Nice to see Rachel Maddow hold up Canada’s Justin Trudeau as a role model on how to do gender equality in government. MADDOW: Canada has a new prime minister, Justin Trudeau. He promised when he took office that he would have a cabinet that was 50 percent women, and then he did it. He made good… Continue reading “Clinton promises to appoint women to cabinet”
I tried not to cry last night, but seeing this covered with “I voted” stickers put me over the edge. When I think of all the women who fought and even died for our right to vote, and now we’re thisclose to a woman president?
Oh yes, I remember this. I remember thinking I would never file a rape complaint, because who ever believes women? I still remember the night Nicole Simpson was killed, and telling my editor we should save a spot on the front page, because the AP wire said the cops wanted to talk to OJ. He gave me this pitying look and said, “No way, this is O.J. Simpson! He won the Heisman trophy!” As if that meant anything. And we missed the biggest story of the year:
Renae Franiuk, a professor of psychology at Aurora University and an avid sports fan, watched the media coverage of the case with interest, and noticed that a lot of it seemed to be slanted against the alleged victim. She was curious as to whether she was just overly sensitive to it due to her job, or if it was an actual problem, so she set out to do a study.
For the study, Franiuk honed in on rape myths, which are “generalized and widely held beliefs about sexual assault that serve to trivialize the sexual assault or suggest that a sexual assault did not actually occur.”
She then divided the myths into standard common categories, and studied both articles and headlines about the Bryant case for endorsements or challenges of these myths. She also studied the articles for positive and negative statements about the alleged victim and Bryant, and headlines for the choice of the word “accuser” versus “alleged victim,” since the former has been proven to elicit sympathy with the accused.
Franiuk’s findings were staggering. First of all, only 13 of the 156 articles studied actually countered rape myths — that is, mentioned how rarely women lie about rape, or how entering a hotel room with a man isn’t the same as consenting to sex with him. On average, there were 1.66 myth-endorsing statements per article, with over 65 percent of the articles having at least one endorsing statement.
Additionally, 27 percent of the articles studied had positive comments about Bryant as a person or an athlete, while only 5 percent of the articles had positive statements about the victim as a person. And whereas 42.3 percent of the articles questioned the victim’s honesty, only 7.7 percent questioned Kobe’s.
Though less extreme, a similar pattern was discovered in headlines, which are often the only information readers take in. Almost 10 percent of the headlines studied endorsed rape myths. Headlines used the word “accuser” 23 percent of the time, compared to about 1 percent each for “alleged victim” or “victim.” Overall, 11 percent of the headlines were pro-Bryant, while only 5.2 percent pro-alleged victim.
Why does this even matter? Well, Franiuk’s study accounted for that too, and found that after reading articles that endorsed rape myths, people were far more likely to side with the accused than the alleged victim. Whether they intended to or not, the media shaped the public’s perception of the case.
I just don’t have the mental energy necessary to sit down and write my own take down, but Laurel Brett’s take is close enough:
The distortions of his campaign and the bullying tactics of his campaign staff are exactly what I’ve been fighting for the past 45 years. A good friend and a kind man recently advised me to emotionally detach from the primary race. This was good advice, but I don’t think this thoughtful guy fully understands that I feel personally attacked by the climate created by Bernie Bro’s, the campaign staff and Sanders himself. These attacks don’t make me angry and self-righteous. They make me feel vulnerable and unsafe.
I must campaign for a world in which I feel I can safely operate and continue to be effective in supporting my family. I am not part of the 1% by any means. I need Wall Street because although I’ve worked for 30 years at the same job, unlike Sanders, I don’t have a pension, just an IRA. I want a world in which I am heard and my concerns are not brushed aside because they are not central to the ideological narrative of his campaign. And more importantly, I feel that issues of health and safety, including safety from guns, are at least as important as money and income distribution. I don’t want the collapse of institutions just when my own children are struggling to establish lives, and I don’t want the poor and homeless to be threatened by massive social upheaval. I may be wrong, but I suspect that these feelings have everything to do with my gender. I also feel that Bernie’s seeming disregard for my concerns has everything to do with the patriarchal manner in which he interprets his gender.
In response to a reporter this morning who asked Clinton to comment on Bernie’s New York Daily News interview, she said:
“I think he hadn’t done his homework and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood,” Clinton said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” just one day after losing the Wisconsin primary to Sanders, “and that does raise a lot of questions.”
Clinton refused to say Sanders not qualified. This am: "I will leave it to voters to decide who of us can do the job that the country needs"
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) April 7, 2016
Bernie took that comment and turned it into yet another convenient fundraising outrage (check your inbox!) here in Philadelphia last night, claiming she called him “unqualified” to be president:
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/717884631874473988
Former senator and secretary of state. Will any female candidate ever be considered “qualified”?
Oh, and bonus points from Jeff Weaver:
@BernieSanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver just called @HillaryClinton voters "stupid" on @allinwithchris !!!!
— Hillary’s crème brûlée (@tooshort4jeans) April 7, 2016
I don’t know if you heard this yesterday, but Donald Trump said in an interview that women who had illegal abortions should be punished. Much uproar ensued.
If you really and truly do believe life begins at conception, and that abortion is a murder, just how do you rationalize a two-track legal system?
I’ve been saying to anti-abortion types for years: If you’re considered a murderer for hiring someone to kill your spouse, how can you not be charged with murder for hiring someone to give you an abortion?
And from that, I pivot into a discussion of “Is that what you want? You want your wives, daughters, sisters, friends and neighbors charged with murder?”
Occasionally someone says yes, but most people see the idiocy once you point it out to them. The most common response is, “I never thought of it that way.”
It kind of irks me that wingnuts get to have it both ways — abortion is murder, but the pregnant woman is a victim. That way, they get to solve two political problems at once. never facing up to the legal consequences of their position.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to his Twitter account on Wednesday night to retweet an image insulting Heidi Cruz’s physical appearance. There’s been a slap-fight going on between the hotel magnate and his rival for two days now so naturally. Trump took it to another level – a lower level. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/712850174838771712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw To Cruz’s credit, he… Continue reading “The golden asshole award”
In the Supreme Court hearing on new Texas abortion laws:
Seconds after Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller began to speak Wednesday morning, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg zeroed in on the “undue burden” question—quickly and mercilessly knocking Keller off balance and setting the tone for the rest of his nearly 40 minutes at the lectern. Ginsburg asked Keller how many women would live 100 miles or more from a clinic if the Texas law went into effect. About 25 percent, he responded—but that didn’t include the clinic in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, just over the border from El Paso. The existence of this clinic featured heavily in the 5th Circuit’s decision to uphold the Texas statute; it asserted that the law did not impose on “undue burden” on abortion-seeking El Paso women, because they could simply cross state lines for the procedure.
“That’s odd that you point to the New Mexico facility,” Ginsburg said, in a clear and firm voice. New Mexico, after all, doesn’t force abortion clinics to meet the same standards that Texas would—standards which, Texas claims, are absolutely critical to protect women.
“So if your argument is right,” Ginsburg continued, “then New Mexico is not an available way out for Texas, because Texas says: To protect our women, we need these things. But send them off to New Mexico,” to clinics with more lenient standards, “and that’s perfectly all right.”
“Well,” Ginsburg concluded, with just a hint of pique in her voice, “If that’s all right for the women in the El Paso area, why isn’t it right for the rest of the women in Texas?”
It starts now. She is going to clean his fucking clock. There will be nothing left of him when she’s done. I don’t know what she’s on, I really don’t, but I want some of it. She’s like twice my age, and I crawl home from my office job every night with barely enough energy to… Continue reading “Forward, now”
