Completely Unnecessary

At least one ward of the Mormon church is activating against Illinois’ HB 2234, which would provide civil unions in the state (h/t Paul). Such unions would be available to hetero and homosexual couples, ad would provide the same rights and responsibilities as marriage.

An email sent around to ward members encouraged them to call state legislators because the bill would, ‘create grounds for rewriting all social mores,’ amongst other evils.

The bill passed out of committee yesterday despite the church’s input.

As they recommend, however, it’s a good idea to call your legislators and express your support for HB 2234.

While you’re at it, also tell them to support HB 2354, the Reproductive Health and Access Act.

The bill mandates that state and sub-governmental agencies cannot deny women contraception or abortions before fetal viability (with an exception for the health of the mother); ensures funding for reproductive health for low-income/medicaid patients; and mandates that public schools provide medically-accurate comprehensive sex ed.

All lovely things.

You can find your state legislators here.

In national news, after Vitter’s amendment to block Title X money to Planned Parenthood, Sen. DeMint offered an amendment that would block a rule re-allowing pharmaceutical companies to provide low-cost birth control to universities and health clinics. DeMint complained it was an ‘earmark’, despite the fact that it offered no money from the federal government, just re-allowed companies to offer cheap bc at their own cost.

The Wicker amendment sought to limit US funding to the UN Population Fund, which provides family planning for women around the world. Republicans continue to argue that the UNPFA provides funds for coercive abortion in China, when even Bush’s own investigators found that it does no such thing. Wicker’s amendment was defeated.

Ugh.

I mean, yay, but ugh that we have to keep having these kind of debates over legal medications and family planning programs that reduce abortions. Hard to argue that pro-life Republicans are really interested in preventing abortions.

In international sad news that really has nothing to do with any of this, Zimbabwean PM Morgan Tsvangirai was injured and his wife killed in a car wreck today.

The truck driver that hit their car (in the middle of a convoy) said he fell asleep whilst driving.

The MDC will investigate independently, especially after their videographer, who rushed to the scene, was arrested and his camera confiscated.

My heart goes out to Tsvangiai, who continues to stand strong after a year of unbelievable tragedy.

Vaguely Related

• Zimbabwe Election Redux
• Today in Lady News

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old American reporter, has been arrested in Iran on charges of ‘illegal’ reporting and is being detained in an undisclosed location.

Scary stuff, but perhaps some key facts from Saberi’s distinguished resume can help assuage our fears.

A former Miss North Dakota, who’s been working in Iran as a freelance reporter, is being detained in undisclosed location there.

And that’s the actual lede from the story running on MediaBistro’s TVNewser.

We don’t learn until the second paragraph that Saberi has ‘reported for NPR, “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”, and Fox News Channel, among others as the [three-year] Tehran bureau chief for Feature Story News.’

But I can’t just blame MediaBistro (though delivering it to my inbox made an impression), as a number of news orgs have decided that Ms Saberi’s 12-year-old pageantry trumps her professional resume.

The original NPR story doesn’t mention the 1997 Miss North Dakota win until the seventh par and as part of her biography. Yet every other iteration I’ve found of the original story leads with this pretty irrelevant piece of information.

To give MediaBistro its due, at least they included a useful headline with her current profession: ‘American Reporter Detained in Iran’. North Dakota’s KFYR and Radio Free Europe cut right to the chase with, ‘Former Miss Dakota Arrested/Detained in Iran,’ respectively.

But perhaps it’s all NPR’s fault for posting her winning pageant photo in the first place, since it keeps popping up.

It appears that Saberi was initially arrested for buying a bottle of wine (which may or may not have been an excuse for the arrest), and is now being held for news gathering after her journalist credentials were revoked by the country in 2006. Iran is now discussing her detainment with the press, which is an improvement.

National and international news orgs have also found more pictures of Ms Saberi, which possibly accounts for the decreasing importance of her pageant title.

Yet, somehow I don’t think a male freelancer arrested in Iran (where, coincidentally, he was also finishing up his Masters in Iranian studies and international relations, as well as completing a book on Iranian culture) would be described as ‘Former All-State Quarterback’ by multiple news outlets.

I sincerely hope Ms Saberi is allowed to return to her studies soon.

And let her example serve as a reminder to women everywhere: burn every picture from your pageant/cheerleading/whatever days if you plan on being in the public sphere in any way, as they will almost assuredly appear in every story about you, no matter how irrelevant to the subject matter.

(I just hope no one ever gets a hold of my Academic Decathlon Swimsuit Competition photos! Embarrassing!)

Vaguely Related

• The Media Introduces Dana Perino!
• Quentin Bryce: Gender-Tagging the New Governor-General

…and a nation mourns.

I actively don’t care about Michael Phelps’ smoking marijuana.

(You can tell because I’m writing a blog post about it. As you are no doubt painfully aware, I never write about anything of substance.)

Seriously, have we nothing else to worry about? Economic collapse, perhaps? Multiple, horrible wars, hmmm?

The NYT today devoted several prominent links to a story about a 23-year-old smoking pot, including an analysis of how Phelps’ disciplinary action should have been handled.

Is there no real news because everyone is just too sad?

Because here’s something wretched if you want it:

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers [in Iraq] has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

And meanwhile, Kellogg will come sniffing back around their champion as soon as the smoke clears (too soon?), and ‘rich, white American male engages in recreational drug use’ will continue to baffle me as a multiple day news item.

ps - While I usually make a point of linking to things I talk about, I broke the links to the NYT’s coverage; no pageviews for this ’story’ from me.

Not that you guys are very clicky anyway. (It’s as though I pointlessly rehash things you already knew about…)

pps- Um, thanks for no one telling me I’d spelled ‘athlete’ wrong for an entire week.

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I’m a bit tired of blogging today, so I’m just passing you over to Jezebel, which has a nice photo of the signing and a transcript of Obama’s remarks.

It’s pretty great that this bill was Obama’s first - may there be more lovely moments like this to come.

Vaguely Related

• Today in Lady News
• The Media Introduces Dana Perino!

It’s all about compromise in Washington.

House Republicans were all in a dither about the $200 million in contraception and health spending (that would have saved $700 million), so Obama (we hope) begrudgingly asked House Democrats to remove the offending item.

And in the spirit of collegial compromise, every single Republican voted in favor of against the bill (244-188).

Yay!

Okay - first, Obama and Pelosi should ram that contraception bill straight through the House and Senate - hanging every Blue Dog who won’t toe the party line on the way.

But when we’re done with that, we need to breathe.

House Republicans thought that Obama would break his vow to compromise. So when he accommodated them, they tried to slap him with it.

They’re hoping that Obama will call Democrat War on the Republicans so they can scream to the rafters about how they saw Socialist America coming and ooh how those Dems just can’t be trusted.

So the President should make sure to keep his bipartisan spirit, but also to remember that we can pass a goodly number of bills without Republicans (even Senate Republicans).

They can spend the next four years being vaguely obstructionist, but largely ineffectual or get on board, especially when an olive branch is offered.

If they choose the former, they better hope the economy takes Obama down with it, otherwise the voters will not look so kindly on Republicans (again) in 2010.

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• Today in Lady News
• Bush Administration Pushes Through New HHS Rule

I’m thinking of renaming my blog - ‘Girl Stuff as the Newspapers Died’. I am just a broken record these days.

Anyway, another day of ups and downs in Lady Land. Good news first.

The final version of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill passed the House today, and is on its way for President Obama to sign. If you haven’t read the backstory of the Ledbetter case, it’s insane.

Ledbetter worked for Goodyear for nearly two decades. She discovered, near retirement, that she made far less than men in her same position and sued for discrimination.

In May 2007, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that Ledbetter’s case was invalid, since she had to sue within 180 days of the original violation (the first unequal paycheck). Of course, Ledbetter had no idea that she was being discriminated against for all those years, so that would have been impossible.

The new legislation extends the statute of limitations by making every paycheck a new act of discrimination, the 180 days extending each time a new check is issued. Huzzah!

But President Obama is going to need that feminine good will to forgive him for caving to Republicans on women’s health.

Obama and Pelosi have agreed to cut $200 million for low-income contraceptive and sexual health services in the stimulus package.

Aside from being a grand total of .024% of the stimulus (math thanks to Jezebel’s Megan), the money was going to fix a costly and time-consuming wavier that states have to get in order to use their own money to cover contraception.

Unfortunately, John Boehner (R-OH) has the soundbite of the fight:

“How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives how does that stimulate the economy?”

His argument against the contraception money has allowed a cavalcade of other conservative voices to fight the culture wars with this procedural money. For example, James Pethokoukis [via USA Today]:

This is wrong on so many levels, one of which is looking at children born to the ‘wrong people’ as economic burdens rather [than] gifts, the music makers, the dreamers of dreams. [Pelosi]sees them as a cost instead of blessed benefits. Wow.

Notice the anti-abortiony-speak going on here. That’s not at all what was being suggested, but the Right to Life crowd has done such a good job of moving the abortion debate onto the birth control debate, that the language is now interchangeable. Running this google search brings up plenty of links arguing that Obama’s stimulus plan will fund abortion.

Many are arguing that the ‘war on abortion’ has now turned into the ‘war on sex, by way of the war on contraceptives’. It’s hard not to see that in Boehner’s objection to the contraception money (one of several items in the bill not directly tied to stimulating the economy, but somehow generating the most outrage).

The point was to save the states money by eliminating a federal hoop (which, if you’re a states’-rights, low-tax Republican should seem like a good thing…), but if it’s about limiting access for women, Boehner’s all about federal oversight. Sex is for marriage and procreation.

Which brings me to my last (possibly NSFW) point. Georgia’ s Coweta County has banned, “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

Notes the Newnan Times-Herald:

The county’s old ordinance specifically exempted condoms from being considered as a stimulation device. The new ordinance makes no such distinction, and would appear to apply to items such as ribbed condoms and various lubricants marketed as having a “warming” or “tingling” sensation.

Hmm, to whom are those products generally directed? Ah yes. Jezebel’s Tracie comments:

…we’re fairly certain that the holy rollers and misogynists that are so concerned with regulating how women stimulate their genitals aren’t nearly as strident when it comes to the sale of Viagra and other drugs that treat erectile dysfunction.

[I assume that, like me, Tracie tried to check on that for sure and got stymied by the unholy number of Viagra links that were not about Georgia's laws regarding the product.]

Point is, if you ladies would just stop having the sex (especially the unwedlocked, pleasurable kind), everyone’s life would be much, much easier.

Screw that. I say check your paychecks instead.

Vaguely Related

• Bush Administration Pushes Through New HHS Rule
• Bipartisan Action on the Stimulus Bill

I’ve been waiting to blog today because I was hoping that President Obama (not tired of saying/typing that yet!) would use the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade to reverse the ‘global gag rule’.

Also known as the Mexico City Policy, the rule was enacted under Reagan, reversed by Clinton and then reinstated by Bush II on this very day in 2001. Here’s the gist (PP also has a video on the site):

Under this Reagan-era prohibition, no U.S. family planning assistance funding can be given to organizations that provide abortion services, offer counseling and referral for abortion care, or advocate legal abortion access in their own countries — even if they do so with their own funds.

Obama has promised to re-reverse the rule, and many were hoping he’d take this anniversary to reaffirm America’s commitment to women’s health and his administration’s commitment to reproductive choice.

I mean the Gitmo thing was good, too, but I like my symbols big and brash.

One person who apparently got the memo about big and brash is the idiot that drove his SUV into a Twin Cities Planned Parenthood this morning. Pro- and anti-choicers were united in their agreement that this disturbed individual should not pass go on his way to jail.

In related news, an anti-choice nurse is being sued for ‘accidentally’ removing a patient’s IUD. Said the nurse (according to the plaintiff):

Everyone in the office always laughs and tells me I pull these out on purpose because I am against them, but it’s not true, they accidentally come out when I tug.

Um. Yeah, I’m thinking new career path for you…

But big thumbs ups to the legions of reproductive health workers and educators out there. Way to fight the good fight, ladies and gents.

Finally, some at DHHS seem to think that Bush’s ‘conscience clause’ HHS rules - that I’ve blogged about ad nauseam - might fall under the Obama’s executive order halting all Bush’s midnight rules.

Oh all right, maybe that new president isn’t so bad after all.

Update: Obama released a statement recognizing and supporting Roe v Wade.

Vaguely Related

• Bush Administration Pushes Through New HHS Rule
• Bush Admin Memo: Birth Control Equals Abortion

The Bush Admin has released what Planned Parenthood is calling a ‘anti-choice parting gift’.

A new Health and Human Services ‘conscience rule‘ allows federally funded health professionals to refuse to perform or even provide information on procedures they find objectionable.

It’s clearly a shot at abortion, except that laws protecting doctors from having to performing abortions have been on the books for 30 years.

Why the rule changes then?

Well, the wording is so ambiguous that it could be read to include objections to emergency contraception, birth control, IUDs and sterilizations.

The Obama team plans to overturn these and other anti-women/choice/take your pick rules, but these things take time to undo.

You know what the biggest dickhead move is about all this?

They’re releasing the rule tomorrow and it kicks in 30 days later  - i.e., they go into effect the day before the inauguration.

PP has a petition to make sure the rule’s repeal doesn’t get lost in the onslaught of activities for the new president.

The Bush Administration never misses a chance to turn the screw. I hope they have some kind of cleansing ritual for the White House.

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I really thought that women politicians had provided the media with enough fodder during the unending election cycle.

But now, with Thanksgiving over, the media have nothing to look forward to until Sarah Palin’s inevitable mangling of the Christmas season.

Luckily, one scrappy woman has stepped in to plug the gap in the news hole - Patti Blagojevich.

Let me state - again - that it appears the Mrs Blagojevich was part of the criminal conspiracy her husband is alleged to have masterminded.

But let’s take a trip through the last 24 hours of Patti in the media, shall we?

The Chicago Sun Times skipped the insinuation and just got straight to the point:

My three dailies  - NYT, Chicago Tribune and The Age - ran various permutations of the same Lady Macbeth story, along with flattering photos:

I like that last one from the Trib especially. It’s a nice companion to the Blago Rats! photo from the Sun Times.

There are, of course, nuggets from all the stories. What I really love is that, aside from the AP story where the author is unclear - women journo’s were assigned the task of gender-ripping Mrs Blagojevich.

The NYT:

In the 76-page federal complaint, Ms. Blagojevich appears to be an influential and demanding partner to her husband’s schemes…
…
And, in a blast of vulgar language, Ms. Blagojevich eggs on her husband when he reportedly threatens to prevent the Tribune Company from selling the Chicago Cubs…
…
The Web site for the governor’s office says that in addition to raising the couple’s two daughters, Ms. Blagojevich occupies herself with typical first lady issues: raising awareness on children’s health, food allergies and literacy, and starting the State Beautification Initiative, which planted native wildflowers along state roads.
…
Ms. Mell’s spokeswoman, Leah Cunningham Pouw, said her own impression of Ms. Blagojevich was that “she is extremely dedicated to her kids,” adding: “I’ve seen her laughing and playing with them. She’s funny; she’s light. When you go in their house, there’s pictures of their drawings posted on the stairwell.”

So, instead of being a typical first lady; she’s a schemer and a corrupter. Does this really come as a surprise? Her husband was supposed to be occupying himself with typical gubernatorial issues: governing and not engaging in corrupt fuckwittery.

That didn’t work out so well, so why are we holding Patti to a different standard? Isn’t it enough that she’s corrupt? Why does she have to be lady-corrupt?

And the only method of defending her alleged co-corruption is, of course, to talk about how good she is with her kids.

Right.

And from The Age (AP):

And in the 78-page criminal complaint against him, his 43-year-old wife emerged as a woman who schemed to cash in on her husband’s job and punish those who got in her way
….
Patti Blagojevich appeared to be a woman who knew her priorities and would not let working at her real estate brokerage firm interfere with raising the couple’s two small daughters.

She apparently was not that kind of woman, though. [The bold and italics are mine - the only way I could convey my reaction to that word, which consisted of nearly spitting up.]

Though I do start to understand how hard it is to capture the full background in crisis reporting. Check out this random nugget of reporting from the AP (printed in The Age):

[Dick Mell] was a powerful Chicago alderman who held a fundraiser in the late 1980s. Hoping to drum up business for his practice, Rod Blagojevich - then a young lawyer - attended and met Patti Mell. The two married in 1990.

What? Dick Mell is still a powerful Chicago alderman. I saw him crapping on and on at the Council meeting just last week. I guess that’s the three sentence history of the situation, but it makes about zero sense.

Anyway, by the time all this is said and done it will be all Patti’s fault. And it will be revealed that she killed some lady’s cats.

Cuz that’s how bitches do.

Vaguely Related

• Patti Blagojevich Painted as Lady Macbeth
• Quentin Bryce: Gender-Tagging the New Governor-General

All right, Chicago Tribune. I was going to write about your Patti Blagojevich/Lady Macbeth article anyway, but her appearance on your homepage has hurried it up a few hours.

Look, I know that people are suddenly visiting chicagotribune.com, so you want to keep those pageviews up. But don’t let the twin shocks of bankruptcy and unexpected relevance go to your head.

Because this is inappropriate:

Lady Macbeth, as you will no doubt recall from Mr Johnson’s English Lit class, is the devil woman who convinces her husband to murder the king, paving the way for his own ascension.

Lady Macbeth doesn’t merely profit from her husband’s rise, she actively corrupts him.

Which is not to say that Patti Blagojevich’s hands are clean. It appears that she was in on the criminal conspiracy, and charges should follow if they are merited. I don’t believe she should get a free ride because her husband is (likely) going to jail and they’ve got kids. Do the crime, do the time.

However! Let’s take a quick look at how we’re covering Mrs Blago’s not-even-alleged-at-this-point crimes.

An unflattering portrait depicting Illinois First Lady Patricia Blagojevich as a modern-day Lady Macbeth who plotted against her husband’s perceived enemies and backed his corrupt schemes emerged in court documents connected to the governor’s arrest Tuesday.

It appears that Patti’s ‘crimes’ so far consist of conduct unbecoming a lady. The Tribune article describes her ‘alleged ambitions and brashness‘ and the ‘obscenity-filled tirade‘ she ‘unleashed’ in support of firing Tribune employees.

That ‘obscenity-filled tirade’ consists of saying ‘fuck’ twice and ’shit’ once. Perhaps not language fit for high society, but certainly language I use in my home when I assume the feds aren’t listening. (And, from the transcript, language that appears par for the course in the Blagojevich household.)

But what really stirs my cauldron is the negative depictions of Patti herself.

For Rod, ambition has not been described as the problem, but rather as a motivator for the corruption he (allegedly) perpetrated. For Patti, the mere act of having ambition is modified with ‘alleged’ - as though that were her crime.

And, of course, we have the word ‘brash’, which has been used time and time again to describe the grating brassiness of women who step out of line.

Should the good governor’s wife should have knitted merrily whilst her husband cooked up the schemes?

From a legal standpoint, it appears so! But for the daughter of Chicago political boss, Dick Mell, not [bleeping] likely.

If she deserves it - and it looks as though she does - let’s try Patti Blagojevich in the courts. But let’s not use insulting literary metaphors to punish a woman for her unladylike ambition and language choice.

[Ed. note- I took the wrong spelling of Patricia Blagojevich's nickname. I've fixed it, and regret the (all-too-common) errors in my spelling.]

Vaguely Related

• Patti Blagojevich In the News (or: Kill the Witch!)
• George Ryan’s Post-Blagojevich Hail Mary