yay Hillary, boo media, boo boo Edwards

For those of you didn't see Hillary's response to the question about "how she does it," watch here. It's a moving moment.

The media, unfortunately, is going ape-shit over this thing. Because it's yet another opportunity to take a swing at Hillary's femaleness. When she tears up, when she wears a low-cut shirt, when she's too hardcore, or "steely," when she "looks old"---it seems there's no okay way to exist if you're Hillary. No matter who you support, this is getting really old. Last night on NPR the reporter covering the story felt the need to qualify: "She didn't actually cry." So she teared up, and it's national news. But so is the blow-by-blow on Britney's mental breakdown, so maybe I'm holding us all at too high a standard. Take a look at the language, though. The New York Times reports, "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's eyes welled with tears, and her voice cracked dramatically . . ." And then, "At this point Mrs. Clinton's voice softened and lowered to a near-hush, and she spoke more haltingly."

Boo.

And then, Edwards's response to all this: "I think what we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business, but being president of the United States is also tough business." When Matt Lauer asked him about his comments on the Today Show this morning he essentially claimed that this response had nothing to do with Hillary's moist-eyed moment.

Boo boo.


---Brooke

a sorry bunch indeed

I know it's hard to see this cartoon so click here.

I got this just a few days after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's op-ed in The Nation, in which she laments how little girls are so obsessed with princesses:

"Disney likes to think of the Princesses as role models, but what a sorry bunch of wusses they are. Typically, they spend much of their time in captivity or a coma, waking up only when a Prince comes along and kisses them. . . . [T]he Princesses have no ambitions and no marketable skills, although both Snow White and Cinderella are good at housecleaning."

So right on. We published a book---Kill the Princess---that got mostly negative review attention for proposing these ideas among others. People want to believe that little girls' love of the Disney princesses is harmless. And I dunno, I'm not one for ruining little girls' playtime with long diatribes about things they're too young to understand. It would be good to kill off the princesses, though, to replace them with a group of women who are doing way cooler things---who aren't saddled with taking care of seven dwarfs or being punished for being too beautiful. But Disney's beaten us to the punch by making little girls love these silly princesses. It'd probably be too hard to kill them off now---and maybe hypocritical, like killing them off just because they're useless. And so these are lessons, I suppose, that are meant to be learned at a later age.

---Brooke

prez politics: on that crazy little thing called separation of church and state (part 2 in an ongoing series)

So I was wrong about Huckabee. Or I was right then, but he's a rising star, who's figured out that the way to win over the GOP is to appeal to voters' religious beliefs and values.

According to an entrance poll for The Associated Press, 8 in 10 Huckabee supporters said they are born again or evangelical Christians and 6 in 10 said it was very important to share their candidate's religious beliefs.

What's particularly disconcerting here, in the aftermath of two consecutive Bush terms, is that this little idea called Separation of Church and State---which actually comes from the Constitution and is an important part of our national identity---means nothing to the conservative Right. These very same people are more often than not Biblical literalists who believe in taking scripture at its word, and who claim to interpret the Constitution on the grounds of original intent, meaning what the Founders meant at the time. So what gives?

Given the current political climate, I think what gives is fear. It's hard not to look at Huckabee's win and think about all the voters who are grasping at straws, voting for the candidate who's most like them. Romney doesn't stand a chance. It really is all about religion. And no one plays to people's fears and sense of moral superiority like the religious right.

Last night John King was on CNN comparing Obama to Bobby Kennedy, saying that it's not very often that a candidate is able to rise above the fray, and that there's something in the momentum he's building that's going to transcend all of this bullshit (I'm paraphrasing, of course). And the poll numbers provide some support for that viewpoint. Republicans got 115,000 voters out as opposed to some 239,000 for Democrats. That's a HUGE difference, and encouraging.

I'm scared of living another four to eight years in a country whose practice of pushing its religious values and moral superiority has already created a disaster of incomprehensible proportions in terms of our global image and relationship with the Middle East.

I do not HEART Huckabee.


---Brooke

what you miss if you're not reading Feministing

We at Seal are super proud to be Jessica Valenti's publisher, and we make a huge effort to keep up with Feministing on a regular basis. Krista regularly emails me about their posts and I check in as often as possible.

But, of course, sometimes life intervenes. Which is how I found myself cruising through the archives last night and seriously engrossed by this 45-minute documentary on men who have relationships with dolls. It's like a train wreck. Jessica calls it creepy, but it's actually sociopathic. And since I'd just watched the movie Little Children on New Year's Day as part of my all-day hangover-remedy movie marathon, sociopaths who are incapable of intimacy with other humans was already lingering uncomfortably in the back of my mind.

I encourage you to watch it, and I don't exactly know why. Maybe just as a warning, or as an educational tool. For women to watch out for men who exhibit antisocial behavior. If it feels weird it probably is weird. I found myself feeling protective of women last night watching this thing, feeling scared that this company exists, that men are spending thousands of dollars for custom-made life-sized dolls that have removable tongues and different faces (awake faces, sleeping faces, engaged faces), and now, which Jessica reported on Tuesday, that men are actually pimping these dolls out (cause not enough men can afford to buy their own "relationships" apparently).

It's true that it's sickening and sad, but I also feel like I'm glad to know that this exists, as a reminder of the fucked up world we live in. As a reminder to take charge and trust my instincts. As a reminder to value the fact that I do know intimacy. And that I'm lucky for that.

Read Feministing. Read it often.