Monday, June 29, 2009 - Posts
-
sponsorship
A guest post from Double X intern Nicole Allan:
The plaintiffs in the hotly contested affirmative action case Ricci v. DeStefano
stood out among the crowd outside New Haven City Hall today. They wore
dress blues and wide smiles or poker-faces that occasionally cracked
into grins. They were, but for one, white, and they were celebrating
their win in a 5-4 decision handed down by a sharply divided Supreme Court.
Mingling on the sidewalk before the conference, plaintiff Frank
Ricci posed for photos with his family. Ben Vargas, the one Hispanic
amongst the 18 plaintiffs, grinned beneath his sunglasses and crisp
peaked cap. Attorney Karen Torre, surrounded by her clients and
jokingly donning one of their caps, delivered a statement in boldly
Obama-esque fashion: “We had the audacity of hope—that some court at
some point would enforce the letter and spirit of the civil rights
laws, accord to firefighters the recognition and respect that they
deserve, and reject attempts to lower professional standards of
competence for the sake of identity politics.”
It took some audacity indeed to ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
-
sponsorship
A guest post from Double X intern Meredith Simons:
Liz Garbus, the Oscar-nominated director of The Farm, has a new documentary premiering tonight on HBO called Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech.
Her obsession with free speech is understandable: She was raised by
Martin Garbus, a First Amendment attorney who risked the wrath of the
federal government with his involvement in the dissemination of the
Pentagon Papers in the early '70s. Ultimately he is the center of his
daughter’s film.
Shouting begins (free speech is “a miracle”) and ends
(“Don’t let the fucking guys win”) with quotes from the elder Garbus.
His synopses of 20th-century free speech milestones are woven
throughout the film and lend context and depth to the 21st-century
cases his daughter highlights. These are the “stories” of the film’s
subtitle, the cases of three individuals and one group who are
astonished when ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
-
sponsorship
On Slate, Walter Dellinger and Linda Greenhouse
agree that Judge Sotomayor has little to fear from today's Supreme
Court ruling in favor of the white New Haven firefighters who sued
their city when it threw out the results of a test for promotions.
Justice Kennedy's majority opinion barely mentions the brief panel
opinion Sotomayor signed. Justice Alito's concurrence is a little more
critical, but not much. Court observers, including me, will patiently
explain that the Supreme Court came up with a whole new rule in its
decision today, which it wasn't Sotomayor's job, as a Second Circuit
judge, to do. This is how the law is supposed to develop: The lower
courts abide by their own precedents, and the Supreme Court's prior
rulings, until the high bench tell them to shift course.
But as Linda points, out the right will try to make hay
with today's decision anyway. Alito gave them some pretty good lines.
He talks about the idea that the white firefighters who sued deserve
"sympathy," an idea that is in the opinion Sotomayor ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
-
sponsorship
Parents of children born with an ambiguous gender often beg doctors to let them choose one gender or another. Now, in Sweden, a couple has decided to raise their now 2-year-old with no gender.
Of course, the kid has one, but they won’t tell anyone what it is. They
dress the kid in any old colors. When they change the diaper, they hide
its parts. The kid’s name is Pop. “We want Pop to grow up more freely
and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,”
Pop’s mother told a Swedish newspaper. “It's cruel to bring a child
into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”
I had a militant feminist mother friend like this once. She only let
her daughter play with cars and trucks, and then one day came in the
room to see her daughter swaddling Baby Tonka in a blanket and feeding
her a bottle ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
-
sponsorship
This weekend, both the Times and the Post published complimentary yet enormously frustrating profiles of Mark Sanford's wife Jenny.
They portray her as a tough, sharp domestic goddess, without ever
questioning what such a tough, smart woman is doing playing domestic
goddess in the first place. Both pieces make clear that Sanford is a
very intelligent, hard working, focused, “Old Testament woman with a 170 IQ,”
who has been indispensable to her husband’s rise. A magna cum laude
Georgetown graduate and a former vice president at the enormously
reputable Lazard Freres & Co., Sanford walked away from her career
to have a family and help her husband realize his political ambitions.
Junk trade?
A typical Jenny Sanford anecdote goes like this: Mark Sanford
apparently told his wife he wanted to run for Congress while she was
still in the hospital, just having delivered their second child.
Despite the fact that this news came out of nowhere, on a very busy
day, she took it in stride. This—supportive and game, but never at the
expense of her family—seems to be her M.O. “The Sanford house was in a
perpetual state of constructive chaos, friends said. Jenny Sanford
would be ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
-
sponsorship
Last weekend, 17-year-old, Marietta, Ga. native Melanie Oudin beat
24-year-old, sixth-seeded Serbian Jelena Jankovic in a surprise upset
at Wimbledon. Earlier this year, Jankovic was ranked No. 1 in the
world. This is Oudin's first Wimbledon.
After the match, Oudin scored critical praise for her ability to get
herself out of scrappy situations. Jankovic begged to differ: "She
doesn't have any weapons, from what I've seen."
According to the more experienced tennis player, she lost because
she wasn't feeling well. In other words, she blamed it on her period. ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
-
sponsorship
I am wondering what you all thought of the miscarriage scene in Away We Go, Sam Mendes’ new film about pregnant slackers seeking a home.
As Dana’s already pointed out,
it’s not a perfect movie. Too many cartoon characters bouncing around
cartoonishly (although Allison Janey, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Josh
Hamilton are such brilliantly wrought caricatures, it hardly matters).
But as soon as we meet Melanie Lynskey, playing hip Montreal supermom,
Munch Garnett, we know something different is coming.
Munch can’t conceive, and has thus adopted a Victorian houseful of
impossibly tidy, polite children with perfect pitch. But the instant
she finds herself in a room with the explosively pregnant Verona
(played by Maya Rudolph), it’s clear Munch is being devoured by
something. And later that evening, after a good amount of wine, Munch
takes to the stage at an open mic night to perform the saddest, least
sexy pole dance ever witnessed, all jerking head and hollow eyes. Her
husband, Tom, played by Chris Messina, explains that ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?