A newlywed groom in Taiwan dies after drinking too much at his wedding:

The man, 35, an insurance company worker surnamed Wu passed out at home after drinking too much Saturday at a high-end restaurant in Taipei among more than 100 wedding guests, the Liberty Times reported.

So many snarky punch lines present themselves:

• “Who does he think he is?  Atomizer?”
• “Great idea for the next time I get married…”
• “Who does he think he is?  Brian Ward?”
• “He musta watched Mad Men  the night before…”

But I’ll leave it to the expertise of my assembled commentariat.

Gallup poll shows, for the first time since the poll started, that “Pro-Life” Americans outnumber “Pro-Infanticide” ones.

Read the whole, detailed thing.  The most interesting part to me is the crosstab on gender polling (emphasis added):

A year ago, Gallup found more women calling themselves pro-choice than pro-life, by 50% to 43%, while men were more closely divided: 49% pro-choice, 46% pro-life. Now, because of heightened pro-life sentiment among both groups, women as well as men are more likely to be pro-life.

Men and women have been evenly divided on the issue in previous years; however, this is the first time in nine years of Gallup Values surveys that significantly more men and women are pro-life than pro-choice.

The Gender Identity feminists have long hitched their wagon to the idea that abortion is the “women’s right”.  Indeed, their behavior in recent years has confirmed that, given a choice between applauding (much less supporting) any other area of female achievement, the sorts of things that real feminists throughout history would have celebrated as major victories, and supporting white, male, establishment politicians who happened to be pro-“choice” – well, there’s no suspense in that, is there?  I’m fairly convinced that, given a choice between a pro-life woman President and a pro-infanticide white male caricature, the “feminist” “movement” today would not only take “b”, they’d do their best to destroy the woman.  It’s hardly conjecture; it’s recent history.

It’s also good news in that as the American public swings toward support for life, it’ll be less a political issue; Life has been a social-conservative litmus test issue that’s made the Republican Big Tent a contentious place for the past few decades; if we can declare victory one of these days, it’ll make that job a lot easier.

And the fact is, while “victory” is years, maybe generations, away, this is the sort of thing that conservatives need to pat themselves on the back over; along with the erosion of support for Victim Disarmament, it’s a testimony to the grass-roots efforts of millions of workadaddy, hugamommy pro-lifers, winning people over one person, one ultrasound, one day at a time.

“It’s OK To Look!“:

British-based Galina Rusanova is accused of of punching and kicking flight attendants and – at one point – ‘snapping like a dog’ while trying to bite a crew member’s leg.

Rusanova appeared at court in Bangor, Maine, on Friday, charged with assault and interference with a flight crew. She will remain in custody before a detention hearing in a US district court on Monday.

In fact, Match.com might already have an in with her:

According to the FBI, Rusanova went to Los Angeles to visit a man she me on the internet and was returning to London on Wednesday when her flight was diverted to Bangor.

The 54-year-old is known in Britain as a respected artist, actress and author who mixes with the rich and famous at London society and charity events.

According to court documents, after her arrest she spent the night at Eastern Maine Medical Center for observation and is said to have told FBI agents: ‘It’s typical of me. I sometimes do crazy things.’

Sounds like someone’s getting six free months of Match!

Search me.

No, really.  Search me.

Thanks.

I gotta remind you; join Ed and I this Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network (Volume II, “The Headliners”) as we interview Christina Hoff Summers.

We’ll be talking about her most recent work, which she’ll be in town speaking about (explaining the “lack” of women in math, science and engineering and, more importantly, assailing “feminist” explanations of the issue), as well as her earlier work including the classic The War On Boys. 

Join us on Saturday. I’m looking forward to this.

Also – on April 11, we’ll be doing a warmup interview for the Minnesota Tea Party.  Stay tuned!

It must be a rough time to be a “feminist”.

Oh, there’s never a shortage of things to caterwaul about.  Modern Gender-Identity feminism is largely about the cultivation and political exploitation of grievances – “Angriculture”, to coin a term.

Still, at a time when women make up an almost 3-2 majority among college students, when the tide is turning even further against the rights of fathers in family court, and when the Obama administration has just pushed a law that’ll allow a woman who’s taken two or three years off the job over ten years to raise kids to sue a company for paying more to men who put the entire ten years in on the job, it must be getting harder and harder to be perpetually angry.

With one big exception.  There is one thing that men always have, that women never will.

Well, anyway, there was:

Minnetonka-based GoGirl has created a reusable “urination device” so ladies can go anytime, anywhere without p**sing all over their shoes or getting crabs on dirty toilet seats. What a relief.

Apparently this is old news in Europe, but Americans are clearly getting a kick out of it. It’s getting some play on national TV shows because frankly no one is too old for potty talk.

The device is marketed to “active women” who frankly don’t have time to sit down and pee. Or you know, they love being outdoors but hate squatting. We just want a couple for fun.

“We just want a couple for fun”?  I’d love to be a fly on the wall at those City Pages parties.

…during the Grammies last night:  The only way to make Kate Beckinsale any better…

…would be to wrap her in bacon.

That is all.

I haven’t followed Jeff Fecke much since he left the Minnesoros “Independent”.

But he (and Megan Carpenter) were on the Prager show yesterday, talking about their allegations that Prager advocates “marital rape” (by asking women to do, please, try to get into the mood once in a while).

Oh, you can listen to the show…

…or you can take Bogus Doug’s review and run with it.

The takedown:

Jeff Fecke on The Dennis Prager Show – Wednesday, January 7, 2008: “You know Dennis, I’ve been going back over my columns back over the break and I was wracking my memory to remember whenever I said you advocate marital rape. And I was wondering if you could cite it.”

The pin:

Jeff Fecke on his own blog, talking about his upcoming appearance on The Dennis Prager Show – Tuesday, January 6, 2008: “I will be on the Dennis Prager Show tomorrow — yes, you heard me right, the Dennis Prager Show — discussing his wonderful advice on how it’s a good wife’s duty to endure marital rape.”

I don’t agree with Prager on everything – capital punishment and the value of abstinence pledges jump to mind – but for goodness’ sake, if you’re gonna mix it up with the guy, bring you “A” game. Judging by the comments, even Jeff’s audience wasn’t impressed.

Ugh.

Bonus question:  how long ’til some “feminist” leftyblog calls Ms. Narayan a hero?

(Via Kouba.  Thanks.  Thanks for nothin’)

MLP at Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry and I have so many “one degree of separation” links, it’s hard to even count ’em all.

This story takes us back to my sophomore year of college:

Twenty six years ago last night, Jay and I were in Jamestown, North Dakota, at a Christmas party at the home of Jay’s boss, Mike Olsen, the athletic director of Jamestown college, where Jay was in the first year of his first job as a college head coach.Lots of info in that sentence, yet none of it pertinent to the story.

Jay was the head coach of JC’s basketball team.  He also taught the mandatory, perfuntory one-semester phy ed class that was part our general requirements.  So I took Tennis.  I don’t think he knew tennis any better than I did (my dad, by the way, was a tennis coach for many years).
But it was a fun class, mainly because Jay was a hoot. He was also the only other Southside Johnny fan in North Dakota.

I did not remember this bit and,indeed, don’t recall ever meeting MLP when I was at JC – but that’s not unusual.  Most College faculty didn’t hang around town that much.

Yes, we were in Jamestown. But what I didn’t tell you, what nobody knows yet, is that I was over nine months pregnant.

My due date was the 14th. Like most first timers, when my due date came and went, I simply assumed I would be pregnant forever. That’s right; it was all a cruel joke perpetrated by Mother Nature, that bitch! and that I, formerly svelte and athletic, was doomed to spend the rest of my life waddling about like an arthritic blimp.

So we went to a Christmas party at the home of Jay’s boss.

Where my water broke all over their living room couch.

EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!

On the other hand, I never liked Mike Olson much, so – cool!

(Although Olson brought JC a slew of national wrestling championships.  Might as well give the AD his due…)

Many entertaining tangents ensue.

Then:

Back to the past…Jay and I stayed at the party long enough for him to open his present, before we headed to the hospital to meet our future ohmygod, I just Carrie Bradshawed!! I loved the show Sex and the City, but come on! That girl was the worst writer ever. Cutesy the Twat should’ve been beaten to death with her own laptop.Anyway… Jamestown is small so it took us all of ten minutes to run home, grab my night bag and get to the hospital. We checked in at about 10:30 and Tyler Patrick was born around 3:00 a.m. That’s remarkably quick for a first timer, but in my family, slow as molasses. My Mom has nine kids and I had already logged more cumulative hours in labor than she ever would.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Jay decided that that was it; he could never put me through such an ordeal again. Yeah, that worked out. Have you met our three other kids?

Having babies is amazing. When you are in the thick of it, you swear nothing could possibly be worth the trouble. Then, at the height of the awful, they hand you the most wonderful, awesome, fascinating and beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, felt or imagined; your own child.

The world literally changes.

Okay, the world doesn’t change, the world doesn’t even notice. Here’s what’s important; You change.

Observations…:

If it had been up to me, Tyler would never have been allowed to do anything out of my sight. It was Jay who convinced me to let Tyler and Katie walk the four blocks to the ice rink at Lake of the Isles when they were five and seven. I stood at the window and watched the spot where they’d disappeared around the corner until they came back, two hours later. It was Jay who convinced me to let Tyler roller blade from our house near Lake of the Isles to Gramma’s house on Lake Harriet when he was nine. I made him carry identification and call me from my folk’s house the second he got there. It was Jay who got Ty the job as ballboy with the Timberwolves when he was in seventh grade, and Jay who decided Ty could catch a bus from his school to the Target Arena downtown. Boys need Dad’s to grow up to be men. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.In the blink of an eye, that’s what happens. They grow up to be men. I miss that skinny, excitable, energetic little boy with the huge blue eyes. Sometimes it makes me sad to know that he’s gone and he’s never coming back. But the truth is that every year he becomes more of the kid that I love.

Once they get through that teenage stuff, anyway.  Grrr.

This morning I found myself taking stock of all the adventures I have had in my adult life. Most recently, I have walked Broadway in New York from the depths of Ground Zero through the blaze of Times Square to the greenery of Central Park and the Upper West Side. I’ve hiked the historic streets of Washington DC, the white sand beaches of Kaanapali and Grand Cayman and floated in the mist under Niagara Falls.

While I am fortunate to have the means and opportunity to have gathered these vivid and treasured memories it was the mundane setting of the stacks of dry goods and produce under the grid of fluorescence at Cub Foods this morning that underscored their only common denominator.

It was there that I found myself flush with gratitude and good fortune as I watched my wife pluck a small jar of sea salt from the shelf.

Wise men know that no one bears the the scars of our existence more willingly or ably than our brides. I’ve always said “Show me a successful man and I will show you a man that married well.”

It is the dividends of a marriage to a wonderful woman, undeservedly so I might add, that make even the most prosaic activities a bounty to my being. I am in awe of the fierce but gentle love and concern she has for her brood and the tolerance she has for my foibles, not the least of which, my ego.

If I were King, she would be the crown that legitimizes my station.

As we walked the sterile isles of Cub, our over-burdened cart informing of the three at home, I realized how hard it will be someday when the littlest leaves the nest but at the same time looked forward to having her to myself again some day.

…and that is what I am thankful for this season.

Not that I need to dig that hard, of course.  But sometimes, things just fall into your lap.

From MPR’s “Loophole” blog, Jeff Horwich writes:

The other day at our weekly brainstorming meeting, a producer friend of ours mentioned that his female friends were all a-twitter about Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s new Chief of Staff)…Evidently the swooning has begun…[as in leftysphere articles] heralding “our sexy, angry, sexy, evil chief of staff designate.” A writer on Gawker invokes the phrase “the cute little guy.”

And someone has taken to Yahoo! Answers to pose the question “Anyone else think Rahm Emanuel is sexy?” The consensus, after 10 responses: Two snaps up.

I have never been prouder of my party.

Well, almost never.

I guess if Sarah Palin can be turned so instantly into a sex symbol, why not Rahm Emanuel?

Jeff Horwich is usually a very sharp guy.  I don’t know if caring for a newborn has warped his mind, or if it’s just working in the Taj Ma Kling day in and day out…

It’s no secret; I mix it up with a lot of the local leftybloggers. 

In most cases, it’s fairly good-natured stuff; it’s business, not personal.  I respect those of them that can write – Jeff Rosenberg and the former members of the late New Patriot kolkhoz, among a few others; some of them return the favor. 

 With others – most of them, in fact – we leave each other in splendid isolation.

Of course, some leftybloggers are a bunch of hysterical nutslaps.  These specimens take their dim, context-challenged whacks at me, and in return – in the rare cases when I can be bothered – I demolish whatever passes for their “points” between 5:30 and 5:35 AM, and then go have a bowl of oatmeal and put the laundry in the dryer.  I almost feel bad – I feel like I’m picking on the retarded kid, almost.  But it’s gotta be done.

Anyway, that’s been the pattern for a while now; the occasional nod, the broad ignore, the occasional gleeful pelting with rhetorical rocks and garbage.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

But there’s a new wrinkle on the horizon.

A few months back, I noted that there’d been long-standing rumors around Saint Paul that Senator and Mrs. Coleman had an “unconventional” marriage.  I wrote “It’s been an open secret forever in Saint Paul and Minnesota politics; Norm and his wife have a rather unconventional marriage”

And apparently more than a few leftybloggers have taken that offhanded mention – of a Saint Paul rumor – as some sort of unimpeachable source on the subject (example).  Of course, they blitzed on the context, not only of the “quote”, but of the post from which it came, which was to hammer on Fast Eddie Schultz’s boundless hypocrisy. 

So while I’m flattered (koff koff) to be considered a definitive, unimpeachable source on the subject, the simple fact is – I’m not.  I reported on a rumor that’d been rattling around my town for a while.  That is all.

So let me break this down for those of you who might have missed the blazingly obvious; the only fact that matters is that Senator and Mrs. Coleman are still married.

Look – I’m all about traditional marriage.  And let’s face it; if there were the faintest impetus to split, it’s not like being divorced is a barrier to anyone in this day and age; Rudy Giuliani and his admittedly colorful marital history were serious contenders for the presidency (indeed, in some ways a better contender than the one we got).  And yet, whatever the truth behind their marriage is (and once again let’s be clear here – its none of your damn business, and mine either, and if you ever, even once, said that the nation needed to “move on” during the Clinton Administration, you really need to “move on” yourself, and right now), they are together after a bazillion years. 

And that’s pretty cool.

Of course, Al and Franny Franken have also been married forever, and that, too, is a wonderful thing.

The difference, of course, is that Franken represents a party that piddles on the family.  I’m not talking the hoary “family values” cliches left over from the eighties – I don’t care that Franken wrote for Playboy, and that he cusses when he does his speaking engagements.  I don’t even care so much about gay marriage – I oppose it on religious grounds, but support civil unions – and while I believe that kids’ development is best served by hetero parents (because kids need male and female parents, all other things being equal), I also think adoptive gay parents are a better option for kids than, say, a single parent.

But the Democrat party piddles on the family in many more subtle ways than that.  It is utterly beholden to the teachers’ unions, and that union has done more than most forces in our lives to undercut the family and trivialize parents.  Hollywood (of which Franken is a part) plays its role as well.  And the stresses caused to middle-class families by relentless taxation do nobody any good – to say nothing of the catastrophic role that liberal politics have played on economically-disadvantaged families, especially African-American ones.

So as a general rule, Republican candidates are better for families than Democrat ones, no matter what their personal lives might be.

I said might.  Again, none of your damn business – but the Coleman marriage, unlike about half of the marriages in our society, has lasted. 

So all of you leftybloggers who are using me as a source on the subject of Coleman’s marriage?  Make sure you update your coverage to include this last, binding bit.  If you don’t, you’ll be guilty of wantonly selective quoting; you’ll be called on it. 

I can say that; apparently, I’m the authoritah.

Feminism, at one point, was about “empowering women”; making them legally and socially equal to men”, or things to that effect.  I’m usually loathe to try to actually define feminism, since for most of the past thirty years most “feminists” have been more concerned about the semiotics of defining degrees of victimization than about actually doing anything useful for women.

Of course, the Clinton years – where organized feminism dropped all pretense of being about women in favor of being about the politics of infanticide – stripped away a good chunk of the canard for those who were paying attention.  And if the organized “feminist” movement had any remaining credibility, the Palin episode should have fed it into the wood chipper.

“It’s not about actually being able to go where your merits take you“, the message has become; “it’s about abortion, and about institutionalizing victimization, and not a lot else.”

And so the kinds of women that feminism would have held out as dreams and ideals a generation ago – Sarah Palin, Condoleeza Rice and others – are excoriated by organized “feminism”; while they’ve succeeded, and done it their way (Rice by leading an academic and political life not tied to any particular guy, Palin by having a family and a wildly successful political career), they have neither supported the civil sacrament of infanticide nor equated federal funding and programs with achievement.

And so, behind the backs right in front of the eyes of Big Feminism a crop of real feminists – women who actually embody the higher original ideals of feminism, merit and equality – have grown up and taken their places and, to the mortification of Big Feminism, realized that the Empress has no clothes is so 1972:
R Tammy Bruce, writing at RCP:

Make no mistake – the Democratic Party and its nominee have created the powerhouse that is Sarah Palin, and the party’s increased attacks on her (and even on her daughter) reflect that panic.

The party has moved from taking the female vote for granted to outright contempt for women. That’s why Palin represents the most serious conservative threat ever to the modern liberal claim on issues of cultural and social superiority. Why? Because men and women who never before would have considered voting for a Republican have either decided, or are seriously considering, doing so.

They are deciding women’s rights must be more than a slogan and actually belong to every woman, not just the sort approved of by left-wing special interest groups.

Palin’s candidacy brings both figurative and literal feminist change. The simple act of thinking outside the liberal box, which has insisted for generations that only liberals and Democrats can be trusted on issues of import to women, is the political equivalent of a nuclear explosion.

Big Feminism traded a benevolent husband for a huge, uncompromising, unthinking, hidebound “movement”.  Little feminists, like Palin and Rice and a whoooole lot of women who are deserting the Democrats today, have worked out the details with hubby and – I get to be optimistic sometimes, don’t I? – ditched the movement.

Bob Collins over at NewsCut is going to be liveblogging MPR’s “Midmorning” show. The subject?:

Does a candidate’s gender really make a difference? That’s one of the questions we’re exploring this morning during the first hour of MPR’s Midmorning.

A better question, perhaps – to whom does it make a difference?

How many Hillary Clinton supporters out there want to vote for a woman – any woman? (Check out the podcast of Ed and my broadcast from the convention last Thursday, with the two Hillary supporters who’d switched to Palin while driving home from the DNC).

Still – read some of the “feminist” response to Palin’s nomination; it seems the only “gender” issue that matters to most of them is abortion.

Ironically, among the base at whom Palin was really aimed – the Reagan coalition of 1980 – Palin could have been male, female, black, Hindu, or damn near anything, as long as he/she conveyed the three emerging messages of this campaign:

1. Flyover land matters
2. The GOP needs to be the party of integrity
3. America – *%$$ yeah!

(Along with “Drill oil, split atoms, create energy”, of course).

…allow me to submit the following piece about an ad campaign for…

…Wrangler jeans.

Money quote:

This is a despicable campaign. It fetishizes murder and violence against women. To sell blue jeans. The people making the ads should be ashamed, though Copyranter doubts they are.

That’s right; Jeff Fecke is right about something.

What an incredibly creepy ad campaign.

To bring the universe back into alignment; I suspect he’s dismally wrong about American Carol.  But I’ll let you know when I come back from the premiere.

More later.

UPDATE 2/8/2010 – Greetings, visitors from “Also Spake Zustra!”  I have a special message for you at the bottom of this post:

Original post follows:

———-

I don’t read the blog “Feministing” for reasoned, rational commentary (via KAR).

Indeed, I rarely read it at all.

As the Twin Cities’ best feminist, it’s depressing, really, to see the perversions that pass for “Feminism” among some of these people.

But you learn to accept that as a given after a while.

What’s funny, though, is catching the occasional dispatch from Cloud Nine.

Academic humanities departments,nationwide, are solidly left-of-center, politically and socially. While my English major advisor indeed, started me on the road to conservatism, we were both outliers. It’s entirely possible to go through a career in humanities, I suspect, and ever have to confront conservatism as anything but a set of stereotypes that you mock with your colleagues.

So this bit here, from a Teaching Assistant at an unnamed graduate program, is interesting; it’s a cry from the heart of a woman having to face…people who approach the world differently than her.

And it’s heart-rending indeed:

I’m a graduate student, teaching a freshman-level writing class. I’ve been a feminist pretty much from the moment my mom popped me out. Anyway, I always lived in a bubble–thinking that the way I thought was simple common sense. Women are equal. Birth control is good. Yada yada yada. I realized as a I grew up, however, that the liberal home life I knew was not the reality for the rest of my peers.

Of course, for many people that can be a growth experience.

Question for the class: How did/does our author perceive this?

And then, last fall, I began teaching composition to university freshmen. My students are, by and large, white, affluent, politically and religiously conservative. To many of them, feminism is a bad word and young, female teachers are pushovers and useless.

To be fair to the students, if this post is any indication, it may not be a group assessment.

Maybe it’s the age gap, as I am 26 to their 18. Maybe it’s the cultural gap, as I am in the deep-South, but spent most of my formative years in more urban, liberal regions of the globe. There are a lot of maybes here.

Yes, indeed. Let’s keep going:

• Maybe you are a cultural bigot.
• Maybe your preening sense of entitlement has left you believing that it’s your way or the highway.

It’s a start.

I loved this bit:

I was making my rounds amongst my students, assisting them at their computers, answering questions, etc. I was sharing an anecdote with a student about my own writing/process, and she (SHE!) asked me what my focus was. I told her–technology and feminist scholarship–and then… the eyes. I heard a short intake of breath. Her eyes grew wide. “Oh my god! Are you a feminist!?” She said the word feminist just the way I say “rapist.”

I nodded. “Yes, I am. Equal rights are a great thing.” She laughed awkwardly, and I moved on.

Who told this young woman that feminism is a bad thing? Seriously–who? She’s a bright woman. She was a fantastic student. But just the same–to her, what I am, is a monster. I don’t feel particularly monstrous.

And she’s not. What she is is a caricature – so much so that a small part of me still thinks “she” is a parody. Feminism – gender identity feminism, to be exact, and as distinct from equity feminism, which is what I believe in – has become a caricature, a caricature that real, “bright women” and “fantastic students”, the people who will go on to productive lives in business, government, society and/or family as they choose, mock without mercy.

It’s a bottomless wellspring of material for some of us. So I’m gladdened to see…

And next Monday, a whole new round begins–and this year, I’m doing more socially-conscious assignments than last year. Could be interesting. But I realize now, that if I don’t ask them pointed questions about how they view the world (be it television, themselves, etc), no one else will, either.

…that not only is the caricature continuing, but it’s growing:

They’ve already made it 18 years without challenging the status quo. Imagine that.

By not becoming Mao-frenching, entitlement-mongering semiotics-of-identity zombies under the influence of the author and the vast majority of her colleagues, they are pantsing the status quo.

Kudos to them.

———-

SPECIAL ADDENDUM FOR “ZUSTRA” READERS: Yeah, my whole “Twin Cities’ Best Feminist” bit really got under some peoples’ skins.  Can they not see how absurdly they were being played?  “Best” Feminist?  Really?

And yet it’s kept the same pack of mental midgets (of both purported genders) howling with rage for years, now.  As if on cue.

I’m trying to find a concept as smug, tautological and dim-witted as “mansplainer” to apply to these – words fail – simpering infants who can’t accept the idea that there’s a rational B-side to their ideas.  But I can’t think of anything that dumb.

Anyway, thanks for stopping!

Ryan from Rambling Rhodes Back Porch Banjo Strumming – long-time MOBster and one of the world’s great scatological bloggers, is getting married today.

Best wishes!

In related news, Kool Aid Report has exclusive rights to the photos.  No, not all that safe for work, on the off-chance you needed the reminder as re KAR. 

Proof that G-d not only exists, but cares for us deeply:

“We are sad to announce the engagement of Salma Hayek and Francois-Henri Pinault has been canceled,” publicist Cari Ross said in a statement. “There will be no further comment.”

If you. Catch. My.  Drift. 

Game, set, match.

Like most Americans, I like to think I’d vote for the right person for President. Indeed, the record is incontrovertible; in every single election since I turned 18, I have, without exception, in retrospect picked the best candidate.

The factors I use to choose my candidates for President (indeed, for every office) are the ones I wrote here, and they always will be.

“Gender” and “Race” are not two of them. I will vote for a black handicapped lesbian conservative over a white male liberal weenie, early and often, every time.

Now, as it happens, most female politicians are Democrats – DFL in Minnesota – and ergo unacceptable. Not because they have ovaries, but because their politics weaken the nation, the economy, the culture and the family.

I suspect Lori “DFL Flak” Sturdevant will read that and find a sexist under the rock. To Lori, writing on behalf of the masses of “feminists” who want a woman, any woman, in office, gender is the subject.

(Provided the woman is suitably left of center):

Aviva Breen, the former director of the Legislature’s Commission on the Economic Status of Women, grimaced when asked about the presidential race. Her expression better matched the reality of Clinton’s situation than did the candidate’s own bravado after winning the meaningless West Virginia primary the night before.    

“This was our chance to vote for a woman for president,” Breen sighed, sounding resigned to the nomination of Barack Obama by the Democratic Party. Clinton “was the only one from our generation to come so far. … There’s no one else in the wings.”

And why do you suppose that is?

Why is it that after a generation of female pundits exhorting (liberal) women to run for office (as liberals), we are down to one female contender – and she’s just a legacy, to boot?

Why, oh why?

The answer is closer than you think:

Moments later, as if in response, trumpets sounded the “Rocky” fanfare, and the annual event’s traditional march began.

Into the cavernous hall processed female elected officials, each of them the recipient of campaign cash from the organization formerly called the Minnesota Women’s Campaign Fund.

It was an impressive assembly — both the several score elected officials on the stage and the 750 supporters who cheered their arrival. Perhaps more notable, however, were some conspicuous absences. Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark and several chairs of key legislative committees couldn’t come to Minneapolis that noon. They were embroiled in negotiations in and around the governor’s office at the Capitol.

In other words, they were right where the feminists who founded womenwinning 26 years ago always hoped elected women would be — in the thick of the making of state government’s biggest decisions.

Sturdevant is a fossil from the age when there were two parties in Minnesota – DFL and DFL-Lite – so we can forgive her the omission; that last bit should have read “they were right where the feminists who founded womenwinning 26 years ago always hoped elected women would be — carrying water for the nannystate.”

There are are, and have been, scads of highly capable female politicians, of course; in Minnesota…:

• Joan Growe – “moderate”, to be sure, but a highly capable politician
• Carol Molnau – partisan bickering about MNDoT aside, a highly accomplished political fixer in her own right, who’s held up her end of a Pawlenty Administration that has been like the 101st Airborne at Bastogne; holding out against incredible odds, giving much worse than it gets.
• Pat Pariseau – one of the best trench-fighters in the Minnesota Senate. Indeed, many of the GOP’s notables in the Senate are women. 
• Of course, Michele Bachmann, after a disproportionally-successful career in the Minnesota Senate, went on to win by the biggest margin of any winning Republican during the slaughter of ’06, and will likely do even better this year – against a full court media press.

Nationally?  Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Condi Rice got farther on the basis of their accomplishments than any other women in American history.  Alaska governor Sarah Palin is on the fast track to bigger things; in ’12 or ’16, she is a solid contender to be on the top of the ticket.  And while Christine Todd Whitman is far from a conservative’s darling, she wasn’t chopped liver, either.  There are more, of course.

Of course, womenwinning doesn’t want to think about any of them.  They’re conservative.  And so even though each of those women has a better story to tell the young women and girls of America than virtually anyone in the womenwinning camp, to them (and to Lori Sturdevant) they don’t exist. 

Indeed, I’ll stand by my prediction from 2002; the first female president of the United States will be a conservative Republican. 

Gender parity is still a long way off at the Capitol. The state has yet to elect its first female governor. But the 2007-08 Legislature is 34.8 percent female. That’s a respectable fifth-highest such percentage in the country.

If gender-based bean-counting (and strict adherence to the DFL’s audaciously-hopeful statism) is the biggest measure…

I’m not be obtuse in saying that, by the way.  Note Sturdevant’s next bit:

With swelling female ranks came more female clout. That’s particularly evident in the House, where a woman has the top job and women head 12 committees.

So what is “female clout”?

I’ve noticed this from any number of female DFL pols, including my own state legislative reps, Alice “the Phantom” Hausman and Ellen “womynandtheirchildren” Anderson; the notion that females are a unified, monolithic bloc with female issues and a female agenda.

Of course, when pressed to name a “female” issue other than abortion – which is far from monolithically decided, even among women?  During the ’04 campaign, polls showed that while the pro-“choice” position dominated among unmarried women and women with no children (the core of the liberal feminist vote), among married women with children it was a decided minority position.

So – are women a “special interest group” based simply on their gender?

Is this a good thing?

If so – should men start voting based on gender issues?

Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups…

On behalf of all of us Fives, I say “You’re welcome, Nines”.

The article is written by Jeanna “The Most Insightful Writer in History” Bryner, who deserves thanks from a nationful of schlemiels.

Because sometimes there’s just no way around it.

As the Twin Cities’ best feminist, I get a little queasy when I see some of what passes for “feminism” these days.

The most notable thing about this campaign, of course, is that it inevitably pits two key “identity politics” camps against (in this case) an older white guy – but, first, against each other.

And, to some – the WaPo’s reliably shallow and shrill Linda Hirschman, in this case – there’s just no getting past the identity politics:

Maria Shriver sure has great hair. Stepping up to the microphone at a girl-power rally in Los Angeles on Feb. 3, California‘s first lady tossed her tawny tresses with authority and instructed Golden State women to vote for Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary on Super Tuesday. So urgent was the matter, she said, that she had come to the rally “straight from my daughter’s riding lesson.”

Two days later, working-class California women, many of whom can’t even afford to give their daughters health care, much less riding lessons, ignored Shriver’s mane-shaking advice and voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton by a margin of 2 to 1, even as many of their better-off sisters fell into lockstep with the Kennedy heiress.

And there we have one of the most puzzling conundrums of the 2008 Democratic contests. Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They’re the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.

The simple reason, of course, is that America is not a nation of blocs.

Well, that’s not true.  America has tons of blocs.  80% of active-duty military, most married women with children, white married males with kids, engineers, Cuban-Americans, Southerners and Westerners, businesspeople and evangelicals vote Republican.  Most teachers, union members, unmarried women, drug dealers and professors  vote Democrat.

What do those “blocs” have in common?

Well, as opposed to “women” and “black Americans”, they’re matters of choice.  One chooses to be each of those things (even “Cuban-American”; the status started and continues with a choice).

For the Clinton campaign, this is devastating. A year ago, chief strategist Mark Penn proclaimed that the double-X factor was going to catapult his candidate all the way to the White House.

At the time, I figured Mark Penn was an idiot.  Apropos nothing much.

Instead, the women’s vote has fragmented. The only conclusion: American women still aren’t strategic enough to form a meaningful political movement directed at taking power. Will they ever be?

If “women” (womyn?) want to marginalize “themselves”, “they” should feel free.

Hirschman seems bedeviled by the notion that woman are people, not X-chromosome-seeking vote-bots:

I can imagine the strategists for the senator from Illinois thinking, “What’s that song in Verdi‘s ‘Rigoletto’?” Women are fickle.

Turns out it’s true.

From the moment the primary season began, the group “women” divided along racial lines. Black women have backed Obama by more than 78 percent. But even after subtracting that group, white women (including Hispanics) are still the single largest demographic in the party, at 44 percent. If they voted as a bloc, it would take only a little help from any other bloc to elect the female candidate. White women favor Clinton. So why is she trailing as the contest heads to Ohio and Texas?

The answer is class. As of Feb. 19, the day of the Wisconsin primary, ABC pollster Gary Langer found that white women with a college degree had favored Clinton in the primaries by 13 percent up to that point. Among less educated women, meanwhile, she commanded a robust 38-point lead. But each passing week since Super Tuesday has seen a further erosion in support for the senator from New York among the educated classes. In Wisconsin, she won a minority of college-educated women. And unless there’s some sort of miracle turnaround in Ohio and Texas, this is what may cost her the Democratic nomination.

In other words, drat the luck, women – even Tic women – aren’t votebots!

For the chattering classes – and there is no chatter-ier columnist in American than Linda Hirschman – “women’s politics” all starts with abortion, extends through “swag”, and ends…well…

This isn’t the class divide I would have predicted a year ago. Among women, the obvious thing would be for lower-income, non-college-educated white and black women to line up behind the candidate with the more generous social platform. Both Clinton and Obama have generous platforms, but Clinton’s health-care plan is more ambitious, and she was the first to propose mandatory paid family leave (which mostly women take).

But Hirschman can’t resist the snooty (emphasis):

But women, black and white, stubbornly refuse to behave according to a strict model of economic self-interest. Black women of all income levels have gone for Obama.

Even before Wisconsin, a plurality of elite white women split off from their poorer counterparts to vote for Obama. So did many of their opinion leaders — Shriver and her Kennedy cousin Caroline, and powerful female governors including Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

And to Hirschman, it’s just unconscionable that women would think (or, given Obama’s dearth of considered policy, “think”) beyond their chromosomes:

So many feminists’ turn to solidarity with their own class is a surprise.

Because, Linda Hirschman, for women who you’d probably not call “elite” – and men, for that matter, too – it’s the pocketbook, stupid.

I’d tell you to read the whole thing, but all that’d do is get you depressed.

Double-Income, No Kids Power Couples are the first people in history to discover that children will mess up your perfect designer house!

WHEN Jacqueline Brown and her husband, Gavin Friedman, were in their early 30s, they lived in a condominium in Santa Monica, Calif., with a black leather Ikea couch Mr. Friedman had bought for law school, a few modest pieces from Pier 1 Imports and assorted hand-me-down furnishings. Within a few years, though, having acquired professional and financial stability — both were litigation associates at prominent law firms — they bought a house in Cheviot Hills, an affluent neighborhood in West Los Angeles, and began remodeling and decorating.

During two renovations, each costing more than $100,000, they built a two-sided fireplace to separate the living and dining rooms, put in a wine cellar and installed a sleek maple and granite kitchen. They bought molded-wood chairs in the Arne Jacobsen style, Murano glass pendant lamps and a custom walnut entertainment unit. Ms. Brown, who had become obsessed with interior design in law school, poured heart and soul into the projects.

But just as Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman were establishing their first truly grown-up residence — she was 38, he 37 — Ms. Brown gave birth to their first child, Harrison, a boy who turned out as bouncing as most.

Suddenly they were confronted with a question that had never before occurred to them: given the way baby gear and toys take over households, the uncivilized habits of toddlers and the dangers posed by sharp-edged contemporary furniture, could Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman continue to live their high-design dream?

Hahahahahahahaha you can’t, yuppie slapnutzes! hahahahahahahaha!

…when the investment has been not in cribs or other nursery furniture but in the classic “double income, no kids” fantasy of a pristine, high-style home for grown-ups, the transition can be hardMs. Brown and Mr. Friedman — who of course were thrilled to have a child, like all the later-in-life parents interviewed for this article — were also determined not to let Harrison “take control of the house,”

Bwahahahaha!  “Determined”, were we?  Oh, you slay me.

OTHERS, like Debra Cherney, 49, and Hartley Bernstein, 56, were more resigned to giving up control…the couple realized that they would need to create a designated play space in their prewar Park Avenue apartment. Still, the room they sacrificed — the formal dining room — was tough.

“I’m pretty sensitive aesthetically, and it does something for me when I look at a pretty room,” Ms. Cherney said. “Looking at what the room used to be was the visual equivalent of listening to Bach or Mozart. Now it’s the visual equivalent of listening to Barney.

Well, Dammit all to hell!

She felt the full impact when she and Mr. Bernstein put their 18th-century mahogany dining table and chair set in storage. “When I bought the table I was envisioning these beautiful, lovely dinners with fine china,” she said. “Once you have kids and once you give up those things, it was like, ‘Who was I kidding?’ I remember thinking this room will look nice again — in about 18 years.”

Well, Deb and Hartley, that’s what boarding school is for, now, isn’t it?

The issue of safety, too, can pose vexing choices for parents in thrall to design. Even before Kipp Cheng and his partner of 15 years, Mark Jarecke, arrived home with their son, Beckett, last March, they could see that many of the furnishings in their Maplewood, N.J., colonial house, including a set of four Barcelona chairs and a glass-top Noguchi coffee table, were accidents waiting to happen. But they weren’t eager to act.

“We are both small-town guys who lived in the city and tried to establish an aesthetic point of view that was largely modernist and minimalist,” said Mr. Cheng, 40, a playwright and a publicist for the American Association of Advertising Agencies. “But when you become parents, you kind of have to throw that out the window.”

Or raise a modernist, minimalist kid.  Y’know.

As for the coffee table, they avoided doing anything until Beckett gave them no choice: while learning to walk last summer, he used it as his main training prop. “He’d cruise and trip and hit his face on the table’s edge,” Mr. Cheng recalled.

Mr. Jarecke initially refused to discuss parting with or altering the table in any way, but they eventually compromised and decided to wrap the edge of the top in foam. “As I’m taping it,” Mr. Cheng said, “I’m saying, ‘I’m taping over what makes the difference between this being a Noguchi table and a Kmart table.’ ” Mr. Jarecke was even more distraught. “It transformed this beautiful modernist piece of furniture into a piece you’d find in a ’70s rec room,” he said.

Simply ghastly!  The Horror!

THE HOR-ROR!

FOR some design-minded parents, certain compromises are too much.

In 2004, Bob Stratton, a design technologist who specializes in home automation, and his wife, Sandra McLean, 50, a food activist and writer, bought a former tool and die factory in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and set about turning it into a two-story, 4,000-square-foot loftlike home appropriate for themselves and their son, Vin, and daughter, Fia, then 2 and 5….“They can play with a toy in the main living area, but it has to go away when they’re done,” Ms. McLean said. “I’m very concerned with what’s in my visual space.

Just as a matter of principle, I think people who refer to their “crap” as their “visual space” need to be beaten with sticks.

She also refused to babyproof furniture when the children were younger. She was “never one of those mothers” who put safety corners on coffee tables, she said. “That stuff is just gross, and I don’t feel you have to sacrifice living space to that degree.” And she decided not to install wire railings on the open side of the floating walnut staircase Mr. Stratton designed to connect the first- and second-floor living spaces.

“We couldn’t bear it,” she said. “It was too ugly. So basically what we did was we trained the kids to hold onto the handrail, and it’s worked. No one’s ever fallen off.”

I’d love to interview those kids in twenty years.

“What’s it like, growing up feeling like a museum piece?”

…and piss off a terrorist!

(As a special Val’s day present, I direct you to one of my favorite Valentine’s Day stories)