Marie Antoinette

Conservatives are peddling misinformation about Michelle Obama’s recent European vacation. They have even taken to comparing her to Marie Antoinette. Ponder that one for a moment. If taken literally, this label would insinuate that the First Lady is promiscuous and sympathizes with our enemies. Are Republicans suggesting that the First Lady has been found guilty of treason and thus will soon be executed by guillotine? Probably not (though Bradley Blakeman does evoke Antoinette’s beheading as he insists “heads will roll”).

I’m inclined to believe that the right does not mean this comparison literally. We must therefore understand their name calling to suggest that Michelle Obama is a member of the tone-deaf elite who cares nothing for the poor. You know, of “let them eat cake” fame. Clearly her career choices have shown her to be the exact opposite. Not that conservatives of late are apt to let facts get in the way of their arguments. A young Michelle Obama left corporate law to work as an assistant to the chief-of-staff to Mayor Daley, and from there helped young people get into public service at Public Allies. Later, she worked her way up at the University of Chicago Hospitals, all the while working closely with the community around her.

If we want to make Marie Antoinette comparisons based in facts, let’s go:

Currently, Republicans are working hard to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, even though it’s clear that this is not the best solution for stimulating the economy and getting jobs to the other 98%. Look at this graph and help me understand how Republicans plan to get elected as they lie through their teeth about caring about lowering the deficit.

Conservatives are piling on the ‘unemployed people are lazy‘ meme. Talk about tone deaf.

Republicans belief in deregulation and corporations-as-king helped get us to a place in history where the only entity with the technology to police BP was BP. They peddled conspiracies that the spill was an inside job, while continuing to stick up for big oil. One member of the GOP even thought BP deserved an apology for the way it was treated during the worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history.

And as our country is literally falling apart, Republicans continue the lie that the stimulus hasn’t created any jobs and that the recession is Obama’s fault. Check out this graph and tell me which administration should take the blame for this recession.

If you want to call names like a child on the playground, go right ahead. But when the name you’re calling an opponent can be shown to apply much more readily to you, you might want to be careful that the “takes one to know one” comeback doesn’t stick.

Also, your racism is showing.

 

Equally Sexist

Now that’s equality!

Just a taste…

Michelle Obama’s European Outfits: Which did she wear best?

Michelle Obama Makes a Fashion Statement in London

Michelle Obama: Fashion icon?

Michelle Obama: Fashion diva or disaster?

There was also the contrived media drama over Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s “fashion faceoff,” about which Melissa McEwan noted:

Why is it, when any two powerful womenespecially beautiful powerful womenare in the same place at the same time, the media has to treat it like a grudge match?!

Not surprisingly, there was little mention of the male G-20 spouses’ fashion choices. They didn’t even bother to show up for the G-20 spouses dinner (or at least, they missed the photo). I mean, who could blame them?

 

New Ad Replaces ‘Same-Sex’ with ‘Interracial’ Marriage

(h/t Rebecca at Skepchick)

There’s a video floating around YouTube featuring young people blathering on about how same-sex marriage in California will destroy civilization, so some enterprising Skeptics’ Guide listeners took it upon themselves to make a point by redubbing the voices.

By replacing “same sex” with “interracial,” the discrimination proposed by Proposition 8 is exposed. There is no argument against same sex marriage that holds water. The fact that the lies the Yes on 8 crowd is using (teachers will have to teach that interracial marriage is just as valid as traditional marriage, churches will have to allow interracial marriage, etc) sound ridiculous when we replace “same sex” with “interracial” demonstrates how their bigotry is a thing of the past. In the future, we will look back on Prop 8 just as we do laws against interracial marriage and wonder, how anyone could think it’s acceptable write their prejudices into law?

Professor What If…has a great post up about how the Yes on 8 argument reflects the de-volution of the US.

 

What If He Is?

This morning on Meet the Press, former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama.

While I lost nearly all respect for Powell when he lied to the UN in the push for the Iraq War, I gained some back today for his comments about Muslims.

I’m also troubled by what members of the party say, and is permitted to be said, such things as, “Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.”Well, the correct answer is, ‘He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.’

But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?’

The answer is ‘No, that’s not America.’
Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Thank you, Colin Powell, for using your voice to say what is right and what is true. And while conservatives are already spinning your words, that you endorsed Obama because of race or because McCain didn’t select you for VP, you did the right thing by using your access to the press to say something that has been needing to be said (Campbell Brown did her part, too). There truly is no other response to the demonizing of Muslims in this country than to stop doing it. Spin away, Fox News and John McCain, but you know that Powell is right when it comes to Kareem Ushad Sultan Khan and his service to this country you claim to love. So just stop it.

Photograph: Platon

Update: Powell talked to reporters outside his interview on Meet the Press and added some more good points. Steve Benen has video; here’s a highlight:

He went on to express his disgust for Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) neo-McCarthyism. “We have got to stop this kind of nonsense,” Powell said, “pull ourselves together, and remember that our great strength is in our unity and in our diversity.”

 

Show Me the Women!

The Women’s Media Center invites you to submit your questions to be asked at the Presidential Debate! We want to hear from you on issues that matter to, and affect, women. Click here to submit your questions, and continue reading below for information about the WMC’s initiative to add women’s voices to these historic and deeply significant debates.

The public responded to Show Me The Women, and so did one of the moderators Bob Schieffer of CBS. He is moderating the October 15 debate which focuses on domestic issues, and he invited The Women’s Media Center and its supporters to give him suggestions for questions he should ask at the debate. We have contacted the other moderators and requested that they accept our questions as well. To date, none have agreed.

The deadline to submit questions will be 5 p.m. EST on Wednesday, October 1st .

Since all three Presidential debate moderators are old, white men (much like one of the candidates), there is a serious need for diverse voices to be represented. Cheers to Bob Schieffer for inviting our questions. Now we’ll see if he uses any of them!

 

Can’t Teach an Old Fox New Tricks

 

Prime-Time Cable News Severely Lacking Diversity

Media Matters conducted a study (PDF here) analyzing guests on four programs on each of three prime-time cable news stations. While the findings about the lack of women and people of color overall may not surprise you, you may be surprised to know which programs are on the winning and losing ends of the spectrum.

If you had to guess what percent of the US population is comprised of white males, what would you say? They’re the vast majority in Congress (86% white, 84% male) and 100% of our Presidents. So…white men must be more than half, maybe even three-fourths of the country’s population, right?

Surprise! White men make up 32% of the population of this country. Think about that for a second. Therefore, if Congress or the office of the Presidency represented the people of this country, white men would be represented as less than one-third. Yet every prime-time news host is white, and all but two are men.

This complete lack of representation of diversity on television reinforces the notion that white men’s voices are the ones we should be listening to. They are who we should turn to when we need answers. They are the ones in power. Though no one is going on television saying that women’s and people of colors’ voices are less valid, the message is being sent loudly and clearly by our absence.

Is it any wonder why some people are having a difficult time imagining Barack Obama as the next President?

 

Getting Uppity

Much like Hillary Clinton was referred to as “ambitious,” Barack Obama is being called “arrogant.” Both are meant to call them “uppity,” suggesting that they don’t know their place in the traditional order of things.

The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve points out that the term “arrogant” is really two coded messages for the price of one.

But ol’ Karl, he’s a clever little piggie. (And, hey, no one’s more convinced of Karl’s cleverness than Karl himself.) Why shoot one irritating barb into the the flesh of the angry working class white guys when you can fire two? “Arrogant,” you see, has two coded meanings. Use it in connection with a black man and it means “uppity.” Use it in connection with anyone, however, and it means “smart.”

Read the whole article here.

 

Race & Gender in the 2008 Campaign

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Laura Flanders contributes her two cents about race and gender and media bias in the 2008 campaign season.

She cites numerous examples of racism and sexism that didn’t become big stories in the campaign season.

…There’s a relationship between someone being able to say “let’s get the bitch,” and violence against women around the world.

And she highlights the importance of focusing not only on race or gender, but on power, as the most restrictive force in the U.S.

…We used to understand there was a relationship between what people say and the way society behaves. But we’ve seen a language disconnected from that discourse about power, and we’ve seen the experience of certain people, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and various of their surrogates, separated from the treatment of groups…we have a media that resolutely says it’s only personal, it’s only about them. And when we talk about race and gender being a problem, there it is in a nutshell.

 

Pundits Lacking Diversity

I don’t have a television, so I often watch shows on the internet. I can watch full episodes of “Lost” and “The Office,” and I follow baseball games with the little online graphics MLB puts out. I don’t really miss TV at all. But the other night I was struck by the fact that in order to watch a live feed of McCain, Clinton and Obama’s speeches, I was forced to sit and listen to white male after white male talk about how historic Barack Obama’s nomination is. Where are the people that look like me? Where are the people that represent any of the diversity of our country?

Nicholas D. Kristof asks, “Are We ‘Too Male and Too White’?” in response to Deborah Howell’s article about the need for diverse voices in Washington Post Op-Ed pieces. She cites some numbers:

Of 19 weekly or biweekly columnists, 17 are men. Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus and former Post editorial writer Anne Applebaum are the only women with regular weekly slots. Two male columnists are African American — Colby King and Gene Robinson. Fareed Zakaria, who also writes for Post-owned Newsweek, was born and raised in India.

Ari Melber at The Nation discusses “White Male Pundit Power.”

The disparity is striking on air. Most anchors, producers and writers in television news are women, according to the Radio and Television News Directors Association, yet the vast majority of prime time hosts, who dominate campaign coverage and frame presidential debates, are white men. That includes all the Sunday morning hosts, all the prime time hosts on MSNBC, and all but one of the prime time hosts on CNN and FOX.

According to a recent, two-year study of the four major Sunday talk shows by Media Matters, out of over 2,000 guests, 77 percent were men and 82 percent were white. The top rated show, “Meet the Press,” also led the pack in male representation, at an embarrassing 85 percent. Latinos were almost completely absent, comprising one percent of the guests. Latinos make up about 14 percent of the population, and the study ran through 2006 and 2007, when immigration policy was often in the news.

Why does it matter that white men are overrepresented in the media? Because it teaches people that white men’s voices are the most important. It suggests that the voices of women and people of color are less valid or less qualified to weigh in on important issues affecting everyone. Most of all, it visually and psychologically keeps the power in the hands of white men.

Why should you care?

The way the public looks at issues – and whether or not the public is even aware of
certain issues like fair housing and voter discrimination – is directly related to the way
these issues are covered by media. The way that media covers these issues is directly
related to who is employed by the media – the reporters, producers and anchors who tell
the stories. Who is employed by the media is directly related to who owns the media.
And who owns the media is directly related to policies that determine who gets a federal
license to operate and who does not. (Media Diversity Matters)