Jon Kyl thinks insurance shouldn't cover maternity

Hat tip to Rum, Romanism and Rebellion: And they wonder why they have a gender gap



This is our very own Senator from Arizona and the Senate Republican whip, complaining that his insurance plan (which he is part of a pool that includes females) covers maternity.

Is it any wonder, when Republicans keep electing chauvinists like Senator Kyl to their leadership, why women have voted more and more heavily Democratic over the years?

I hope he will write a thank you letter to female members of his insurance pool next time he gets a prostate exam.

They don't call it, 'Cracker Barrel' for nothing.

Tasha Hill, a black woman and an army reservist was leaving a Cracker Barrel restaurant in suburban Atlanta when Troy Dale West almost smacked her seven year old daughter with a door.

She told him that she did not appreciate his action, and he responded by beating her badly, using the 'n' word and the 'b' word repeatedly as he pounded her with closed fists.

What is amazing is that there were a fairly large number of customers outside but not one bothered to intervene (though they did tell the police what they saw.)

What is even more amazing and disturbing was the tenor of the interview that Hill and her lawyer got from CNN. They were repeatedly asked whether she 'provoked' the attack.

Provoked??!

Excuse me, but how the heck could she have 'provoked' this attack? Although Hill says that all she did was tell him bluntly that she did not appreciate the way he nearly slammed the door on her daughter, it really doesn't matter what she said. Nothing she COULD have said (though witnesses said she didn't say or do anything 'provocative') could possibly justify a brutal assault that still has her nursing bruises a week after the attack. It's that simple. He has no right to physically assault her no matter what she said to him. what is disgusting is that she and her lawyer were even asked if she 'provoked' him. I guess since the victim is a black woman and the perpetrator is a white man the white men doing the interview simply assume that he must have been 'provoked.' It's an outrage that anyone even has to ask about this. I'm not sure that we shouldn't just retire the term, at least when talking about human beings (yeah, you can 'provoke' an animal to attack but humans are supposed to be more highly evolved than animals, though maybe not in Mr. West's case.)

Beyond this, there is something more that is troubling about this as well. It's that the restaurant where this happened was a Cracker Barrel. In this case the restaurant clearly bears no responsibility for Mr. West's actions although the people who failed to intervene were presumably customers on their way in or out. But Cracker Barrel does have a disturbing recent history of racism. Even into the twenty-first century they have practiced de facto segregation such as forcing black customers to sit in the smoking section (including those black customers who don't smoke.) Even Chris Rock's mother has experienced racist treatment at a Cracker Barrel, only three years ago.

So it may well be that there is an undercurrent to this attack: Troy West represents exactly the demographic that Cracker Barrel seeks to attract. Keep in mind that even the name is vaguely racist. "Crackers" (derived from 'whip-crackers,' a term that hearkens back to the worst memories of slavery) were the young southern men who during the worst of the Jim Crow days would keep blacks 'in their place.'

Furor over pregnant 66 year old shows that sexism is still with us

Remember when Tony Randall became a father when he was in his seventies? Remember when Strom Thurmond became one when he was past ninety?

As I recall, there were congratulations all around. It was a great thing, or so everyone said, that such an old man could be a father.

So what about a sixty-six year old first time mother? Congrats all around like when these old guys became fathers? No, many people are claiming to be outraged by it. They are treating the story of British mom-to-be Elizabeth Adeney, a healthy sixty-six year old who became pregnant by in vitro fertilization, as some big scandal.

Do I detect a hint of sexism here? Yes, and it's none too subtle. When a ninety year old man can still make his organ work, he is lauded for his manhood. No one says a word about the fact that he probably won't be around to watch junior graduate from high school. Oh, granted there is some 'sweet young thang' involved, who it is assumed will look after the child after the old guy has departed.

But when a divorced woman, even a successful career woman who can certainly afford (and presumably will afford) to make sure that the child will be cared for in the event of her death, becomes pregnant all of a sudden she is called selfish and foolish.

Granted there are some health risks associated with a pregnancy later in life but as a doctor is quoted in the story I linked to, they are 'very treatable' health conditions.

As to raising the child, when he or she graduates from high school Ms. Adeney will be 84. It is certainly reasonable for a healthy sixty-six year old woman to expect to reach 84 (remember that women live seven years longer than men on the average to begin with.) And heck, look at how many kids now are being raised by grandparents or even great grandparents because their parents are either unable or unwilling to take care of them. Far from being called selfish, those grandparents are lauded for their selflessness. Now granted, Ms. Adeney recently became divorced. But there are many successful single parents out there so any argument that her lack of a partner will make child raising more difficult, while undoubtedly true, clearly does not count for much in the face of the factual evidence that single parents are raising children every day and the overwhelming majority of them are doing a good job of it.

I think it is great that technology has advanced to the point where a woman her age can become pregnant.

Now if we could just advance as a society at the same rate, we'd be telling her "you go, girl" instead of reserving those kinds of adulations for the Strom Thurmonds of the world.

McCain rape joke

One of my favorite Arizona bloggers, Tedski, did a post on the worst side of John McCain's sense of sick 'humor' in which he dug up this image of a Tucson newspaper article from 1986 in which John McCain is quoted as telling the following joke:

Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, ‘Where is that marvelous ape?’

But, hey this is a guy who publically called his own wife the c-word.

All I have to ask is DO WE WANT THIS KIND OF A NEANDERTHAL SEXIST AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?

Incidentally, Tedski has been selected as the state blogger representing Arizona at the Democratic convention. I put in for it, but I don't mind saying that the credentials committee made an excellent choice.

Sexist attack on Clinton goes too far

I've been plenty critical of Senator Clinton at times for both her positions on issues and for some things she's said. And I've been very clear about my support for Senator Obama and I'm glad that is getting close to clinching the nomination. But in this post I have to say that Rep. Steve Cohen, an Obama supporter from Tennessee, went just one step too far, though Cohen did apologize for the remark. Not so some bloggers, who have gleefully spread it around on the internet.

He compared her to Glenn Close's character in the movie, "Fatal Attraction". I saw that movie once, many years ago, and have no desire to see it again. Close's character plays an obsessed psychotic killer who has an affair with a married man and becomes obsessed with murdering his wife and taking her place.

To begin with, this remark is dripping with sexism. No one considers Hillary Clinton to be a psychopath, but the intent is to suggest otherwise. In fact, about the only thing that is common between Clinton and the character is that they are both female. Cohen probably considered the first real or fictional female psychopath he could think of (I guess Aileen Wuournos crossed his mind later.) Stop and think. Suppose a male Hispanic politician was compared to Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem's chillingly cold killer in No Country for Old Men.) Would it be considered a racial smear? Absolutely. And it is no less a sexist smear to compare a female politician to such a horrible character.

I know, I know. Some Republican will undoubtedly point to some post where someone compared Bush to Hitler. All I'd say about that is that it is also wrong (There was only one Hitler, thank God, and no one since then has been as completely and unalterably evil.) I have been known to compare Bush to Mussolini a few times but when I have it has not been a reference to any real or perceived Italian heritage, but rather a reference to macho but incompetent leadership and poorly planned military adventurism (and I'll let the present state of things in the world make that case.) In other words, it is a comment about policy, not a comment about DNA or anatomy.

But while I may disagree about many things with Hillary Clinton, I respect her for putting her best effort and point of view out there, and we should applaud the first woman to come as close as she did to being nominated by a major political party for President of the United States instead of passing off sexist cheap shots.