the support of every female voter, every female-oriented organization, and frankly just about everyone who's not in Barack Obama's immediate family.

Nobody doubts that Clinton has been a strong defender of reproductive freedom. She has a 100% voting record for every year she's been in the Senate. (So, by the way, does Obama.) But NARAL is entitled to decide who they want to endorse without taking the sex of the candidate into account, and I commend them for doing so. It would be a mistake to allow reproductive rights to be treated as solely a women's issue or an issue that only women really care about. Getting male candidates like Obama to stand with NARAL just as strongly on these issues is exactly how NARAL achieves its goals of making pro-choice positions the political mainstream. What good would endorsing a sinking ship simply because she is female do to NARAL's political objectives?

I know that what these people who are complaining really wanted NARAL to do was to wait for Clinton to bow out gracefully. The problem, unfortunately, is that she is showing absolutely zero interest in doing so. Even today her campaign is touting their fundraising, claiming that West Virginia shows she could still win, and doing everything in their power to act like they still have a shot. The downside of this strategy is that organizations like NARAL and big names like Edwards will deliver the message to the voters that Obama is the nominee and that it's time to support him, even if Clinton doesn't want to hear it. I expect that the big names will only continue to fall into line, not slow. And it will be no sign of disrespect, no betrayal. Simply the way things are going to be. Those who whine about it will only continue to look foolish and wounded, and as someone who has been known on occasion to whine until I look foolish and wounded, I know what a weak place you have to be coming from in order to sink that low. It might hurt, but it's time for these women to admit the truth and get started on moving on.

I'm the best! And I have no life!

A survey of attorney productivity with a breakdown of male vs. female and parents vs. childless found that childless women attorneys are the most productive of all 4 categories. (Women with children being least productive.) Surprisingly, unlike with women it appears that men with children are more productive than their childless counterparts. I have a couple of theories of why that might be, such as perhaps the childless men are still looking for mates, or maybe the men with children would rather work late than go home to screaming babies. I don't know.

The important thing is this: I am the only single woman in my practice group. This means, apparently, that I should be billing circles around my coworkers! But alas, I am not, because I am lazy and easily distracted and would rather go drink beer with friends or sleep occasionally than slave over a hot computer all day.

This sort of survey just reinforces what many of us already know: Ladies, you apparently can be a high-powered lawyer or you can be a mother, but you can't really be both. Most of the high-ranking and high-earning female attorneys I've known and known of over the years have been childless. Given that male attorneys can apparently find time to breed, it's quite sad that the profession won't find a way to accomodate women's desire to do the same and also make partner.

I don't know if I ever want to have children. But I don't want my ability to do that to be foreclosed by my chosen profession or my desire to have a full time job at a top law firm where I get meaningful and interesting work. Why can't I have both?

Then again, right now I'd settle for time to find me a babymaker.

What's wrong with this picture?

Matthew Yglesias has a post up about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a congresswoman from south Florida who is supposed to be working to turn Republican seats Democratic, but refuses to participate in targeting of three vulnerable Cuban-American members of Congress also from South Florida because they are buddies. Despite the meat of that post, I can only focus on the picture Yglesias chose to accompany it.

Now, in full disclosure, I knew Debbie Wasserman-Schultz when I worked for a lobbyist in the Fla. legislature back in 1996 when she was a lowly state Representative. She was somewhat of a caricature even then, with let's just say a unique personal style and a tendency towards behavior that got her noticed for perhaps the wrong reasons. But in the last 12 years she got herself elected to Congress and has been an effective representative for her district. And while it is certainly fair game to question the political judgment behind refusing to help take vulnerable seats because you like the Republicans who hold them (and maybe because you don't want to piss off the Cuban vote in FL in the event you ever intend to seek statewide office there), I still have a weird feeling about this picture.

Maybe it's just that I personally reacted reflexively and negatively to the awful blue eyeliner. I am a girl who knows her makeup, and who has strong opinions about the times when brightly colored eyeliner is appropriate. (Answer: pretty much never.) Maybe it's that I remember the Katherine Harris/Cruella DeVille comparisons and feel a little guilty for participating in them. Or maybe it's that we've finally seen a national campaign with a female candidate in which her appearance has been inordinately focused on as compared to her male rivals. But something about that photo rubs me the wrong way. I can't decide if I'm bothered at my own reaction, that Yglesias used that photo when Wasserman-Schultz has a more recent official photo, or perhaps I'm bothered that a Congresswoman would ever choose to wear bright blue eyeliner in her official photo (which that was, according to Wikipedia.) I honestly don't know.

Wasserman-Schultz's current official photo is this must more tasteful and reasonably-made up one:



Why didn't Yglesias use that one? Sure, the one he used came up first on Google image search and was on her wikipedia page. But her official photo came up second, and would be on her house page. It was an editorial decision, and maybe it was just to make Debbie look a little kooky. But maybe there was a subtle intention there to cause readers not to take her as seriously. Even if she did have bad choice in eyeliner, that's not enough of a reason to write off someone's judgment entirely without giving them the benefit of the doubt or the respect a Congresswoman should be afforded.

My thoughts on this topic are ever-evolving, so I may edit. I may decide I don't care. I may decide it's my personal quirk. I dunno. But let me know if you think I'm off base.

What's sexism got to do with it

Lately it's been very en vogue to see Hillary Clinton's failings as a sign that sexism is dooming her candidacy. Certain local bloggers have in fact asserted that it is proof positive that racism is less powerful in our culture than sexism. But I found it terribly sexist when the Clinton campaign was assuming that she would win in large part because female voters would be unable to overcome their estrogen and would reflexively vote for Clinton--even if they're Republicans, Mark Penn said! As though we don't vote on issues, don't make decisions carefully and independently, and would immediately fall in line like the homogenous Chick Borg everyone presumes us to be. But a funny thing happened on the way to the female-fueled nomination...

This article from today's Boston Globe sums it up perfectly: many of us women voters just don't like Hillary Clinton. It's not sexism, it's not a weakness of female voters, it's human nature. We want to like our president, even if likeability is not the best measure of whether someone will be able to lead effectively. I know, I know, people liked George W. Bush too and look where that got us. I know. But as someone who has spent the last 7 years wanting to punch our president in the face every time I see him on television, I cannot overestimate the importance of having our next one be someone who I can actually stand to listen to for an hour at a time if something important is happening. When I see Hillary Clinton during the debates and she says something ugly or does her strange fake cackle, I see red. I want to turn off the television lest I commit violence. I do not like her, and no amount of softening or crying or appearances on Saturday Night Live are going to change that.

As the author notes, having a problem with someone's likeability is not an inherently sexist proposition:

Questioning a woman's tone and delivery evokes charges of sexism, of biased preoccupations with niceness - as if no one ever complained about the Bob Dole snarl or the Dick Cheney sneer. How many times do we have to hear that when women get forceful, they are called shrill and angry, while bellicose males are lauded as strong and presidential? We get it. No one has questioned Senator Clinton's toughness, or her readiness to be commander in chief.

Many male candidates have been rejected because they were not likeable. Richard Nixon lost once because he was perceived as less likeable, then won in his second attempt...and turned out to be a collossal asshole. Al Gore's loss in 2000 could be blamed almost entirely on the public's negative reaction to him during the debates and the public perception that he was self-aggrandizing. Mitt Romeny's loss this year was probably in large part because people found him unauthentic and snide. Pointing out the likeability deficit as a problem for a candidate is not sexist. Disliking a particular candidate because of their personal tone and style is a natural human reaction and has nothing to do with sexism.

Frankly, asserting that every rejection of her as a candidate has sexist undertones is further exacerbating the problem. It reinforces the old canard used by throwback opponents of feminism that women are always embracing victimhood for personal gain. If you cry wolf by finding sexism in every defeat, without showing that it's actually at work, you weaken the cause of those who have to fight real sexism every day. Hillary Clinton is losing because she is running a bad campaign and because she is a candidate with an unfortunately tumultuous past relationship with the American public. It's not because anyone has questioned whether she could run an army or manage a national crisis because she's a girl. But if she doesn't stop asserting that every disadvantage she finds herself in during this campaign is rooted in sexism, she's going to continue to lose women voters at a fast clip. We don't, in my experience anyway, tend to react well to whiners.

In which I make another abrupt about-face

Given my previously expressed viewpoints on this here blog, I'm sure most would expect me to have nothing but derision for Hillary Clinton's show of emotion yesterday. Yes, she almost cried, got a little choked up and had to fight back tears while responding to a question about who does her hair and makeup every day. And my initial reaction was to distrust it, to think that this was just another ploy to make her seem human and caring and REAL in a way that would hopefully help with her little likability problem.

But the more people talk about the tears heard round the world, the more annoyed I get. As I said last month, I don't think any candidate for president should cry under pressure. I said that when Mitt Romney cried twice in three days, and I mockingly presumed they had focus grouped whether crying would make people vote for him and had gotten a resounding yes. But Mitt's crying got almost no attention from the press or public--so why should Hillary's be treated any differently? Why is it a greater offense, something more open to public questioning of her emotional temperament and ability to deal with difficult situations, than it was clearly NOT for Romney?

This double standard is not new. Pat Schroeder ran for president in the 80s and was criticized all around for crying during the speech in which she bowed out of the race. We should not see a woman cry if she wants to be taken seriously as a candidate for leader of the free world, they said. Edmund Muskie told us that in the 70s when he cried in New Hampshire after the press was mean to his wife, and then suddenly went from front-runner to has-been. But the times have changed, and with them we have seen nearly every politician of the last 10 years feel the need to show their emotions when they think it politically expedient. Every politician, that is, except the women.

You can't have it both ways--she can't be the Hillbot when she's emotionless, droning and competent, and just another weak girl when she becomes so exhausted and frustrated that she nearly bursts into tears (but manages to regain her composure before a full on outpouring).

In the grand scheme of things, a brief flash of emotion shouldn't mean much. In particular, it shouldn't mean much here because I still suspect it was a planned tactic. But if it does matter, it should not be held against Hillary Clinton but not held against the male candidates in the race. While I agree there is no crying in politics, we all like to pretend there's no sexist double standards either. If so, this story should be just as much a non-event as Romney's was.

Secret weapon

I watched every second of this speech by Michelle Obama in South Carolina. And I actually cried. What an amazing, inspirational and brilliant woman.

Nobody else out there has someone this charismatic and authentic in their corner. No, not even Bill Clinton hits these heights at his best, and I am a huge admirer of his. Unfortunately Bill has been tainted by a life in politics. Michelle Obama is still a real, true, genuine person and it comes through.

I know it's half an hour long, but watch the whole thing. And try not to cry.