Thursday, October 11, 2007
There are Women in Hollywood? (4:20 pm)
If you’re up on the Feminist blogosphere, you’ve probably already heard word of the “decree” Warner Bros’ president of production Jeff Robinov recently made regarding the future of women as leads in Warner films. If you haven’t heard yet, there isn’t one:
Warner Bros has always been male-centric in its movies. But now the official policy as expressly articulated by Robinov is that a male has to be the lead of every pic made. I’m told he doesn’t even want to see a script with a woman in the primary position (which now is apparently missionary at WB).
Yeesh. It’s a good thing that Gloria Allred is on the case (and calling for a boycott!):
“If that’s what he said, when movies with men as the lead fail, no one says we’ll stop making movies with men in the lead. This is an insult to all moviegoers and particularly women. It is truly unfortunate that women get blamed for decisions which are made by men.(via)
This is, of course, very disheartening news. Thank goodness, then, for the in-depth, accessible and intelligent round table with some of Hollywood’s leading businesswomen published today on Salon*. As Rebecca Traister, of Broadsheet, writes:
More women than ever write, direct and produce movies. But we’re in a period in which their on-screen stock is falling. This summer brought us “Knocked Up,” about how a schlubby guy can land a hot successful woman and make audiences whoop in appreciation when he kicks her shrill (responsible,... read more
posted by Intern | 3 comments
Open Wide, Tom (12:09 am)
You’d think someone who argued for starting a disastrous war in order to send the message, “Suck On This!” might think twice before doling out moral instruction to anyone. But Thomas Friedman is nothing if not shameless, so in today’s column he took the youth of this country to task for not pouring out in the streets and being generally more radical (presumably, I guess, so that he can sit back and watch for his own aesthetic edification and personal uplift, while doing nothing himself but writing braindead columns like this).
Let’s start with my man’s short memory. Leaving aside that hundreds of thousands of Americans (many of them young) took to the streets to stop this war before it happened, probably the last time there were truly large, radical protests in this country was in Seattle in 1999. Here’s how Tom greeted them:
Is there anything more ridiculous in the news today then [sic!] the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle? I doubt it.
These anti-W.T.O. protesters … are a Noah’s ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960’s fix.
He goes on to say “adopting 1960s tactics in a Web-based world…[is] a fool’s errand.” Tom’s like that cokehead dad who finds his kid’s stash in the old anti-drug commercials, self-righteously asking, “Where did you learn this?” (“I learned it from watching you,” Tom’s poor daughter cries.) I can hear the voiceover now: “Parents who are passive schlubs have kids who are... read more
posted by Brian Cook | 2 comments
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Business Vote? Really? (10:58 pm)
Election season is almost upon us, so let’s roll out the articles explaining why the Democrats should try and peel of just enough Independents or Republicans to eke out a victory. First on the list is Paul Waldman over at TAP Online making a case for the Big Business vote.
“And today, with health care emerging as the key domestic issue of the moment, it’s time for Democrats to make a new argument to those businesses that want to act responsibly and simultaneously enhance their prospects for profits over the long term. If Democrats can successfully advance that argument, they can break through the presumption that the GOP is the “pro-business” party.”
Our friend Chris pointed toward some non-intuitive business decisions earlier this summer, writing about the desire of the capital class to speed up environmental regulation and health care reform as a cost saving mechanism. And I’m all for building strong coalitions to tackle those problems when they can be constructed. If Lee Scott wants to take a break from sipping champagne in Arkansas and chip in with some energy saver bulbs, more power to him.
But Waldman is making a different, and far less convincing, case. He says the economy does better when the Donkeys are in control, whether “it’s inflation, unemployment, GDP growth, personal income growth, federal deficits and debt, and stock market returns.” That’s probably true. Yet he doesn’t mention those tiny little things called taxes. You know, the cash businesses and high wealth individuals don’t have to fork over when the GOP is in power. The real reason they keep sending cash to AEI and Romney. Plus, the “responsible” business leaders he desires already support the Dems. There’s not much of a constituency to pick off.
In the end, populist policies are going to woo many more converts (and first-time voters) than pro-business language, no matter how rosy it appears. And after yesterday, corporate America and the Dems seem to be pretty cozy as is.
posted by Adam Doster | 1 comment
Changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (4:29 pm)
Five years ago, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in order to measure student success in schools up through high school. This law will soon be presented to congress for renewal and, for the sake of the children, NCLB has got to go.
Here’s why:
by Mahreen Mehdi, Publishing Intern
posted by Intern | start the discussion
Yanking Back On the Reins of Climate Change (2:32 pm)
Or, Thinking Outside The Stall:
Orion Magazine has a compelling, imaginative essay in their Sept./Oct. issue calling for a return to horse-power as a clean, renewable, and powerful means to farm our nation’s fields and transport our nation’s citizens. Author Dick Courteau knows his equine stuff having been raised on a Minnesota farm in the 1940s where
“McCormick’s reaper was still drawn by two big Belgians and a Percheron, Sally, Dick, and Rex…We were in a horse-powered technology, but not a primitive technology. That horse-drawn reaper in my childhood cut the oats, gathered them into precisely measured bundles, wrapped the twine around them, then automatically tied the knot, cut off the twine, and kicked out the bundle…One thing is certain. Horses were not abandoned because they were no longer up to the job. “
Courteau champions the unmatched versatility and strength of horse power and presents a cogent argument on how this natural source of energy can be used to reduce agricultural’s shortsighted and total dependence on oil:
Today, conventional farms in this country depend on oil for virtually 100 percent of the energy employed in tilling fields. Already fuel costs are a close second among farm expenses and have started to put a crimp in farm operations, and even the best-case scenario is one of ever-tightening oil supplies. With the food supply for 300 million people at stake, shouldn’t a responsible government be putting some backup measures in place?
To start with, stop paving over some of our finest... read more
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Calls For Action To Stem Violence In the Democractic Republic of the Congo (3:11 pm)
allAfrica has got the statement of former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa and current Co-Director of AIDS-Free World Stephen Lewis calling for a new UN initiative to end sexual violence in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Also, though he avoids directly citing the thousands of women and children being brutally raped in the Congo (not to mention the thousands of murdered husbands first forced to witness these atrocities committed to their families before they take their last breaths), they’ve posted the statement of Senator Russ Feingold urging the United States to act on the rapidly escalating crisis.
posted by Jarrett | 1 comment
A Thousand Shades of Gray (2:30 pm)
Andrew O’Hehir over at Salon has an extended overview of Tony Kaye’s new three-hour plus documentary on the Abortion Wars of the 90s, Lake of Fire. Kaye, the contentious director of the Edward Norton flick, American History X, has created, according to O’Hehir, an abortion film that will unsettle you no matter what side of the debate you’re on. Kaye films in detail two abortion procedures from start to finish - one late-term abortion and one first trimester abortion. O’Hehir writes of these sequences:
The principal difference between the two procedures is a matter of size and quantity, but the removed material is recognizably and shockingly human. For much too long, the pro-choice movement has relied on comforting euphemisms suggesting that early abortions result in nothing more than unrecognizable globs of goo. That was always sophistry; when you see tiny severed legs, arms and other body parts in that tray, it seems like something worse than that.
And Kaye supplements the footage with his thoughts in an interview with O’Hehir:
“When I did film it, which was after five years of working on the film, I was in” — here a long pause; he’s having trouble getting the words out — “an altered state when I came out of that place.”
But hang on:
Hold those calls and letters, defenders of choice. Throughout the film, Kaye is extraordinarily sensitive to the painful decisions of women who seek out the procedure. If the abortion scenes are shocking, so are Kaye’s interviews... read more
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Class Warfare (10:02 am)
If the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee are curious about just what they have to do to enrage the general populace enough for an angry mob to descend upon the Capitol, cut off their heads and place them on bobbing, pointed sticks, moves like this (which maintain the status quo of billionaire hedge fund managers paying less than half of the percentage in taxes than you or I do) are a really, really good start.
posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion
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