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Being a blogreader
The downside about going away for a weekend is apparently it takes me four days to catch up on all the reading that piled up while I was gone (and then the stuff that piled up while I was reading the old stuff)!
I don't actually read all that many blogs. Look over there at that sidebar -- see how short that blogroll is?
And while you're there, note that it's one entry longer than it used to be. I've added Republic of Dogs. I went and read his fine blog because I'm impressed by the comments he made in this thread over in Twisty Faster's "I Blame the Patriarchy." She even calls out my favorite of his comments in its very own post regarding "How To Be A Feminist Fella After Getting Lambasted By Feminists". If you've ever wondered what what men can do about the patriarchy, this is your answer. If you've never wondered what men can do about the patriarchy... go read it anyway.
And, for the record: I eat no shrimp tacos. Nor pork, nor chicken, nor beef. Though I've been known to enjoy the heck out of tacos with soy-based fake meat products in them, from time to time. And on the very rare occasion, with real live breaded fried fish filets.
(Edit: and, oh my! the blogroll was missing Twisty's site. That's what I get for editing html before the first cuppa coffee...how embarassing.)
comments are back: thank you, haloscan
signed up with haloscan in hopes that I can give y'all back the ability to make comments without turning spam-control into a time-sink for me.
Old entries will be weird, with the "Comments (0)" from HaloScan but with comments in-line from greymatter's old comments system. I actually find the whole comments-in-a-separate-window thing annoying, but maybe I can either get used to it or find some way to embed the haloscan comments system in the page. I haven't played with it really at all yet, except to make sure it works.
Two posts in one! The Plame game, and: More on reproductive choice
Should I keep doing these what-I'm-reading roll-up posts, or should I start posting one entry per link? (since I've turned comments off for now, y'all will have to email sev@byz.org if you want to actually weigh in on this question.) The problem with going one-post-per-link is that I'm really not going to have time to go into the kind of detail that I'm putting into this post:
Shakespeare's Sister posted a link to a Washington Post article by Dan Froomkin on the "who outed Valerie Plame" game. If you haven't been following the recent revelations in the hunt for who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, to the press, then Froomkin's article is the place to go to get caught up.
It's become pretty clear that at the very least, Rove identified Plame to journalists. Calling her the wife of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV does in fact unambiguously identify her, seeing how as in this country, people can legally have a maximum of one spouse. All the speculation about whether he used her name or not is kind of silly. It's disingenuous to suggest that giving someone enough information to uniquely identify a person isn't "leaking" just the same way that giving someone the person's actual full name would be.
How often do men get referred to as so-and-so's-husband? Maybe Rove doesn't understand how a reference like that could in fact be construed as identifying information. He *might* be that dumb. And, as a privileged white male, perhaps he's just too sheltered to understand. How many of you know what Rove's wife's name is? I mean, we know that Clinton's wife is named Hilary, the shrub's wife is named Laura. It was trivial for me to discover that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's wife's name is Rebecca Turner Gonzales, though I can't say I ever hear her referred to except to point out that that's the name of Gonzales's wife. But at least her name is included -- they don't just call her "Mrs. Gonzalez." Rove's wife's name is "Darby" and not just "Mrs. Rove," something that would surprise me if my only source of information was mainstream news. Somehow, they mostly just call her "Mrs. Rove."
How we refer to women isn't a straightforward problem. Even when we're talking about women's accomplishments, we often find that women are referred to using their first names, or using their relationships to men (wife of, daughter of, mother of) instead of using their full name. Stripping women of their names is a linguistic power game in which women's status is reduced and mens' dominance is reinforced.
Get a grip, Rove. As much as you and the rest of the patriarchy would like to reduce women to mere appendages of men, we do in fact have our own names, our own careers, our own ambitions, our own lives.
So, now: the white house promised to fire anybody involved in leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent. And the man hasn't even had his security clearance suspended -- a common practice when there's an investigation going on. Helloooooo? How's about a sign, any sign at all, that the white house gives a sodding screw about living up to the promises made to this country? Y'know, the parts of this country that *aren't* Halliburton stockholders?
And, as for the rest of the what-I'm-reading list: [more]
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