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From the Desk of Bob Mankoff…
John Stuart Mill’s famous dictum that the only antidote to bad speech is more speech also applies to humor. This Kim Warp cartoon works as a concise antidote to Seth MacFarlane’s performance at the Oscars.
In this case, I thought it would be interesting to let the cartoonist speak for herself. Take it away, Kim:
The discussion about the Oscars has moved on a little since I drew this cartoon. The comments I see floating across Facebook lately are more like, “Why did all the women go ape-shit? Seth MacFarlane was making a joke about himself. They’re acting like he’s Hitler!” I’ve been asking myself the same question, because, on a certain level, I went way out-of-proportion ape-shit, too. I’ve concluded that the boob song at the Oscars hit a hidden nerve with women. You know how when you go home for the holidays, you think you’re all over your childhood traumas and you’ve achieved something in life that they can’t touch? And then some jerky relative makes a joke putting you down about something you’d forgotten all about, and you go absolutely, inexplicably ape-shit? That was the nerve that Seth MacFarlane hit…
Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/ZgzkYl(Source: newyorker.com)
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Podcast: Justice and Ruth Bader Ginsburg→
This week in the magazine, Jeffrey Toobin writes a Profile of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who even before her time on the Supreme Court played an important role in shaping the legal framework for women’s rights and gender discrimination. Here Toobin and Margaret Talbot talk with Amy Davidson about Ginsburg’s legacy and some of the current issues the Court is addressing. Also, fiction from a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Click-through to listen now: http://nyr.kr/15sjBe5
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An Army of Women: Read Amy Davidson on the end of the ban on women in combat, plus a slideshow of servicewomen through history: http://nyr.kr/UoffRs
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Jane Kramer reflects on life before Roe, and on our re-entrance into the era of a right-to-life:
“Today, most of the women in this country were post-Roe v. Wade babies. They grew up knowing that the struggle was won. It couldn’t happen again. But it has. …this time, we should all be ready for the fight”
Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/141vaJe
Photograph: AP.
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"As someone born in the mid-nineteen-eighties, I grew up taking the legality of abortion as a given. It struck me as an immutable part of How We Live Now, a battle that earlier generations had fought and largely resolved. I realize today how wrong that presumption was—how ignorant, in particular, of the experiences faced by huge numbers of women across America who still have to overcome serious obstacles in order to obtain reproductive care."
— Sarah Stillman on the reality of Roe v. Wade, forty years later: http://nyr.kr/Svwukc -
Forty years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade—the anniversary is on January 22nd—the debate over the case, and abortion, hasn’t cooled off. If anything, it has only become more controversial. “[Roe] was, I think it’s safe to say, the galvanizing force of the new right, the religiously oriented conservative movement,” Jeffrey Toobin says on this week’s Political Scene podcast. He and Jill Lepore join host Dorothy Wickenden to discuss Roe and the politics surrounding abortion and contraception today.
Listen to the podcast, and click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/SSbntA
(Source: newyorker.com / The New Yorker)
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As the doctors cautiously revealed the details of injuries inflicted on the young woman, who needed a gut transplant as her intestines had been torn by iron rods, thousands of students from colleges and universities in the city gathered in a spontaneous protest in Delhi. Anger spread like a heat wave. In my years in Delhi as a student and a reporter, the protests against the various instances of sexual assault would be attended and lead by left-leaning women’s organizations student groups. India’s conservative middle and upper-middle classes mostly stayed home. This was different…
Basharat Peer on the fury in Delhi after the rape and murder of the 23-year old unnamed victim: http://nyr.kr/YSQPOw
Photograph by Rakash Singh/AFP/Getty.
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"I like a little bit of revolution. I think it’s a very good hobby for a young woman. Better than squash."
— Sally Errico talks to the London Times columnist Caitlin Moran about feminism, her influences, celebrities, and sex. Click-through to read. -
Who Won the War on Women?
…If it hadn’t been for those antediluvian attacks on contraception, we’d be calling this the Year of the Woman. If there was a war on women this year, it looks like the women are winning.
Margaret Talbot on the female candidates in yesterday’s Senate races, and the “war on women” narrative in this election cycle: http://nyr.kr/RfWGw4
Photograph by Josh Reynolds/AP.
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"You often hear the argument that it’s patronizing when political candidates appeal to women about women’s issues. What women voters really care about is what everybody cares about, and this year, that’s the economy… Moreover, the fact that sometimes gets lost in this parsing and claiming of voter motivation is that access to contraception and abortion are economic issues. They are matters of health care, as the Democrats like to emphasize, and they are moral matters, as the Republicans like to. But there is a reason why the dramatic rise in women’s work-force participation in the nineteen-sixties and seventies coincided with the wider availability of a reliable birth-control pill and abortion. Women’s ability to pursue education and careers is predicated on their ability to plan when they will give birth. The health and prospects of their families rests in part on mothers’ access to reproductive health care. When some, usually more affluent, women can easily obtain birth control, and others cannot, that has real economic implications, both for individuals and for social equity. Romney and Ryan would prefer that your forget it, but women’s issues are everybody’s issues."
— In today’s Daily Comment, Margaret Talbot considers what women voters want. Continue reading.
