My wife has been on a “what does it mean to be feminist” kick lately, and so I would like to dedicate this post to her.
The New York Times website has been running a series of “conversations” about current news topics, usually between columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks. This week Stacy Schiff, author of a recently released book on Cleopatra, is filling in for Brooks, and the topic of conversation is feminism and Sarah Palin.
Continue reading »
Eight years ago, Barack Obama was an Illinois state legislator. Eight years before he became president, George W. Bush was considered a spoiled, unlucky businessman trying to unseat a well-entrenched governor. Eight years before he became president, Bill Clinton was trying to regain the job of Arkansas governor that he had lost two years earlier. Eight years before Ronald Reagan became president he was finishing up his second, and final term as governor of California and getting ready to retire from politics, at least for the time. And eight years before he became president, Jimmy Carter was a state senator trying to cobble together support for the upcoming governor’s election.
The lesson? Except for those who manage to succeed in moving from Vice President to President (George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, LBJ, Harry Truman, etc.) US presidents tend to come out of relative obscurity.
I couldn’t help but think of this as I read a Washington Post op-ed complaining that “Despite our assumption that a female president is inevitable, and likely soonish, it’s surprisingly difficult to come up with a name.” Continue reading »
I personally believe that there are far too many Americans that are obsessed with their jobs and careers to the detriment of their relationships with friends and family and to the detriment of their own spirituality and enjoyment of life. I also believe that words and definitions have profound power over our thoughts and actions. So I put those two concepts together and have decided that it is past time for people to stop defining themselves in terms of their careers. Let me explain.
When you introduce yourself to a stranger, there are two questions that are almost always asked within the first five minutes of conversation–and usually within the first thirty seconds: what is your name, and what is your job. Pick up a newspaper and read a story where the reporter interviews random people about some important political topic and you will see people described as “Bob, a lawyer from Plano, TX”, “Jim, a doctor from San Diego”, “Tom, a New York Firefighter”.
Continue reading »
Life is about to get really interesting in the Senate. Right now, the chairs of three of the most powerful committees in the Senate are either stepping down, or about to. Joe Biden (Foreign Relations) is becoming Vice President, Robert Byrd (Appropriations) is stepping down from his committee chair for health reasons, and Ted Kennedy (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) will likely be gone within the next two years due to a malignant brain tumor. Other senior members of the Democratic caucus include Lieberman (who will likely lose his committee chairmanship soon for supporting McCain) and Kerry (who is supposedly on Obama’s short list for Secretary of State). We could see a change to the chairmanships of half of the Senate committees (not including Select, Joint, and Special Committees). So where will things stand, when all is said and done?
Continue reading »
One of the problems with overcoming bias is the problem of changing common knowledge. The best example I’ve seen is a classic Family Ties episode, in which the neighbors panic because a black family moves onto the block. As soon as the black family moves in, several families leave the neighborhood because of a fear that property values will start to decline. As a result, the rest of the families on the block become nervous about the “changing face of the neighborhood”, and their own property values, and several more for-sale signs come up. The Keatons challenge their neighbors about this, and every time are met with the same response: hey, I’m not racist, but there are a lot of racists out there who buy houses, and I can’t afford for my house to lose too much of its value. In other words, because it was common knowledge that there were an awful lot of racists out there, non-racist people were acting in racist ways. In order for society to reform, not only must individuals choose to not be racist, but they also have to communally come to believe that society is not racist. Otherwise the believe that society is racist becomes a self-fulling prophecy.
Continue reading »
Recent Comments