first off, i am writing saturday. i didn't say i'd write early and c.i. didn't say i would when it was noted that i was blogging on saturday.
fly boy and i went to see play last night. (i didn't care for it and it was obvious the cast was trying very hard so i'll avoid knocking it. plays get so little attention that if it just doesn't work, i have no need to weigh in. if it's offensive, that's another story.)
no, ruth, thank you.
ruth thanks me for listening to her report. (i heard three versions of it.) it was a pleasure. i asked her the 1st time, 'did c.i. ask you to cut it for length?' she said no but she felt like her reports were getting too long. i don't think that's true. no 1's ever said that to me in person or in an e-mail. but she feels like she goes on too long.
i think that has to do with the fact that she's trying to cover so much. i teased her by saying that i'd grab Law and Disorder for her. teased her because that's 1 of her favorite programs. she said, 'oh you should cover it too. we can both cover it. mike's been mentioning it.'
i won't grab Law and Disorder because i know she loves that program but i will try to listen to and cover something. i think kat's going to start grabbing Guns and Butter. ruth's got a lot to cover and i can grab at least 1 show. i may try to grab something that she never gets to but always means to cover.
this report, she has a wonderful feminist critique of the attitude of a guest on CounterSpin which is a program i listen to now thanks to ruth. i'm sure i'd heard about it before from c.i. but it was ruth's highlighting it each week that made me say, 'okay, i'm going to listen.' i heard the woman being interviewed by janine jackson so when ruth wanted to read her take on it to me, i did know what she was getting at and she didn't have to explain the interview to me.
ruth's kinder than i am. i heard it and didn't think, 'oh she doesn't know about all the work women have done before.' i heard it and thought, 'oh she doesn't care about the battles women have fought and that's partly because of where she writes.' i don't mind an opinion journal, i don't mind a news magazine, but i have no use for a party organ and let's not kid.
i hunted down the article online, the 1 the woman had written, because ruth said she was going to write about it. when i found it, i read it and was prepared when ruth called back with the next section of her report. she is correct, the woman does suggest that women, who are elected and pro-life, should be given space. i'm sorry that's crap.
the issue the writer has tried to focus on is the fact that the new york times shuts out pro-choice voices and instead runs anti-choice male voices. adding anti-choice female voices helps no 1. i really don't buy into the 'i'm a feminist but i'm pro-life' if you're a woman working to defeat other women's rights. you don't want to have 1, for whatever reason, don't. but you're not a feminist if you're working to take away the legal choice from other women.
i don't see that as a gray area.
and to offer that lame 'well .... uh, the new york times depends on officials .... on the academy ... on government officials' nonsense is not feminism. (and that's not a quote from the woman, that's my impression of her statements on the broadcast.) feminism is about valuing women's right to speak and write about their own experience. the new york times is not about feminism.
that's why they have their 'i was a happy working woman but decided i'd be happier at home' stories every 6 months or so. trophy wives are all over that paper, women of achievement barely.
gatekeepers set up the rules so as not to include women unless they were queen bees working to hold other women back. women have had to storm the gates to get the little bit of public space they have. to turn around and accept the premise of gatekeeping goes against feminism.
so read ruth's latest public radio report. she's not playing 'cautious' and she's not going to go 'uh ... uh ...' women of ruth's generation don't play. they don't mess around with abortion, they don't bother with nonsense. they fought this battle.
women who came after, and that includes me, owe them a huge debt and we need to quit playing nonsense games with our times. nonsense includes acting like we have to preface a defense of a medical right with some sort of 'oh abortion is wrong, i know' nonsense.
never heard a man say of a kidney stone operation: 'oh i know it's wrong but i had the procedure. i know it's not in the bible. i know god put the kidney stones in me and i am disowning his will by taking them out, but i did it.'
i don't have time for nonsense and roe v. wade doesn't either. it's under attack.
as ruth pointed out, great number crunching by the woman, lousy commentary. (ruth was kinder.)
on ruth's report, max blumenthal is the writer at the nation who slammed joan mellen. i have no idea why he felt the need for his rebuttal. in the same issue, people objecting to katha pollitt had their say and katha didn't have the need to reply. but blumenthal's got to have the last word.
mellen wrote a great book and you should all read it. A Farewell to Justice is the name of the book. if you're 1 of my younger readers, read it especially. you'll be alive when papers start coming out about the jfk assassination. you'll be able to look at all the blumenthals who have covered up and denied for years. when those papers start coming out, do me a favor and write the nation. write them and tell them that max blumenthal was a lousy man who attacked people trying to find out the truth. tell them that he was a judith miller. he was being fed info by the cia.
this actually wasn't what i planned to write about. i'll do what i planned on monday. but i am just so blown away by ruth every week. if you're a community member of the common ills and you think 'i should share more' i want you to take a look at ruth. she was a member who didn't think any 1 would care what she had to say. when c.i. wrote about how npr gets a pass for all their distortions, despite having a larger audience than fox, msnbc and cnn combined, ruth thought, 'okay, i know this topic, i can write about this.' and that's how she carved out her space.
members love her. (i love her. she blows me away!) i think it was around this time last year that she started contributing to the common ills. her voice is a valued 1 and it is also 1 that we all love. i want more yiddish from ruth! that's my only gripe. i loved reading her using a yiddish phrase and trying to figure it out and then, later, calling her up and asking her how to say it.
she's 1 of a kind. she really should have her own site. c.i.'s told her that too. but she thinks the report is really all she can handle right now. (during work hours, she's the primary caretaker for her youngest grandson monday through friday.) we're lucky to have her voice.
by the way, there was a playwright on RadioNation with Laura Flanders tonight. see, she appreciates the arts in all their forms. tomorrow esther kaplan's going to be on so make a point to listen.
