Politics

Sigh. Yesterday I finally finished From Housewife to Heretic by Sonia Johnson. I took a long break in the middle of it, but yesterday I read the last 150 pages. This book was published in 1981 and written in 1980. Now that I'm finished, I'm bummed...not because it was a good book and I hate to see it end, even though that's true too. I'm sad because Johnson ends the book on such a positive note--saying that women need to get angry, to be "all on fire" for women. I agree. She ended the book on such a hopeful note that the Equal Rights Amendment would pass. It didn't, even though she and many others fasted for 37 days in Illinois--fought SO HARD--were willing to die for women's rights. For this sentence: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." That was twenty-one years ago. I'm just learning about all the things that happened in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and I can't let any of it go. I won't. I feel like some kind of quaint relic; it would seem strange to bring this up in casual conversation. But maybe I should anyway!

Eh, so much for pleasure reading. Now I'm on to reading for my fall classes.

Cross-posted at Blog Sisters.

I was watching the Today show the other day, and Matt Lauer was interviewing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). Lauer started off asking Frist about the new Medicare prescription bill with the "doughnut hole." Then, Lauer steered the interview toward the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that many are starting to doubt seriously that Iraq has or has ever had. Lauer asked Frist where the WMD were, and Frist was saying that they're minute amounts of chemicals, tiny, tiny little germs and viruses...that they're invisible. Talk about Orwellian!

More on "Where are the WMD?" and doubts about Iraq:

10 Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

Where Are the WMD? by Robert Novak

Where Are the WMD? (Thread on Wicked Good)

Iraq's Free Fall from Yellow Times

Where's the WMD? from the Council for a Livable World

I read this infuriating piece yesterday in the TimesDaily. The link to the infuriating piece won't be active for long as it is on the Creators Syndicate site and will be replaced the next time Charen writes a column, but you need to look at it while you can. Charen is arguing against affirmative action in college acceptance practices, or "quotas" and "racial preferences" as she calls them. She makes me the most angry when she says that "If preferences were eliminated from higher education, black students at every level of education from primary through middle and high school would have to take academic performance more seriously."

WHAT?!?! What a smug piece of entitlement crap! Her whole argument is based on glaring racist assumptions. Do you think African American students and their parents don't take academic performance seriously, or just not as seriously as white students and parents do? What a crock! It's racism like this that the educational system is built upon. Charen says that "When underqualified black students are granted admission to extremely selective schools, they tend to drop out at extremely high rates and to find the work very challenging." Underqualified? More like excluded and intimidated by predominately white classrooms, invisible white privilege, and institutionalized racism. More like inadequately prepared by a government that would rather privatize education than actually invest money in public education, especially public schools in poor neighborhoods!! Does she really not realize that there's a correlation between wealth and race? Does she think that working-class African American families can actually afford such luxuries as tutors, educational summer camps and programs, etc.? Did Charen ever once think of that? I can think of something Charen should do. [Rolleyes]