At the big Paris flea market, Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, which takes up several city blocks, this portrait was among the items for sale. I’ve seen people reading Dreams from My Fatheron the Metro (seriously, the guy next to me, honest) and everyone wants to talk about him. What a difference!
Category: POLITICS
Kevin Spacey, David Letterman, Twitter and Moms Rising – All in One Post!!!
OK so I’m in London and a friend posts this on my Facebook page. And I should be telling you more about London and that we’re leaving for Paris this afternoon (on theEurostar!!) for the weekend but this is just fun.
ALSO on that same Facebook page though, from Moms Rising, is this:
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner “…we are now lagging behind the rest of the world in closing the gender gap. According to the World Economic Forum, the US ranks 31st of 128 countries overall, but 76th in educational attainment, 36th in health and survival, 69th in political empowerment, and 70th for wage equality for similar work. In the representation of women in our Congress, we rank 71st.”
Reps. Maloney, Biggert reintroduce Equal Rights Amendment
So when you’re finished laughing at Kevin and Dave, think what we can do about these devastating numbers! I’ve just gone to work at Causes Managing Editor at Care2 and we have an active women’s rights section there – and we all know plenty of other places to raise some hell. Somehow, seeing it all aggregated like this makes it worse, no?
Brick Lane in the Real World – Things Have Changed in London
You can see it there – the street name in English and, I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’s wonderful book. Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been. Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London’s East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane. But the book was published six years ago. And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.
Sarah Palin and the Resignation: Some Posts You May Have Missed
I don’t know about your universe, but all the listservs I read have been crammed with Sarah Palin discussions ever since The Resignation. I went looking, therefore, for some not-so-usual blog posts, beyond the conventional wisdom. There are lots of great comments and ideas. Among them:
My biggest hope is that the very strange tale of Sarah Palin doesn’t
dissuade other mothers of small children from running for office.
There’s something to be said for having that perspective in state
houses, governor’s offices and in Washington, D.C. I hope the strange
path that Sarah Palin seems to be on doesn’t keep other moms away from
the political world. Punditmom
It’s hard to know what more to make of this until we get a much better
explanation, but the view from here is that you won’t have Sarah Palin
to kick around anymore. Her Presidential prospects are done, and it’s
hard to see how Republicans will still consider her a potential leader
of the movement. The Next Right
A few words about Sarah Palin: She is one of the most fascinating women
I have ever met. She crackles with energy like a live electrical wire
and on first meeting gets about three inches from your face. Her
instant subliminal message is: “I don’t know you very well, but I’m
very clear about who I am.” She reeks of moxie and self confidence. And
she’s fearless. Mark McKinnon
What is going on right now in the Republican Party—even as the
professionals scramble to react with grins and snorts to the news of
Palin’s Alaska resignation—are the early scenes of the 2012 campaign
for the presidency with Sarah Palin as the once and future hero. Like
Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth Regina, and, skipping
four centuries of quarrelsome princes, Margaret Thatcher, the
Republican Party has already decided that the governor of Alaska will
rescue the GOP from its ruination. What Sarah Palin begins with an
announcement from Wasilla is not only a campaign, it is an Iditarod of
a crusade—first woman, first mom, and second moose-hunter into the
White House. The Daily Beast
Beyond the basic publicity blunders Palin made (e.g., her spokesperson
was on vacation in New York while the announcement was delivered in
Alaska), the governor’s departing speech was rife with errors of
judgment. Every quitter, famous or not, can learn from her mistakes,
particularly if you’re resigning from a position of leadership. Harvard Business Blog
As quoted in Disability News,
Palin wished that “folks could ever, ever understand that we ALL could
learn so much from someone like Trig — I know he needs me, but I need
him even more… what a child can offer to set priorities RIGHT – that
time is precious… the world needs more ‘Trigs’, not fewer.” That
apparently struck Erik Sean Nelson, described on his Huffington Post
page as a “fiction author and comedy writer,” as hilarious, and he
responded with a post titled, “Palin Will Run in ’12 on More
Retardation Platform”. . .(this one is really quite shocking) Terri’s Special Children Blog
THIS IS MY PERSONAL FAVORITE: “I think Sarah Palin is on the verge of becoming the Miami Vice of
American politics: Something a lot of people once thought was cool and
then 20 years later look back, shake their heads and just kind of
laugh,” quipped Republican media consultant Todd Harris. Politico
But Sarah Palin didn’t quit. Her family was held hostage until she agreed to give her captures (sic) what they wanted – the ransom was her career. Isn’t it a shame that a popular governor of Alaska with a terrific
future of contribution to her state, had to give it all up because she
made the fatal error of accepting the Republican VP nomination. Too bad
a public servant has been slaughtered. Too bad she wasn’t giving a fair
fight based on her principles. Too bad for women everywhere who have
considered a role in politics. I hope Sarah Palin travels the country
and speaks to all the folks who like her message and makes oodles of
money doing it. She’s earned it. Help4NewMOms
We’re not very interested in bashing Palin; Todd Purdum took care of that
for all of us. But she deserves some credit: no matter how much luck is
involved, you don’t move from small-town politico to national newsmaker
in three years without at least knowing what you want. And Sarah
Palin’s resignation makes her goal abundantly clear: she will never
again have a chance to make this much money in this short a time, and
she’s going to take advantage. The Stimulist
Finally, take a look at this: three bloggers including my good friend Jill Zimon talking about soon-to-be-ex-Gov. Palin and the impact of her withdrawal from state government.
Robert S. McNamara: Did His Atonement Suffice or Did He Just Outlive Our Anger?
It's hard to understand the role of Robert McNamara and feelings toward him, particularly during the Johnson Administration, but if you think "Dick Cheney during the Bush years" and multiply, you'll come closest. McNamara, who died today, was one of the great villains of my 20's and 30's. Secretary of Defense, a major architect of the Vietnam War and defender of the ideas behind it, he supported both Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in their attempts to "save democracy" there. He entered the new Kennedy Administration in a blaze of glory just five weeks after being named, and then resigning as, president of the Ford Motor Company. A supremely successful and confident executive (who opposed production of the much-reviled Edsel), he seemed a creative and promising choice.
What he became was a symbol of all that seemed wrong with American foreign policy, especially in Vietnam,(including the "domino theory" claiming that if Vietnam "fell" other nations in the region would fall as well) and one of the subjects of the landmark book about this foreign policy team, David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. In addition to the vast, deep anger at the direction of the war and the philosophy that defined it, McNamara and all he represented reminded us daily of what we saw as both the arrogance of the US decision to enter and remain part of the war in Vietnam and our conviction that we were being manipulated, spied upon and lied to.
Paul Hendrickson's The Living and the Dead best described McNamara's impact by visiting the stories of five people affected by the war. Here's an excerpt from the first part of the book; it looks long, but you'll be glad you've read it:
In the Winter of 1955
His
wife wasn't drinking milk with her Scotch in the hope her stomach might
hurt a little less – not then. A man bearing a child hadn't set himself
on fire below his Pentagon window – not yet. A wigged-out woman hadn't
stolen up behind his seat in an outdoor cafe in the Kodak winter sun of
Aspen to begin shrieking there was blood on his hands. (He was applying
ketchup to his hamburger.) A Viet Cong agent – his name was Nguyen Van
Troi — hadn't been found stringing fuses beneath a Saigon bridge he
was due to pass over. Odd metaphors and strange turns of phrase weren't
seeping from him like moons of dark ink. His pressed white shirts
weren't hanging loose at his neck. He wasn't reading Homer late at
night in an effort to compose himself. His dyslexic and ulcerated son
hadn't been shown in a national newsmagazine with his ropes of long
hair and kindly face reading aloud a list of war dead at the San
Francisco airport. Reputed members of an organization called the
Symbionese Liberation Army didn't have stored in a Berkeley garage some
crudely drawn but surprisingly detailed descriptions of the interior
and exterior of his resort home in Snowmass, along with thumb-nail
sketches of members of his family. (WIFE: name unknown to me. She is
small, not outstanding in appearance & probably not aggressive. .
.") He hadn't stood in the Pentagon briefing room in front of his
graphs and bar-charts to say with perfect seriousness, "So it is
fifteen percent of ten percent of thirteen-thirtieths that have been in
dispute here. . ." He hadn't stood on the tarmac at Andrews, at the
rollaway steps of his blue-tailed C-135, before winging to a high-level
CINCPAC meeting in Honolulu, and told another tangle of lies into a
tangle of microphones, made more artfully disingenuous statements to
the press boys, this time about the kind of forces – which is to say,
combat forces – soon to be shipped to the secretly escalated war. ("No,
uh, principally logistical support — arms, munitions, training,
assistance.") He hadn't hunched forward in his field fatigues at a news
conference in Saigon and said, as though trying to hug himself, and
with only the slightest belying stammers, "The military operations have
progressed very satisfactorily during the past year. The rate of
progress has exceeded our expectations. The pressure on the Viet Cong,
measured in terms of the casualties they have suffered, the destruction
of their units, the measurable effect on their morale, have all been
greater than we anticipated" — when, in fact, the nations chrome-hard
secretary of defense had already given up believing, in private, a long
while ago, that the thing was winnable in any military sense. The
president of the United States hadn't called him up to yell, "How can I
hit them in the nuts, Bob? Tell me how I can hit them in the nuts!" —
the them being little men in black pajamas in a skinny curve of an
unfathomable country 10,000 miles distant. He hadn't yet gone to this
same president and told him he was afraid of breaking down. The
expressions "body count" and "kill ratio" and "pacification" and
"incursion" hadn't come into the language in the way snow — to use
Orwell's image — falls on an obscene landscape. The casualty figures
of U.S. dead and missing and wounded hadn't spumed, like crimson
geysers, past the once unthinkable 100,000 mark. Nor had this man risen
at a luncheon in Dean Rusk's private dining room at the state
department (it happened on February 27, 1968, forty-eight hours before
he left office) and, without warning, begun coming apart before Rusk
and dark Clifford and Bill Bundy and Walt Rostow and Joe Califano and
Harry McPherson, telling them between stifled sobs, between what
sounded like small asphyxiating noises, between the bitter rivers of
his cursing, that the goddamned Air Force, they're dropping tonnage on
Vietnam at a higher rate than we dropped on Germany in the last part of
World War II, we've practically leveled the place, and what's it done,
nothing, a goddamned nothing, and Christ here's Westmoreland asking for
another 205,000 troops, ifs madness, can't anybody see, this thing has
to be gotten hold of, it's out of control I tell you. . .No.
None of this.
Not yet.
It all lay waiting in the decades up ahead.
Pretty amazing, huh? Those are just a few of the moments that informed McNamara's War years, and mine. And the engendered the rage, the hateful things yelled at marches, the weeping, the tear gas, the chaos and the fear. And McNamara knew it. He spent much of the rest of his life trying to atone for those years, first by leading the World Bank in its sunnier years and urging America and the world to help the starving and the lost. At least once, he broke down at a major appearance as he described the world misery the Bank sought to abate. Later, he collaborated on a book, Argument Without End, that struggled to understand and, some claim, apologize for, the war.
As many of the obits noted, especially that on TIME's website, ("Robert McNamara dies, no escape from Vietnam") for many, next to LBJ, McNamara was the war. And as Hendrickson's book noted, he haunted those directly affected by the war even more than the rest of us.
Somehow though, it's difficult to retain rage as ideas soften and history teaches us more about times we lived when we were young. I remember that when Nixon died a friend called to talk about it. I wasn't home, and she said to my son "What really makes me mad is that I think he outlived our anger." I'm still trying to figure out if that's how I – we – will feel about this death. McNamara certainly tried to both understand and to atone for Vietnam but the damage of that war, up until today, remains. As I've written before, since Vietnam, every national campaign including the last one, and, you can be sure, any one that Sarah Palin runs in the future, is informed by – colored by – sometimes defined by – what happened then. President Obama has certainly blunted the culture wars, generational change will absolutely change many issues, especially related to gender rights, but I wonder… When the right gets mad – gets desperate – they can easily reignite the culture wars that were the bi-product of the Vietnam era. And Robert McNamara is responsible for those, too.
I don't know. Really, I don't. But I'm ending with this Charlie Rose interview with McNamara from 1995. Take a look. There's more of the whole man here. The question is now much he deserves, after what the Defense Secretary in him did, to expect us to think about all the rest.
Womanomics Hits Home – Punditmom’s Home, That Is
I had the privilege this morning of attending a book party at the home of the one and only Punditmom, whose talents are exceeded only by her very lovely self.
The event had real star power: BBC's Katty Kay and ABC's Claire Shipman, both solid, unpretentious, smart, thoughtful women – and moms – and, oh yeah, network news stars. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that they've written a book called Womanomics, whose basic thesis is that it makes economic and corporate governance sense for the needs of women workers to be accommodated by their employers. In fact, if their book is right, and there is no reason to doubt it, there is a real revolution afoot.
For someone my age, it's thrilling to hear employment issues discussed with assumptions we could never have made. Asking for schedule adjustments, work/family life balance, was out of the question. We were just fighting for equal pay and a few weeks off when we had our babies. The argument these two women make, that businesses are learning that women in their workforce in great numbers, and at all levels, is of great value to their bottom line. They line up to hear the two speak; join conference calls by the dozens to be briefed and basically finally get the power and capacity of "more than half the talent, not just more than half the population." Interesting, accessible and funny, great believers in their mission, they were a pleasure to meet and listen to. I can't wait to read the book.
OH and I'll post about The Wedding soon.