Why I’m a bread and butter voter

August 20, 2008 · Filed Under Feminism, Politics · Comment 

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this in the Guardian: “For American women now, money is the ultimate women’s issue. Not choice.”


“The way Washington, DC non-profit organisations, political campaigns and especially the media package the interests of women voters is a case in micro-inequities, those little acts of discrimination and stereotyping that add up to a lot. It’s years of campaigns telling us that single women don’t vote much, and when they do, they care only about sexual politics, education and kid issues (in reality, they don’t even make the top five). It’s the incomprehensible recasting of the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign as being about gender dynamics, when in fact she spent of most of her time talking about the economy.

Women control 84 cents of every household dollar spent, and we earn about 43% of a two-partner household income. Which makes us anxious. Which means that many of us will vote on the economy in November. But we will vote on our economy – responsible governance and helpful public policy that allows us to do what we want and need to do: work. I feel it’s safe to say most women would pay higher taxes for a more effective government. We won’t pay to support interest payments on the Iraq war. Women are traditionally more open to an active government, and we believe government can do good, according to a 2004 Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote poll.”

If the candidates want to win women’s votes, they need to address women’s economic concerns in a meaningful and consistent way.”


I miss Hillary Clinton’s economic voice in this presidential race. I don’t want McCain to run away with economy voters just because he sounds more in touch on the economy. And so I read this article from the AP on Obama’s tour through Virginia today with great interest (and AP, I hope I am within your character limit when quoting):
Obama said it was wrong that the Iraqi government has been sitting on billions of dollars in oil revenue while the U.S. spends billions to rebuild the country.

“We should be using some of that money to rebuild Virginia, laying roads, building broadband lines and putting people back to work,” Obama said.

“If you give me that opportunity, if you give me that chance, I will fight for you every single day,” he pledged. “I’ll wake up every day in that White House thinking about those people in Martinsville.”


I believe women voters see through McCain’s posturing on economic policy, despite some Republican memes that Obama has “declared war on highly motivated working women.” This is code for GOP claims that since Obama will raise taxes on very high-earners, the women among them will just “choose to stay home” instead of earning (especially when you figure in child care costs- well here’s an idea- let’s make child care more affordable and supported in this country!). This is specious in the extreme. In fact, McCain fares worse among women than any presidential candidate since Bob Dole in 1996. In the August 13 Pew Poll, Obama holds a 51-38 lead among women over McCain.

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It’s the new McCain: Titty jokes and Bush smirks

August 7, 2008 · Filed Under Feminism, Internet Media, Politics · Comment 

Cross-posted from the Huffington Post
From Politico:

“...at a biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, John McCain appears to have volunteered his wife for a topless beauty pageant:
McCain felt so comfortable at the event that he even volunteered his wife for the rally’s traditional beauty pageant, an infamously debauched event that’s been known to feature topless women.
“I encouraged Cindy to compete,” McCain said to cheers. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”
As a reader emails, “Miss Buffalo Chip has ‘been known to feature topless women’ in the same way that Guns and Ammo magazine has been known to feature firearms.” Indeed, an ESPN.com columnist describes it as “occasionally bottomless.”

I’ve written before about McCain’s risque line-towing, but I’m wondering if new campaign advisor Steve Schmidt (who helped foster the “I’d rather have a beer with Bush” phenomenon in 2004 and made John Kerry French) has been taking McCain out to Hooters in Virginia Beach as part of message training.

Between the belligerent yodeling—”We have to drill here and drill now“—and offering up his wife for a cash prize I’m wondering if this is McCain’s attempt to channel the elusive white male voter he so needs to win?

More at Huffington Post....

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What I learned from (hot chick on Wired magazine cover) Julia Allison

July 21, 2008 · Filed Under Feminism, Internet Media, Psychology · Comment 

What kind of ambition drives a woman to appear in a glamour shot on the cover of a nerd magazine under the caption, “Become Internet famous (even if you’re nobody)…Julia Allison and the secrets of self-promotion.” Did you all see the recent Wired cover with Julia Allison? Women on Wired are rare enough, and I read the piece with curiosity after ripping it away from my husband. Turns out, Allison is the Paris Hilton of the Internet. Through Twitter and constant blogging of her sexy twentysomething life, she’s famous. I was half jealous and half disgusted. When I was a moderately sexy twentysomething, it never would have occurred to me to make hay from my exploits. Who would take you seriously? And how could your ambition be that naked? Then I read the follow up email Julia sent to Wired editor Chris Anderson. Explaining her path to celebrity, Allison writes,



“The true goal was never “fame” at all. I wanted two things: 1) editors to publish my work, 2) people to read my work. I wanted to be like Nora Ephron – able to exist creatively with an audience and relative financial freedom…”



Ah-ha: classic female tactic. Allison claims her ambition is driven by a larger purpose and to fulfill a larger more socially acceptable role. She doesn’t want to be famous for nothing- she wants to be a writer. But still, I have to give the girl credit for creativity. It’s really hard to break through to that editorial page (84% of op-eds are written by men). If Julia Allison can get her body of work quickly noticed by using the virtues of other body parts, well, then I have to consider that. It’s not often you hear a woman so baldly cop to wanting to get ahead. Recently, I have heard many young women leaders at Harvard Business School protest their ambition. At the BlogHer conference, with hundreds of super-successful women in deep discussion, I didn’t hear the talk turn to personal ambition (even in the “Blog to Book” seminar, whose premise was that the hundreds of folks in the room had enough ambition to want to publish a book). Yesterday, a friend who is senior executive at a large company described herself as wanting to physically “shield herself’ from the naked ambition of another colleague when the two women were granted face time with the multinational corporation’s big boss. My own ambition seems to have gone on summer vacation, and I can’t reach her no matter how hard I try.


Psychiatrist and author Anna Fels notes that women have a difficult time copping to desiring personal recognition, and accepting it when it comes. Not the affirmation that comes with fulfilling a role, such as being a doctor or lawyer, and not the affirmation that comes with being part of a mission or larger being that is important. No, the “highly individualized” recognition that comes from just being you. Is Julia Allison an aberration or is this a generational thing?


I went to a panel at BlogHer that featured fantastic women executives in the new/old media space. Stacy Morrison, the editor in chief of Redbook magazine, also wears her ambition on her sleeve. I’ve seen her speak twice now, and it’s remarkable. Her language manages to be both collaborative and baldly ambitious at the same time. She regularly peppers he speech with phrases like, “I knew I wanted to take over the magazine when…” and refers to “her magazine” with the emphasis often reserved for one’s children. But Morrison also said her job is to be “the professional empath” for the 10 million women who read Redbook. This woman is clear, and her ambition, too, is couched in her role as (I’m imagining how she’d paraphrase it here) interpreter of the hopes and dreams of her readers.


I asked Morrison about her phrasing- I said I had literally never heard a woman speak so ambitiously before. She explained it’s because of her clarity of purpose. She’s known what she wants to do with her life since she was a little girl. This “luxury” of clarity means she is unambivalent about being ambitious. She doesn’t need to apologize for it, or temper her language, because she is doing exactly what she has to do, and that is the way it must be.


A major light bulb went on when I heard this. Do I feel less ambitious because I am conflicted about what I am meant to do, to be, on this earth? If I were less ambivalent, and if I knew how I fit in a larger puzzle, would I be ok with saying, “I want to be rich, have a book and maybe a radio show and be a damn good mother”?


cross posted from BlogHer.com

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Cobbler has no shoes

July 20, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized · Comment 

My website is in a bad place. I know. I’m in a major transition: career, life stage. And thus, the site is in flux, my bio’s in flux, all is flux. I will soon have a lovely, frequently updated site. Until then, remember me fondly and read me elsewhere!

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Zimbabwe’s dead as Mugabe prepares to assume the “throne”

June 28, 2008 · Filed Under Politics · Comment 

The Chicago Tribune has a very moving article. Mugabe’s people have been killing members of the opposition party and we worry about our presidential candidates making poor jokes…

 Kalyn sent me these links from Field to Feast, an African food blog- a post from April with hope:

“A week ago today, the citizens of Zimbabwe went to the polls. They emerged proudly displaying their pinkie fingers, stained pink from the ink used to mark their votes. Excited whispers of change wafted on the air like errant plastic bags, shreds of new information were panned like gold, and I saw – for the first time in my three years here – a flicker of hope on the faces of people in the street.

Now, a week has past. The ink has disappeared. And so has the flicker of hope. As the delay in the release of Presidential results continues and the political posturing takes a hard-line turn, a veil of resignation has again descended and I can almost tangibly feel people looking inside themselves, trying to determine how they are possibly going to dig a deeper well of patience.

What is going to happen”?

And then, a post from today:

I ended my last post with a wish that the flicker of hope I saw in the days after the 29 March election would reignite. I was wrong, however, to assume the flame had disappeared. It remained a smolder low to the ground, tended by brave people, despite the boots and sticks and metal rods trying to snuff it out.

Yes, blogging about food still seems trivial to me. But, it also seems like something I need to do to take a mental break from thinking about the situation here. So, after two months, with this post, I am back! I’ll be consciously avoiding any discussion about the political or humanitarian situation here (which you can read about here, here and here), mostly for my own sanity. So today, I will tell you only one thing about Zimbabwe – a story about the country’s indigenous nyimo bean.

 

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Morra Aarons-Mele