O'er the weekend

Not sure if anyone caught the ridiculous Washington Post Style Section story on Hillary Clinton's cleavage about a week ago. (Yes, they devoted an entire story to the topic). In addition to the various Wash Post and NY Times critiques of the story, yours truly published a letter to the editor in Sat's Washington Post, as follows:

It was almost funny that The Post devoted an entire column to the subject of Hillary Rodham Clinton's breasts -- excuse me, cleavage. Robin Givhan compared seeing Clinton to "spotting Rudy Giuliani with his shirt unbuttoned just a smidge too far," but I doubt that would spark a comparable Style article.

Most disturbing, however, was the misogynistic tone Givhan took, most notably with her comment, "No one wants to see that . . . Just look away!" It really should come as no surprise that women tend to have breasts. With breasts come cleavage. They are part of the female body, not "part of a bold, confident style package."

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In other news, our friends at NOW have alerted us that The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 (H.R. 2831), sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), will likely come to the House floor for a vote this evening Monday evening, July 30. Why does this matter? You may recall that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court recently (and unfairly) limited the ability of anyone who has suffered pay discrimination to seek back pay and other compensation. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 will fix this constitutional misinterpretation and ensure that pay discrimination victims get their fair day in court. Tell your rep to support equal pay!

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Finally, some of the articles I've been linking to -- in the LA Times, Wash Post and NY Times -- require registration to read the articles. There's nothing I can about that except advise you to register; it's free!

And they're off...

So last night the Dem candidates (yes, for Prez) debated on a CNN/YouTube forum with questions posed by regular ol' folks. Fielding such queries as "are you black enough?" or "are you female enough?" the candidates did their best to not seem annoyed that Tom Brokaw wasn't the one forming the questions. For a full transcript click here

In addition to the questions re: War & Peace, someone did inquire whether or not the candidates had chatted with their kids about sex. For some reason, this seemed a bit harder to answer than one might imagine; Senators Edwards and Obama (the two who answered the questions) both deferred to "good touching v. bad touching."

Hmm... does this apparent discomfort maybe underscore the point that it is HARD to talk to your kids about sex? Y'know what could help? If you think the answer is: SEX ED click here.

This is not an endorsement, either

Yesterday, Presidential candidates Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, along with Elizabeth Edwards, spoke at Planned Parenthood Action Fund's convention. Each pledged to support reproductive health and rights. (All Prez candidates were invited, the above were the only ones to attend...) Probably nothing we didn't already know right there, but nice to see the tops of the ticket show up and stand up.

And, on that note, what legislation are we supporting today? Check out Senator Clinton's re-introduction of "The Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act," a law that would make Emergency Contraception (EC) -- a second chance to PREVENT unintended pregnancy -- available at all facilities for our servicewomen. As it stands now, Department of Defense policy does not require EC to be available at all health care facilities. In fact, current availability of EC is up to the discretion of each individual facility. Considering that timely access to EC (which is effective up to 5 days after unprotected sex but is most effective the sooner you take it), Congress should waste no time passing this common-sense legislation. But. They probably will.

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On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I think that the people who have uploaded Harry Potter #7 are really not playing fair (oh, and breaking the law). Marketing aside, there's something to be said for an extremely rare, exciting experience that has truly united the global community and the HP madness has singularly offered/captured that. Don't spoil it for the rest of us...