The Laughing Monster

Despite the fact that I have a blog, and broadcast my thoughts to the internet every now and then, I’m actually a pretty private person.  My first instinct wouldn’t be to blow someone up or shout her or him out for doing something lame, if said person was a private citizen (public figures, by contrast, are fair game).  But on Sunday night I encountered one of the biggest assclowns I’ve ever met.  He is so assclown-y, in fact, that I would like the whole world to know. I was enjoying a convivial farewell dinner in London with a group of five vivacious, accomplished women writers and journalists at St. John’s Bread and Wine.  The entire night was wonderful, and I laughed the whole time.  At one point, talk turned to pregnancy, and the two pregnant women in the group had one of the more honest and hilarious conversations I’ve ever heard, prompting more uproarious laughter from my end.  Around twenty minutes later, a business card slid near my elbow.  I looked up to see the messenger, a tall man in his 50s sporting a bushy take on the Hitler ‘stache.

He neither winked, smiled, nor licked his lips like LL Cool J, so it didn’t feel much like a come on (note to men: slipping women your cards generally fails, anyway).   In fact, he rather glared at me.  I turned over the card to find this charming, charming message:

Note: this reads "Madame, You are a MONSTER, a laughing monster, very primitive!  I fear my ears are destroyed. W. W."

Now, here is a lesson for anyone who thinks they can silence a laughing woman such as myself with a hyperbolic 18^th-century putdown scribbled on a card: YOU MUST BE STUPID.  THIS IS ONLY GOING TO MAKE ME LAUGH HARDER.  ONLY NOW AT YOU.  So, laugh we did, and all six of us were laughing directly at him.

Happy ending: I ignored his glares till he left the restaurant, and the waiter, who was horrified at his behavior, gave me a compensation bag filled with baked goods.

Suggested pro-loud-woman activism:  Tweet a link or a joke of something funny today (and every day – why not?), with the hashtag #laughingmonster.  Make yourself laugh, make your friends laugh, make me laugh.  Or, send this guy an mp3 or .wav file of your laugh!  Remind him that women are not just to be seen, but heard, too.

The Mainstream Media: Still a Lamestream Place for Women, and other notes on media coverage

From April 8-10, I spent a marvelous three days in Boston for the National Conference on Media Reform, hosted by the non-profit Free Press.  Not only did I have the chance to see my best friend, who's studying for a PhD. at Harvard, and to sample some of Boston's famous ice cream offerings, I attended some fabulous panels at the conference, several of which I reported on for Ms. magazine.

More than a hundred years after the intrepid muckraker Nellie Bly pioneered the genre of undercover investigative journalism, American mainstream media has yet to embrace women as equal players in the industry: as editors, reporters, managers, sources or subjects. You’d think a century might be enough time for a profession that purports to speak truth to power to empower the voiceless in its midst. Not so much. Women hold only 27% of top management jobs, according to a new report [PDF] from the International Women’s Media Foundation. (click here to read about the panels on media policy, reality TV and the sexualization of young girls.)

Meanwhile, you have to wonder why the NYT keeps letting its reporters slime rape victims in its coverage time and again.  Is it a coincidence that the two most controversial articles were written by men?  Not clear.  But a magnificent piece by Washington Post reporter Emily Wax (inexplicably shunted into the "Lifestyle" section -- oh wait, there is an explanation for that, sexism) on female journalists and sexual assault and harassment highlights that in some cases, there *is* a clear difference between male and female reporters:

I think of the time I spent reporting in Congo, when male reporters cringed when I said I was working on a story about a hospital ward filled with women who had to have their vaginas reconstructed because the gang rapes by rebels were so brutal. “I won’t go near that story,” one male journalist said. I couldn’t allow myself to ignore it.

Readers agreed and sent the hospital huge donations.

I don't know if anyone else feels the same way but I am SHOCKED to hear a reporter say he (or she) "won't go near" a story.  I find that an appalling dereliction of duty.  Thoughts?

Totally uninformed sweeping generalization about gender: Women's NCAA basketball is superior to men's

The past two nights of NCAA championship basketball could not have contrasted more starkly.  A conservative estimate would put the women's game at 150 times better than the men's game; a more generous comparison, perhaps 200 times better. The men's game between Butler and UConn (UConn won) was sloppy, choppy and dull.  The women's game between Texas A&M and Notre Dame (Texas won) was graceful, soulful and exciting.  The women ran plays and cooperated.  The men showboated and couldn't convert.  The women boxed out, communicated, made their layups and their free throws.  In short, they played solid, fundamentally sound basketball and it was breathtaking to watch.

I wonder if the different styles of play can be traced to the fact that men have a lot more to prove because of the high economic stakes of professional male athletics.  Female basketball players have the WNBA to look forward to, but the money is nowhere near the same.  As a woman, there's less incentive to prove that you're a one-person franchise.

Without further ado -- a huge salute to the women of both teams for giving the NCAA championship a good name again after Butler and UConn did their best to smear it.  It was a spectacular game, played with so much heart and soul.  Bravo.

Living La Vita Bunga

I once met an Italian journalist living in Beirut, a wonderful, warm, successful woman with the world at her fingertips.  She was leaving Beirut, and thinking about other cities where she might pitch her tent.  Paris?  Istanbul?  Why not Rome?, I asked her.  She looked at me like I still had the crack pipe in my right hand.  As an Italian, she told me, she can't stand to live in Italy.  Life under Berlusconi is just too depressing. In The Berlusconi in Us All: Bunga Bunga's Real Meaning, a new piece that ran today in the Atlantic, I excavate the hidden meanings of the goofy-sounding term "bunga bunga."  After hearing it repeated uncritically across the international media, I thought it might be worth exploring where this term came from, and what it represents with respect to the sexism, racism and corruption that plague Italy and that are part and parcel of what Italians call "Berlusconismo."

In interviewing a dozen or so Italian professors, researchers, filmmakers, journalist and political analysts, that overwhelming sense of "WTF" came through loud and clear.  Every interview ran an hour long.  Several slowly morphed from interview to therapy session as the subjects unloaded one after another complaint about Berlusconi and everything he stands for onto me, the willing listener.  Thanks to their insights and observations, I was able to put together this article about what "bunga bunga" really means for Italy.

I hope you enjoy.  Read it here.

To the victim-blaming, let's add a lawsuit. Rape victim Eman al-Obaidy is now a defendant.

The NYT reports today that the accused militia members have filed a lawsuit against Ms. al-Obaidy.  Here is the glorious victim-blaming Libyan government spokesman Mr. Musa Ibrahim again:

“Oh, yeah, they have filed a case,” the spokesman, Musa Ibrahim, said. “The boys who she accused of rape are bringing a case because it is a very grave offense to accuse someone of a sexual crime.”

....

Mr. Ibrahim initially described her as drunk and potentially delusional. Then, later on Saturday, he called her sober and sane. And on Sunday he termed her a prostitute and a thief.

In addition to the creepy, high-school-era sneer ("Oh, yeaaahh..."), there's something frightfully reminiscent about the heavily-criticized, victim-blaming attitude captured by the NYT's reporting on a gang-rape in Texas, where many of the local residents expressed less concern for the victim than for their "boys."

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

This is absolutely not to suggest that false rape allegations are anything but serious, but it is wildly anachronistic to counter-sue an alleged rape victim before you have been proven innocent.  If these are false allegations, then the militia members should await trial and rest assured they will be proven innocent.  Charges for slander can follow.  Otherwise, sit tight, "boys," and let the victim have her day in court.  Which reminds me -- where the eff is she?

Journalists have been unable to learn Ms. al-Obeidy’s whereabouts since she was removed by force from the Rixos Hotel here after scuffles between security personnel, hotel staff and foreign journalists she had been trying to approach on Saturday.

NYT ignores top female political bloggers; top female political blogger responds

It didn't take long for this story in the NYT about a group of young, successful (all white, all male) political bloggers to piss off a lot of women. "Brat Pack" stories are always popular.  People like to read about young, successful people, especially when they travel in hordes.  What an exclusive club!  What intelligent fun they must have!  Would you look at that, some of them even have some neat-sounding female accessories! Luckily Ann Friedman was quick on the draw with her wonderful send-up that shouts out the many talented female journalists in DC who have, as she notes, been there all along.

One sweltering DC evening many months ago, Ann Friedman, 29, then an editor for The American Prospect, sat with her friends Annie Lowrey, a reporter for Slate; Suzy Khimm and Kate Sheppard, reporters for Mother Jones; Marin Cogan, a reporter for Politico; Phoebe Connelly, a freelance writer and former web editor for The American Prospect; Britt Peterson, an editor at Foreign Policy; Dayo Olopade, a writer for The Daily Beast, Kay Steiger and Shani Hilton, editors at Campus Progress; Kat Aaron, a reporter for the Investigative Reporting Workshop; Monica Potts, a blogger for The American Prospect; Amanda Terkel, a reporter for The Huffington Post; and Laura McGann and Sara Libby, editors for Politico, at a bar on U Street. Ms. Friedman spoke about her younger — well, relatively younger — days in the city.

“Everyone’s gotten a little bit older and a little more tired of being constantly rendered invisible,” Ms. Friedman said, speaking of a wave of Washington women journalists who have come of age together. “Four years ago, we were fact-checking and editing these male pundits, along with creating award-winning work of our own. None of that has changed.” [my emphasis].

Go Ann!

What Nawal El Saadawi and a music teacher in Iowa have in common

A story out today in the New York Times on rising divorce rates in rural America surprised me for its incredibly old-fashioned kernel of truth inside: women's economic empowerment leads to happier, more liberated living. From a woman who went to college and got a master's degree, on divorcing her high-school educated ex-husband:

“As we get more education we get more confidence and more income,” Ms. Vermeer said, “women are saying, ‘Look, she finally had the guts to stand up and walk out.’

I will never get tired of hearing statements like that.  Compare it to leading Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi's thoughts in an interview I did with her for The Nation:

Within a household, the individual woman must have power. It’s not easy—it means political rights, economic independence, knowledge. A lot of women are afraid of loneliness, so when they see a woman who can live alone, then they think, “Hmm, I can do that.” But you need an example, and that is why I am proud to say I have divorced three husbands.

Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Nawal El Saadawi, Mohamed Yunus, Nicholas Kristof (I hate to say it, but he's been a very vocal proponent of the economic empowerment of women) and their ilk still rule the day.  As long as we're mired in capitalism, must we play the game?  Hmm...

Is Kathleen Parker for serious?

I hope she's being ironic, and I'm just too thick to tell, but in a boring story full of generalizations about feminism in the Middle East (about the nuances of which she seems wholly ignorant), Kathleen Parker writes that "what we enlightened Westerners know is that empowering women empowers us all."  Not only is the story full of sleep-inducing cliches such as the aforementioned, but it utterly fails to address the actual ins and outs of what different sorts of feminism look like in the Middle East, which is, of course, a large and varied region. She writes:

Among life’s surreal experiences, few can compare with finding myself seated on a baroque bench, one of dozens lining the perimeter of an ornate drawing room in the palace of Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak in Abu Dhabi, chatting it up with three Ph.D.-endowed women sheathed in black abayas, sipping sweet hot tea and eating candies. “I think you Americans do not enjoy being women as much as we do,” said one, peering into my face with an earnestness one usually associates with grim news delivered to next of kin.

Say what?

Yes, if you use your own experience as the standard for how a life should be lived, then having a PhD. and wearing an abaya will strike you as 'surreal.'  The rest of the article swiftly turns its back on those Emirati women, (useful as an anecdotal lead, not so much after that) and focuses on topics that...hey wait...look at that -- have to do with her forthcoming book, "Save the Males."

Save me from this drivel.

The Arab League: Why?

That was the title of a story idea I had conceived of at least a year ago, but which became, in published form, a slightly different question: "Will the Arab League Finally Lead?"  Find out the answer in today's story in the Atlantic.  

The idea first struck me when I was living in Cairo, and used to walk past the Arab League building on my way to and from Arabic classes at the American University of Beirut.  It's a big, white building, rather majestic for something built in the 1960s, and home to the most relentless inactivity imaginable, or pomp and impotence, as I like to call it.  It make the UN looks like a hotbed of political activism.  In Damascus, also, I often passed a gorgeous white building around the corner from the Four Seasons hotel, designated for the Arab League.

And I had to ask myself - what the s**t are those guys (and they are all guys -- one person I interviewed called it an "all-male preserve") doing to justify all this prime real estate?  Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of anything.  My friend Mitch, who has covered the region for years, always says that the last thing you want to hear under any circumstances is "Don't worry, the Arab League is on it."  That more or less means "you might as well disembowel yourself and tip yourself off a high building, since nothing positive could possibly come out of that scenario."

Then all this much ado about Libya commenced, and I had to wonder...is the Arab League going in a new direction?  Click to find out:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/after-mideast-uprisings-will-the-arab-league-finally-lead/72541/1/

Assclown of the Day: Kirsten Powers sweeps past Seif al-Gaddafi

Assclown-watchers know that when Seif al-Gaddafi steps up for a live TV interview, as he did today on Al Jazeera English, odds are about 99:1 that he's taking home the Assclown of the Day award.  I won't dwell on his assclowniness in this interview, I'll just give you three words to describe him: incoherent, imbecilic, and most of all infuriatingly condescending to the kickass reporter who asked him tough, awesome questions.  It probably didn't help her cause that she was female.  He practically rolls his eyes at her questions.  It's maddening.

I was also pretty tempted to give the Assclown of the Day award to whoever gave orders for soldiers (they can share in the prize, like when a Pulitzer is awarded to a reporting team) to fire on unarmed women protesters who were demanding the resignation of fraudster, assclown president Laurent Gbagbo in Cote d'Ivoire.  Seven or eight women were killed.

But because the term "assclown" to me implies a certain degree of rank stupidity, not just evil or inhumanity, I'm going to have to bestow the pointy hat today on Kirsten Powers, for her stunning, what-kind-of-crack-are-you-smoking claim in the Daily Beast that access to contraception does not reduce abortion.  She writes:

During the recent debate over whether to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood, the organization claimed that its contraceptive services prevent a half-million abortions a year. Without their services, the group’s officials insist, more women will get abortions.

I’ll admit I bought the argument—it makes intuitive sense—and initially opposed cutting off funding for precisely that reason.

Then I did a little research.

Not only is this an example of smug, terrible writing (the "First I thought the obvious, but THEN I did a little research" set up is tedious and clichéd), but just to be clear, by "research" she means "totally misinterpreting some Guttmacher stats and squeezing her eyes shut in the face of the intuition [sometimes it's there for a reason] that told her that access to contraception helps prevent pregnancy."

Here is what her "research" led her to conclude:

This doesn’t mean that access to contraception causes more abortion—though some believe that—but that it doesn’t necessarily reduce it

Apart from not explaining how in the #@%&! access to contraception could possibly cause abortion (I thought it was pregnancy that caused abortions, not methods of preventing pregnancy), she shamelessly concludes, with zero substantive evidence, that Planned Parenthood's

...deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families.

The "ideological agenda", by the way, is that it is:

...in reality, a population-control organization. Funny, this was never mentioned in the gauzy $200,000 advertising campaign launched last week. It also doesn’t make it into the “About Us” section of the group’s website, which repeatedly claims its mission is to protect women’s health, when in fact the real mission is to keep the birth rate at whatever level the leaders believe it should be.

Well, luckily there's Lindsay Beyerstein at Big Think, who rebuts her in the blink of an eye with a simple left-right combo:

Actually, the original study found that 12% of women who weren't using birth control when they got pregnant cited lack of access as a reason why not.

Powers' logic is as faulty as her facts. Her main evidence that birth control doesn't prevent abortions is a study of women getting abortions. If you only look at women seeking abortions, you're only going to see cases in which contraception failed, or wasn't used.

If you want to measure the power of prevention, you have to look at the millions of sexually active people who use birth control and don't get pregnant.

It's so painfully obvious, I feel like if I tried to talk about this verbally I would wind up sputtering and screaming.  Even prominent right-wing donor Richard Scaife has come out in favor of Planned Parenthood, writing in a column what most of us, save Kirsten "Assclown of the Day" Powers, know already:

Of course, no one wants teenagers to get pregnant. Yet far too many do -- and they need reliable, honest advice about what to do next. For many of them, Planned Parenthood is the only reliable source of that advice. For many others, Planned Parenthood is the only safe, reliable source of counseling to avoid getting pregnant in the first place.

I'm still struggling to understand how:

1) someone could write something this intellectually flimsy and expect for it to stand up and hold its shape

2) this article was greenlit by an editor at the Daily Beast

3) the Beast has not yet run a version of it with the entire text in strikethrough and a gigantic apology at the end.

How is it possible?  Any guesses?

Also - if you think I've missed a bigger assclown, please feel free to send suggestions or comment below or on Twitter, @annalouiesuss.  I know there are many out there and sometimes they slip below my radar.