'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'They're advancing extreme legislation. It's dangerous to women's health, disrespects the judgment of American women -- I don't know if they even gave that a thought -- and it's the most comprehensive and radical assault on women's health in our lifetime. It's that bad.'

-- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (prior IntLawGrrls posts), in a Thursday conference call with journalists, reported here. Spurring Pelosi's criticism was a spate of bills aimed at limiting access to abortion, now pending in Congress. (credit for 2009 AP photo)

(Not) facing the nation

IntLawGrrls formed in 2007 partly out of concern about the narrow range of what passes for wide-ranging public discourse.

Examples:

►A congressional hearing on the question of what to do about Guantánamo featured a panel purportedly representing the spectrum of answers. A photo in the next day's paper told a different story. Every witness had once worked in the U.S. Executive Branch and lived on the East Coast. All but one were of European ancestry, and only one could lay claim to any expertise in human rights law. None was a woman. (The picture in mind appeared in late 2006, if memory serves. But it's replicated weekly on Capitol Hill. (credit for 2009 photo of Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iran))

►Op-ed pages of major newspapers feature men in proportions far greater than that of men among the U.S. population. This phenomenon spluttered onto news pages in 2005, when the University of Southern California law professor at right, Susan Estrich, complained, and an op-ed editor pushed back. Disparity in the sex of cybercommentators, then and now, appears even greater.

IntLawGrrls endeavors to help change things, by: offering a virtual-world space for commentary by women; pointing out women's accomplishments through items like our expert series; and improving real-world public discourse through events like our "Women and International Criminal Law" roundtable to be held this October 29.

Now comes a new study charting that in the world of Sunday morning talk shows -- reputedly a world to which official Washington pays close attention -- disproportions are, well, off the chart.

The evidence is presented forcefully in "Guess Who Won't Be Coming to the Studio: An Unknown Congress," published in the Summer 2010 edition of the law journal Green Bag. The author is Alex B. Mitchell (left), a 3d-year law student at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.

Mitchell analyzed who appeared as guests in 2008-2009 on CBS' "Face the Nation," NBC's "Meet the Press," ABC's "This Week," "Fox News Sunday," and CNN's "State of the Union." All his findings are well worth pondering with regard to representation not only on talk shows but also in the halls of Congress. Here're his key bottom lines:

► Minorities: More than a third of Americans -- 36.9% of the population -- belong to this category. Among them, of course, is President Barack Obama. Yet their representation in Congress is less than half the overall number -- 14.6%. And their representation on the talk shows? A near-infinitesimal 2.5%.

► Women: More than half of Americans -- 50.8% of the population -- are female. Among them, of course, are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, women who stand 3d and 5th, respectively, in the line of presidential succession. Yet women's representation in Congress is less than a third the overall number -- 16.9%. And women's representation on the talk shows? 13.5%, two-thirds smaller than their representation among all Americans.

Further skewing matters are a few other facts that Mitchell unearthed.

At a time when 58.6% of all members of Congress were Democrats (credit for 2008 photo of "freshmen" members of Congress), 49.8% of all talk-show guests were Republicans. Whereas Senators made up fewer than 20% of the Congress, more than 80% of all talk-show guests came from that upper chamber. And though fewer than 10% of all members of Congress fit into the category that Mitchell defined as "white, male U.S. Senators in office 6+ years," more than 60% of all talk-show guests fit in this category.

Bottom line on this set of facts:

► During the period studied, only 1 woman ranked among the top 10 repeat Congressional guests on these shows. Today's puzzler: Can you name her? (Answer below.)

The implications of Mitchell's research could fill volumes. Mitchell put it succinctly:

Explanations aside, the empirical effect of predominantly interviewing one demographic ... is that the wealth of diversity of ideas that make up our nation is stifled.

'Nuff said.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

She genuinely sees her party as a vehicle for good and her pragmatism is not the least bit cynical. She is the most powerful woman in the country, the most fearless person on Capitol Hill and on track to be one of the most productive speakers in history.

-- New York Times columnist Gail Collins, extolling achievements of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Pelosi, a Baltimore-born San Francisco Democrat, became Speaker in January 2007, the 1st woman ever to hold that congressional leadership position. (credit for 2009 photo)

Remember the right to health?

This time last year we blogged in wonderment on how the rhetoric of a right to health pervaded Democratic discourse in the United States.

We quoted longtime health care advocate Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, of course, but also Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California, and, most significantly, the preamble to the Democratic Party platform, which declared:

We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right.

It was a heady moment. Many of us recall far too vividly the health-reform debacle of the 1990s,. Have spent far too many hours in hospitals and on health-benefits websites. Have endured far too intimately the hardships of our uninsured (and underinsured) clients, friends, and family. Last August we found reasons for hope.

Fast forward a dozen months. This August, as in the '90s, fringe distortion dominates the mainstream media. Voluntary end-of-life counseling is transmuted into the dark fantasy of a "death panel." The fact that many health professionals already conduct such counseling as a matter of routine fades in this feat of political prestidigitation. Lost entirely are truly critical facts: 77 percent of us support the choice of a public option, and 47 million children, women, and men in the United States need health insurance.

In this topsy-turvy tumult it is easy to bewail deprivations of the right to health, to complain that the Democrats, the Executive Branch, President Obama, are not doing enough to protect that right. In the hope of aiding understanding of what's happening right now, this week my class will begin to learn about Human Rights by studying the concept, scope, and enforcement-or-not of the right to health. Even before we begin that study, however, I can't help but remember what a Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. had to say about human rights, nearly a century ago. As I've written (n.176), in 1916 the renowned U.S. Supreme Court Justice stated

that he did not ‘respect the rights of man . . . except those things a given crowd will fight for ...’

As a matter of theory, Holmes' hostile statement is of course troubling. But as a matter of practice, it is right on point. It requires hard work to entrench even the most basic of human rights. Change will happen only when it is not only some few officials in Washington, but also all U.S. supporters of health care, who do their part to make it happen.

Put another way:

What have you done for the right to health lately? What will you do once Congress' odd August recess comes to an end?

A most interesting trope at the DNC

Lots said and seen on opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, as Marjorie so eloquently posts above. One phrase resounded in this IntLawyer's ear.
Heard it 1st from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

America needs a president who knows that health care is a right, not a privilege. ...

Later, from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy:

[B]reak the gridlock and guarantee that every American -- North, South, East and West, young and old -- will have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.

It's a phrase Kennedy's used for years, as the video tribute to him demonstrated. But Pelosi's call shows that it's reached the mainstream, at least within the Democratic Party. The preamble to the party's platform declares:

We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right.

It's a moment to mark, in this country where one President's proclamation of 4 Freedoms helped to spur a social, economic, and cultural rights movement, yet other Presidents' words pushed back as that movement grew elsewhere in the world.
In the United States, perhaps, as elsewhere, a right to health.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes.)

This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.

-- U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) (above left), former Presidential candidate and Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. The cause of his objection? President George W. Bush's statement in Israel's parliament, during a commemoration of Israel's 60th birthday. Bush likened proposals to meet face-to-face -- that is, to engage in diplomacy -- with adversaries such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to pre-World War II appeasement of Adolf Hitler. Many others objected. Here's what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) had to say:

I think what the president said in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel.

On May 14

On this day in ...
... 1950, Karen Lorraine Speier was born in San Francisco. As a girl she chose her confirmation name in honor of then-1st Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. At age 28, by then a lawyer and aide to U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Cal.), Speier (left) joined him on a 1978 factfinding mission to Jonestown, a compound in a jungle in Guyana to which a charismatic Bay Area preacher, Jim Jones, had moved with many followers. She said later of her decision:

'In those days, there weren't many women legal counsels in Congress, and I worried how it would reflect on women if I appeared reluctant to go.'

At Jonestown Ryan was killed, and Jones and nearly all his followers committed suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Speier began her own career as an elected official in 1980; since then, she's served in numerous local and state posts. On April 8 of this year she won a special election for a vacated congressional seat. Within days House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the oath of office to U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Cal.).

... 1948 (60 years ago today), at midnight, the British mandate over Palestine ended and the independent state of Israel came into being. Almost at once President Harry S. Truman announced the United States' recognition, and attacks were launched from neighboring states.

Another Old Feminism icon jumps the shark*

As one with a penchant for wearing my Ms.-issued T-shirt, "Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman," I was thrilled back in the summer of 1984 at the prospect of casting 1 of my 1st-ever top-of-the-national-ticket votes for Geraldine A. Ferraro (left). Ferraro had just defeated an African-American candidate, former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley A. Chisholm, by a delegate vote of 3,920 to 3, to seize the Democratic vice presidential nomination.
Was unsettled soon after that convention by stories questioning my candidate. Was discomfited later in the season, as I watched what, I was forced to admit, did not seem to me anywhere near the stellar performance I'd expected in Ferraro's debate with her GOP opponent, incumbent Vice President George H.W. Bush. Neither matter was enough to change my vote, though.
The chance to put A Woman in the White House trumped any and all doubts in my mind.
Other voters disagreed, however, and in 1984 Republicans trounced Ferraro and her presidential slatemate, Walter Mondale, by a popular vote margin of 58.8% to 40.6%, an electoral vote margin of 525 to 13, and an abysmal states-won margin of 49 to 1.
The experience taught me caution in choosing candidates.
I have voted, of course, for many women since, for in these interim decades there have been many, many women on the ballot. But I have never voted for The Woman when convinced that her opponent was the better choice. In general, I have been pleased with the women who've led where I lived -- U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to name 2. But by no means have all women leaders pleased me. Still, as this post indicates, I've carried a soft spot for Ferraro all these years, notwithstanding that her candidacy resulted in 4 more years of Reagan-Bush, followed by 4 of Bush-Quayle -- a stretch that helped pave the way for 7-years-and-counting of Bush-Cheney.
No soft spot any more.
IntLawGrrl Johanna E. Bond wrote a while back of her disappointment in Ms. founder Gloria Steinem. Now Ferraro's joined Steinem as an icon of Old Feminism who seems bent on permanently staining her own image in the eyes of New Feminists.
No stomach for repeating what Ferraro's said these last several days; click to read her initial words, and her subsequent defense of herself.
Suffice it to say that a "feminism" that defends women against all, and above all, a "feminism" that reduces everything to a phenomenon to be explained by assigned identities, that ignores intersections among sex and class and race and ethnicity and other attributes, a "feminism" that divides when it ought to unite, deserves no embrace.
Words of division merit only 1 response: denunciation and rejection, now and always.

* "jump the shark" is among my favorite phrases; definition here.