Sherry Chandler

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I found this Reuters video posted by egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Woman. I think Deborah Tannen makes some very valid points about what is going on in this Democratic primary, a problem that she calls “The Hillary Factor.”

You also need to know that there’s been an absolute media storm over the perception that Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous treated Senator Obama unfairly at Tuesday night’s debate, though few, few have protested the long history of such unfair treatment of Senator Clinton at previous debates:*

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electability. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?

Where indeed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.

That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans — some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places — who are doing the whining.

The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama.

It is, in fact, his status as media darling that makes Big Tent Democrat an Obama supporter. He thinks that will give Senator Obama the edge he needs to win the general election. But Tuesday’s affair may indicate that Obama’s media buddies are fair weather friends. And if, as is reported, Mr. Obama performed poorly under the barrage of character questions on Tuesday, he needs to get over it and learn how to deal. Hillary Clinton has done so.

“If as reported” I say because I don’t watch television debates and I agree that questions about flag pens are just possibly not as important as questions about torture policy. On the other hand, if you’re going to protest this treatment of one candidate, then you must protest this treatment of all candidates or your protest is just partisan whining.

Senator Obama gets pretty snarky about the debate, whether or not he deliberately flipped the bird at Senator Clinton. (Where have I seen this kind of behavior in a young male pol before? Oh yeah. Here.) Call me stodgy but I don’t find this behavior presidental, and I cannot imagine either Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton behaving in quite this way, no matter how avid the crowd.

He is also planning to pour $2 million into ads in Pennsylvania over these last four days of the campaign there. No wonder the media love him. And if Clinton ekes out even the squeakiest victory, she has done so against incredible odds. And it might say something about the real will of the people.

If I have learned anything in my 63 years, it is that you can’t often predict the consequences of events. Whatever the outcome of the presidential primary, I hope one consequence is that young American women wake up to the fact that the fight for women’s equality is not won, even here where women have gained a lot of ground. Around the world, the condition of women is pitiful.

Update: Let the powerful words of Robin Morgan speak for my hopes that women will become activists again. If you have not read her Goodbye To All That #2, I suggest you do so:

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they’re not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten the status quo), who can’t identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking “what if she’s not electable?” or “maybe it’s post-feminism and whoooosh we’re already free.” Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, “I could have saved thousands—if only I’d been able to convince them they were slaves.”

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*egalia also points out that some women’s organizations have begun a belated protest.

Strange dreams haunt this spring. One night my son woke me, a bit freaked because I was crying out in my sleep. I spent all last night writing code that, when posted, would reveal the Bush administration’s perfidy. That would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Historically, cats have featured in a lot of my troubled dreams. Once, when my twins were crawling age, I dreamed I was walking down a bank beside my grandfather’s barn, one child cradled on each arm, when they morphed into wildcats, leapt out of my grasp, and ran like lightning for the thicket.

Click to Play!

H/T Have Coffee, Will Write

A red state with bluegrass that, over the last week or so, has turned lush emerald green and grown ankle high. Such is Kentucky. Spring, at last, is putting on its party duds. Yesterday as I walked, woolgathering, across the campus of the medical compound where I work, a man in a maintenance worker’s uniform called out “Get a whiff of that tree. It smells wonderful!” An ornamental in full bloom beside the walk, the tree was glorious and sweet. But just as sweet that spring of a joy so bursting it had to be shared with any passing stranger.

Three women singing close harmony is one of life’s sweetest consolations. Like the Andrews Sisters, Patty, Maxine, and LaVerne. Somehow I always think of them in uniform, entertaining the troops. Maybe it’s because their very best known song is “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” but they were known as the “Sweethearts of the Armed Forces Radio Service.” However, their careers spanned from about 1925 (Patty was 7 when they started) to the 1970s. “Rum and Coca Cola” was at the top of the charts on the day I was born. I found this toy at Blue Girl in a Red State.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.
— Portia’s speech from Act IV, Scene I of The Merchant of Venice, text from Project Gutenberg.

It is Poem in your Pocket Day and I thank Margo Berdeshevsky for reminding me of this passage in her Poet’s Pick last week.

Garrison Keillor threw a sonnet contest. Results, winner and 32 finalists, here. Or you can listen to a streaming broadcast of the show Sonnet in your Bonnet? in which members of the cast read the poems.

And also, in my list of local events this week, I, rather stupidly, forgot to mention that Lynnell Edwards will be reading from her new book The Highwayman’s Wife tonight at 6:30 at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington. The reading is free. The workshop afterwards is $25. Tonight’s event is, I think, the last of the CCLL’s New Books by Great Writers Series for this season.

Which reminds me, in turn, of Alfred Noyes’s poem “The Highwayman”. I submit this link to you as your bonus poem.

A commenter at The Sideshow, who blogs at Pruning Shears, suggests that we are all being distracted from vital issues by the horse race of our Democratic primary. He (signs Dan so I assume he) had in mind focusing attention on the Bush administrations war crimes so that they will be brought to justice.

I would agree, to an extent, that media coverage of the primary and its every gaffe and cough is withdrawing attention from important matters. The problem is that there are so many crises that it fatigues the mind. And I have no real faith that Bush will ever be brought to justice. None of our three candidates is talking anything serious on that front.

Dan Froomkin summarizes exactly what Bush has admitted in the Washington Post. Via

Here is the ACLU action page. Sign their petition or use their language as an outline to write a letter to the editor.

A reminder of Washington Monthly’s No Torture, No Exceptions issue

I do think, however, that this election is one of our vital issues. The country is seriously wounded by 8 years of Bush and our choice of leader will determine whether we can heal ourselves. And you can count me as one of the old women who is seriously angry about the sexism manifest in so many aspects of this campaign. Some healing needed about that for sure.

Are working class voters really “bitter?”. Kevin Drum says it may be more complicated than we think.

Kevin also pointed the way to The Feminist Re-awakening.

And then there’s Salon’s Rebecca Traister: Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!

In other issues, Kevin Phillips says debt has become the U.S’s principle industry. I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with an old Nixon advisor but if I hear the man right he’s saying what I’ve been saying for years. The whole American economy is a bubble kept up by borrowed money.

By the way, NPR keeps trying to convince me that the Pope has a softer side at the same time that their newscasts tell me how close his moral stance is to that of GWB. I’m sorry. I remain unconvinced.

On the war front: Why the Surge Doesn’t Matter. From War and Piece

And in Kentucky, as you no doubt know, the Republicans threw a party — at which Geoff Davis lives up to his name and Mitch McConnell illustrates why he didn’t go into stand-up. Non-apology followed.

And the Supremes held up our lethal injection techniques.

Accept — well — consider: just as life has its twins, its symmetries, two eyes, two hands, day and night, hot and cold, life and death, so also it has its triplets, its asymmetries. The nose makes a triangle on the face, brow to chin makes a triangle, shoulders to pelvis. When we place our two feet wide on the ground, we make a triangle with the earth, a stable stance. The nature of God is triple: father, son, holy ghost (father, mother, child). The nature of the Goddess is triple: virgin, mother, crone. The Fibonacci sequence contains both two and three.

Calamity Jane, photo from Wikimedia Commons.

James Lee Burke writes mysteries about a Cajun named Robicheaux whose life is beset by calamity. Mary Jane Cannary-Burke is better known as Calamity Jane (1852-1903). Barack Obama may have been better served by comparing Hillary Clinton to Jane than to Annie Oakley (1860-1926). Jane, though involved in exploits enough for a woman of her time, was not averse to exaggeration. Annie not only made good on her brags but also became a considerable philanthropist for women’s issues. She offered to raise a company of “lady sharpshooters” to serve in the Spanish American War but William McKinley did not accept.

This video is widely available throughout the intertubes. I provided a link to one spot myself earlier. But iit’s important so I thought I would post it too:

I love the black shirt.

Thanks to Have Coffee, Will Write for help with the code. Jeff has a great new look, so if you haven’t been over there for a while you should give him a visit. He’s doing great work on Myanmar and Darfur and he’s fighting the good fight against Wal-Mart.

Green pathways out of poverty. Via

Cranky Environmentalists