Rat in the Kitchen

This post is NOT just for the parents of little kids. Okay? I know everyone thinks, "oh, Disney, oh, Pixar, oh, animation--that stuff's for kids." And I gotta admit, PK's love of the small rodents was a big factor in my taking him to see Ratatouille on the first day. But the real truth is that I, personally, was dying to see it because it speaks to dominant characteristics of my three favorite men (as Mr. B. put it): (1) PK's mouse love, which by extension applies also to rats; (2) Mr. B.'s animation obsession--just look at the water and the reflection in the broken plate in that image there; (3) The Boyfriend's chefness. It's like the damn thing was made just for me. Turned out, after seeing it, that it also has a lot about critics and artists and creativity and anti-elitism going on--some of my own personal hobbyhorses. And there's even a nice little piece by Janeane Garofolo's character about being a woman in a man's profession and what that's like.

And all that stuff is treated properly. As in, intelligently, and with nuance. The critic starts out as The Bad Guy and ends up being, you know, complicated, and helpful to Our Heroes, and says witty things about negative criticism being "fun to write and fun to read," which we all know is true. The speech about having worked harder than any of the boys to get where I am, thankyouverymuch, isn't just cliched girl power stuff--in combination with the character's appearance and general attitude, it really speaks to the issues so many high-achieving chicks like us have about ambition and invulnerability and the goddamn looks bullshit. We get a little introduction to how a professional kitchen works, and the fact that artists aren't usually from the social class that tends to patronize them (in both senses of the word), and (my favorite part, because it so reminded me of the boyfriend) a lyrical explanation of the way that some lucky people think of food and cooking and serving people as both sensory talent and polished accomplishment, a kind of gift, again in both senses of the word.

Which really, is kind of what the movie boils down to: a sweet, cute, beautiful charmer of a film about gifts: having them, sharing them, understanding them, what they mean, what they're for. The rat in the kitchen thing isn't just a clever little twist (though it's that, too, and there's nothing wrong with it). It's really the center of the movie, and you see pretty quickly how the other kitchen folks are "rats" in their way too, as is the critic and even the hapless hero, and how in a way we're all rats, we all feel rejected or intolerable or unworthy, maybe especially in the areas we most admire and appreciate, and really it's okay, because the trick to the whole thing is just to somehow lose yourself in the pleasure of the gift and the giving and realize that you don't have to be The Best or Most Famous or Perfect in order to be good, and that really, the nature of all the best gifts is that they're specially chosen by the giver for the recipient and therefore small, intimate, and particular.

Oh, I see how it is

Y'all are over at Flea's telling stories of your children's horrifying outbursts.

And if you're not, you should be.

And if you lack children, you should go and read. It'll make you feel superior *and* relieved, which are hard feelings to combine in most cases.

Catch-22, Young Lady

For the first time (in Colorado, anyway), a judge has found that a young pregnant woman is too immature to have an abortion.

You have to like the logic:

the judge found that "she lacked the maturity to decide whether to have an abortion." The court emphasized her "unwillingness to communicate with her mother or consult with other adults, her focus on her own needs, and her failure to discuss the matter with a doctor." The trial court also felt that she had "only minimal understanding of the risks of the abortion procedure" and that she was "unemployed and being supported by her mother."

Judicial bypass exists for girls who are unwilling to tell their parents about their pregnancies. Apparently, this particular judge thinks, therefore, that applying for a judicial bypass in and of itself makes a girl too immature to have an abortion.

That's some catch, that Catch-22.

For the record, the girl did consult with an adult (the school nurse, who was present at the hearing); her "own needs" would, of course, be the precise reason for having an abortion (that selfish bitch); presumably she hasn't discussed it with a doctor (though she did discuss it with a nurse, obvs.) because she hasn't gotten the judge's goddamn approval to go make that appointment; it seems to me from the article that she understands the risks of abortion as well as most people (and that the judge fails to understand that the risks of giving birth, especially to young women, are in fact ten times greater than the risks of abortion, but hey, he's not the one on trial here, now, is he?).

He's absolutely right, though, that being unemployed and supported by her mother is a mark of grave immaturity in a 16 1/2 year old girl--precisely the kind of situation in which young women should definitely not be allowed to have abortions.

Cross-posted at SG after 3 pm.

Oh, god

The current Supreme Court is so depressing. Now they've gone and found that voluntary desegregation is unconstitutional. Further evidence that precedent matters not to the newest members, notwithstanding their statements during confirmation that it did. Scott's got a little legal analysis and will have more soon. What I'm going to talk about, instead, is what SCOTUSblog characterizes as the

Roberts opinion . . . discussed the lack of a compelling interest in achieving racial balance in public school classrooms.

Here is what Roberts actually says:

In upholding the admissions plan in Grutter, though, this Court relied upon considerations unique to institutions of higher education. . . . The Court in Grutter expressly articulated key limitations on its holding--defining a specific type of broad-based diversity and noting the unique context of higher education--but these limitations were largely disregarded by the lower courts in extending Grutter to uphold race-based assignments in elementary and secondary schools. The present cases are not governed by Grutter.

This is the most depressing thing I've read in a long, long time. It literally makes me feel like crying.

What Roberts is saying is that while Grutter found that racial diversity is important in *college*, it doesn't therefore follow that it's important in *K-12* classrooms. But the point of Grutter was that it's important in college because diversity is an important part of education in a pluralistic society. Which is, if anything, more important to K-12 education than it is to college, both because K-12 is universal (college, obvs., isn't) and because attitudes towards race and ethnicity are formed young; by college, such attitudes are already formed.

Which is presumably why Roberts, white guy that he is, can "reason" thusly:

race is not considered as part of a broader effort to achieve "exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints," ibid.; race, for some students, is determinative standing alone. The districts argue that other factors, such as student preferences, affect assignment decisions under their plans, but under each plan when race comes into play, it is decisive by itself. It is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. Like the University of Michigan undergraduate plan struck down in Gratz, 539 U. S., at 275, the plans here "do not provide for a meaningful individualized review of applicants" but instead rely on racial classifications in a "nonindividualized, mechanical" way. Id., at 276, 280 (O'Connor, J., concurring).

Even when it comes to race, the plans here employ only a limited notion of diversity, viewing race exclusively in white/nonwhite terms in Seattle and black/"other" terms in Jefferson County.

Believing that Brown makes desegregation attempts like those in Seattle and Louisville unconstitutional, because they notice the existence of race, gets at a fundamental (and intellectually dishonest) move beloved of social conservatives racists: the argument that the essence of anti-racism is pretending that race doesn't exist. This is an argument white folks really get into, because it absolves us of ourselves being racially marked ("white," folks, is indeed a racial category--in fact, it's *the* racial category, as I'll explain in a second) and also because it lets us believe that if we pretend to be race-blind, somehow we really are, both individually and as a society.

But it doesn't work that way. Racial categories *do* exist, regrettable as that may be. And they exist *because* of racism, specifically in order to define "whiteness" as "the unraced category, that which is fully human."

Lemme unpack a bit. I am not saying that the tendency to think in terms of "us" and "them" isn't "natural"--fwiw, I think it is. What I am saying is that the tendency to think in terms of "white" and "not white," or "black" or "Asian" or "Indian" or "Mexican" or "Hispanic" is "unnatural"--that is to say, it's natural, and we do it, because we've been taught to, because our "natural" tendency to think "us" and "them" has been used in the service of defining those categories specifically in terms of skin color/hair color/continental origin.

So, for instance, we do *not* think of "people born in the United States" as "Americans" without some mental effort to overcome--to re-learn--a learned tendency to think of "Americans" as "white." We still teach kids to do this, by (for example) emphasizing "black history"--oops, the history of "African-Americans" (see what I mean?) in February, at which time we teach them that the *primary* characteristic of "black" people is that they've been discriminated against in the past and that they've fought to overcome that and now things are much better.

Which, you know, is a well-intentioned thing to do. Unfortunately, like so many other well-intentioned attempts to combat racism, what it *also* does is (subtly) teach kids about racial difference. And as a result of this, racial differences, specifically "black" and "white" differences, continue to exist.

Following the logic of the Roberts court, the proper answer to this is to stop teaching black history altogether--or, more charitably, to stop requiring schools to teach black history, which *in the absence of a more intelligent approach* will amount to the same thing. So, for instance, Roberts wrote: 1.

Seattle has never operated segregated schools--legally separate schools for students of different races

Okay. Let us concede (though I don't believe this to be true) that what Roberts *means* to say is that in a court of law, the only meaning "segregation" has is "explicit and legally enforced segregation"--as opposed to de facto segregation. Nonetheless, that is not what he *does* say; what he says is that segregation = "legal separation." Even if we concede his apparent intention--particularly if we concede it--this is obvious question-begging; segregation is racial separation, period. And while we cannot do anything about segregation on the level of individuals (e.g., who one becomes friends with) we can, and as a pluralistic nation that believes in equality and rejects racism, we should, do our damndest to make sure that our public institutions reject segregation and, if necessary, consciously act to desegregate.

Which, to get us back to the black history month example, is clearly what we need to do. Because even when we're acting with the best of intentions, we still think in racial categories and we are still passing that along to children, thereby perpetuating racism. Pretending that this is not the case does not make it so. What we need is more desegregation, not less--and we need it in precisely the terms that Roberts (racial ignoramus that he obviously is) rejects as inadequate when he says

But under the Seattle plan, a school with 50 percent Asian-American students and 50 percent white students but no African-American, Native-American, or Latino students would qualify as balanced, while a school with 30 percent Asian-American, 25 percent African-American, 25 percent Latino, and 20 percent white students would not. It is hard to understand how a plan that could allow these results can be viewed as being concerned with achieving enrollment that is " 'broadly diverse,' " Grutter, supra, at 329.

Okay, Mr. Chief Justice, little ol' me will explain to you how this plan can be viewed as achieving broad diversity.

First: the schools you put forth as potentially existing--50% Asian vs. 30% Asian, etc--do. Not. Exist. In. Seattle. As your use of the subjunctive ("would") admits. They could, fairly easily, because Seattle has a huge Asian population and is otherwise mostly white, but right now they don't. *If* they did, that *might not be a problem*--because, being a hypothetical, its coming into being would depend on other changing circumstances that might, in theory, mean that racism as such really didn't exist in Seattle. So let's quit with hypotheticals and stick with the facts on the ground.

Second: look, dude. You yourself *clearly* recognize the existence of race; otherwise the categories you're using wouldn't *mean* anything. And the reason why Seattle defines race, for the purposes of desegregation, as "white/non-white," while Louisville defines it as "black/other", tell us everything we need to understand about how race and racism work. Seattle is in the Pacific Northwest, and it is a majority white city. While racism against blacks surely exists there, it is less pronounced--and ironically, given that the invention of race in America was all about slavery--less of an issue, historically, than racism against Indians and Asians. Nonetheless, because Seattle is part of the U.S. and because all American racism comes from slavery, there's also a problem with prejudice against blacks and Latinos (aka "illegal immigrants," in the U.S. imagination).

So, in Seattle, you've got "white" people (the majority) and "everyone else" as the operating racial categories. Whereas in Louisville--Louisville, for god's sake--obviously the operating racial categories are "black" and "not black." These are the terms in which people think, which vary according to the specific histories of specific places, albeit all being inflected by our (imagined) identity as "Americans," to whom categories like "Asian-American," "African-American," "Hispanic/Latino," and "Indian" mean something. In other parts of the world, people think racially in different terms: "Arab" vs. "Iranian," for instance (to us, they're the same), or "Sunni" and "Shiite" (which we're just barely starting to recognize as different categories, though we can't yet label individuals), or "Hindu" and "Muslim" (which to us are religious labels, rather than racial ones--they're all "Indians" or "Pakis," as far as we're concerned).

And that is why we need more, not less, desegregation--and why the Roberts court is flat out wrong when it says

We have emphasized that the harm being remedied by mandatory desegregation plans is the harm that is traceable to segregation, and that "the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools, without more."

The harm that is traceable to segregation includes our ability to use labels like "Asian-American", which clearly signifies that "American" means "not Asian-looking." And that harm does come from "racial imbalance in the schools"--the phrase "without more" is meaningless--because, at this moment in history, we still have "black history month" during which we teach that "black history" is all about racism, Jim Crow, and MLK. Rather than recognizing that *American* history includes these things *as well as*

- white abolitionists, the 18th-century argument over slavery, and the legal invention of "black" and "white" as meaningful categories (anyone who's been confused or inclined to argue with my contentions throughout this post that "white" is the central racialized term in American history, you can chalk your not knowing what I'm talking about up to the racist education you received);

- jazz music, Bugs Bunny, and pb&j (all defining "American" markers; all African in origin--again, if you don't know why, thank your racist education).

Those are just two examples; if I weren't white my own damn self, and partly as a consequence well-educated in racism, I could surely come up with a hundred others off the top of my head. Instead, I've spent a lot of my adult life trying, slowly and painstakingly, to try to learn *just a little bit* about the ways being white categorizes me racially, and trying to teach my own kid about differences between people in ways that simultaneously alert him to the reality that race exists and try to make it an intellectual concept to him, rather than a "natural" one.

And one of the best ways to do this--the one that helped me, to the extent that I'm slightly less racist than average--is going to school with other kids who were different than me specifically because of their race. Not because doing so is a good kumbaya moment, or because it looks good in the yearbook pictures, but because people who are of the same social class, who live on the same street even, but are racially different in the terms of their local/national community, will, for that reason alone, be treated differently, be aware of subtle differences in culture--and learning that will teach kids that yes, race does matter--as well as being substantively similar in many other ways--which will teach them that it doesn't.

That's the problem with race in America. It matters, and it doesn't. Recognizing the latter while failing to recognize (or rather, pretending not to recognize) the former is wrong on the facts.

And if Roberts weren't so damn white, he'd realize that.*



*See, for instance, Thomas's comments, which are *much* more careful about defining segregation and much more explicit about relying both on a *narrow* interpretation of precedent and the particular--and only compelling--argument that race-based attempts at desegregation feed racism by causing white resentment. You can read the Justices' comments here.

Fine, I wrote a stupid book report. Now can I play PS2?

Heebie-geebie here. As long as I'm continuing to dominate Open-Mike-Nite at Bitchville, I'd like to swing a little love towards Fatfu, because she consistently writes smart and thought-provoking entries about fat-acceptance issues, and fat issues are feminist issues, and can't we all just hop in bed together.

Read today's entry here, which is excellent, (and is by Meowser, who also posts there). Then go back and read them on a regular basis. But not at my expense. If you had to choose, say you'll choose them but secretly wink at me.

On the plane this weekend, I re-read The Good Marriage, by Judith S. Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee. I do love this book, but I read it more critically this time around.

They took fifty couples who described their marriage as "happy" and interviewed the hell out of them over two years, and then wrote up their findings. They are very up front that their findings may not generalize; the couples were found by word of mouth and local publicity, and are from a skewed demographic of mostly white, upper-class, college-educated, heterosexual, Western, on and on etc. I still find the writing thoughtful and conclusions believable.

What has changed for me between readings is that I became a feminist.

I first read this book about five years ago. The narratives of these good marriages read like fairy tales to me. I wanted to be saved from myself. I wanted so damn badly for a magic man to swoop in and save the day.

Then, blah-blah-blah, saw the light, all men are always jerks, then saw some more light, some men are jerks sometimes, and others are less often jerks, and now I'm the enlightened spountain of wisdom you see before you.

So, the second time through the book: I was struck by the fact that these are narratives that people within a marriage construct, about the marriage. (I'm not saying it's a bad marriage. I believe their capacity to assess their experience. They say it's a good marriage, fine, it's a good marriage.)

But we're not seeing the marriage, we're hearing a narrative constructed from the inside of the marriage. Constructing narratives tells you how they experience the marriage, not the facts on the table.

I don't know much, but I know there's whole scads of psychology deal with constructing narratives. (Warning, here comes a bunch of heresay.) I've read that the severity of PTSD that a survivor carries correlates with the loss of control experienced in the trauma. Not the actual loss of control, but whether they experienced it as a loss of control. And children with identical upbringing can turn out wildly differently, because what affects the kid longterm is how they experienced the childhood, not the actual childhood. (So parents, do your best and then promptly forgive yourself, because ultimately some variables reside inside your kid and you can't control it. The kid is autonomous, and it'll have a set of reactions to anything you do.)

(Where the hell did I read all this stuff? I'm pawing through my old entries trying to find links, and I've e-mailed a friend, and I'm trying to substantiate something, anything here, so that I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass. Which is fun too, but less educational.)

So perhaps these happily married people started out regular. Perhaps they started with basically normal chemistry and arguments and good times at the outset of the relationship. But maybe over time, they construct unusually positive narratives, which then color their experience of the ongoing relationship. Then they filter their ongoing marriage through these rosy-colored glasses, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rosy-colored glasses is too harsh, perhaps. The happily-married people seemed grounded, and aware that their partners weren't perfect. There wasn't a fantasy bubble that risked being burst. But maybe the luck in a happy marriage resides in the stories we tell ourselves about our marriage.

PHEW I'm done being serious. You know what I love? Candy. candy candy candy.

I guess this is goodbye, gentle readerkins. You all probably miss your Bitch, and I too have to go home and feed my kitty-cats. As soon as I find some links, I'll insert them in this post, but don't hold your breath because I'm lazy as hell.

Anyway, you can come over to my blog any time you want to hang out, and I'll tell you about candy and candy and more candy. Bye now!

UPDATE: I found one of the links, via Tia over at NoTickling! This article describes the interplay between one's self-narrative and one's experience of life.

Grandmas don't grow on trees, you know.

Hi, hi, hi. First, scroll down and read the Boyfriend's post from this morning. I don't mean to preempt his musings. I'm a hapless victim of the chronological scroll-down convention.

The wedding was in Wisconsin. Jamaal and I stayed with my maternal grandma, Beatrice.

On Friday, my other grandmother died. My paternal grandmother, Rita.

The funeral was the same day as the wedding. I didn't go to the funeral. I fretted about it. I didn't even go to New York at all to pay my respects. The fretting I wrote about here, and the aftermath I haven't written up yet, but I'll edit a link in here as soon as I do. (Now I have. Here's the rest.)

On the plane home, I thumbed through SkyMall, where you can spend $40 on a remote-control golf ball. Fool your friends and vex your enemies and confuse your cat. If you spend $40 on a practical joke, who exactly is the butt of the joke? A little philosophy conundrum there. Heebie makes you think.

Anyway, the remote-control golf ball reminded me of my grandfather, Al, who died when I was in college. He was married to Rita. I'm feeling sentimental, so I'm going to tell you a story about Al.

Al had a magic trick that he'd trot out when we were at a restaurant. He'd pass around a $20 bill. We'd all verify that it was a $20 bill. We'd copy down the serial number. Then Al would place it in the candle in the center, and we'd watch it go up in flames. (While we ate, I'd be hyperaware of the remaining pieces of the twenty dollar bill. You could see them, green and singed. So close to being money. So sad. I wanted the money so badly.)

Then at some point, the twenty would appear. Intact! It's magic! Like, someone would be served a $20 dollar bill for dessert. We'd check the serial number, and lo and behold, it was the original serial number.

Then Al got senile and died without telling me how he did this trick.

A few years later, I found out that he'd told my brother. And now I'll tell you. And you can perform this trick at dinner parties everywhere; just remember to look dreamily up at the ceiling and do the exaggerated wink as though you're wearing knickerbockers and someone dropped a tuppence in your cap. "This one's for you, Granpa Geebie. Wherever you are...wherever you are..." Say that wistfully. Got it? Wistfully.

So, here's the trick: you'll go to the bank and withdraw new twenty dollar bills, so that the serial numbers are in consecutive order. Then you'll take a pencil and erase the last digit of two of the twenties. Sneaky!

Then, when the crowd is watching, the trick is that there is no trick. You really do burn a twenty dollar bill. You really do spend $20 each time you perform this trick. Is it worth it? Do you even have to ask?

Is there a moral to this story? Maybe. That things that look easy are actually accomplished the hard way? Didn't we already know that by watching gymnastics on TV? So there's no moral. The moral is, I'm sad to close the chapter on my paternal grandparents, even if I wasn't close to them. (I'll bawl like a baby when my other grandma dies, though. She and I are very close.)

(Our flight last night was cancelled, so Jammies and I slept on army cots in the middle of O'Hare. Wake-up call at 4:00 am. Just got home this afternoon. Just saying.)

Behold, this creature that walks like a woman, yet...

I clicked through from The Rude One's blog last week to some other freak's blog (if by blog, you mean...). I could refute the article if it merited anymore attention than it has already had, but it was essentially "Man Hating Feminists and The Man Who Hates Them." Part 669, I think. I looked at a few of his other articles too, and the creep has a total boner for these godless angry feminists. I've heard about them for years. Feminazis! Man-hating Dykes! (ohhhhh, I'm soooo askeered.) It seems that these kind-hearted men and women who so selflessly alert me to these degenerates are generally Compassionate Conservatives and Jesus Traffickers (religion is a drug, I can support that statement, ask me. Not always a bad drug, but that's another issue...). 

What I really want to know is: Where are these women? Has anyone ever seen one in the wild? Does anyone have one? What do they eat? I'm curious as hell on that one, I'll bet it involves soy milk. Do they have special Veterinarians? Special bedding? Somebody tell me. Listen, I work with about a hundred women with Women's Studies degrees and there's not an Angry Humorless Man-Hater among them.

I'm talking a lot of flannel shirts and trucker's wallets if you catch my drift. I shit-you-not, we have a company moving truck, Rusty, so I don't think I'm exactly suffering from underexposure. All these sassy independent bitches, yet our bathroom door does not say WOMYN. We don't have a "Please check your testicles at the door basket." There's no sign that says in giant letters "The Bryant-Lake Bowl Bans Dicks On These Premises."

That last one doesn't sound like a bad idea, actually. 

It also strikes me as odd how when I read about these spawn of the liberal agenda women, the writer always makes it personal, yet so entirely improbable that the limit of credibility is sorely stretched; "I recently spoke with a, damned to an eternal life in a fiery lake, member of the gentler gender...", "Often, it seems, Liberal sluts will regale me with the details of their abortion, only to later break down and admit it wrecked their life completely and their ability forever to enter a loving relationship as God intended it." (Okay, that possibly does happen to me with some frequency. Who knows what they are actually mumbling about, it's not like I take my dick out their mouth long enough to listen.)

My point, if I have one, is that I suspect these women are riding around in the backs of Reagan's welfare queen's Cadillacs, because from where I sit, all I see are loyal spouses, loving moms and women with far more compassion and far more full of Christ than the assholes that write about them. 

I gotta go, the sign printer closes in ten minutes.

The Boyfriend

Teh Boyfriend is not gay...

The Doc asked me to try and write a little bit for the blog this weekend and as she is both a colossal pain in the ass and threatened to emoticon me with the pouty face, I reluctantly agreed to do what I could. Bitch. I had intended to write from the Pride Block Party on Friday night, sadly I never got past "Since the dawn of time..." before all hell broke loose. For the record; while I'm neither Proud nor even Pride curious, I enjoy a Block Party as much as anyone, however I was a little crabby about attending this one as the Minneapolis Downtown Classic bike race, an event I rarely miss, was also this evening. What kind of an asshole would schedule a bike race and Pride on the same weekend? That's so gay.

By attend, I should really say, attend to. My idea of a party is to sit in a hot basement with people running into my makeshift office to hand me disgusting wads of cash that look like they came right out of the compost pile, or scream "I need ones! Ones and fives! And wristbands!". Though Molly, in addition to being her usual Live Action Super Hero self, did take a few moments to occasionally flop in the swively chair and do her best impression of a Fifties pin-up model, it was the highlight of my evening. Okay, I'm a pervert, get out of my ass already. My understanding is that several thousand people showed up, hungry and thirsty. Teh Gay, can really work up your appetite.

Chevrolet brought a car that you could enter into a contest to win. It was a hatchback, so I guess that makes it a gay car, presumably a girl could move her whole house in maybe four or five trips. I did manage to make it out of the basement at the very end and Al's kitchen, that had been cranking it out all night long, stuffed me full of cucumber salad and--as I was as they say on The Tour, hungry as a motherfucker--the most delicious bratwurst, ever. I checked in on the liquor station and asked Chad for something refreshing and delicious. Chad mixed up something that he said was our mojito mix and a little soda, I tasted it and while it was refreshing and delicious, I asked if I could have a little liquor in it. Chad looked at me like I had punched him and said "dude, there's liquor in there" I drank it just to be polite.

Never doubt Chad on matters of the bar, as we were counting and organizing I realized that that mojito packed a hell of a fucking wallop. We soldiered on until maybe 1 am and Molly and I agreed to meet back at my office to finish in the morning. Just then some one rushed into the office to announce that they had found six hundred left over jello shots in the walk in. Sell what you can, and give away a few, but don't kill anyone, I said. In no time, a shirtless waiter with "Jello is Freedom" sharpied on his chest was making the rounds and jello shots were flying like acid at Bonnaroo, a very good time to call my car and make a mad dash to safety.

I returned the next day and Molly and I counted and wrapped all day, then--per my fiduciary duty--we commenced The Drinking of the Forty-Nine Beers. I awoke this morning, bruised and bloodied, wandering lost on the streets of south Minneapolis, Having found my way home for a short nap, I'm back on my feet and enjoying a Fo-Kat at Lucé, tapping this crap out on my Mac-Book. If I don't edit and send this out now, it's technically still Sunday.

The Boyfriend.

If you peer at the pixels, you can just. make. out. something.

Hello all you kiddos out in BitchLand! Adjust your antenna, here comes Heebie! (Honey, why's the reception gone bad? It's not bad, dear. That's not Bitch. That's Heebie. She looks like that.)

Bitch invited me to guest post this week, and I'm super excited, and flattered, and unavailable. Until Tuesday. (I'll be at a wedding. ) But look, you couldn't keep me away, you wild, wild horses. (Stop biting me.) I'll be back and gabby on Tuesday.

If you want to get to know me, I live here. (Heebie, you dumbbutt. Don't give away all your content, you don't have that many tricks in your arsenal. (But I'll improvise, Gentle Reader, I'll improvise.))

This is the blogger equivalent of downing a bag of pixie stix, by the way. I'm not usually this chaotic and hyper. I just got all giddy when I saw the e-mail from Bitch a moment ago. (Heebie. Put the keyboard down. Put. it. down. (Yes'm, I'm sorry.))

See you all on Tuesday,
heebie-geebie

Overwhelmed by online media

Y'all, I've got friends visiting for a week and they get here this afternoon and my house is a motherfucking mess and I've got a phone interview at noon and my shit is just fucked. up. Thank GOD they're college friends so I can tell myself, like the rude bitch that I am, that it's okay for them to be welcomed to a trash heap, they'll understand.

Yes I suck. Anyway, I'ma be busy(er), and I may or may not be blogging, and I may or may not manage to arrange a guest blogger (I'ma try). But here are a ton of linkages to tide you over for a while, I hope.

Because you're all friends, it's okay to just throw links at you. You'll understand.

1. Yet another grad student begs me to post yet another survey. Poor bastards. Help them out whenever you can. It's easy, and they're so grateful.

Immigration Attitudes Survey

Increasingly, Americans are turning to the web for news about politics. This is a survey about online news coverage of the immigration issue. We are interested in your thoughts on this important political controversy. If you decide to participate in our survey, you will start off by answering a few questions about yourself and your political attitudes. Then you will watch a short news clip of an immigration story. After the clip, we will ask you some questions about your position on immigration policy. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.

Click here to take the survey.

Please feel free to contact Chris Weber (crweber@notes.cc.sunysb.edu) or Mary-Kate Lizotte (mklizotte@yahoo.com) at Stony Brook University with any questions or concerns. Thanks for your help!

2. They're not just trying to guilt-trip women. The anti-choice freaks are after men, too. It's SO fucking depressing. Wouldn't it be lovely if there were people interested in the mental and emotional health of men who actually cared about it for its own sake, rather than as a tool to beat women down with? (FYI: the lovely affadavit people

used in SD for the incredibly biased Task Farce Report on Abortion, the 8th Circuit informed consent challenge, PP v South Dakota , and as recently as the "partial birth" abortion case at the Supreme Court

, according to my friend, Nancy Goldstein at NAPW.

3. Why doesn't anyone ever print the good news about Iraq? Like the guardsman with PTSD who can't get mental health care but can get charged with half-a-dozen felonies because he does PTSD-type things?

Or the story about the missing soldier whose wife is about to be deported, the illegal bitch? Guess she and her husband shoulda thought about whether he'd be available for her hearing before he chose to go off to war and get himself lost.

Thank about stories like these as July 4th comes up. It used to be my favorite holiday. Now it makes me feel like shit.

4. Interesting little piece of promotional spam from my email inbox, actually detailing a project worth linking to: AOL True Stories, an online movie project where you can watch documentary films for free--or, of course, buy them!--but you don't have to, which is the point. Oh, and they have a blog. Mother Jones did a piece about one of their films, which makes it okay for me to be pimping for them too. Here's another one about U.S. soldiers in Fallujah. The good news just keeps coming and coming. Yay America.

5. That said, it *is* good news that there's more and more awesome free online content making up for the death of the mainstream media right-wing lapdogs mainstream media. The ACLU's got a cool new spoken-word project, for instance. Check out, e.g., this breathless rant about abstinence (links directly to an mp3).

Promote the Gay Agenda

Here's your mitzvah for this week.

The Point Foundation provides scholarships and mentoring to LGBT student leaders at all educational levels. They and Yahoo have come up with an easy funraising drive. For every photo uploaded to the group's photo pool, Yahoo will donate $1 and up to $25,000. Currently, The Point Foundation provides scholarships to 94 people, one of whom emailed me about this; they

select Point Scholars based on social, emotional and financial need, scholastic aptitude and leadership potential. We pay particular attention to those students who have lost the financial and social support of their families and/or communities as a result of revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Photos don't necessarily need to be of pride (especially if participants aren't queer or didn't go to pride), but they just need to be representative of people who are proud to be LGBT or are proud of LGBT people.

Instructions:
1. Go to The Point Foundation website
2. Click on the Worldwide Pride 2007 (Yahoo) link (third item down in the far-right column; lavender colored)
3. Create a Yahoo ID if you do not have one
4. Join the Worldwide Pride 2007 photo pool
5. Upload your photos
6. Create multiple Yahoo IDs
7. Go back to step one, wash, rinse and repeat!
8. Be proud of yourself.

Honored to meet you, Digby

From the Take Back America conference. You have to watch: Digby is not in that particular freezeframe.

Check it out

Very cool collection of images from the history of feminism, put up by a blog reader who works for a Norwegian image agency and thought, dammit, there need to be more right-on image archives out there in the world. Yay her! (Go, click over, people: in the online universe, clicks = "see, boss? People love this stuff!")

"Sounds like she was a very bitter person."

God, there are some assholes in the world. No, not former Ottawa city manager Weldon Padgett--who allegedly had a habit of drugging his wife and raping her, and who was, charmingly, worried about her mental health (!) when she started to suspect--but the people commenting on the article.

Which also, by the way, goes to show that mainstream news sites that set up blogs haven't the first fucking clue, some of 'em, how to do it right. One of the lovely things about blogs, yes, is their ability to include readers through comments. However. If you don't moderate the comments so as to eliminate patently offensive speech, all you're doing is providing a megaphone to assholes. More and more, I'm thinking that guys like the commenters at that link make the internet/country/world a hostile atmosphere for women. And that they're doing it on purpose.

And hey, if that's the audience you're writing for, let 'em comment; god knows no one else is going to once a few dickwads like that have snarled the thread. But if you actually want to write for folks other than bitter misogynist adolescent assholes, you might consider making the boys shut up and sit the fuck down, so someone else has a chance.

Animal rights now!

Why is it "cruelty" to feed a puppy to a snake when feeding a mouse or rat to a snake is perfectly a-ok?

No Comment

Congressmen who are liberal are more likely to have slutty daughters. And therefore, they are more likely to support abortion for selfish, personal reasons.

Another conclusion: If you are pro-life, don't vote for candidates with daughters.

It must be awful to be so self-loathing.

Just say Yes to Lindsay's new gig

Lindsay Beyerstein, rising journalistic star, just got a new gig over at In These Times. I've been meaning to subscribe, but now shall do so with a note saying that she's the reason why. Good for them.

Here's her first story there.

If only practice what they preach.

The House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education shocked many progressives in early June when it approved a $32 million increase for the discredited Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) program.
....
This apparent change of heart from the Democrats on abstinence-only education is an attempt to build a veto-proof majority for Labor-H. According to the June 7 Congressional Quarterly Today, President Bush has vowed to veto any Labor-H [Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education] bill that exceeds the amount that he set aside in his budget. Bush put forward a $698 billion budget. The Labor-H markup exceeds that figure by more than $10 billion. So Democrats must attract enough votes to pass the bill with a veto-proof majority if they are to prevail.

The Dems want to pass the bill because, as the second largest discretionary spending bill (behind defense), it contains money for things like Medicare, the National Institutes of Health and Center for Disease Control, job training programs, unemployment benefits, Head Start, Global HIV/AIDS funding, k-12 school counselors, Pell Grants, Public Broadcasting, and Social Security. (You can download a .pdf of the subcommittee's proposed spending markups here).

There are two problems with this attempted compromise (assuming it works; if not, that would be problem #3). First, absintence "education" requires that kids be taught

the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity

--whether or not such gains actually exist. So abstinence programs "teach" stuff like, absintence until marriage makes marriages last longer (not true) and improves self-esteem (not true). Stuff like birth control's only addressed in terms of failure rates, and "presented only as it supports the abstinence message being presented." Moreover, studies have found that abstinence education

- Doesn't work: kids who get absintence training are as likely as anyone else to fuck around before marriage.
- Contains "significant errors or distortions" of fact.
- Blurs the line between science and religion.
- Promotes gender stereotypes as fact.
- Effectively denies sex education to gay and lesbian students, since gay marriage is illegal.

Worse still, the people who have the most to gain from that extra $32 million are . . . the political/religious right, who are just going to funnel that money right back into the pockets of politicians who, if the intended compromise here succeeds, care more about lying to kids about sex than they do about things like properly funding proven education, health, and human services programs.

And round and round it goes.

Of course, the truth is that just like teenagers, telling politicians to just say no won't work, because that's not how the world works. People are going to have sex, and politicians are going to make unsavory compromises. Still, you can't help but wish that the shitheads of the world would fuck over someone other than kids.

'Twill be cross posted in a couple of hours over at SG.

P.S. In doing a google image search for the required SG header graphic, I found out that chastity belts are apparently a current form of fetish gear. I really didn't need to know that, did you?

CLICK ON THIS LINK

Finding the .pdf that is the third link in this brief note makes me feel a-okay about having read yet another Paris Hilton thread over at Unfogged.

Seriously. Seriously. Follow that first link, download the .pdf linked as "today's order" and read the footnote. You'll thank me. As Mr. Kotsko pointed out to me, it's bitchier than anything *I've* ever written.

Oh, and the first two pages of the second link (also a .pdf) are worth having just to see who got a much-deserved dressing down, but since everyone hates downloading unnecessary .pdfs, I'll save you the trouble on that one. The footnote WHICH YOU MUST READ is addressed to

Vikram Amar
Professor of Law
University of California

Randy E. Barnett
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory
Georgetown University Law Center

Robert H. Bork
Formerly the Alexander M. Bickel
Professor of Public Law at Yale Law School

Alan M. Dershowitz
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law
Harvard Law School

Christopher J. Wright (DC Bar # 367384)
Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP
(Counsel for Amici)

Viet D. Dinh
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center

Douglas W. Kmiec
Professor of Constitutional Law and Caruso
Family Chair in Constitutional Law
Pepperdine University School of Law

Gary S. Lawson
Professor of Law
Boston University School of Law

Earl M. Maltz
Distinguished Professor
Rutgers School of Law – Camden

Thomas W. Merrill
Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law
Columbia Law School

Robert F. Nagel
Rothgerber Professor of Constitutional Law
University of Colorado Law School

Richard D. Parker
Paul W. Williams Professor of Criminal Justice
Harvard Law School

Robert J. Pushaw
James Wilson Professor of Law
Pepperdine University School of Law

Professors Amar, Barnett, Bork, Dershowitz, Dinh, Kmiec, Lawson, Maltz, Merrill, Nagel, Parker, and Pushaw, I hope you're suitably ashamed of yourselves.

ABC for Plan B

It's about time. On Wednesday, the Republican representative from Connecticut, Christopher Shays and Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg from New Jersey introduced the Access to Birth Control Act, legislation to require pharmacists to stock Plan B if they supply anyform of contraception.

The bill, authored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., would make it illegal for a pharmacy to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and require pharmacies to help, not hinder, a woman's ability to access contraception.

You can get a .pdf of the proposed legislation at the bottom of this page. For facts about pharmacy refusals and state laws, see Planned Parenthood's site. For arguments against Plan B, see here. Here's where you can contact your senator or representative and tell them to support the bill.

And y'know, if you want to generate discussion and maybe get a few more people to support it, you could wear a lovely Plan B tshirt this summer.

Cross-posted at SG.

Politics and the English Language

It's been a while since I did "real" political posts, and in today's NYT Select, Paul Krugman explains why.

as far as I can tell, no major news organization did any fact-checking of either debate. And post-debate analyses tended to be horse-race stuff mingled with theater criticism: assessments not of what the candidates said, but of how they “came across.”
....
debates involving 10 people are, inevitably, short on extended discussion. But news organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts — not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest.

The fact is that covering real news requires background knowledge, fact checkers, and time to focus on day-by-day political and international developments. Most unpaid bloggers may have the first, but few have the others. And without those things, news is no more than the idiotic columns of Maureen Dowd about whether Obama's clothes are too metrosexual or Giuliani's sex life is too controversial. Gossip's fun, and can be revealing--but ultimately, politics depends on more than personality or telegenic ability.

That said, most decently (not formally) educated people know damn good and well that Mitt Romney was either lying or betraying unforgivable ignorance when he claimed that the Iraq war started because Saddam wouldn't let inspectors into his country; after all, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter both spoke out at the time about the lack of WMDs and the Bush administration's saber-rattling. It's fucking pathetic that the mainstream media, with the money to hire fact checkers and full-time reporters, can't do better than I can on that front.

There are people who do this stuff better than me and better than the mainstream media. Most of them write political blogs for pay. I'm not talking the simple partisan mouthpiece type blogs, but legitimate independent political analysis. I recommend Obsidian Wings, Matthew Yglesias, Majikthise, and Ezra Klein.

Philolsophers

I couldn't help myself.

Hat tip to Mr. Labs.

Fame (What's your name?)

Here are four posts that struck me, recently, as oddly connected:

I Puke on Dude Nation

The Porn Effect Online

First Shiv

When the Internet Sucks

Initiallly, I wanted to use them to say something about the motivations of women who capitalize on their bodies for attention and approval. God knows I've done it, and most women who are more or less conventionally attractive surely have at some point too.

But then I saw these three followups to that third story, and wrote about them here, and then I took a break to read some of Sherman Alexie's new book (which by the way is very good). Towards the end, the narrator, who at the beginning of the novel commits a mass shooting in a bank,* thinks

Those people in the bank trusted me to be sober and smart and kind. I betrayed them.

And it suddenly occurred to me that the worst thing about things like Girls Gone Wild and SG isn't that these poor young women collaborate in their exploitation, or that they think that being sexxxy is a route to power, or that someday pictures of their tits might keep them from running for office. Or that they're collaborating with the patriarchy, or that they're somehow betraying their less attractive sisters.

The worst thing about women flashing their tits or playing the minx on the internets is that in doing so, they're demonstrating that they trust other people. To realize that it's all in good fun, that they can be sexual beings and still fully human, that enjoying the power of physical attraction doesn't mean losing all one's other complicated attributes.

And really, that kind of basic trust that other people are decent human beings is a good thing. If there's anything that needs to be analyzed, condemned, or regretted, it's that there are so many people out there who betray it.


*Or maybe he doesn't. I haven't finished the novel yet.

Feminist Parenting--the Downside

Pseudonymous Kid absolutely hates Bringing Up Baby because Katherine Hepburn's character is "so stupid."

The trim, yakkety-yak sisterhood holds no charms for him. I am distraught.

Blogging, Academia, and Me

A li'l more self-promotion: here's Eric Rauchway, the panel organizer, talking about that blog panel thing.

What struck me at the time, and what I really wanted to say something about, was what Eric mentions in his post: the fact that most of the follow-up discussion was about the anxieties of blogging: aren't people afraid of what might happen if they blog?

These same questions have come up every time I've talked publicly about blogging to an academic audience, and I think Eric's thought that they're about different disciplinary discourses is at best only a partial explanation. The differences between humanities and science folks (let's include econ on the science side for argument's sake) on this anxiety-of-blogging question is, I think, just a small symptom of a larger disciplinary difference (which might be gendered, too) between fields where there are obvious and well-paying non-academic jobs and fields where there aren't. Which also means fields where there's less anxiety about getting and keeping jobs vs. fields where there's more.

I think that anxieties about blogging are mostly anxieties about unemployment. For academics in particular, unemployment anxieties have different forms: the will-I-finish anxiety, the will-I-get-a-job anxiety, the will-I-publish anxiety, the will-I-get-tenure anxiety. And because for academics, having a job is so deeply bound up with having an identity, these unemployment anxieties become personal anxieties, which are difficult to discuss with non-academics (because they don't share them) or with one's immediate colleagues (who are, after all, also one's competition and/or tenure committee).

So we turn to blogging, in part, to express these anxieties safely--which means impersonally and publicly. Interestingly, it seems that impersonal publication of one's personal private anxieties actually helps a lot--not just in terms of finding a like-minded audience (there are a lot of pseudonymous academic blogs, have you noticed?), but also simply because articulating them subjects them externalizes them: you realize that they're something you can analyze, that they're *not* just you or the entirety of you, that they're something more public, more shared, more systematic than that.

Which, you know, is a good thing. And it's part of the roots of feminist lit crit, too: the idea that expressing the mundane, the personal, the minute is actually a political act both because it gives "mere" experience a material aspect and because it helps/forces both the experience and the author to move outside herself, to become part of the public world.

I think these realizations are generalizable beyond myself, but I certainly have to admit that they're incredibly rooted in my own experience of blogging. It's pushed me from an anxious nobody into a self-possessed somebody even as it's brought me "out" of academia into a more broadly public/populist/common role. Ironically (I think I remember saying something like this a long time ago), the self-possession is more my "old" self than the anxiety. Or rather, the two have always existed in relationship to one another: the anxiety is internal, private; the self-possession is both identity and public performance.

So anyway, that's me. Notes, perhaps, towards a future, longer, and better articulated public effort/essay.

Feminism is Cool

Check it out, y'all: Jessica Valenti was on the Colbert Report last night. Dayamn. It's a good interview; she was funny and easygoing, and Colbert gave her a little shit but took account of the fact that she's a little less used to the media spotlight than some of his guests. You can tell he's on board with the F-word.



And hey, if you liked it, you could do worse than let the Colbert people know.

More about Ledbetter, this time from a Real Actual Lawyer

So the convo on the Supreme Court Hates Women post was interesting to me. And Professor Lemieux, to whose femism and knowledge of the law I am always willing to defer, was surprisingly mild, I thought, about the case, mostly focusing on Alito's comments.

So I asked a Real Actual Lawyer who happens to read this blog, and who has happened to be quite friendly and generous to me in the past, and who happens to work in labor law, to write me a quick guest post on the topic with, y'know, actual real information and legal thinking as opposed to my patented seat-of-my-pants analysis.

Everyone, give Tor a nice welcome, wouldja?

Hi! Bitch has asked for me to put something together on the Ledbetter case, and while I’m going to do the best job I can, you should know that I come from the land of the ‘black hats’ – the management side lawyers who represent employers in these types of claims. That being said, I do not believe that it is ever appropriate to discriminate in any way against someone based upon their gender, race, national origin, religion, age, or disability status. Nor do I think that it appropriate to discriminate based upon genetics, gender identity or sexual orientation – things that employers are prohibited from doing in some areas of this country, but not others. If they would listen to me, I would urge Congress and the various State Legislatures to address that problem. Sadly, they do not listen to me.

One central issue here, that I want to address before people get bored and go off to read something else (sorry Bitch, it happens when lawyers write things), is that if your company prohibits you from discussing your wages or terms of employment with other employees, talk to your HR department or your local office of the National Labor Relations Board. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act prohibits employers, even non-union ones, from prohibiting employees from discussing their wages with other employees, as well as certain other limited groups of people (who are these ‘limited groups’? Remember, I’m Management-side – I can’t give away the store here). You can’t discuss that information with a competitor, but you clearly can with your co-workers. If your personnel policy prohibits it, it is wrong, it is illegal and it is unenforceable. And tell your employer to hire me to write a better policy for them.

The Ledbetter case focused on one specific issue. Bitch’s summary of the facts of the case – see here – is correct, but slightly incomplete. Lilly Ledbetter filed several claims against Goodyear, including a sex discrimination claim under Title VII, and a claim under the Equal Pay Act. She won in District Court on the Title VII claim, but lost on the Equal Pay Act. She elected not to appeal the Equal Pay Act claim, and the Title VII claim made its way to the Supreme Court for a final (judicial) decision.

The question under Title VII was a simple one – simple to define, anyway, if not necessarily simple to answer. The statute of limitations for Title VII is 180 days (300 in some states) for discrete acts of discrimination. Generally speaking, everyone agrees that decisions like a failure to hire, termination and discipline are discrete acts – i.e. Jane Doe was terminated on January 1, 2005. She must file her claim before close of business on June 30, 2005 to be able to proceed. Everyone also agrees that some types of discrimination result from a cumulative series of events – i.e. hostile work environment claims. If the first filthy email may not have created a hostile work environment (under the law), and the 50th certainly does, where do you draw the line? Judges then determine what is reasonable, and what is not.

The issue in Ledbetter was whether discriminatory pay decisions are a series of discrete acts, or discrimination that is the result of a cumulative series of events. And as we all know by now, the Supreme Court ruled that discriminatory pay decisions constitute a series of discrete acts, and therefore, any discriminatory acts which took place prior to 180 days before Ledbetter filed her complaint were barred by the statute of limitations contained in Title VII.

Although I do not normally agree with Justice Alito & Co., I think this was the right decision in this case, and in addition, that Ledbetter’s attorney screwed up. First, while we can disagree about whether Title VII’s 180/300 day statute of limitations is sufficient, I don’t believe Title VII was meant to exempt discriminatory wage claims from its statute of limitations. Practically speaking, I agree that it can be difficult to determine whether you are getting paid less than your colleagues, but you do have the ability to do so. On the other hand, the longer you allow a claimant to wait to file a claim, the less likely you will be able to investigate any claim and resolve it before litigation as well as becoming increasingly difficult to track down the relevant witnesses and documents. The statute of limitations is not a perfect solution for either employers or employees, but as someone once said, if both sides are equally unhappy, it’s probably the right decision. Keep in mind also that one of the stated purposes of Title VII is to encourage the prompt resolution of these types of claims.

Hypothetically speaking, if I represented a client who employed a widget maker, and one widget maker complains of wage discrimination based upon her gender. The investigation discovers that the widget maker was caught sleeping on the job at one point (but wasn’t written up for it), and doesn’t do as good a job at widget making as the other widget makers. So she’s not such a great employee – but that is somewhat irrelevant to her claim of discrimination (could go to motive for making the claim, but we don’t know yet). The investigation also discovers that she’s paid less that the other widget makers, but that makes sense given everything else we’ve discovered so far – but it also doesn’t mean that she hasn’t been discriminated against. So HR brings the employee in, tells her we’re investigating her claim of discrimination, and that we’d like for her to tell us specifically how she was discriminated against. She refuses, says that she doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble, that she might have overreacted, and says that she’d like to go back to work now please. HR believes that if she is pressured, she will resign.

If she was in fact discriminated against, she’s now accruing a claim against the company. The dollar value of her judgment grows with every passing day. There isn’t anyone left to speak to, there doesn’t appear to be any objective evidence of discrimination, and there are no other claims of discrimination from other employees, either against the original employee or any others. There may be witnesses willing to testify for the employee, and the employee may have evidence that she was discriminated against, but she has no obligation to give the employer that evidence – all of which may be used in court against the employer. The employer has absolutely no desire to continue to employ a discriminatory manager, but there is no proof that any manager is in fact discriminated. And similarly, the employer could offer a settlement agreement and pay her off – but without proof that she was discriminated against, the employer isn’t going to offer much money, and if she wasn’t actually discriminated against, it doesn’t set such a hot example for the other employees, who will see the worst widget maker collecting money that could have been part of a raise for the hardest working employees.

How long should this employer have to wait for a claim? Six months? A year? Ten years? What would you advise the employer? Let me know, they’re waiting for a call back…

Had Ledbetter gone the other way, it would have opened the door to claims being filed that are decades old. And while some judges would dismiss them, others may not, which would subject employers to liability for decisions that were made by people who are now deceased or impossible to locate. Speaking from experience, the majority of discrimination cases that are filed today have little merit – and if Ledbetter had been decided otherwise, it would have opened the floodgates to tens of thousands of meritless claims being filed – all of which have a cost to employers, and eventually to you. And lastly, there’s the slippery slope concern, where Ledbetter could have led to other types of claims besides wage discrimination and hostile work environment being exempted from the statue of limitations.

Finally, the reason why Ledbetter’s attorney’s screwed up should be clear from the following exchange in the oral argument before SCOTUS:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Why didn't you ask for the equal pay claim? As I understand the magistrate judge he said, yes, you had made it across the first hurdle, you had a prima facie case. You showed that you're a woman, and you're getting this and all the men are getting much higher. But the employer has come forward with any other factor other than sex and the other factor is that, your inadequate performance.

MR. RUSSELL: We should have objected to the failure to reinstate the Equal Pay Act claim. We didn't; we didn't think it was that important at the time because we still had the Title VII claim.

Had they appealed the Equal Pay Act claim, which was not time barred, Ledbetter would have been within a longer statute of limitations – a statute which was designed specifically to address gender based wage discrimination. One crucial difference between the Equal Pay Act and Title VII is that the EPA prohibits even unintentional discrimination on the basis of gender, so even if Ledbetter had not been able to identify a discriminatory act within the EPA’s longer statute of limitations, the mere fact of the discriminatory disparity in pay would have given her a successful claim. It isn’t entirely clear why she did not appeal that decision, but it may have been a tactical move to force the appeals courts to focus on the Title VII claim – similar to when a prosecutor intentionally doesn’t charge lesser included offenses, which forces the jury to convict on the highest count, or let the person go entirely.

I think it is important to recognize that employers have not been given a free rein to discriminate in how much they pay employees. There are other Federal, as well as State and Local statutes out there that provide protection for employees, many of which provide broader protection than Title VII. Is there room for amending the Equal Pay Act to further prevent this type of discrimination? Absolutely. I just don’t believe that Title VII is the right way to do it.

More bullshit about "health"

This time, from India, where

An Indian court has ruled against a group of female flight attendants who were grounded from the national airline for being overweight.

The court said that state-owned Indian Airlines had the right to take the step in the interest of flight safety and in the face of growing competition.
....
"No airline can afford to remain lax in any department whatsoever, be it the personality of the crew members of their physical fitness," Justice Rekha Sharma said.

"If by perseverance, the snail could reach the Ark, why can't these worthy ladies stand on and turn the scale."

Read the whole article, and then have fun picking apart the errors of fact in the judge's reported statement. You can see my list over at SG, but no cheating!