tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post3525816897176248151..comments2023-10-15T10:48:01.870-04:00Comments on Roxie's World: Meet Fred FlintstoneRoxie Smith Lindemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06455529922082930949noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-415969998025859062008-02-24T12:18:00.000-05:002008-02-24T12:18:00.000-05:00Thanks for helping my Mom define her sad mood, Rox...Thanks for helping my Mom define her sad mood, Roxie, et. al. <BR/><BR/>Yesterday she took a chance (based upon your post) and wore her "OUT for Hillary" Campaign button around town. Like your Mom, Rox, she received some stares, but the longer she wore it, the stronger she felt. She said that it feels good to declare, openly, who you are and who and what you stand for. Then later in the day, she was taken down to her knees by my her partner's son who looked at my Mom's button and said, "Out?" Do you mean like "out of the running?". The conversation didn't last long, but it was enough to remind her of how young boys (whose attention span consists mainly of the time it takes to play a GAMEBOY game) who try to emulate their fathers. <BR/><BR/>No prosaic wit or wisdom today. Just a little news from the suburban curb.<BR/><BR/>Oh Sarah ... me and my Mom are sorry (even though we don't know you) about your partner's situation. I hear this phrase A LOT around here. Damn Health Insurance companies!!! My Mom's partner works in the field and required a specific type of blood test because of her possible exposure to an infectious disease. After she had the test done, she found out that it wasn't covered by insurance. Odd. This is a health care worker who could potentially expose patients and she HAS insurance and yet they don't cover a test for an infectious disease. Something is terribly wrong here.<BR/><BR/>I think that my Mom's sadness is justified. <BR/><BR/>sdsScullery Dog Samhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01410891167356425289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-48444210459708067522008-02-24T12:16:00.000-05:002008-02-24T12:16:00.000-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Scullery Dog Samhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01410891167356425289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-85679086501033626612008-02-24T10:50:00.000-05:002008-02-24T10:50:00.000-05:00Yeah, yeah, Chris. Your wife is a strong woman. Lo...Yeah, yeah, Chris. Your wife is a strong woman. Look, Tweety, this is Roxie's World, and it's inhabited by lots of people who have had training in understanding language, self-presentation, text, subtext, and the psychology of sexism. We all know that "My own wife is a strong woman" is a common rhetorical technique used by guys who've been caught doing or saying sexist stuff and who are aware, at some level, that that's not OK. It's an attempt to deflect the claim they are, in fact, like, um, y'know, <I>sexist</I>. <BR/><BR/>That particular line has been used by such luminaries as G. Gordon Liddy and William Bennett, as well as any number of proponents of wifely - submission - like - it - says - in - the - Bible. <BR/><BR/>In addition to trying to ward off accusations of sexism, it is also a display, a piece of self-presentation that says, "See, I have a strong wife. I must therefore be tougher, stronger, and more manly than the average man." (Liddy in particular likes to present his wife as the second coming of Genghis Khan, but in skirts. Wait a minute--Genghis Khan <I>did</I> wear skirts. OK, the second coming of Genghis Khan. Note that this presents him as the guy who could have whupped Genghis Khan. [Actually, that's a matchup we'd like to see. But then, Liddy has some chops. Matthews, not so much.])<BR/><BR/>Anyway, leave the tougher-than-thou self-presentation to us dogs: we're better at it. And we also know when we should just look ashamed and resolve to try better next time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-92158358178175392992008-02-24T10:10:00.000-05:002008-02-24T10:10:00.000-05:00Sarah's comment makes clear just how sick our whol...Sarah's comment makes clear just how sick our whole country has become. If there is by chance a reader of Roxie's World who hasn't seen "Sicko," you need to do it now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-69828852908294841922008-02-24T00:03:00.000-05:002008-02-24T00:03:00.000-05:00Oh, Sarah, I'm so sorry to hear about your partner...Oh, Sarah, I'm so sorry to hear about your partner's illness. Your friends in Roxie's World send good thoughts your way. Your comment remind us that in a very real sense, lives are at stake in this election -- lives made precarious by lack of health insurance, lives on the line in an unending war, lives thwarted by poor schools or lack of economic opportunity. Pretty speeches won't count for much if we can't find the will and the way to begin addressing the country's long-neglected problems.<BR/><BR/>We hope your partner's situation improves, Sarah. Big face licks to you and to him.Roxie Smith Lindemannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06455529922082930949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-62076589424677607062008-02-23T23:25:00.000-05:002008-02-23T23:25:00.000-05:00I have to say that I agree with everything said in...I have to say that I agree with everything said in this post and have been rethinking my own unconscious bias towards the kind of charisma that Barack embodies as a holdover from the influence of patriarchal Southern politics. I also am increasingly concerned about Obama's lack of substance on the issues since my own partner was just diagnosed this week with a potentially terminal illness and denied his outpatient treatment by his hospital physicians because he lacks health insurance. When your wasting partner is lying in bed crying "they're going to let me die" the health care crisis in America becomes horrifically real. This country no longer guarantees our most basic right to life.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09555606836926211668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-5601220947013055412008-02-23T23:14:00.000-05:002008-02-23T23:14:00.000-05:00There are two issues: men are afraid of strong wom...There are two issues: men are afraid of strong women so they discount them and many women don't want to be strong, because they doen't want to take respoonsbility for their lives. <BR/><BR/>The first is just the Good Old Boy's club transforming itself to include minorities so they don't completely die out. I find it amazing how the good old boys in media keep telling her to quit because there is no way for her to win--at the time she was 26 deligates behind. There are still enough deligates in play that she can still stay in the game. However, if the Michigan and Flordia deligates are put back into play, the balance will be tiped back in her favor, which is why the boy's club is fighting it.<BR/><BR/>Secondly, let's face there are some women who would prefer to be second class citizends. They can stay home with the kiddies and play house while letting someone else make the decisions. If women stuck together and voted as a block, we would have smashed through that glass ceiling decades ago. It just takes a majority of us to decide to do it.Theresa Chazehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05700832583917523217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-86721918547551997022008-02-23T09:02:00.000-05:002008-02-23T09:02:00.000-05:00Great post, Rox, and great comment, RA (hey, I for...Great post, Rox, and great comment, RA (hey, I forgot to thank you for your Dickinson riff earlier this week -- that makes this Goose SO happy). And I'd definitely rather be Susan Sarandon. . . . <BR/><BR/>Anyway, I've been flabbergasted by the toxic levels of sexism, coupled with the lack of compunction about unleashing highly negative insinuations about Senator Clinton's motives and actions by men I have considered reasonable (see Frank Rich's recent columns in which he draws conclusions about Clinton from "facts" he has made up -- it's truly astonishing, and he would rant rant rant if he heard Limbaugh doing it. . .but it's a Limbaugh tactic if I ever saw one). And then there's The Nation's endorsement of Obama which made me laugh out loud (it goes something like. . .he's too conservative for us, he really hasn't done anything that we can point to, and Senator Clinton is the one who has the plan to get us out of Iraq and a healthcare plan that will work, but we like the Prom King and are going with him rather than the Valedictorian). And then there's the NYTimes itself, puffing up little negative bits about the junior Senator from NY and putting it on their front page (yesterday). <BR/><BR/>The sad fact is that if Obama were an African American woman whose rhetoric inspired, she would have dropped out of the race by now (it's no surprise that one mantra with Obama campaign staffers is to remember that, yes Roxie, you can say anything about a woman; and thanks to one of our dear friends who has been raising this point for weeks). <BR/><BR/>I think I beg to differ with you Rox about the sexist conspiracy business -- sure, there haven't been meetings in back rooms where agreements to "take the bitch down" were made, but there have been implicit agreements among interested parties acting together and exploiting residual sexism to win. Think about it, from McCain's query--"who's going to take the bitch down"--to the adolescence-on-parade gleeful guffaws when Mama gets beat (after all, Mama would make us eat our vegetables: formulate plans that, yes, might require SACRIFICE for everyone to have health care, for us REALLY to bring the troops home) to Obama staffers knowing you can say anything about a woman, we have witnessed some of the most immature expressions of hate (yes, hate) that we've ever seen. AND it's ye ole politics of distraction again: NO ONE IS DISCUSSING THE ISSUES. Well, Hillary keeps trying to discuss them, but Obama supporters just keep swooning and singing "Don't worry, be happy, the details don't matter and thinking about them just makes your head hurt anyway."<BR/><BR/>Neoliberal candidate? He's Barack Obama. He won't require any real change on our parts. We can, as so many have done in academe, simply pontificate about the need for change, cast brutal judgments on those with whom we disagree, and all will remain the same, just as it has in the university. Consider this: in my field more white men are hired for tenure-track jobs every year though women have the far better track record on PhD completion. Mmm. . .is that really because the men are doing substantially better work? Also, often in academe, powerful women are indeed bitchified through whispering campaigns (all conducted under the guise of "confidentiality" so the woman in question doesn't stand a chance of addressing those rumors). Thus one presidential or chancellor cabinet after another, all across the land, is primarily white male. And have you noticed that where there were feminist/women's studies that became gender studies, there's now masculinity studies that are of broad interest and application (rather than the "special interest," too narrow women's studies).<BR/><BR/>If he wins the nomination, Obama is not going to have sexism to help him out in the general campaign. He's going to need much more clearly drawn plans. His first answer in Thursday's debate was simply embarrassing and then ended with "my economic plan is like Hillary's"; and then there was his incoherent rambling after his answer about plagiarism that made his supporters laugh. . .do they know that his answer--"he's my friend and adviser and said I could have those words and use them as my own"--would NOT have satisfied the Honor Council of my own university?<BR/><BR/>But, as one of our dear friends wrote, we live in a cut-and-paste world and he's the cut-and-paste candidate. We live in a world where most don't want to think and so we go with anything that makes us feel. To that I'll add that we live in a land of very lazy journalists--very few want to evaluate the claims and proposals of candidates. 'tis far easier simply to feel and jump on the bandwagon of the moment.<BR/><BR/>Oh, as I said earlier, I fear we are in big trouble. And I admire Senator Clinton more every day. She is not letting the journalists write her script, and she doesn't do, as the liars have said, the cynical thing. Yesterday she gave up a half day of campaigning because a Dallas police officer in her motorcade was killed. She spent time with his family, and she spent time with the officers who are his colleagues rather than campaign, and at a time when there's no time or energy to spare. Thank you, Senator Clinton, for your empathy and your care and for not turning feeling good into fodder for your own campaign.<BR/><BR/>In Peace & Possibility,<BR/>GooseMartha Nell Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10066686045532002283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23938076.post-87063417319207311322008-02-23T08:01:00.000-05:002008-02-23T08:01:00.000-05:00Roxie, The strange thing is that women acquire a s...Roxie, <BR/><BR/>The strange thing is that women acquire a sense of their great power, by way of that monumental fear of women they constantly witness in men. We are at times so empowered by it, that out of some unconscious sense of compassion for the male struggle with our gender, we find ourselves inadvertantly giving place to their needs, the way all creatures instinctively give themselves up to care for their young. <BR/><BR/>I had a thought which is not meant to demean anyone (in fact, it makes me feel more love for them all), but it just struck me that this Democratic primary election is a remake of Bull Durham! Obama is that tall gangly pitcher, who finally comes of age, through the teaching of his catcher Kevin Costner (John Edwards), along with the wildly delightful <A HREF="http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/figures/anc.00151.014.jpg" REL="nofollow">sexual guru magic of Susan Sarandon</A> (Hillary Clinton). Now who would you rather be, the pitcher, the catcher or Susan Sarandon? Wouldn't most men choose the catcher and most women Susan Sarandon, even though those two are the ones left behind in the minor leagues, and only the pitcher makes it through to the big time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com