The Next Hurrah

The Woman in the Gray Flannel Suit

by emptypockets

Tomorrow's marking of Equal Pay Day on the last Tuesday in April tells half the story: that on average a woman earns 77 cents for every dollar a man is paid. So, she comes even with his weekly wage on the following Tuesday; she comes even with his 2005 wage at the end of April 2006. Discrimination in hiring and pay -- some of it unrecognized and unintentional -- account for most of the difference.

The rest of the story is that women are not only being paid less, they are being asked to make a choice their male peers don't face: career, or family. In many professions, they can earn an equal wage only by sacrificing home life -- and often that means saying no to motherhood.

Coming Home

by emptypockets

When I arrived at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I saw an enormous placard reminding travelers of basic precautions to take if visiting a country "touchée par la grippe avion," for example to eat poultry only if it has been thoroughly cooked and to avoid handling birds. It was a simple public health measure that would probably cost a few hundred dollars to put in place nationally. Back at JFK, the closest thing I could find was a small flyer in the baggage claim area that read, "KEEP HOOF AND MOUTH DISEASE OUT OF THE US!" with no other instructions except, cryptically, a clip-art icon of an SUV.

Passing through the airport in Brussels, I saw a piece of artwork depicting the New York Times masthead at the top, some luggage claims with JFK written on them, airline ticket stubs, and postmarks reading "Sept. 11 2001." My uneasy feeling dissolved a minute later when I realized why the piece had bothered me: No humongous flag. No yellow ribbons. No jets, no towers, no symbols of American pre-eminence, resilience, perspicacity at all. Just documentary evidence of a day when time stopped.

Do you know what the slowest part of getting through the security screening at a European airport is? Kissing all the guards on both cheeks. By contrast, when I reached the American Airlines wing of the terminal, I was shunted by a round-about route along a walkway where I had to double-back and wait in a confusing series of lines to reach an additional security checkpoint. There, they asked me in what towns I had stayed; in what town I had last packed my bags; if it was at a hotel or a private home; how many bags was I carrying; how many had I checked; may we see your claim tickets please; what electronic devices are you carrying; what electronic devices have you checked; do you have anything that could be used as a weapon; who were you visiting here; where will you be staying in the U.S.; what is the name of a contact person in the U.S.; what is his phone number? All of which, undoubtedly, will go into a large government database to profile my travel habits and personal associations. Perhaps it will also be sold to a commercial firm to help me receive valuable offers of pre-approved credit cards and discount car insurance. Ultimately I suppose it will be leaked to some nefarious individual who will steal my identity and ruin my credit record.

Backdate Anti-Immigration Laws to 1492

By Meteor Blades

Depending on whom you believe and how you count, somewhere between 1300 and 600 generations ago, groups of my ancestors migrated to this hemisphere, humping it in over the Bering Strait before it filled with glacial melt or paddling ashore on America's west coast. They didn't call it America. That had to wait for another wave of migration from another direction. Between those two waves, there's considerable disagreement over how many other waves occurred or where all of them originated. Disagreement ranging from respectfully mild to sulfurous, smear-laden academic and cultural warfare, accompanied by ideological motivations or religious claims not supported by science.

For instance, many American Indians, including the late Vine Deloria, object to the Bering Strait theory itself. Cherokee Orrin Lewis explains succinctly here. As you can see, long before we come even close to the legislative atrocities contained in the demented xenophobia of HR4437 - and other schemes - we're already into an argument about immigration.

Praising South Dakota. Confessions of an Ex-Abortion Provider

By Meteor Blades

For years, I've been complacent. Oh, I sent money. I slapped on bumper stickers. I voted for the right politicians. I swore at the passage of the latest restrictive statute. I sighed when a court ruling was announced. I shook my head in disgust upon learning that another doctor had felt compelled to buy a bulletproof vest or a shoulder holster. I got into a cocktail party argument every now and again. All along, I called myself pro-choice. A backer of reproductive rights. But, like a lot of people I know, I was lazy about it. Stupidly lazy. No more.

Here are three reasons why:

Bill Napoli

Julie Bartling

Mike Rounds

Red. Blue.

by emptypockets

A new reality TV show starts tonight, "Black. White." In it, a black family is disguised as whites and a white family as blacks, through the miracle of modern makeup. They then go out in the world with hidden cameras to discover what bias they do -- or don't -- face.

It got me thinking about a different kind of bias: the political kind. Obviously, judging people by political orientation is a world apart from judging by race; you really are looking at the "content of their character" not some superficial trait. On the other hand, if taken to an extreme it would segregate our culture as surely as any other form of discrimination.

We know from projects like BuyBlue.org that someone out there cares about the political preferences of their pork processors and pizzamakers. I myself stopped buying slices from my neighborhood pizzeria when in 2004 they put behind the counter a picture of Bush and Giuliani among the World Trade Center ruins (they took it down last fall, and I went back). So, my soul is stained with the greasy pepperoni-juice of discrimination, too.

What I wanted to ask all of you is, how far do you take the Red-Blue divide?

Who Has the Most Women Working?

by emptywheel

Via Angry Arab, I see this quiz from the BoGlo. Which of the following countries has the lowest level of female participation in the work force?

• Chile
• Finland
• Ethiopia
• Thailand

Turns out the answer is Chile. But I was more interested in the reverse question: Which of these countries has the highest level of female participation in the workforce? The answer is Thailand, which has a whopping 65.1% of its women in the workforce, as compared to our 59%, Canada's 62.1%, Philippine's 50.2% and South Korea's 49.9%.

Facts on Muslims and Arabs (Two Terms that AREN'T Synonymous)

By DHinMI

With all the controversy over the editorial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, there's been quite a flurry of discussion in Blogostan about Muslims.  Some of the discussion has been good (like Georgia10's backgrounder on the controversy here ), some not so good (like much of the discussion on the thread below Georgia10's piece).  To be fair, while I've seen quite a few insensitive, ignorant and even offensive comments about Muslims and Islam, nothing I've seen on any liberal blogs has come even remotely close to the genocidal ravings about Arabs and/or Muslims you can see just about every day at Frei Republik or Little Genocidal Footsoldiers Little Green Footballs.  But there's still a lot of ignorance and apparent bias seeping through in comments from generally insightful and well-informed people.  So here are a few demographic facts about Muslims and Arabs that some may find surprising, and that knowing about will, I hope, elevate the conversations about the cartoon controversy. 

First, Arab isn't synonymous with Muslim.  Islam did arise out of the Arab bedouin society and culture of 8th century Arabia, and the Koran was written in and studied in Arabic, so the influence of Medieval Arab culture and society is important, just as nomadic Caananite culture and society of .a thousand years earlier is important in shaping all the monotheistic religions.  But to equate Arab (which is a cultural, social, ethnic and linguist identification) with Muslim (which is a religious identification) is like using calling Christians Jews, because Jesus and most of his earliest followers were Jews. 

Beyond the historical aspects of the different identifications, there are many non-Muslim Arabs, and far, far more non-Arab Muslims than there are Arabs of all faiths combined.  There are approximately one billion Muslims, but only about 200 million of those Muslims are Arabs.  In fact, of the countries with the largest Muslim populations, only Egypt is an Arab country (in millions, %=percentage of national population that's Muslim; figures calculated from country profiles in CIA Factbook:

1.Indonesia (212m, 88%)
2.India (140m, 13%)
3.China (133m, 1%) *
4.Pakistan (157m, 97%)
5.Bangladesh (119m, 83%)
6.Egypt (74m, 94%)
7.Turkey (69m, 99%)
8.Iran (66m, 98%)
9.Nigeria (64m, 50%)
10.Ethiopia (32m, 45%)

"Is David Dreier Gay?" Crosses Into the Mainstream

By DHinMI

From today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

California's Rep. David Dreier is a gentleman in the not-so-gentle world of the House Republican leadership.

Witty, articulate, friend to the Annenbergs and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Dreier is a Ronald Reagan-style optimist who favors inclusive politics. But after 25 years in Congress, he finds himself isolated by the increasingly raw social warfare within his own party.

Amid the turmoil in the House, the 53-year-old lawmaker is an obvious candidate to help fill the leadership void. But Mr. Dreier, whose upscale Los Angeles-area constituents are less conservative on social issues than on fiscal matters, shuns any elected party post, preferring to protect his privacy as a loyal lieutenant to Speaker Dennis Hastert…

Mr. Hastert waived party rules to extend Mr. Dreier's tenure as House Rules Committee chairman and considered elevating him to fill in when Mr. DeLay first stepped aside in October after being indicted in Texas on campaign-finance charges. The idea was quickly scotched when Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) went to Mr. Hastert to claim the title for himself. But talk of Dreier leadership set off an uproar among social conservatives, who mounted calls to Mr. Hastert's office and attacked Mr. Dreier, citing his votes in support of stem-cell research and against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.  [emphasis added]

Um, yeah. Preferring to protect his privacy. And sure, “social conservatives” objected to Dreier’s votes on stem cell research and against the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Let’s be honest here. The reason why Dreier isn’t acceptable to many Republicans is because he’s gay.

It’s hardly a secret that David Dreier is gay. Doug Ireland wrote about Dreier for the L.A. Weekly in 2004. And Pam covered things as Dreier’s candidacy to replace DeLay was floated and quickly pulled back when DeLay stepped down last September. But throughout all this, there’s been barely a peep in the mainstream media about Dreier apparently being rejected for the top ranks of GOP congressional leadership because of his (still not publicly acknowledged) sexual orientation.

But this morning, I finally heard an honest mention of Republicans rejecting Dreier for leadership because he’s gay on a non-alternative media source. During her weekly News Roundup with a panel of journalists, NPR’s Diane Rehm asked her panel—including the WSJ’s Doug Harwood—about the Dreier article. Specifically, she asked about why he faced a “leadership test.”  She almost certainly knew what she was doing, and The Nation’s David Corn took her bait, and made it clear that Dreier is gay and that’s why many of his colleagues oppose the idea of him being in leadership.

It was really quite simple, and didn’t include any parsing, or hemming and hawing. Corn just said there’s plenty of information out there for people to read for themselves, even mentioning the LA Weekly article (linked above). For the WSJ—which separate from their editorial page is an outstanding newspaper—to avoid candid discussion about Dreier’s sexual orientation and the opposition it generates among his Republican colleagues is irresponsible.

Homophobia is a fact of Republican politics. To paper it over with euphemisms about protecting one’s privacy helps the GOP continue pursuing a radical agenda while concealing their true radicalism and intolerance to the broader public outside their reactionary base. Kudos to Diane Rehm and David Corn for just coming out and saying what David Dreier and his fellow Republicans won’t say: he’s gay, and for that reason his fellow Republicans don’t trust him.

  

Post-Schiavo Attitudes On The Right To Die

by DemFfromCT

A new Pew poll documents the extent of the Schiavo affair's failure to advance the religious right's agenda with average Americans.

An overwhelming majority of the public supports laws that give patients the right to decide whether they want to be kept alive through medical treatment. And fully 70% say there are circumstances when patients should be allowed to die, while just 22% believe that doctors and nurses should always do everything possible to save a patient.

Public attitudes on these and many other end-of-life issues are unchanged from 1990, despite advances in lifesaving technology, the aging of the population, and the controversy associated with the Terri Schiavo case. Most Americans believe it should be up to individuals ­ not the government or medical professionals ­ to ultimately determine their end-of-life medical decisions.

This has to be taken in to context with the same group's ongoing war against science (exemplified by this wonderful Onion piece). The American Taliban, and Bill Frist in particular, lose on this one.

Thai Turkey and Thanksgiving Redux

By Meteor Blades

Over the past week, my wife and I have had probably a dozen conversations with Los Angelenos of various ethnic and religious backgrounds talking about the turkey they'll be eating day after tomorrow. Doesn't matter if they're originally from Senegal or Guatemala, Belarus or Vietnam, Scotland or China, it's the same story with all of them: turkey has to be on the table.