But in any case, getting a loan to move into a home — especially for first-time home buyers — is no walk in the park these days.  But now in addition to all the usual hoops people have to jump through, it looks like there’s a new one — pregnancy.   If you’re a pregnant woman or you’ve just become a mother and are off on maternity leave, even the best ’splainin’ in the world isn’t going to convince your bank that you’re worth the risk.

Shocked?  Find out more over at my Speaker of the House column!

We all know this end of summer/back to school time of year is a hectic one.  So while we’re all trying to manage (myself included), here’s some good reading from some of my favorite Mothers of Intention:

Aimee Giese aka Greeblemonkey met with the First Lady of Panama to talk about Project C.U.R.E.  Read more here to learn about this great effort!

My fellow MOMocrat Karoli takes on conservative talking points on right wing feminism.

Gloria Feldt wonders at her blog Heartfeldt Politics whether GOP women candidates that everyone is crowing about are really good for all women? (And, yes, that’s me in the video!)

MomsRising blog wonders why bankers want to know about our uteruses.

And Susan Getgood of Marketing Roadmaps blog has a new book!  Check out Professional Blogging for Dummies!

The media love to mock women in the political world by using sexist terms that demean us and make us out to be something not worthy of serious consideration.   We saw that time and time again during the 2008 presidential election as talking heads not-so-subtly suggested that Hillary Clinton was only a viable candidate for national office because we felt sorry for her after Bill cheated on her. And instead of focusing on Sarah Palin’s qualifications, or lack thereof, as John McCain’s running mate, the media focused on her looks and questioned whether a mother of five with young children still at home was up to playing with the big boys.

There’s still plenty of that when it comes to powerful women — one of the most recent examples is an article in the Washington Post about Elizabeth Warren, where they question whether she is a “zealot” because of her passion to help middle class families in these horrible economic times.  When I see things like that, it’s hard not to wonder whether a man in that position would have been described differently — I’m betting a male counterpart would be described more positively as something like a “devoted advocate” rather than a “zealot,” which has such a negative inference.  (Not to mention the fact that the article was, yet again, another story about a politically powerful woman that got placed in the Style section.  But that’s another post for another day.)

Another increasingly common phenomenon I’ve been noticing is that some news outlets just act like we don’t exist, implying through omission that it’s just the big ol’ menfolk who are out there trying to make change, with hardly a woman to be found!

The most recent outrageous example is a Politico article entitled, More Bloggers Throwing Hats in Ring.

The article explores the “phenomenon” of political bloggers deciding to take their voices beyond the bloggy world and actually try to get elected to office.  When I learned that the piece was being written, I was excited because I know several women bloggers who are doing just that!

When I saw a call for information about the piece from someone I now know was involved in the research for the article, I e-mailed him with several names — my friend Jill Miller Zimon of Writes Like She Talks who ran and was elected to her city council last year in Pepper Pike, Ohio; my former D.C. Metro Mom blog colleague Aimee Olivo who is running for School Board in Prince George’s County, Maryland; and Ariana Kelly of MomsRising blog who has tossed her hat in the ring for a seat in the Maryland State House of Delegates.

11 men got included in the article, but only two women were mentioned, even though the reporter had at least three more names, and I’d have to bet he had more.   So I have to ask — how does that choice get made and why?  One of the men highlighted in the article is Judd Legum, who is a blogger running for the Maryland State House of Delegates.  He’s talked up in the article as a big money raiser and his head shot is prominently featured just under the headline. Yet Ariana Kelly, who is also running for that same elective body and writes for a very prominent blog and organization that has over one million members is found nowhere in the article.

If one is truly interested in writing an article that fairly represents the growing movement of bloggers running for elective office, why leave out the numerous women and pen an article that implicitly suggests it’s mostly a guy thing?  I certainly hope it’s not because these three women are moms.  Because that would tick me off even more.

When the article does get around to tossing us gals a little bone, it’s with a tone of dismissal with its offhanded reference to the recent BlogHer conference half-day session with The White House Project, that may as well have said, “Oh, isn’t it cute that those lady bloggers are starting to think about running!”

So, other than beating our heads against our computers as it becomes clear that even when we try to step up to the plate with the boys, what do we do to combat the fact that they’re just ignoring us?   I guess we keep fighting — fighting the likes of Politico, who also doesn’t seem to recognize just how many of us women pundits are out here, fighting the Sunday talk shows, fighting NPR, fighting the Washington Post and the media in general that refuses to see political women where they are.

Maybe I should send the writer and his editor each one of these hats as a little reminder?

Or I could just send them an advance copy of this little baby! As the Politico piece said in its opening line, “The blog might be the new on ramp to American politics.”  Politico is right on that one — but we “powerful blogger ladies” will try our best not to run over the menz as we accelerate past them onto the political highway!

Image of MOMocrats at BlogHer ‘10 courtesy of Stephanie Himel-Nelson

]]> http://www.punditmom.com/2010/08/whats-worse-when-the-media-mock-political-women-or-ignore-them/feed 5 http://www.punditmom.com/2010/08/are-obama-family-vacays-any-of-our-business http://www.punditmom.com/2010/08/are-obama-family-vacays-any-of-our-business#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:09:34 +0000 PunditMom http://www.punditmom.com/?p=5766 Michelle and Sasha Obama are taking a beating for their summer vacation trip to Spain.  The media are salivating, constantly dissecting what some call an inappropriate trip that sends a “let them eat cake” message to the American people.

I…

Michelle and Sasha Obama are taking a beating for their summer vacation trip to Spain.  The media are salivating, constantly dissecting what some call an inappropriate trip that sends a “let them eat cake” message to the American people.

I have two words — lay off.

Can’t we just let them enjoy what little “private” mother-daughter time they’re ever going to have, especially at this time in their relationship? Sasha will be a fourth-grader this year and I know from personal experience with my own daughter that these years — the ones where the diapers and tantrums are done but the teen hell years are still off in the distance — are especially precious.

Not to mention the obvious question — isn’t it a good thing to have the First Children see the world?

When I was a young girl growing up on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania, I dreamed of the day I’d be able to see something beyond a few of the states that surrounded the one where I lived.  Most of the people I knew were content to settle in my small hometown after high school or college, or at least not stray too far.  But I longed to break loose, move to the big city and see EVERYTHING!

Of course, that requires two things — time and money.  The time was no problem.  The money?  Well, that was a little harder to come by as I worked my way through college while pursuing a journalism career. Not to mention the cost of that law degree I have.  By the time I secured my first passport and made my maiden trip across the pond, I was 35.  I’ve made up for lost time since then, but I knew that if and when I had a family, if I could swing it, I’d want any children to travel internationally sooner than I had to be able to see first-hand how the rest of the world lives.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the current media Michelle smack-down:

It’s not appropriate to make such a jaunt when the country’s unemployment rate is 10%!  How dare they spend some of the taxpayers money on a lavish trip?!  Why isn’t she keeping her daughters at home when so many other American families have had to scrap their more modest getaway plans?

I’m sure there are some families thinking these things, but the real reason for this trash talk isn’t difficult to figure out — it’s an easy way to fill time and create “content.”   This is a Faux News story.  If the first family of the United States can’t take their small children on trips to show them the world, who can?  For security reasons, presidential families will always have to travel in special jets and endure Secret Service companions, all at taxpayer expense.  Is that a reason to keep their children locked up in the White House with their only exposure to other cultures coming from their school classes?

No doubt these same politicos would not be calling Michelle a modern day Marie Antoinette if she had chosen something like a reprise of the Clinton vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Comparing her to the headless French queen is just conservative crazy talk.  You can bet that if this trip was the same except you exchanged Laura Bush and one of her daughters for Michelle and Sasha, and there would be nary a peep from the naysayers.  The coverage would more likely be about what a nice mother-daughter experience they were having that both would remember for the rest of their lives.

This easy time-filling brouhaha is nothing more than the intersection of cable news spin and our country’s increasing xenophobia, as well as the conservative zeitgeist that the Obamas just don’t deserve any of this — neither the the White House nor any of the accouterments that come with being the family of the leader of the free world.

Michelle’s desire to have some special time with Sasha is normal and understandable.  What isn’t normal is that they’re the First Family, and there’s no place in the America they could go to have some quiet girl time in these last golden years of childhood.  If any of the rest of us were in Michelle’s shoes, we’d probably be doing the same thing in an effort to give our families whatever little bit of “normal” mom and daughter experiences that are possible for people who live in the biggest glass house in the world.  So why shouldn’t we let them have their time and put the politics of First Family vacations to rest?

Image courtesy BET.com.

UPDATE: I wasn’t thinking about this angle until my fellow MOMocrat Cynthia Liu posted this response on Facebook to this post.  It sort of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘double standard.’

I see, the GOP can stall extension of unemployment benefits, urge the continuation of the UNPAID-for Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of the country, and dismiss 119 golf “fundraisers” attended by the GOP leader of the House in the last …365 days…but it’s Michelle and Sasha Obama’s trip to Spain that sends a “let them eat cake” message to the American people.

I’m really sick of how the press willingly repeats the most racist memes from the right wing.

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If you’re attending, I hope you’ll join me for my panel on Saturday morning, Radical Mom Blogging: You’d Be Crazy Not to Take These Women Seriously!

My co-panelists are Annie from PhD in Parenting and Stephanie Roberts of Shutter Sisters fame and the Picture Hope project!

We’ll be talking about how our motherhood experiences have turned us all “radical” in our writing, our blogging and our approach to life, and how we’ve tried to use that radical side to help make positive change in the world!

Come on!  Bring rcoffee and danish!  We’ll have fun!

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There’s been a lot of speculation about who’s going to get the prime real estate in the White House press room that’s been left vacant by Helen Thomas. CNN’s Ed Henry thinks it should go to FOX News. Others say Bloomberg News wants it. Some have suggested it go to Ed Henry himself.

I’d like to think that our press corps has more important things to think about than where they get to sit at the daily White House press briefing. Because, really, do questions get better answers from the Press Secretary depending on where the reporter is sitting in the room? I have to agree with Jon Stewart (as I often do!) — things have been going downhill over the years with the White House press corps and the latest skirmish over who takes the seat of the person who’s in permanent journalistic time out is a bit juvenile.

As someone who cut her journalistic teeth in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after learning about journalism at the alter of Woodward & Bernstein, I say it’s time to put some people back in who will ask the hard questions.

I like to ask the hard questions — like when I had the opportunity to be on a conference call for women bloggers with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week. The topic was ostensibly to chat about his recent Nevada appearance with the First Lady and exercise, but I wanted to ask him about the financial regulation bill and how he reacted to the criticism about it not being tough enough to protect families finances. (I know we’re moms, but we can multi-task on issues, just like we do with our family’s schedules.)

So as the reporters from the “big” news outlets are jockeying for position, I’ve come up with my top ten reasons why I should get Helen Thomas’ seat in the White House press room — though, really, I’d take any seat because I can ask questions from anywhere in the room. If Robert Gibbs is paying attention (and maybe I can get some support from Jon Stewart, as well) here are ten excellent reasons I should get a shot on behalf of the women of the blogosphere to have some face time with the other journalists at the White House:

10. I’m not 89. Sure, by mentioning my love of “Woodstein” I’ve dated myself a bit, but I’m a lot younger than Helen Thomas, so hopefully no one would question the legitimacy of my comments because of my age.

9. I’ve already sat in Helen Thomas’ seat. I was lucky to get a private White House tour about 15 years ago, including a visit to the White House press room. I made sure someone took a picture of me in Thomas’ seat, so I know that it fits!

8. Many of my family members are Jewish , so if the White House is worried about what I’d say if asked a question about Israel, I think I’d be a little more diplomatic in how I phrased my personal opinions, even though I really think that should be none of their business.

7. I’m better looking than Ed Henry.

6. I have over 25 years of experience asking the hard questions, both as a reporter and as an attorney, so I’ll make sure to ask the important political questions. I don’t care about whether the President smokes or what’s on his iPod, though I might have to see if I can get the lowdown on where Michelle shops for cute shoes!

5. I already have more journalism experience from my “old school” era than most of the people sitting in that press room now, so I won’t let access to the power brokers color the questions I ask.

4. After years of taking depositions, I know how to ask the follow-up questions that so many White House journalists seem to ignore.

3. I promise I’ll retire before I’m 89 and let someone else have a chance at that seat. I have serious plans that involve a beach, a cabana boy & fruity drinks with little paper umbrellas.

2. I’ve seen the Oval Office and eaten the special Presidential M&Ms. So I’m over the starry-eyed aspect of being in the White House.

1. Women and mothers who blog about politics are the next revolution in political coverage. I’ll share that seat with other political moms who want to keep the seat warm with questions from all sides of politics. We’ll get the real information, because everyone always answers a mom’s questions sooner or later!

If Aunt Bea was still around, I think she’d like it how things are working out with Medicare better than they did with that medicine man!

Maybe Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey experienced the challenges of feeding her children nutritious food — her official bio makes no secret of the fact that she is the first former welfare mother ever to be elected to Congress.  But as many on Capitol Hill scoff at the idea that the federal government should have a role in making sure that our children — especially the 16 million who are classified as undernourished — are served healthy meals in schools and day care facilities, there’s fortunately one high profile chef advocating for passage of the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act.

To that I say,  “Go Chef Tom!”

I’m talking a little more about how celebrities like Tom Colicchio and others are joining forces with lawmakers to make our country better for hungry and homeless children at my weekly column at The Stir, Speaker of the House!

Image courtesy of the House Education and Labor Committee

And thanks to Mike Kruger in Congressman George Miller’s office for the video and info on the Act!

Take a look at this face.  Are you willing to turn away from it?

This week’s TIME Magazine cover is powerful and disturbing, forcing us to face an image of an 18-year-old Afghan wife who’s had her ears and nose cut off because she tried to escape beatings and brutal treatment by her family.

If you know anything about the Taliban at all, I’m sure you’re not surprised that its members think it’s perfectly okay not only to beat and subjugate their women, but also to mutilate them in an effort to keep them in line with their pre-historic ways.  But with the eyes of this young woman defiantly staring back at us, it’s time to look back and ask ourselves whether we’re willing to call violence like this just an unavoidable consequence of war rather than the global humanitarian crisis that it is.

The Taliban has made no secret of the fact that it will step up its efforts to keep girls from being educated and women from having jobs because as far as its members are concerned, women belong no where other than the home.  And they kill people who dare to challenge that.

Think about that when considering the fact that several studies have shown that women and girls are the key to changing the world — give them an education and a little seed money and they can rise from abject poverty.  When women and girls are better off economically, men in those cultures back off on the need to continue violence against them.

So which is the better strategy — spend money on a war we know we’ll never win and just leave women and girls to fend for themselves when we wave goodbye or take some of that money we’re channeling into the war effort and try to give women a real chance of not ending up like Aisha, the girl looking back at you?

Vice President Joe Biden claims we’re not nation-building in Afghanistan and we should only be focused on the war effort.  According to Politifact, that’s only partly true.  The Obama team may not be using the phrase “nation-building” when they talk about what’s going on there, but we’ve been propping up leaders and elections of a country that isn’t our own for a long time.  So if that’s the case, it’s not that much of a stretch to do something for the women of Afghanistan, too.

Lucinda Marshall raises an excellent question as she wonders whether some will use this article it to defend any decision America makes to stay longer in Afghanistan  under a ‘we can’t abandon the women and children’ theory.  But what if the menfolk had thought about the women and children in the first place, using the money that’s been spent on war and channeling it to things that would actually help move this God-forsaken region into something that even slightly resembles a modern century — probably even something along the lines of 18th or 19th century would do for these women?

Our awareness has been raised time and time again about atrocities against women in many places around the world  — by the Clinton Global Initiative, by Nicholas Kristof, the co-author of the book Half the Sky, and by newspaper opinion pieces. And we know that someone in the military has finally decided it might be a good idea to read Three Cups of Tea, about how building schools in that part of the world can actually benefit an entire culture.  Some have even come to the novel concept that having women soldiers reach out can help change things, too. But raising awareness doesn’t stop violence.  Someone has to be willing to step up and take action.  That action doesn’t have to be a threat.  It’s actually better if it’s something more constructive like supporting women where they are.

I want us to be out of Afghanistan just as much as the next person, and I suspect I want it more than President Obama since he seems to be backtracking on the things he said on the campaign trail.  But if the women having their facial features mutilated were French or Canadian or Italian (or American), you know the official story about whether we think it’s worth putting an end it such horror would be a whole hell of a lot different.

Image courtesy TIME Magazine

From a family perspective, Dan and his wife (who is the Bamberger family connection) provided a glimpse for our now ten-year-old PunditGirl into what it was like to spend time with a generation not many fourth-graders get to experience.  My husband’s parents passed away some years ago and mine are quite a bit younger than many grandparents we know!  Dan and his wife, who lived fairly close to us, always warmly welcomed PunditGirl.  So I’ve always been grateful to them, along with a few West Coast relatives, for giving her a connection with a generation she otherwise might not have known.

However, there is more for me to mourn about Dan’s passing than the loss of a family member.  Everyone in the world of journalism should be saddened not only by his death, but also by the missed opportunity to approach news coverage and commentary in the way that Dan always did — with unyielding integrity and a healthy skepticism toward corporate and governmental control of power and information.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I Was a Teenage Watergate Geek (I know that sounds like a semi-horror film that will never be successful at the box office!).  My primary inspiration and role models that steered me toward my first career in journalism and how I view how journalism should be practiced were those who took on President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, including the duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as well as Dan Schorr.  When Dan ended up high on Nixon’s enemies list, it was clear to me that Dan was a journalist’s journalist.

Because of those high profile examples, it never occurred to me at that point in my life, as a starry-eyed high school girl who wanted to charge into the world as a modern-day Nellie Bly, that reporters were anything less than bastions of truth-telling and scandal-revealing muckrakers who would dig to get to the facts, even when people like Nixon and his minions were trying to thwart the Fourth Estate, as well as the American people.

Yes, I was young and naive to think that all reporters shared the same principles and dedication to the truth as Dan and a few other Watergate superheroes — reporters willing to take on the establishment and challenge those who assumed it was their right to hide or distort important stories that had significant impact on our lives.

My journalism career was never as vaunted as Dan’s nor would I ever try to compare myself to him in any way as I write online political commentary today and try to get the word out that women in new media may well be this generation’s truth-tellers.  But from the time I was a wet behind the ears 17-year-old radio news reporter, through my days as a television journalism, to today where I try to earn a bit of a living as a freelance journalist and online politico, I try to hold myself to the standards that old school journos like Dan held himself to.

And as I watch those cable news shows that seem to provide so many people with their perspective on the world, I wonder what the land of news and information would look like today if just a handful of reporters would explore, dig and critically question rather than taking the information that is spoon-fed to them at events like the White House daily briefings or in corporate news releases.  I long to see, hear and read more of Dan’s version of journalism again — instead of tuning in to see the same loop of quick-hit stories played continually on our screens and shouting heads trying to pass themselves off as political analysts.

While some in the news establishment today might have considered Dan to be a contrarian, I will always look to him as someone who led by example — for journalists and news consumers alike — in showing us that covering and understanding the world, and those who run it, is more than just repeating verbatim what someone tells you and that true journalism calls for asking the hard questions, using critical and skeptical thinking, and being willing to be the one to say that the Emperor’s “new clothes” aren’t really clothes at all, and even going a step further by pointing out that maybe the Emperor even has ulterior motives for his actions.

I will truly miss seeing “cousin” Dan at family events.  I’ll always fondly remember watching our daughter have discussions with him about the president, how she wanted to teach him about the Harry Potter series, and the time she asked Dan and his wife Li if they would ever consider coming to her school for her “special friends” day.  But I’ll also miss his voice, — the one that he still used as an NPR news analyst until shortly before his death — his view of the world, and his example to me of what the life of a true journalist should look like.

Image courtesy CBS News