Thursday, September 12, 2013

Women Wanted

Yesterday's snapshot noted Barack's speech on Syria and resulted in a problem that's more and more common today.  A point was made to include opinions.

And apparently women have none.

None that magazine or newspaper websites are interested in.

The Los Angeles Times did a piece with six voices.  A friend at the paper passed that on thinking Tom Hayden's remarks would be worth linking to and that was correct.  His take was worth noting.  But he was one of six voices and did no one notice that five were men?  Robin Wright was the only woman.

As one of the few women weighing in (or allowed to), Wright's remarks were considered.  But she had fear, fear to preach and we don't need it in the snapshot.  But so rare were the female voices that I spent approximately ten minutes thinking there had to be at least a single sentence in there that we could utilize.  There wasn't.  (Wright's a strong reporter.  That was a lousy reasoned opinion that she chose to share.)

Yesterday being Wednesday, we had Margaret Kimberley.  (Black Agenda Report publishes its weekly edition on Wednesday -- it also publishes throughout the week but Kimberley's column runs in the weekly edition.)  On Wednesdays, you can count on one strong female voice who's interested in something that wasn't covered on TMZ.


We brought back in (again) Phyllis Bennis' analysis.  She's provided the strongest legal analysis of anyone on this topic (an attack on Syria).   I cheated by including a piece published before the speech.


At one point, I stopped dictating the snapshot to grab a tablet and stream All In because an NBC friend I was griping too insisted Chris Hayes' special broadcast after the speech was worth catching.  I was doubtful but I checked.

Joy-Ann Reid may have something to say some day.  She doesn't currently.  If a Republican were in the White House, she might be a strong voice.  Instead, she chooses to parrot the administration.  Well, we already has Jen Psaki (State Dept spokesperson) in the snapshot so we really didn't need Reid also speaking for the administration.

That was guest one.  And, again, when a Republican gets in the White House, Reid will hopefully be worth listening to.  I doubt that's true of the other guest.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is a funny sort of opinion sharer.  Nothing will ever shake what she thinks.  Not events, not reality.

And worse than her rigidity, even worse than her whoring for the administration, is her desire to be the left's Peggy Noonan.  Take your 'inspirational' to a sales convention.

She's so disconnected from reality and the world at this point, she exists only as an astral projection.

[At some point, MSNBC is going to have to create a real ethics policy.  When they do, first among the guidelines should be: You do not book your boss for a guest.  Chris Hayes disclosing -- as he did -- that Katrina is his boss does nothing to address the appearance of a conflict of interest.  Do most people feel an employee will have a free flowing conversation in front of their boss?  No.  Booking your boss creates the appearance of a conflict of interest.]

Like Joy-Ann Reid, Michael Cohen (Guardian) has been pimping war on Syria but, unlike Reid, he can offer an honest assessment of Barack's speech.


He didn't get a link.  Even though his column was worthy of it.  He didn't get it because there were already too many men in the snapshot.

This was in the same news cycle as Andrea Peterson's Washington Post piece on what's missed when women are shut out of the debate?

Which is good because the problem isn't just the outlets.  Peterson's column might lead you to believe it's just the outlets.

I like Sunsara Taylor.  But the following, included in the snapshot yesterday, left a bad taste in my mouth:

 Revolution and Stop Patriarchy's Sunsara Taylor re-Tweeted Larry Everest on the speech:


  2. 17h
    Shocked Obama didn't promo this video!: (Albright defending US mass murder of Iraqi children)
    Retweeted by
    View media
  3. 17h
    Obama forgot to cover this chapter of US "concern" for Iraqi children:
    Retweeted by
    View media

You are a feminist.  You are part of Stop Patriarchy.  And your response to the war speech is . . . to repost Tweets from a man?

I'm sorry, Sunsara, that doesn't cut it.  In the time it took you to re-Tweet, I'm sure you could have composed a 140-character Tweet.

No newspaper or TV network controls Sunsara's Twitter feed.  She is a woman.  She has her own voice.  And so the only one silencing Sunsara on her Twitter feed yesterday was Sunsara.

Who's silencing women when they're in charge of their own feeds and sites?

With Sunsara, it's Sunsara.  She's a highly aware person.  Other women are less so and can buy into cultural think and norms without grasping it.

So maybe they don't think -- due to the message preached by society (including who the media includes in the discussions) -- their opinions on real issues -- yeah, I mean real issues -- don't matter.

Also true, as with many men, some women shouldn't be expressing opinions.  

How stupid are you?

For a few women blogging today, the answer is, "Very stupid."

At a popular 'young' feminist site, Syria was handled in a blog post and we are probably supposed to applaud the garbage that went up.  In a landfill of pop culture sewage, the Syria post appears.  But the other posts include thought and research.

I'm sorry to break it to the lousy and ignorant woman, but you're not writing about Syria by reading 'headlines.'  Even worse for the stupid woman, she doesn't grasp the internet.


What the ignorant fool wanted to do was piss on Fox News.  It's an easy win.  No one will rush to defend it.  Few will question you on it.  And best of all, snark can replace any time you might be required to put in on a real post.

As I said 'headlines.'  Let's all grasp that Google News is not outlet headlines.  Meaning?  A long headline will be reduced by Google News' listings the same way that it will be reduced in an RSS feed.

If you look up at the Fox News story the woman's trashing (she provided no link, it's here), you'll see it's reporting on poll results.  There's nothing wrong with Fox News' headline.  The Google headline was the same but missing the words "Fox News Poll."

The stupid blogger thought she could snark and make fun of Fox.  The headline reflects the results of a poll so actually the stupid blogger is making fun of Americans.

Of the sites I quickly checked in an effort to find women to include, this was the only one writing 'about' Syria.  And that's what they were offering

I have held MSM accountable.  We also need to hold each other accountable.  And we need to hold 'our' outlets accountable.  The site with the bad snark basically mirrors Ms. magazine's blog.  The blog is often embarrassing.  People who know nothing about a topic decide to blog on it.  With hideous results.

Think back to Trina's "Ms. magazine praises known homophobe and pro-lifer," Betty's "Ms. magazine embraces anti-choice women," and Ann's "Syria and other things" (and include Kat's "Can Ms. magazine please stop attacking women?" for another reason).  Ms.'s blog was praising a known homophobe and an anti-choice woman.  How the hell did that happen?

Because a highly ignorant woman chose to go 'topical.' A woman (White) apparently belatedly discovered the 50th anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream Speech" and rushed to do a post -- rushed so quickly that she didn't bother to get even basic facts. She may have had tremendous guilt over being Anglo-White.  If so she fits in with a new theme at Ms.  Feminism is about women working together for women.  Trina's "Ms. magazine's bad blog post" noted a Ms. problem this summer.  You can actually see that problem throughout a number of Ms. posts in the last month.

So do we call out Ms. the loudest?  I don't think so.  For all it's problems, it is trying.

It may encourage shallow thought and sloppy research but it also argues that women can weigh in on any topic.  And I prefer that to Women's Media Center which constantly whines (yes, it is whining when you complain about others doing something you do yourself) that women are left out of the media on this topic or that topic.  But look at the crap WMC covers.

Why aren't women brought on, for example, to discuss the economy?  Well maybe because lousy outlets like WMC can't put women into that discussion.  Worse, when they do have a piece, it is a niche piece.  As though, for example, women can't discuss economic theory but if you bring them on your ABC's This Week roundtable, they'll be able to address some women's economic issues.  While everyone else is debating theory, this expert will pipe in with a few stats about women.

Women's Media Center needs to get its act together.

With Ms., the problem is they have interns doing the blog.  They used to have Christine Cupaiuolo doing their blogging.  Christine made as many mistakes as any of us do.  She was also a talented writer who did the work.  Again, her blogging was not flawless.  She's a person, not a machine.  But she would never have been caught ending a post with praise for a woman who was anti-choice and homophobic.  Christine was (still is) aware of the world around her.  By refusing to pay someone to do what Christine did, Ms.' blog is now a hit-or-miss affair.

There is a culture that works against women in this country.  There's no denying that.  The net starts and quickly a male circle jerk is in place.  Not by evil intent, but by like minded males helping one another out.  (And if they're 'progressive' males a woman gets helped out too -- a token because they don't want to get called on sexism and one woman allows them -- in their minds -- to deflect that charge.)
 

But it's equally true that some of the problem is our own problem.  It has nothing to do with men.  It has to do with us. 



If you're a woman who wrote at your own site or some group web site about Barack's speech and called out the march to war, I didn't see you and I looked for you.

Every day at least fifty male writers e-mail the public account (common_ills@yahoo.com) asking that their writing be noted.  Women (other than those who write for blog mills whose posts are really advertisements for products) never e-mail.  I understand that, I would never e-mail someone and ask them to highlight me.  It comes off pushy (and needy), I get that.  But if you're a woman against war writing about that, please consider yourself invited to e-mail this site and say, "Hey, about Syria/Iraq/etc., I wrote this [give link], just FYI."  I would love to be offline already.  But while I am online, I do try to make a gender difference.  I do my part to help create the 'baseball cards' of women.  (Male cultural figures are such because of what the men say about them, how often they reference them, etc.  We try to use women as references as often as possible here.)  I also want to be sure other women are included in the conversation.  So if you're a woman writing to call out war, you're not bothering me by asking that we note your writing.  You're helping me and helping others by letting us know you're out there.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.









 

















 

















 

















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