Category Archives: DC

America, DC, faux gender theory, politix

"… ladies."

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A Cambridge student athlete has made it to the finals in the Miss East Anglia competition, precursor to the Miss England pageant. Is this more or less shocking than a Hispanic woman who grew up in the projects getting a Supreme Court nomination? Check out the picture below and weigh in.

This is a toughie. Let’s hear comments from the peanut gallery:

“Slim women – not anorexic – look better than fat blobby women. Get over it. If that weren’t true, people wouldn’t prefer them, would they?”

An excellent point, since “people” do objectively “prefer” the slim over the blobby, and we know this from detailed examinations of everything since the dawn of time. Thank you, John Stern from London.

What about Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx: could she really hold her own on America’s highest bench? Educationally, she has scaled some very high ivy walls, graduating from

Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 1976, where she won the Pyne Prize, the highest general award given to Princeton undergraduates.[7] Sotomayor obtained her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Still, surely there’s a more qualified white man in the wings who is being overlooked simply for the sake of color? Again, speak, O peanut gallery!:

“This country has taken a dangerous shift away from the basic tenets of our Constitution , and instead of seizing the opportunity to right that ship, we get another poor choice designed to placate the masses.

Randy Barnett would have been a much better choice.

Unfortunately, being white and male,he didn’t have much of a chance from the start.”

SO TRUE, SgNews. Btw, who is Randy Barnett?

the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University, where he served as the faculty adviser for the Federalist Society. He joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in 2006. Barnett is a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute. … In 2009, he drafted the Bill of Federalism, 10 proposed amendments to the US Constitution designed to limit federal power and strengthen individual rights.

In other words, he’s the Ron Paul candidate for the bench! I can’t believe Obama didn’t pick him. Of course, it wasn’t his Libertarian views, his involvement with the Federalist Society, Cato Institute, or Goldwater Institute that held him back; it was his sex and his race, which as we all know are a serious barrier to advancement in America.

For more, because there is always more, see here and here.

Honestly, I am as shallow, judgmental, and quick to stereotype as anyone else who has grown up in this flawed society, and both of these women strike me as eminently qualified for their positions. I wish them the best. With all this criticism from all sides, though, is it any wonder women say they are less happy than they used to be? (Also, did anyone running that study consider that perhaps women feel allowed to be more honest these days?)

DC, mawidge, musing

clean, clear, and under control

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My mother’s thyroid biopsy came back empty. No cancer! One of my parents doesn’t have cancer! I would have thrown a party when I found out if I hadn’t been about to leave for a weekend in DC.

Mr. Ben and I Vamoosed for a mere $25, and if you’ve been craving an alternative to the Chinatown bus, I recommend it highly. Clean, roomy, with working televisions (even if all they did was inform me How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days if you’re the reasonably charming Kate Hudson). Plus, they drop off in Bethesda, close to where my ailing parents reside.

As to my ailing parents, I do wonder a bit what’s to be done. Though my mother was found to be out of danger, the surgeons who removed her thyroid left her with a scar that makes her look like Juno, the chain-smoking caseworker in Beetlejuice played by Sylvia Sydney. For some reason I can’t find a picture, but you remember her — the afterlife expert who exhales through the slash in her throat.

My mom’s had her throat slit, my dad’s been disemboweled. What a year for my parents. My mother is rocking it, though. She looks great — and when she asked the doctor what the condition of the scar would be in early August, he said, “Well, I can tell you one thing that would help.”

“What’s that?” asked my mother.

“A really striking diamond necklace.”

I fear that my father might need more than some frost to distract attention from his situation. Chemo hasn’t been sitting well with him after all; he’s hardly been able to eat or sleep. I can only hope he adjusts soon, or something? What can I hope for?

Probably to keep us from thinking such mopey thoughts, when Mr. Ben and I were in town, they wouldn’t let us stand still for a moment. The weekend whirled by & all I recall looking back are flashes of my wedding dress, about a hundred pairs of silver slippers, a much amended song list, a stack of stamped invitations, a strapless bra, the Rabbi in his office, some really terrific strawberries, and faces made up to look pretend Japanese for a spirited if a bit silly production of the Mikado at Wolf Trap.

I made it back in time to catch the Sopranos with my next door neighbor. David Chase really knows how to gut a viewer, doesn’t he? Except for that overdone bit with the model train, it was an amazing hour of suspense; I think I was whimpering from start to finish. Idly it occurred to me as I watched that it was ridiculous to get all emotionally involved with the deaths of these fictional monsters, whereas I’ve managed to stay relatively calm about the sickness of both of my parents. But I guess that’s what art is for.