Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Links of the Awesome

People give me crap about defending Martha Stewart, but I swear the woman has a freak flag that she simply chooses not to fly.

Corporations class is like this.

Anyone up for a night at the theatre?

The Obama girls are touring potential schools. CC's pick Sidwell Friends and Fausto's pick Georgetown Day are both on the short list.

If you followed the Clinton campaign at all, you might be dubious at The Daily Beast's Choice to hire Mark Penn to do a survery on sexism. But they did, and he found that American women are pissed off.

Are you sure it isn't just because they were talking to Mark Penn?

CC

7 comments:

Stephanie said...

Look at that figure (68%) for the workplace!

PG said...

I'm skeptical of the Daily Beast on feminism, as well as Mark Penn. The piece from Elaine Lafferty, "Sarah Palin Is a Brainiac," was embarrassing.

I find it entirely plausible that in person, Sarah Palin comes off as a smart. I have for years been explaining to hyper-verbal friends that Bush is smart in an MBA way that's just difficult for lawyers to recognize. Similarly, Palin seems to be smart in a way that's difficult to recognize for people who like to write -- she is an carnivore who devours one subject at a time but has no particular inclination to graze on anything that isn't immediately useful. She reminds me of a high school classmate who graduate in the top 10 and did well in every subject that could be learned by use of flashcards (and she could put pretty much everything on flashcards). So let's put aside the question of Palin as "brainiac."

What I find unconvincing are Lafferty's protestations of Palins's feminism, simply because Lafferty gets them across so poorly. For example, she describes Palin as "personally pro-life." Great, so am I -- I personally don't want an abortion, and as a person who would like to adopt, I hope other people also don't have abortions. What does that have to do with one's political position on whether women should be allowed to choose a safe, legal abortion?

Lafferty also seems to have originated the "personally pro-choice position," one I hadn't heard before. Most people say that they think abortion is wrong personally but want to preserve other people's wright to choose; does Lafferty think abortion is good but doesn't care if other people have the right to choose it?

It's also difficult to sound like a great feminist lawyer if you confuse Title IX with Title IV (what is Title IV?), or talk about Palin's support for equal pay without admitting that the Republican ticket thinks it's more important to slap down trial lawyers than guarantee women's ability to be paid what they have earned, even if they earned it several years ago.

Also, wtf with citing Economist readers as ones who will "get" Palin, when the Economist considers Alaska a petrocracy and Palin a joke?

L said...

Ha! I watched that Martha Stewart show and it was awesome. I love Snoop Dogg, and I love that Martha had him on her show.

Joe The Math Guy said...

Mark Penn would then be what us Stats profs call a lurking variable. It would have been interesting to have had, say, Ellen Degeneres doing a parallel interview with exactly the same questions and then compared the results.

Anonymous said...

Whether someone comes off as smart or not doesn't necessarily relate to how smart they are. I know someone who is of around average intelligence, but who comes from a family of people who are all both bright and intellectual. This person uses a lot of multi-syllabic words so that many people think she is very smart. If the listener is smarter, they notice that she uses a lot of the multi-syllabic words incorrectly, and they don't think she's so smart. Just sayin'.....

fausto said...

The ladies Obama returned to GDS Monday and Sidwell yesterday for another look. Maret is apparently not on the latestshort list; "too small" say the whisperers.

fausto said...

Feh. They chose Sidwell. Fausto's mom says it was really aforegone conclusion, because (assuming the girls stay there) the GDS high school would have been extremely difficult for the Secret Service to secure, while the Sidwell campus has already been done (for Chelsea Clinton).