“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Wednesday is Ladies’ Day
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: A new ‘Year of the Woman’?
A little more than 20 years ago, Anita Hill sat before a panel of 14 U.S. senators, all male, who aggressively questioned her claim that she had been sexually harassed by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. As the nation watched the hearings, riveted and repulsed, one Washington state senator couldn’t help but ask herself: “Who’s saying what I would say if I was there?”
The answer? No one – there were only two women in the Senate at the time and neither was on the Judiciary Committee. And so, in 1992, Patty Murray, the self-proclaimed “mom in tennis shoes,” laced up and ran for U.S. Senate. The Anita Hill effect spawned the “Year of the Woman,” when 19 women won seats in the House, and four women, including Murray, won in the Senate.
Two decades later, a slew of Republican attacks on women, women’s health and women’s economic futures might just turn 2012 into another “Year of the Woman.” To understand why, it’s worth recapping this year’s parade of anti-women horrors.
Mattea Kramer: Tough Talk for America: A Guide to the Presidential Debates You Won’t Hear
Five big things will decide what this country looks like next year and in the 20 years to follow, but here’s a guarantee for you: you’re not going to hear about them in the upcoming presidential debates. Yes, there will be questions and answers focused on deficits, taxes, Medicare, the Pentagon, and education, to which you already more or less know the responses each candidate will offer. What you won’t get from either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is a little genuine tough talk about the actual state of reality in these United States of ours. And yet, on those five subjects, a little reality would go a long way, while too little reality (as in the debates to come) is a surefire recipe for American decline.
So here’s a brief guide to what you won’t hear this Wednesday or in the other presidential and vice-presidential debates later in the month. Think of these as five hard truths that will determine the future of this country. [..]
Ironically, those in Washington arguing for urgent deficit reduction claim that we’ve got to do it “for the kids,” that we must stop saddling our grandchildren with mountains of federal debt. But if your child turns 18 and finds her government running a balanced budget in an America that’s hollowed out, an America where she has no chance of paying for a college education, will she celebrate? You don’t need an economist to answer that one.
Dana Goldstein:
Bad Lessons From ‘Won’t Back Down’
Each character in the new film, about Pittsburgh parents and teachers who band together to take over a struggling school, is crafted less as a believable human being than as a talking point. First there are the students of F-rated Adams Elementary, a tapestry of white, black, Latino and Asian children. But racial diversity is not typical of failing schools; of the seven shut down in Pittsburgh this year because of low performance, two are more than 95 percent African-American, and the rest more than two-thirds black. [..]
Should parents and teachers have the right to take over schools? In Britain, parents can launch charterlike “free schools,” but even supporters worry that only the most involved and educated parents will go through the arduous process, which could further exacerbate educational inequality. I support many different pathways to school reform, including parent management-as long as it is closely monitored by proven educators, states and cities. Yet I’m not hopeful that this latest school choice trend will take off in any truly systemic way. Most single moms don’t have time for a third job, which is one good reason we must insist on understanding that quality education is not just a choice but a right the state must provide for all children.
Stephanie Coontz; The Myth of Male Decline
SCROLL through the titles and subtitles of recent books, and you will read that women have become “The Richer Sex,” that “The Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys,” and that we may even be seeing “The End of Men.” Several of the authors of these books posit that we are on the verge of a “new majority of female breadwinners,” where middle-class wives lord over their husbands while demoralized single men take refuge in perpetual adolescence.
How is it, then, that men still control the most important industries, especially technology, occupy most of the positions on the lists of the richest Americans, and continue to make more money than women who have similar skills and education? And why do women make up only 17 percent of Congress?
Bryce Covert; Dear Hanna Rosin: I’m Doing Fine! Love, the Patriarchy
Hanna Rosin’s new neon-covered book, The End of Men, just hit bookshelves and has already led to a slew of interviews and excerpt placements. The title may sound familiar: the book grew out of her Atlantic article of the same name. That piece came out at the height of the recession, when men were suffering historic levels of unemployment. Rosin’s thesis is that the recession exaggerated a broader trend already well underway, in which American men are ceding economic dominance to women, who are better suited to a new economy that values communication, collaboration and service work. Her story’s moment may have faded: since the recession officially ended, women have gotten less than 20 percent of the jobs added to the economy, regaining just a quarter of the jobs they lost during the crisis. Men have recovered 42 percent of lost jobs.
But perhaps the biggest challenge in grappling with Rosin’s book is her tendency to use key concepts over and over without stopping to consider what they actually mean. “Matriarchy,” “success,” even “feminism” all play major roles in the End of Men, but they’re sketchily defined at best. Women have what it takes to be successful in the economy, she tells us, and calls this a matriarchy, suggesting that thousands of years of ruling patriarchy are coming to an end.
Emily Douglas: DHS Throws a Lifeline to LGBT Immigrant Families
Today, the Department of Homeland Security threw a lifeline to undocumented immigrants who are in same-sex relationships with US citizens. New federal guidelines will allow ICE officers to take into account a same-sex relationship with an American partner when determining whether to pursue a removal proceeding. This doesn’t offer immigrants a path to permanent legal status, but it does provide “a way to mitigate the harshest consequences of the lack of immigration equality and prevent some couples from being physically separated,” said Victoria Neilson, an attorney with Immigration Equality.
These guidelines build on DHS’s 2011 directive to concentrate enforcement priorities on immigrants with criminal records and stall the deportation proceedings of those who have not committed crimes. A same-sex relationship can now help qualify an immigrant as “low-priority” for deportation.
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