Mary Ann Glendon shivs the President

If you haven't heard yet, you probably will: this year's Laetare Medal recipient, Mary Ann Glendon, is boycotting Notre Dame's commencement because the Dark Lord, Barack Obama, will be there. Glendon served as Ambassador to the Vatican from '07 to '09, and it's not like this is the first time we've seen Bush Administration officials turn around and attack the new president after serving in that trainwreck. Nevertheless, it's particularly rich coming from this Great Moral Arbiter who, so far as I can tell, was hunky dory with her old boss' frequent, gleeful, and unrepentant use of the death penalty, not to mention sanctioning of torture, mendacity, and killing of hundreds of thousands of people in an unjust war. Barack Obama being pro-Roe, however, totally crosses the line.

I know it may seem like I'm spending a lot of time on this subject, but what can I say? This really sticks in my craw. Ths kind of double-standard makes practicing Catholics (and Christians generally) look a little, well, "weird" to everyone else, especially the inflation of gay marriage and birth control and stem cells and, yes, abortion to the status of absolute moral sine qua nons, when these same people have no comment or waffle or find some sort of "nuance" on torture, preemptive war, child molestation, worldwide poverty, etc. Where was Glendon when George W. Bush was accepting the very same degree from Notre Dame in 2001, with the blood of dozens of prisoners fresh on his hands? Where was Bishop D'Arcy when Catholics were clamoring for someone in the clergy, anyone at all, willing to say that any priest caught molesting children should be cast from the Church and left to the mercy of the American legal system?

From what I can tell, she's also very fond of calling herself a feminist while lecturing other women on what they should be doing with their bodies, so I'm not exactly crushed that she won't be gracing the stage this year.

why blogs are fun

In the midst of an otherwise truly painful blog comments section:

In my experience, the shamers of sexually active young women, are women of any age who think that sex is a bargaining tool and free sex is driving down the market value. Whether they be holy-rollers or whores, they think men ought to pay for sex one way or another.

This is the most thought-provoking point I've read in months. Not that it fully explains what's going on, or even is necessarily right (for instance, I think they've failed to note men among the "shamers", especially considering this thread is dominated by prudish lecturing men), but I'm fascinated by this thesis about not just the commodification of sex, but the economy of sex, especially if you add into it that both men and women of certain groups "think men ought to pay for sex one way or another," though perhaps for different reasons.

a story in pictures

Pretty stark.

President Obama signs his first bill-- and it's a big one

The Lily Ledbetter Act is now law. I would like to point out exactly what the law does. From the text:

To amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and to modify the operation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, to clarify that a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice that is unlawful under such Acts occurs each time compensation is paid pursuant to the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, and for other purposes.

The point of this change is to get around the bizarre reinterpretation of existing congressional law from the Supreme Court, in which the act of breaking of law via paying unequal wages only occurs the first time the pay is made unequal and that the statute of limitations for pressing charges is 180 days after that. Now the statute of limitations is effectively 180 days after the last time pay is meted out unequally.

There's also the change in how the violations accumulate as well, though. Now each occurrence of paying unequally is a separate violation of the law, implying that beforehand any continuous period of unequal was only one violation. Theoretically, then, does this mean that a company who pays its workers on a biweekly basis could now be guilty of as many as 12 violations of the law for paying a woman less for 6 months (one count for every paycheck)? If so, awesome.

Women for John McCain

Nice.

Fox and Friends: "soldier is hard to spell, because there's no D in it"

Where do they find these people? There's video on Crooks and Liars of a clip of Fox and Friends discussing a teacher who argues that English spelling is too hard for many students. FOX, which has never found an anti-feminist stereotype it didn't love, has found a blonde woman to anchor the show so horrifically stupid that, within the same segment, she says:

It [spelling "soldier"] is too hard because of the "d." There's no "d" in it."

and...

Yeah, you could use a dictionary, but here's the thing: do they even sell hardcore dictionaries anymore?

In case you were wondering, a "hardcore" dictionary is a bound paper one, as opposed to an online dictionary which, apparently, is utterly useless for checking spelling.

But don't worry, people, one of the dudes tries to out-ditz the blonde:

People have been speaking English for thousands of years!

Mr. Stewart... Mr. Stewart, you are being paged...

John McCain to his wife: "you c*nt!"

Wow. From jwilkes:

In his new book, The Real McCain, Cliff Schecter, a journalist and frequent contributor at the Huffington Post related perhaps the most disturbing of McCain's tirades. During his 2000 White House bid, the Senator was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, his aides, and three journalists who spoke to Schecter on condition of anonymity, but independently confirmed each other's accounts of the incident. Cindy McCain playfully ran her fingers through the Senator's hair and teased, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain reddened and fired back, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollup, you cunt." After he'd cooled down, McCain apologized, saying he'd had a long day.

Umm, wow.



Wow.

John McCain opposes equal pay law

The title, borrowed from the Washington Post, pretty much says it all:

NEW ORLEANS -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who skipped a Senate vote seeking equal pay for women last night in order to campaign for president, said he opposed the measure because it would prompt a flood of lawsuits.

Senate Republicans defeated the bill yesterday on a vote of 56 to 42, by blocking a full debate and vote on the bill. Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) both returned to Washington in order to support the measure, which is aimed at responding to a recent Supreme Court decision that sets a deadline on how quickly workers must sue over pay discrimination. The presumptive GOP nominee is visiting poor communities throughout the nation, including towns in Alabama and Appalachia; today he toured New Orleans' Ninth Ward.

"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," McCain told reporters yesterday. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

As Echidne asks, how exactly would McCain equalize pay in this country without lawsuits? For Crazy Train, equal pay for equal work isn't worth it if it means the government having to regulate or enforce anything. Some principles.

Women. Always bitching about equal pay. If they want money so badly, why don't they just marry into a wealthy family? Ya know, like John McCain did!

Spitzocrisy

Seeing as how he was such a zealot, we probably should have guessed he had some skeletons, but nevertheless I don't think anyone saw this coming.

I think the egregiousness of Spitzer's crime lies mainly in expectations. No one had any idea that Spitzer was doing this stuff. There weren't any rumors or stories that I know of about him having any proclivity for prostitutes, whereas there had been rumors about Larry Craig and David Vitter and Mark Foley (and, interestingly, Mitch McConnell; I see another bombshell somewhere in our future!). He doesn't fit the stereotype of the crooked politician. He's not an unctuous, smooth talking, cigar smoking senator or a fiery Republican morality policeman. In fact, it seems so unlike him because he's exactly the opposite, a liberal reformist hard-nosed prosecutor and a "cold fish."

And for the love of Pete, can we stop calling it a "prostitution ring?" He called an escort service. Can I order my journalism a little less sensationalist, please?

The whole affair has also sparked some arguments about whether prostitution should be decriminalized/legalized, which involves discussions of whether it is "victimless" and whether it is qualitatively different from legal things like pornography. Civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald and feminist Amanda Marcotte are making the most cogent arguments for and against. Marcotte's insight on the myth of the "Sad, Unfuckable John" and the power dynamic between prostitute and john is particularly strong.

"a slow whorification of ladyhood"

A litle something for my feminist readers. Glad to hear UT's molding some of the greatest minds of the 19th century.

Seriously though, it's hard to believe an undergraduate in 2007 would "pen" something so egregiously Victorian.