Dear Rush Limbaugh: I Know You Are But What Am I?

When 30 year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke tried to testify in favor of health insurance-covered contraception at a Congressional hearing (and, after being blocked by Rep. Darrell Issa R-CA, then had to issue her extremely articulate testimony via YouTube), Rush Limbaugh had this to say in return: [She] goes before a Congressional committee and essentially says [...]

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Word of the Day: Entitlement

Clearly on the extreme is the most recent string of pols abusing their, ahem, position.  First up, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who fathered a child over ten years ago with one of his housekeepers.  As in someone who for 20 years worked inside his home, where he lived with his wife and kids.  Ugh. And then [...]

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Backlash bedamned: Fear not the alpha gals

Successful women, watch out.  The menfolk, they don’t like us. At least that’s the message from a New York Times piece by Katrin Bennhold, titled “Keeping Romance Alive in the Age of Female Empowerment”.  And since we’re all, you know, successful women, we thought we ought to parse it out if only to share the [...]

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The Way We Were

We embarked on some personal archeology this past weekend.  Which is to say, we cleaned the garage. We do this periodically.  What’s interesting is that we get rid of stuff in layers: our own private dig.  We keep things we don’t use, if we have a place for them somewhere, only to finally send them [...]

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Candles in the Wind

I’ve been thinking about Shannon’s post from Tuesday about the Mad Men finale, when Don Draper chose Pretty over Smart — even though Smart was herself quite Pretty.  Now, I tend to think that Don went from rock star to weenie when he proposed to his 25-year old secretary on a sex-charged whim:   He [...]

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Raised By Wolves

Weren’t we all? I came across that line Wednesday in a piece by Maureen Dowd, who quoted Michelle Obama as saying that her husband had spent so much time alone growing up that it was as if he had been raised by wolves. Love that phrase, don’t you? Think about it and you realize that, [...]

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Spinning the spinster myth: we can do anything, but what does it matter if we don’t have a man?

Men are single. Women, on the other hand, are unmarried. And that, ladies, is how language screws us once again All of which came to light Wednesday via Maureen Dowd, who used the current flap about the sexuality of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to note how quickly women go from “single” — read: sexy, [...]

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Doesn’t Hurt to Ask, and Other Excellent Advice We Talk Ourselves Out of Taking

Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask! How many times have you used that very line, psyching up a friend before sending her into the field of battle, whether the battlefield be the boss’ office over a raise or a promotion or just a couple of days off, or the next cube over, daytime home of [...]

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