Wednesday Wonk: Watch out, haters

Posted: August 14, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , | 25 Comments

1175623_429013850548541_816965767_nHi, I’m baaaack. How have you been, newsjunkies? As you know, a week is a whirlwind in sex and politics, so… prepare yourself for a very un-fancy link feast…starting with some items on Our Gal Gals, of course.

Wendy 2014, Hillary 2016

  • The Liberal Agenda posted the meme to the right on Tuesday. What a difference five to six years makes… with pieces like The Atlantic’s “How the Left Wing Learned to Love Hillary.”  As evidenced by Daily Kos’ hilarity in the forms of diaries titled “Hillary Clinton will be a very, very cool president” and such.
  • I really am wary of this “perceived inevitability” crap in the progressive feeding trough, though. We’ve been to that rodeo before–pass on Meet the Beast all over again. Hillary’s likely running–we see all the political movement opening the way for her to essentially be drafted into doing so. But, she’s not inevitable, thank you very much David Axelrod and co.
  • Please, remember as a true Hillary stalwart–Peter Daou–has cautioned in his “A Reader’s Guide to Anti-Hillary Themes.” Repeat after me, Sky Dancers: Hillary is not inevitable. “No matter what she says about working hard, staying focused and not taking anything for granted, detractors create this perch then try to knock her down from it.” –Daou
  • And, though I can’t see the lovely Liz Warren primarying Hillary, damn the debates we could have from a match-up of that kind would be epic and exhilarating. If only the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones were still alive (not that she would primary Hill either). Now, that would really be a primary season to savor.
  • Wonkgirl daydreams aside… I *welcome* a healthy primary contest. May the best shero win–it will only make her stronger as a candidate and Madame president. Maybe good ol’ Joe can change his name on the ballot to Robinette Biden. I know, bad Wonk. Just can’t help myself. I still remember his philosopher king distinction on the campaign trail in ’08 that “girl-girls are tougher than boy-girls.” (I would link if I could find a source that wasn’t batshit rightwing. Google at your own peril. I do remember Joe Biden saying this, though. Just nobody on the left wanted to look at it because he was on the Obama ticket by then.) Seriously, I can’t wait for a healthy primary debate.
  • And, don’t forget. Before 2016, we’ve got the 2014 election cycle with which to smash and weaken the hell out of the patriarchy first. I’ve got a bunch of Stand With Texas women links up on Sisterhood of the Pink Sneaks. A very small taste, via Burnt Orange Report: Texas Democratic Organizations Urge Wendy Davis to Run for Governor. Draft Wendy. Draft Hillary.
  • I know, we’re all preparing for the onslaught of backlash. We’ve already seen some claws come out–iron my shirt slapping Hillary and such. I know Fox News et stupid al. still can’t shut up about the Weapons of Mass Destruction they found in Benghazi. Channeling my best Kiki McLean here to say: They’re STUPID. And, they are bleeding anybody who doesn’t have political derangement psychosis. Let them eat their Joker cake…
  • If they think Hillary fatigue is a concern this far out, they ought to actually worry about Hillary/Woman hater fatigue. The more desperate they get in their respective Hillary and Obama derangement, the more they will “radicalize hundreds of thousands of us” that will turn into millions and millions of us scary hairy feminists who “don’t give a flying frigidaire about your Boehners, Weiners, or Spitzers” at the national ballot box or elsewhere. Or, you know. Just normal everyday people who don’t want a bunch of Newt Gingrich clones on stupid-steroids running this country into the ground with a Second Contract against America.

Chris Christie: Teanderthal extraordinaire

  • Flashback to last August:

“For instance, I hear people talk all the time about female voters. I think it’s condescending to women to say we have to have a different message for women than we have with men. I’m going to lay out a message for our party tonight [at the Republican convention] that I think will resonate just as much with women voters as it will with men voters.”

–Chris Christie

Herstory

Be-YOU-tiful, Sky dancers! Have at it in the comments. I’ll talk to y’all later tonight.

Right now, I’m off to go take care of a few things before my doctor sister’s White Coat ceremony this evening. This is the girl who rolled her little eyes at me for making her do “really hard” book reports on pandas when I played teacher and she, reluctant/only teacher’s pet. Well, look at her now. My Little Sweetheart forever, all grown up! I may be older than her by a gazillion years, but she inspires me to keep going…

…not unlike Hillary or Harriet Tubman. (“If you hear the dogs…keep going.” –Hills, DNC 2008.)

Saturday: Smash the Patriarchy, Extinct Political Birds, Blurred Feminism, and Mental Illness as Rebellion

Posted: August 3, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , | 62 Comments

extinct_birdsNewsflash: Conservative dodo bird Jonah Goldberg finds Hillary Clinton boring.

(So boring, in fact, that recall Goldberg and/or his wife ghostwrote fed stale old anti-Hillary canards about tea, cookies, and bra-burning for Palin’s America by Heart.)

In other news…

Keep your popcorn bowls handy, newsjunkies, as we continue to watch the heads explode on all the dodos.

Next up… Two patriarchy-smashing parodies of the misogynist-yet-insidiously catchy earworm that is Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” I recommend taking the time to view the videos below at some point this weekend if you haven’t seen them already. (Especially after Thicke went on the Today show this week claiming his original track to be “great art” and a “feminist movement in itself.”)

First up, Mod Carousel’s gender role reversal “Sexy Boys”:

From the video’s description:

Mod Carousel, a Seattle based boylesque troupe, does a sexy parody of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines music video.

It’s our opinion that most attempts to show female objectification in the media by swapping the genders serve more to ridicule the male body than to highlight the extent to which women get objectified and do everyone a disservice. We made this video specifically to show a spectrum of sexuality as well as present both women and men in a positive light, one where objectifying men is more than alright and where women can be strong and sexy without negative repercussions.

The other video is Melinda Hughes’ “Lame Lines”:

From the lyrics, as transcribed in Hughes’ youtube description:

You think I want it
I really don’t want it
Please get off it
You’re a douchebag
You’re a little flacid
Your dance is spastic
Should go get tested
I hate your lame lines
You think I want it
I really don’t want it
Please get off it
You’re a douchebag
Hey don’t you grab me
Look at me, I’m classy
I said don’t grab me

There are a lot of other parodies out there, but these two had a distinctly gender bender vibe to them. So, what do you think Sky Dancers? Did these versions succeed?

Switching gears a bit, here’s an interesting piece from AlterNet by Bruce E. Levine, called “Why Life in America Can Literally Drive You Insane” with the byline “it’s not just Big Pharma” underneath:

In “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” (New York Review of Books, 2011), Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discusses over-diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, pathologizing of normal behaviors, Big Pharma corruption of psychiatry, and the adverse effects of psychiatric medications. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large share of the blame for this epidemic, there is another reason.

A June 2013 Gallup poll revealed that 70% of Americans hate their jobs or have “checked out” of them. Life may or may not suck any more than it did a generation ago, but our belief in “progress” has increased expectations that life should be more satisfying, resulting in mass disappointment. For many of us, society has become increasingly alienating, isolating and insane, and earning a buck means more degrees, compliance, ass-kissing, shit-eating, and inauthenticity. So, we want to rebel. However, many of us feel hopeless about the possibility of either our own escape from societal oppression or that political activism can create societal change. So, many of us, especially young Americans, rebel by what is commonly called mental illness.

Ah, yes, I believe I called it when I first coined the phrase, “Political Affective Disorder.”

It’s a long read, and not one I can yet say I fully endorse or not, particularly on the issue of diagnosis and the author’s attitude toward the DSM as nothing more than “pseudoscience.”

As a student of the psychological discipline, I am still taking my sweet time to form an opinion on the DSM-5 and the food fight between its proponents and detractors. The DSM in all its versions thusfar has been far from a perfect venture, but having  gotten to hear directly from one of the Work Group chairs that was at the frontlines of changes for her respective category at a mental health conference last month, I have to say it makes a difference to hear from the horse’s mouth the reasoning that went into each change, as opposed to reading about it in an op-ed. That’s a rant for another time, though!

Suffice it to say, Levine’s essay is thought-provoking and raises important points for debate. I have long-thought there was a social rebellion aspect to mental illness. (Cassandra, anyone?)

Excerpt from the piece, with some relevant survey trends and research stats on the current state of the American Dream/Nightmare:

Returning to that June 2013 Gallup survey, “The State of the American Workplace: Employee Engagement,” only 30% of workers “were engaged, or involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their workplace.” In contrast to this “actively engaged group,” 50% were “not engaged,” simply going through the motions to get a paycheck, while 20% were classified as “actively disengaged,” hating going to work and putting energy into undermining their workplace. Those with higher education levels reported more discontent with their workplace.

How engaged are we with our schooling? Another Gallup poll “The School Cliff: Student Engagement Drops With Each School Year” (released in January 2013), reported that the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become. The poll surveyed nearly 500,000 students in 37 states in 2012, and found nearly 80% of elementary students reported being engaged with school, but by high school, only 40% reported being engaged. As the pollsters point out, “If we were doing right by our students and our future, these numbers would be the absolute opposite. For each year a student progresses in school, they should be more engaged, not less.”

Life clearly sucks more than it did a generation ago when it comes to student loan debt. According to American Student Assistance’s “Student Debt Loan Statistics,” approximately 37 million Americans have student loan debt. The majority of borrowers still paying back their loans are in their 30s or older. Approximately two-thirds of students graduate college with some education debt. Nearly 30% of college students who take out loans drop out of school, and students who drop out of college before earning a degree struggle most with student loans. As of October 2012, the average amount of student loan debt for the Class of 2011 was $26,600, a 5% increase from 2010. Only about 37% of federal student-loan borrowers between 2004 and 2009 managed to make timely payments without postponing payments or becoming delinquent.

In addition to the pain of jobs, school, and debt, there is increasingly more pain of social isolation. A major study reported in the American Sociological Review in 2006, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over Two Decades,” examined Americans’ core network of confidants (those people in our lives we consider close enough to trust with personal information and whom we rely on as a sounding board). Authors reported that in 1985, 10% of Americans said that they had no confidants in their lives; but by 2004, 25% of Americans stated they had no confidants in their lives. This study confirmed the continuation of trends that came to public attention in sociologist Robert Putnam’s 2000 book Bowling Alone.

Oh dear, this makes me want to get into a dialectic with me and myself about Tonnies’ small town Gemeinschaft and big city Gesselschaft and Durkheim’s Anomie.

I’ll spare you and just quote another paragraph from Levine’s piece on Alter Net before I close:

The reality is that with enough helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, isolation, and dehumanization, we rebel and refuse to comply. Some of us rebel by becoming inattentive. Others become aggressive. In large numbers we eat, drink and gamble too much. Still others become addicted to drugs, illicit and prescription. Millions work slavishly at dissatisfying jobs, become depressed and passive aggressive, while no small number of us can’t cut it and become homeless and appear crazy. Feeling misunderstood and uncared about, millions of us ultimately rebel against societal demands, however, given our wherewithal, our rebellions are often passive and disorganized, and routinely futile and self-destructive.

taintor-idiot-no-longerI can attest to that much personally, having gone through the self-destructive, passive slow suicide of anorexic rebellion in my adolescence and into my twenties and the process of recovery and trying to reclaim my identity now into my thirties (as a patriarchy-smashing-archery-goddess-witchy-woman-feminist of course!)

Give Levine’s article a read in full if you have the time. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts, especially from Dr. Bostonboomer, our resident psychologist.

Alright, well that’s all I’ve got for you this morning.

What’s got your blogger juices going this Saturday, Sky Dancers? Let us have a listen in the comments, and have a great weekend!

Throwback Thursday: Those ‘Dog Days of Summer’ primary debates

Posted: August 1, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , | 16 Comments
na_Democrats_Debate_820_t440

Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., talk onstage during a break in the ABC News Democratic candidates debate Sunday at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

Good evening, newsjunkies!

Since it’s the first of August, my memory has jogged back to those primary debates from way back when, the ones before the total loss of my innocence about the Democratic party as a young whippersnapper 20-something — one who Hillary Clinton was starting to win over in those debates with her masterful debate skills and just the simple plain-as-day fact that not only was Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton the diametric opposite of the BITCH warmonger stereotype that the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, et al. had been feeding in the trough up until then…But, also the growing evidence with each debate that she was the best candidate standing on that stage. Time and time again, and the more the good ol’ boy network ganged up on her, the stronger she became…sheer baptism by fire! And, myself–a radical feminist in the making. Like Sarah Slamen told our Texas ‘all asshat, no cattle’ legislature: “Thank you, for being you, Texas legislature. You have radicalized hundreds of thousands of us…” . The experience of 2007-2008 radicalized my feminism… or at least, cemented a process that had already started to unfold as I came of age politically.

Hillary+Clinton+Democratic+Presidential+Candidates+Ah0aR5uFuxwx

In a sea of male empty suits, the workhorse in the pantsuit with the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt at her side. (Click pic for HQ)

Mind you, I did so in a time where a faux cowboy running off of nepotism and Forrest Gump like charm first took the election Al Gore essentially dropped on the floor, with the media laying banana peels on the floor for him to trip over every step of the way. Four years later, Cowboy Clueless unarguably claimed the election from one John F. Kerry who let it slip clear through his hands as he windsurfed his way through being swiftboated. I saw the worst of presidential matchups and media shenannigans in both of the first presidential elections in which I was old enough to vote–and here came Hillary Clinton, like a breath of fresh air. Not a saint by any means, but a Joan of the American political arc nonetheless compared to the fallen over cliff-view I’d seen in the decade prior. She laughed, she cried, and she honed her debate points like a laser as the chatter of the male suits on stage became even more obvious for the shallow, insular horse manure it was.

I’ve been poring over transcripts from the summer of ’07 for the past hour or so, for a throwback moment to spotlight tonight, and here’s what I settled on…Hillary’s response to the closing question asking all the candidates, what the decisive moment was in their life, with George S. opening the final round by saying, “You know, presidential biographers are always looking at the turning point in a life, the moment where an ordinary person went on the path to the presidency, the decisive moment.” Hillary, August 19th, 2007, Des Moines, in the fateful state of Iowa:

CLINTON: Well, when I was growing up I didn’t think I would run for president, but I could not be standing here without the women’s movement, without generations of women who broke down barriers, the civil rights movement that gave women and people of color the feeling that they were really part of the American dream.

So I owe the opportunity that I have here today to many people; some of whom are known to history and many who aren’t.

But more personally, I owe it to my mother, who never got a chance to go to college, who had a very difficult childhood, but who gave me a belief that I could do whatever I set my mind…

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that is the last word.

hillary_dorothy

…and the spirit of Dorothy Rodham living through her.

All eyes on Iowa 2016.

A few Hillary-links for you to peruse tonight:

At the Golden Heart  Awards on October 16,  Michael Kors will present his inaugural award for Outstanding Community Service to Hillary Clinton who clearly needs a museum in which to store and display the many awards and honors she continues to collect.

FILMMAKER and Academy Award winning documentarian Charles H. Ferguson has signed on to a CNN Films project about Hillary Rodham Clinton, which will have a theatrical release before it hits television.

This is a double-edged sword, because the scrutiny Hillary will receive will be more intense than her Republican rivals or a Democratic challenger, who will likely get to throw everything at her. While she will be expected to be above it all, starting with not punching down, as the saying goes, acting presidential while working to get the presidential nomination for the first time in American history.

CNN will surely be once again dubbed the “Clinton news network” whether they stay objective, accusations of going soft inspiring them to do the opposite. The cross promotion of the feature on CNN is likely to set Republican teeth on edge.

For women and girls of all ages it’s not possible to hedge or try to be coy about what this means. It is an exciting moment in American history, because women have waited a long time to see such building fanfare over a potential female presidential candidate with the viability and star power of Hillary Clinton. She’s getting the exact same due that a man of her stature would demand and it’s been a long time in waiting for this moment.

Documentarian Charles Ferguson already has one Oscar to his credit, for a movie about the financial meltdown (“Inside Job”) and another Oscar nomination for his film about the Iraq War (“No End in Sight.”) He’s now going to be making a full-length documentary about Hillary Clinton. Given his track record, I doubt it will be a puff-piece.

As for that biopic, it’s very pointedly going to be called “Rodham.” Directed by James Ponsoldt, whose film “The Spectacular Now” opens this weekend, “Rodham” will focus on Hillary’s earlier years. In the Watergate era, Hillary Rodham was in her mid-20’s and working with a group of fellow D.C. lawyers on how to legally impeach a President. The movie will focus on how she wrestled with her personal and professional prospects: a brilliant political career in D.C. versus moving to no-count Arkansas to be with the man she loved. We all know what path she ultimately chose but a lot of us may wonder why she made that choice.

  • Thinking now is as good a time as any to post this primer Peter Daou wrote in April of this year, for all your Hillary diehard ninja needs in the coming election cycles– A Reader’s Guide to Anti-Hillary Themes:

Now, as the floodgates open on 2016 speculation, and despite her high standing in public polls, commentary about Hillary Clinton is following predictable patterns. Several pervasive anti-Hillary themes are being dusted off for yet another political cycle; these are carefully-crafted and patently false talking points designed to dehumanize and demean her. Many of the themes are rooted in the sexism that permeates our culture.

During the 2008 campaign, under withering fire for allegedly being, among other things, too ambitious, too polarizing, and willing to “say or do anything to win,” Hillary refused to play into stereotypes. She told her staff, “I don’t want to succeed because I’m a woman, I want to succeed because I’m the best at what I do.” Whatever she chooses to do in the future, as a former advisor and current supporter, I sincerely hope she is judged based on her actions, not on other people’s inventions. With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of anti-Hillary themes so that readers, viewers and listeners recognize them for what they are.

1. SHE WILL DO ANYTHING TO WIN
Rooted in decades-old Clinton conspiracy theories from the fringe, this catch-all attack has been adopted by mainstream critics and is designed to portray her as unscrupulous, unethical and even sinister.

2. SHE IS TOO AMBITIOUS
Another way of saying she doesn’t know a woman’s ‘place,’ this is designed to undermine her achievements and to frame her actions and goals in an unsavory light.

3. SHE IS TOO POLARIZING
Any popular figure generates strong feelings, but in Hillary Clinton’s case, it is ascribed to her as a negative personal trait. The irony is that it’s most often peddled by people who are busy bashing her, thus creating the very polarization they are lamenting.

4. SHE IS CALCULATING
A way to strip her of humanity and to deny that she has genuine feelings, this portrays her as a machine, methodically scheming to attain predetermined goals.

5. SHE IS DISINGENUOUS
Used disingenuously by people who want to call her a liar but are too timid.

6. SHE IS INEVITABLE
No matter what she says about working hard, staying focused and not taking anything for granted, detractors create this perch then try to knock her down from it.

7. SHE REPRESENTS THE PAST
Translation: she is old. Ageism in various forms.

8. HER CLOTHING
Often used in faux-jest, it is still a potent and all-too-common way to undercut a successful woman by highlighting appearance over accomplishments.

9. HER HAIR
See .

10. HER HUSBAND
When all else fails, attack her family.

I just LOVE this list, it is so perfectly reflects the experience of 2007-2008.

And, with that…

This is your Thursday evening/late owl overnight thread, and it’s an open one for you to use until Dakinikat’s Friday morning post. Do your thing in the comments, Sky Dancers!

Saturday: Late Lunch Reads

Posted: July 27, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , | 20 Comments

1016966_420781081371818_990974132_nGood afternoon, newsjunkies.

By late lunch, I really mean a) I’m eating from a box of Annie’s Homegrown cheddar bunnies, and b) this time last week, JJ aka Minkoff Minx and I were happily squished together in a restaurant booth in Atlanta waiting for our sandwiches to come out (which took forever to do so; I think this was the universe giving us more time together…)

JJ had an even bigger heart in person than I already thought she would–somewhat an impossible feat. I can only hope know this is just the start of many more Sky Dancer luncheons and meetups and such! (How does a Winter 2013 Sky Dancers convention sound, y’all? Or, maybe Spring Break 2014?)

The entire conversation last Saturday afternoon was such a blast, between JJ’s mama, her daughter Bebe, my younger sister Megan, and the two of us.

At one point, in my typical absentminded and inarticulate fashion, I stumbled trying to explain that we feminists hold our movement to a standard that I don’t think other social justice movements (of which I consider myself a member!) necessarily do. We struggle to find the perfect hypothetical woman to carry out all our diverse views on womanhood–when really all we need is a woman who lives her choices in action, and supports the choices of others. (Y’all know what comes next…drumroll please…)

Hillary 2016!

Anyhow, here are a few ‘easy-over’ links for you to graze on while you peruse the net this afternoon…

First up, if you haven’t seen it yet, Maxipad-gate: Now I Know Exactly How To Talk To Dudes About Periods! [via Upworthy]

I’m just going to excerpt here:

So this guy watched a maxipad commercial and thought that periods were the best time EVER in a woman’s life. Then, he found out that wasn’t true. So naturally, he took to Facebook and expressed his thoughts, which you can see below.

Then, the (fictional) CEO of Bodyform decided to respond to his unfortunate misunderstanding of the way the human body works.

Here’s the “Bodyform CEO” response:

Sardonic awesomeness, right? When I saw it, I just knew I had to post it here. Apologies if it’s a repeat of anything posted on the frontpage or the comments already. I’m still all tortoise-like slowly but surely catching up on last week and this week at Sky Dancing. So I should probably stipulate that this disclaimer applies to all my links 🙂

Next up, an -interesting- read via New Zealands “stuff.co.nz” network of publications, in which Rosemary McLeod examines the last fifty  years of feminism after Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique: What women wanted – and what they got.

I’m going to tease you a tiny snippet and withhold my opinions of the piece for a moment so I can hear some unvarnished feedback from y’all. I really hope you take the time to read it in its entirety and comment below if you have the chance this weekend–as ever, I look forward to hearing what Sky Dancers have to say on this topic!

Teaser, just to give you a taste:

THE POWER STRUCTURE

In 1963 there was no Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

QUESTION: What does the Ministry of Women’s Affairs do?

MORE QUESTIONS:

• What would Betty Friedan make of Madonna, Tracey Emin and Lady Gaga?
• Would she have enjoyed Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, or Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill?
• If she were young today would she have a pierced nipple/clitoris/tongue?
• What would her tattoo be, and where would she have it?
• Where did suburban neurosis go?
• Why are twice as many women as men currently on antidepressants?
• Why do three times as many men as women commit suicide?
• How are university women’s studies courses faring?

And, finally–a Hillary-bite! NBC to air Hillary Clinton miniseries [via Gary Levin in USA Today]:

Diane Lane will star, and the action will begin in 1998.

clinton
(Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

Story Highlights

  • Hillary miniseries is one of several planned by NBC
  • Diane Lane will star
  • NBC expects to air it before her presidential candidacy is formally announced

As Hillary Clinton is widely expected to make a second presidential run in 2016, NBC is planning a sure-to-be-controversial miniseries about the former first lady and secretary of State.

Diane Lane (Unfaithful) will star in the project, which has yet to cast an actor to play the former president. But it will begin in 1998, midway through Bill Clinton’s second term, when the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal engulfed the family.

Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) will write and direct the four-hour project.

Will NBC run afoul of campaign laws that require equal time for presidential candidates? Not if the network gets the project on in a hurry.

“She’s not going to probably declare her candidacy for two more years,” NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt said, “so this could well have aired before that.”

Oh wow! This reminds me of Obama and the West Wing storyline that preceded his election. Oh WOW. I’m kind of gathering my thoughts here on this, so…

I’m going to turn the comment sections over to y’all. Have at it!

Throwback Thursday: Three Generations of Rodham Women

Posted: July 25, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 18 Comments

chelsea-dorothy-hillary Good evening and/or late night owl greetings, newsjunkies. I thought tonight we could revisit this picture from the end of July 2010. It’s from Chelsea’s wedding as I’m sure you all recall, with her maternal grandmother Dorothy Rodham still alive at the time and present. I was reminded of the Rodham women when I was in Atlanta this weekend and got to have lunch with the wild and wonderful JJ aka Minkoff Minx (!!!! Not enough girly exclamation points in the world. Still on cloud nine!). With JJ and I, side-to-side seated inside a booth like long lost inseparable sisters from another mister, my own lifesaver of a kid sister to the other side of me, and to JJ’s other side her feisty and fabulous mama and her wide-and-bright-eyed, beautiful daughter Bebe…it was major “coochie time,” just as JJ told me it would be in text in the days beforehand while we were making arrangements on where and when–indeed it was the best sisterhood time ever and I so didn’t want to leave to go back to my conference events!

But, back to the photo and some more tangential musings on it. I often think of Hillary, Chelsea, and Dorothy, as my own mother is Hillary’s age and I’m Chelsea’s age…and my own grandmothers, both married by 16 in partition-time India, without any proper education to meet their abilities. My favorite joke about my paternal grandmother, in fact, is that she should have been a politician, because she totally knew how to wield power and get things done once she moved to the US and had to navigate the American healthcare system, and all without speaking a drop of English 🙂

I just cannot wait to cast my vote for Hillary 2016. For the budding young Bebe and my sister who enters her first year of medical school this fall, for my mama, for JJ’s mama, and for both my grandmamas. And, of course for all of us Sky Dancers! So many amazing renaissance women. So much untapped potential.

Alright, I’ll have more to say over the weekend, including a pic of JJ and me, and perhaps some other Atlanta pics. I’m going to do the reads I have for you tonight, link-dump style:

Alright guys, Rue-kitto is rubbing up all over me for loves and attention. So, I’ve got to stop here and save the rest of my links for the Saturday Reads this weekend.

Your turn in the comments, Sky Dancers. This is an open-thread.

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