Today is Women's Day of Action for Healthcare Reform, sponsored by the National Women's Law Center and many allies. Turns out it's also the day a vote on the 1,900-page House proposal (PDF) may be in sight. "Americans are ready for comprehensive health insurance reform and the House will soon act," Nancy Pelosi said in a statement last night accompanying many last-minute changes to the bill. "Publication of the changes started a 72-hour legislative clock, meaning that a floor vote could take place as early as Saturday," the AP reported. "But with no Republican backing for the measure, Democrats will need overwhelming support from their own. A festering intra-party disagreement over how to prevent federal funds from being used to pay for abortion remained unresolved Wednesday morning."
Oh yeah. That. Long story short, there's the Stupak amendment, which hardcore abortion opponents love, and there's the Ellsworth-DeLauro "compromise" amendment, which everybody hates.
Women's and abortion-rights advocates have pretty much had it up to here with “compromise.” "This is a do-or-die moment in the battle over abortion coverage," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. "Either the House Leadership can cave to the demands of the anti-choice lobby -- intent on exploiting the divisions over abortion within the Democratic Party -- or take a principled stand against these political machinations. While anti-choice lawmakers opportunistically move to extend the already punishing federal funding for abortion restrictions into the private market, American women have given more than enough in the spirit of compromise. More deep slices from the half-a-loaf already given to American women would be intolerable.
"Abortion is a constitutionally protected medical procedure that one in three women will have in their lifetime. Yet the abortion-neutral language negotiated into both House and Senate bills amounts to a promise to women with a 'no-guarantee' clause. While an honest and credible attempt to defuse the debate over abortion, the compromise potentially leaves millions of women under the new system without even the option of abortion coverage.
"American women cannot afford to give any more ground on healthcare. And House Leadership cannot afford to renege on their responsibility to protect women's rights and health."
So hound your reps today. If you're in D.C., head over to Dupont Circle with your healthcare nightmare story for an all-day vigil. This should get you going:
Have you always wanted to run a background check on everyone you've ever met, but been too put off by the thought of paying up to $19.95 per check? BeenVerified.com can solve that problem for you! Their new Background Check iPhone app will allow you to snoop on unsuspecting acquaintances -- gathering "basic information like name, age, address history and relatives," a "comprehensive state and nationwide criminal records search," a "social networking scan," and the value of any property they own -- three times a week for free, and if that's not enough, more extensive plans start at $8 a month. According to 9to5mac.com, "In just three days since its release, the application already sits on #12 on the iTunes list of free utilities and continues to climb."
Supposedly, this is meant to appeal to small business owners, average citizens looking to make sure their professional contacts aren't shady, and online daters hoping to reduce their chances of meeting criminals for coffee. But Been Verified's national TV spot (below) is right up there with the Broadview Security ads Sarah Haskins ably skewered in terms of reminding women that we are never safe. Sure, there's a guy in there who's going to check out his accountant, mortgage broker and electrician -- it's not like women would be hiring those people anyway! -- but the commercial is anchored by a single woman who wants peace of mind before the first date and a pregnant woman who declares, "No stranger comes around my growing family without a background check!" (That must make running errands difficult, but perhaps she has background-checked help?) The latter also asks the question at the heart of this particular pitch: "How can I know who to trust?" Silly lady, didn't you see the Broadview ads? The answer is no one! You're a victim waiting to happen! Unless, of course, you run a criminal records check on anyone who gets within a 10-foot radius of your fetus.
Like all safety precautions, there's surely a time and a place for something like this. Businesses already running checks on potential employees can do it less expensively. Investigating an accountant beyond Yelp reviews could be a good idea before you hand over sensitive financial information. People hiring caregivers for family members would probably find it useful. And sure, if you've got a hinky feeling about a guy you just started dating, it would be nice to find out for sure if he's already married or wanted for fraud or something. But what individual actually needs to run a check on three people a week? If you're as puzzled by that question as I am, the application offers a helpful suggestion: "Not sure who to check? Run background checks on everyone in your address book!" Of course! Why didn't I think of that? After all, how can I know who to trust?
In a week when airport security theater is increasing yet again for no good reason other than calming a public that prefers the illusion of safety to rational thought about risk, this idea that hypervigilance is necessary to survive everyday life is working my last fucking nerve. How can I know who to trust? Well, let's see, there's gut instinct cultivated over 35 years of interacting with other human beings. There's real fear, as opposed to diffuse anxiety. There are recommendations from friends I've come to trust over time. There's the Better Business Bureau and umpteen websites where I can find complaints about someone I'm considering dealing with. There's making a realistic assessment of the likelihood that any given person means to do me harm -- which is perhaps never zero with strangers, but only rarely much higher, in my experience. There are patterns of behavior that should raise red flags if I'm paying attention. There's, you know, common sense.
Meanwhile, you know who's really going to love this one? Stalkers. Control freaks, manipulative jerks and garden variety nosy parkers. Maybe even identity thieves. Basically, half the people you would want technology like this to help you avoid. Sure, you can check out that guy you just met online -- and he can do the same. If it so happens that he is the kind of person you'd be better off without, now he doesn't even have to fork over $20 to get piles of your personal information -- but hey, at least this way you don't have to feel like a chump for being the one who gave him that info, since you learned in advance not to trust him. Don't you feel safer already?
It's that time of year. Pants are a little tighter, jowls are little droopier, and there's a high concentration of your mom's famous tollhouse cookies in your bloodstream. Time to start making some new fitness resolutions.
Or did we say frescolutions?
In today's installment of "things for which we blame Jared Fogle" a woman named Christine Dougherty has become the face – and body – of Taco Bell's "Drive Through Diet" campaign.
Right off the bat, let's just say that we're skeptical of a "diet" that involves eating burritos in your car. We further have our doubts when there's a disclosure that "Drive-Thru Diet is a not a weight-loss program." And were I Taco Bell, I wouldn't go bragging about having a whole seven items on the menu that contain fewer than nine grams of fat. (Which, by the way, does not qualify any of them as low fat.)
But we credit Christine, whoever she is, for losing 54 pounds over a sensible two-year period instead going all gimmicky and "Biggest Loser" on us. And we admire her for working within her weaknesses. "I didn’t want to cut out my fast food," she says in the online ad, "so I started choosing Fresco items from the Drive-Thru Diet menu and making other sensible choices."
Good on you, Christine, and thanks for the caveats, because it's a safe bet that nobody's going to get into a bikini like the one you sport on the Taco Bell page simply by switching to the lower-calorie options on a fast food menu. A far likelier scenario is that those "other sensible choices," along with, dare we say, exercise and an efficient metabolism had a bigger role in the transformation.
We're all for taking those little steps that can lead to big changes. And we applaud fast food chains for offering fresher, lower-fat options. But we call bullshit on rounding up seven menu items and calling it a "diet," and we'd like to know a little more about this Christine lady before we trust her lifestyle advice. Want to get healthier in 2010? Think outside the bun – and then think some more.
It's notoriously difficult for actresses of a certain age to get work in Hollywood, but CNN's Breeanna Hare notes that if you're an older white woman who looks suitably patrician, opportunities abound in the "boozy grandma" role that seems to be featured in every other TV show these days. Veteran actresses Kelly Bishop, Holland Taylor, Caroline Lagerfelt and Jessica Walter have all recently played such three-martini matriarchs — I'd add Susan Sullivan, currently working out her elbow on "Castle," to that list — and now Susan Sarandon has brought the type to the big screen in "The Lovely Bones."
And at this point, it is a type. Says Hare, "It's a role that's virtually paint-by-numbers — drunk grandmothers are nearly always wealthy, white and cruelly witty, with poor parenting skills," but in the hands of such talented performers, the outspoken, cocktail-fueled older woman is still extremely watchable — which really ought to make us wonder what they could do with other roles. For all the talk of Meryl Streep rocking Hollywood's socks off this year (and believe me, I'm as thrilled about that as any other female moviegoer who's not invested in Edward vs. Jacob), let us not forget that she's Meryl Freakin' Streep. Is her recent wave of success really going to help other women her age to open movies and land the cover of Vanity Fair? TVGuide.com senior editor Mickey O'Connor provides the reality check: "Maybe it's become, play a drunk grandmother and you get to work past the age of 60." Even if you're Susan Sarandon, let alone an award-winning actress (Bishop has a Tony, and Taylor an Emmy, for instance) who's spent decades stuck in "Hey, it's that guy!" territory.
I suppose the boozy grandma is better than the dotty — or nonexistent — older woman character, in that she at least has a discernible personality, opinions and enough brains to produce just the right clever, cutting remark on the spot. But does she have to be a functional alcoholic for the audience to accept those things? Does a woman over 60 — or 50, even — have to be snobby and self-absorbed to be interesting? As cookie-cutter types go, "wealthy, white, witty and wasted" does at least offer an actress something to do, but given the talent and résumés of some of these performers, "wasted" is exactly the right word.
The early morning call was for a "domestic abuse" situation. "My husband had me with a knife," the woman said. "I'm scared for my life, and he threatened me." And when the 911 operator asked for her husband's name, she broke into sobs and said, "Charlie Sheen."
The early Christmas morning call that Sheen's wife, Brooke Mueller, placed to Aspen authorities has been released, and it is as sad and scary a few minutes of audio as you'll likely hear today.
On the tape, Mueller, who tested with a blood alcohol level of 0.13 when she met with police, sounds disoriented and repeatedly says, "I need to file this." The statement the couple gave the police sheds even more depressing light on the events, which seem to have erupted when Mueller threatened to divorce Sheen and take their 9-month-old twin sons. In their statements, both parties admitted yelling and slapping each other on the arms. But Sheen, who said that he had been having marital problems lately and that his wife "abuses alcohol," denied pulling a folding knife on her, though he did produce one for the police from his bag. It was, oddly, open and locked. Mueller, meanwhile, claimed he told her, "You better be in fear. If you tell anybody, I'll kill you. I have ex-police I can hire who know how to get the job done, and they won't leave any trace." Police also noted the appearance of red marks on her neck, which she said occurred while Sheen was holding her down with the knife to her throat.
Mueller's statements are remarkably consistent with Sheen's ex-wife Denise Richards' accounts of the actor's behavior, including an incident where he told her "I hope you fucking die, bitch. You are fucking with the wrong guy," and threatened to have her killed. Sheen also served two years' probation for a 1996 assault on then-girlfriend Brittany Ashland. In 1995, he settled a case out of court with a woman who claimed he'd hit her when she refused to have sex with him. And in 1990, in an incident deemed an accident, he shot his fiance Kelly Preston in the arm.
Child Protective Services is now apparently investigating the case, and for now, Sheen is remaining conspicuously mum to the press. That's fine, because we don't lack for punditry on the subject of Sheen's and Mueller's behavior and possible poor judgment.
But the surprising element in all of this is how relatively unscathed Sheen seems to be so far. A CNN report this morning put it best: "Scandals Don't Faze Charlie Sheen's Career."
Which raises the question, Why the hell not? CBS aired his sitcom "Two and a Half Men" — for which he earns a reported $825,000 an episode — last night as usual and has issued no statement on the events of Christmas. Hanes, with whom he has an endorsement deal, has likewise not distanced itself from its client.
Sheen's certainly not the first actor with a historic fondness for controlled substances and ladies of the town. So grudging props that he's managed to parlay that very public bad-boy reputation into a lucrative on-screen career. Oh, that Charlie! He's the philandering rake from that sitcom! And hey, the scandalous publicity just sent the ratings through the roof.
Here's the thing, though: Are you fucking kidding me?
There's naughty and there's shoving women around, hitting them, verbally abusing them, and threatening to kill them. Repeatedly. Over years and years and years. It doesn't matter if you've had an on-and-off relationship with sobriety. It doesn't matter if the women in question are hookers or porn stars or sexy actresses or college students. It doesn’t even matter if they're drunk. For what it's worth, you don't go pulling any of that on men either, though that doesn't seem to be an issue for Sheen.
So while you can get fired from a hit TV show shortly after making a homophobic remark, and you can lose your beauty pageant crown after posing topless, you can also, apparently, make a career of abusing women and be the highest-paid actor on television.
Air a public service announcement in which a woman speaks soberly about the grave risk of breast cancer and male viewers are all: Zzzzzzzzz. But have a male celebrity winkingly pretend to be a gynecologist, lecture his "bromigos" on the importance of breast cancer screenings and perform a mammogram on his own man-boob, and men just might perk up and wipe the slobber from their chins. At least, such is the wisdom of the Men for Women Now campaign, which produced that very spot starring stoner-dude comedian Jack Black — and, as Danielle Friedman points out today in the Daily Beast, it's just one of a handful of recent PSAs about women's health issues to feature and target men. But while she celebrates them for successfully getting out the message, I think they've failed miserably.
In the run-up to the holidays, CBS produced spots starring actors Chris Beetem and Josh Pais urging men to give the gift "even Santa can't deliver" to the special woman in their life: a Pap smear. The message wasn't for men to talk to the women in their life about how Pap smears can save lives, but to just go ahead and call up her gynecologist and make the appointment for her. The takeaway: "Save her life by getting her in stirrups, stat!" The timing of these PSAs was awfully poor, considering the guidelines for Pap smears were recently revised to suggest that women have them less frequently than previously advised in order to avoid unnecessary harm. More importantly, can you imagine the reaction to a PSA urging women to go ahead and secretly schedule a much-feared prostate exam for their husband as a "gift"? It would be seen as a controlling gesture, not a considerate one. Of course, the caring thing to do is spread the word about disease detection and prevention, to help inform personal medical decisions, which is kind of the point of PSAs, right? But, again: Zzzzzzzzz.
At least the Pap smear spots clearly had women's health in mind — as opposed to say, their breasts. Broadsheet readers might recall Canada's Rethink Breast Cancer ad, which featured a pair of bouncing bikini-clad breasts and beseeched viewers to "save the boobs." It was a fun and sexy approach, but also one that assumes the plight of nice knockers will stir men into action faster than the living, breathing, thinking and feeling human being carrying them. Gents, there is equal opportunity for offense here.
On a similarly fratty note, Men for Women Now — which almost sounds caveman-like, right? — has enlisted all manner of male stars to talk about boobs in online videos. The thinking behind these spots seems to be that saying "boobs" enough just might make men give a shit about breast cancer. Again, here's an assumption that is offensive not only to women but perhaps especially to men. Kevin Connolly of "Entourage" delivers the following sales pitch for the group's Facebook application: "Really, what is Facebook all about — faces? Ha-ha! I don't think so. It's about boobs. Ladies go there to show 'em off. Guys go there to check 'em out. I mean, really, when you think about it, it should be called 'Boob-book.'"
Another spot features Bob Saget, who has turned his squeaky-clean image as the dad on "Full House" into a comedy routine in which he acts as filthy and unfatherly as possible. "I save breasts," he tells the camera with a straight face. "I keep them in a chest, which is kinda redundant, at the end of my bed, and sometimes I'll spray Pledge on them to keep them lemony fresh." He continues on with his particularly desperate brand of creep-out humor: "I give Pap smears door-to-door. It's just me, you can let me in. I'm a dad on TV — there's nothing to worry about."
The creator of Men for Women Now, Noreen Fraser, tells the Daily Beast that "men are kind of marginalized when it come to women’s cancers." She asks: "Why shouldn’t men stand up for women's cancers?" I absolutely agree. By all means, men should be encouraged to learn more about diseases that threaten women and share what they know with the ladies in their life. I just don't see salivating over boobs and telling jokes about breast-collecting psychos as very effective consciousness raising. That isn't to say there aren't men out there who can only be persuaded to care or even think about women's health by a pair of jiggling jugs or sexual innuendo. But, frankly, I think I'm better off without those guys thinking about the state of my breasts or cervix.
The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut, who covered both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin extensively during the 2008 campaign, has written a book, "Notes from the Cracked Ceiling," on what she's learned from and about women in politics — and, as the subtitle says, "What It Will Take for a Woman to Win" the presidency. I look forward to reading the whole thing, but here's what I've learned from the excerpts and related items currently running in the Post: We still haven't had enough women in politics at all, let alone at the national level, to draw many firm conclusions.
Take Kornblut's tips for "How to shatter the 'highest, hardest' glass ceiling," which include: Beat breast cancer. No, really. Surely, it's a tongue-in-cheek strategy suggestion, but given the number of female politicians who have successfully leveraged their triumph over the disease to improve their image — Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell — it might just be one of the best. By contrast, only Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have provided evidence that advice like "Don't take women — especially young women — for granted" is sound.
Then there's the "Women Leadership Styles" piece (which notes that former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is "is pointing to her recent survival of breast cancer as evidence she is tough" in her campaign to unseat California Sen. Barbara Boxer), which identifies five models, including one ("The Businesswoman") that is admittedly "untested." Beyond that, the "Iron Lady" has a good track record internationally, but only Clinton and Madeleine Albright fall into that category in the U.S. We apparently favor "The Prosecutor" — e.g., Napolitano, Gregoire, Claire McCaskill, Amy Klobuchar, and Jennifer Granholm — although "The Young Mom" can sometimes be a crowd-pleaser. Reps. Wasserman Schultz, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Linda Sánchez have done all right with that, but then, the only female governor of Massachusetts, Jane Swift, might have been forced out because she gave birth while in office, and the other noteworthy figure in this category is Sarah Palin. On the upside, if Jane Swift waits until she's a bit older to try again, her maternal image could make her a fabulous "Grandmother in Pearls" — a love of children is evidently an asset as long as you're done raising them — à la Nancy Pelosi. Who, although she "is, after all, the most successful woman in American political history" is also the only woman working that particular model, making it not so much a "women leadership style" as "one woman's persona." And that's the whole list. (As Bitch Ph.D.'s M. Leblanc tweeted, "Women leaders, get them in ALL THE FLAVORS!!!")
So the path is clear for little girls who want to be politicians when they grow up: Become a successful prosecutor with young children and grandchildren simultaneously, and never let work interfere with your home life, or vice versa. Failing that, cultivate an image of toughness — and enough actual toughness to endure all the jokes about your either having testicles yourself or being inclined to remove other people's — or become CEO of a huge corporation and cross your fingers that that will work someday. Bonus points if you survive breast cancer. Oh, also, in the immortal words of Ani DiFranco (whom you probably shouldn't listen to unless you want to grow up to be some kind of commie, but still), "God help you if you are an ugly girl/'course too pretty is also your doom." If, like Clinton, you dare to have undereye bags in your 60s, you'll be savaged. If, like Pelosi, you have obvious work done to counter the criticism that you look too much like an actual aging woman, you'll be savaged for that, too. And if, like Granholm, you're younger and conventionally beautiful — hey, guess what! Also a problem! "Voters can find a woman attractive, but they don't necessarily think that translates into gravitas," writes Kornblut. Neither, apparently, do a Harvard law degree and experience as a prosecutor, at least until you fug yourself up in television ads. Says one of Granholm's advisors, "When we took it down a notch, people said, 'OK, she can be governor.'" God bless America.
And of course, there's Palin — an inescapable part of the conversation whether we're discussing beauty queen governors, female presidential contenders, moms of young children, the 2008 election or a laundry list of other issues. Her very omnipresence in articles and now books about women in politics only serves as a reminder of how few serious success stories there have been from which we can draw lessons for the future. Kornblut lumps her in with all the others in these short pieces, as though Palin's just one more highly accomplished woman butting her head into that glass ceiling, sidestepping the fact that — although she's taken her share of purely sexist criticism — the former Alaska governor's reputation suffers most because she distorts facts, presents ignorance as a virtue, translates the Constitution as saying that freedom of speech means freedom from criticism, et frickin' cetera. That this is one of the most visible women on the political stage — a fluke and a national embarrassment — is all the evidence necessary to prove that we still don't know jack about what it takes for a woman to succeed on merit at the highest levels. And when the number of successful female politicians is so pathetically small that even an expert on the subject is reduced to offering insights like, Umm, it probably helps to be an average-looking breast cancer survivor, and having kids is good except when it isn't, all that tells me is that we need to elect a hell of a lot more women before seeking patterns in their examples will be worth the trouble.
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