COMMNET
Comment Creeping Progress for Women Seventy-five years ago, women in the United States finally won the right to vote, and in the last Presidential election, women cast 54 percent of the ballots....
...Now get this straight," the judge lectured the mom...
...But their sanctimoniousness knows no bounds...
...policy on Iraq is disgraceful...
...it's given Dole $21,000 since 1987, The Washington Post reports...
...No-brainers don't make for good policy...
...Equally absurd positions were rife among the conservative American delegates in Beijing...
...It might have been more credible had the Dole campaign simply said it mistook the Log Cabin group for a bunch of maple-syrup manufacturers...
...Representatives to the Beijing conference insisted that the U.N...
...The judge managed to equate speaking the second most common language in America with child abuse— a gross insult to victims of real child abuse and a slur on Spanish-speaking Americans...
...now he doesn't like gays and lesbians...
...Xenophobia, more accurately, bigotry against Mexican Americans, is common in America today...
...War is not an instrument of peace...
...Everything is a war game to Washington...
...documents can actually bring about equality for women, when only...
...boycott of the international women's conference—is no more credible than their professed concern about families...
...They don't like affirmative action...
...Hillary Rodham Clinton, who spent the last year making herself over in the image of a nonthreatening homemaker, has responded to conservative attacks on the "radical, anti-family agenda" of the international women's movement by downplaying feminism and emphasizing motherhood and family...
...I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you" if you bring drugs into the country...
...They don't like gays and lesbians...
...But conservative religious leaders and heads of state can't make the women's movement disappear...
...The more politicians genuflect at the altar of family values, the more it seems that women and children get the shaft...
...But what's even more surprising is seeing Dole turn down a dollar, since the guy snorts money like an anteater at a picnic...
...Has the Dole campaign returned a dime...
...The dignity and the decency of our nation are victims, as well...
...As the cameras panned the scene, you couldn't help but notice Liberty holding her nose...
...What concerns the globe-spinners in the State Department these days more than a strong Iraq is a strong Iran, so in time-honored tradition, Washington wants to bolster Baghdad to balance Teheran...
...The President has been meekly defensive on the subject of women's rights—describing the U.S...
...Women in Africa, India, and Latin America are working to improve health care and education for women and girls—efforts that have helped reduce disease and infant mortality and improve standards of living for women and their families...
...What are their names...
...troops were put on alert, U.S...
...Glendon, a leader of the communitarian movement, promotes "more local control over abortion laws"—an absurd example of letting community standards arbitrarily constrain universal individual rights...
...Time Warner hasn't given Dole $1,000...
...The disappointments sure to arise in China should help our movement outgrow its legalism—the fallacy of thinking that changes in the law or U.N...
...She promises freedom—not a free ride...
...She promises fairness—not favoritism...
...Motherhood cannot be amended and we're glad they didn't try," The New York Times wrote in response to a failed drive for equal rights in 1948...
...Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard law professor who was chosen as the Vatican's delegate to the U.N...
...Such efforts give the he to the notion that feminism is "anti-family...
...This has been true throughout the history of the women's movement...
...Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, which Hillary Rodham Clinton attended after much debate...
...And there are the same network military experts, replete with their giant maps and long pointers, explaining the terrain and the strategy in monotone...
...If the celebrations had a depressingly muted quality, it's because this is not the most auspicious historical moment for women around the world—or in this country for that matter...
...Senator Dole and I would appreciate any assistance you could give us ....' —-John Moron, Dole finance director, writing to Richard Tafel, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, in happier times How about Time Warner—one of the companies Dole has accused of "debasing" American culture...
...Fast forward to 1995...
...The United States also fears that a weak and unstable central government in Baghdad would incite the Iraqi Kurds to join their comrades in an all-out war against Turkey, one of America's favorite brutal allies...
...bombers doing there...
...Worried that he'd be perceived as sympathetic to gays and lesbians, the Dole campaign returned a $1,000 contribution from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian group...
...That most countries still treat abuse of women as a private matter, instead of an important human-rights issue, compounds women's isolation...
...It seeks stability above all...
...President Clinton, who possesses both a burning desire to be reelected and a grasp of basic math, celebrated the recent anniversary of women's suffrage...
...Wilson, by the way, announced his Presidential campaign in New York, using the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop for his immigrant-bashing...
...delegation to the Beijing conference as "true blue to families...
...Just how tough soon became clear: "The first time we execute twenty-seven or thirty or thirty-five people at one time, the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically," Gingrich said...
...There's an obvious difference" between Time Comment Warner and the Log Cabin Republicans, the Dole staffer said...
...Isn't that what Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon said during Vietnam...
...This from a small item in The New York Times with the understated headline of the year: "Gingrich Suggests Tough Drug Measure...
...But the growing momentum of the international women's movement, and the passion of its leaders in the Third World, should give women everywhere inspiration and hope...
...now he doesn't like affirmative action...
...That ugliness was recently on display in the Texas courtroom of Judge Samuel Kiser...
...He told her that by speaking Spanish to her daughter, "you're abusing that child and you're relegating her to the position of housemaid," a wonderfully judicious statement if ever there was one...
...This sort of willful ignorance set the tone for what some feminists called the "backlash conference" in Beijing...
...Bombs Away It's that old undeclared-wartime feeling again...
...Gingrich wants to severely limit appeals of death sentences for smuggling...
...It is a crude, unpredictable instrument of destruction...
...So it's bombs away in Bosnia...
...Per our discussion, I am attaching a list of upcoming Dole for President fund-raising events...
...On both human rights and family policy, the Republicans are about as compassionate as Vlad the Impaler...
...And women's fundamental individual rights continue to be subordinated to repressive social standards...
...But neither celebrations nor conferences can take the place of concrete action to oppose the backlash against women at home and abroad...
...Now that we could almost believe...
...There are the networks, letting the Pentagon take over the producer's booth, supplying its own canned footage on the airwaves...
...You start speaking English to this child...
...It just wants to eliminate Saddam, who is an embarrassment...
...A $20,000 difference...
...but it wants to keep the regime strong...
...Soon, thousands of U.S...
...In a child-custody case, Judge Kiser told Martha Laureano that he would take her five-year-old daughter away from her if she continued to speak Spanish in the home...
...But the majority of families are a beautiful place to be, and most are safe havens...
...The Wall Street Journal contended that the Beijing conference features "the American quarrel between ardent feminists and equally ardent defenders of family values...
...Gingrich, by the way, unveiled the new gallows in front of 1,500 people at a cheerleading jamboree in Georgia...
...With the rise of virulent conservatism and the sadly defensive posture of liberals in Washington, it's easy to lose heart...
...When the word 'family' is referred to in the document, most often it is in the sense of a negative, like when they say that most violence takes place in families," she said...
...Grassroots environmental and development initiatives have also improved economic conditions for families and produced a model for sustainable living...
...It seems obvious that the United States was trying to orchestrate a coup in Iraq or provoke Saddam to make a foolish military lunge so that Clinton could get his scalp...
...But they are not the only victims...
...It is fueling the "English Only" movement and the anti-immigration movement, and it is being pumped by the likes of Pat Buchanan and Pete Wilson...
...Newt's Fryathon Newt Gingrich fashions himself the Grim Reaper on social programs, and now he's so enamored with the outfit that he wants to wear it to the gallows...
...It's got a ring to it, you've got to admit: "Show how much you love your kids: support the death penalty...
...Never mind that our own officials confess that U.S...
...This summer's saber-rattling is just the kind of reckless behavior that could bring about more bloodshed, and more suffering, in Iraq, whose people have suffered enormously at the hands of the United States...
...The single most anti-women-and-children public policy in the recent history of the United States is Bill Clinton's own pet, "welfare reform...
...They wouldn't have ten years of playing games with the system...
...This refusal to accept women as full human beings is fashionable among communitarians...
...So then the Dole staff tried to come up with a better excuse...
...Martha Laureano is bilingual, by the way, and wants her daughter to be, too...
...And the U.S...
...One of the most regressive aspects of the current backlash against feminism in the United States is the recycled idea that women's individual, inalienable rights conflict with spiritual and cultural values...
...He's doing it for the children, he says...
...I do wish to apologize to the profession of housekeeping," said the judge, "since we entrust our personal possessions and our family's welfare to these hard-working people, and I hold them in the highest esteem...
...conference, is a particularly well-respected proponent of this view...
...long-term grassroots organizing can actually do so.' —Meredith Tax, president of Women's World Organization for Rights, Literature, and Development (The Republicans' professed concern about human rights in China—the reason they originally gave for demanding a U.S...
...The Dole campaign said it had accepted the contribution by mistake, but it turns out the campaign had aggressively solicited contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans in the first place...
...Last time we checked, Congress had not voted to declare war against the Serbs in Bosnia...
...There's the Pentagon, talking about "precision" bombings...
...They don't like abortion...
...recognize the universal rights of women to be free of violence, and that mass rape be finally recognized as a war crime—both steps toward acknowledging the violence against women that has historically been ignored...
...His plan ought to give the squads some new chants to rehearse: Kill 'em Again, Kill 'em again, Harder, Harder, and Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah, Go Reaper...
...The United States has spent millions of dollars funding Iraqi opposition leaders, but Washington doesn't want democracy in Iraq...
...But a few days later, Secretary of Defense William Perry admitted that "nothing leads us to believe that any invasion is under way or planned...
...Until we stop this nonsense, there will be more Martha Laureanos who have their dignity besmirched and their basic rights besieged...
...His idea for a fryathon would certainly bring new distinction to the United States...
...Our policy," said a spokesperson, "is to decline contributions from political groups that have an agenda that is in opposition to Senator Dole's...
...But that's no concern of our policymakers...
...They'd have one chance to appeal," he says...
...No Brain Policy When Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Lieutenant General Hussein Kamel, fled to Jordan, denounced the regime, and warned that Saddam was about to invade Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, he had Washington's strings attached to his back...
...Well, this tough guy's not so tough after all...
...that's why the Clinton Administration has kept the embargo on for so long, and that's why it takes the most provocative steps toward Baghdad...
...now he doesn't like abortion...
...Despite American politicians' saccharine sentimentality about family, our elected officials are making life miserable for mothers and children...
...In fact, domestic violence continues to be one of the biggest problems women face around the world...
...The rights of lesbians were also inadequately addressed, and derisively dismissed by pundits like Cokie Roberts...
...warships moved in, and the Pentagon moved up the timetable for "war games" with Kuwait because of Iraq's allegedly provocative behavior...
...Through the combined efforts of the Vatican, conservative Muslim leaders, and the Christian right in the United States, the Beijing conference delegates submitted to a more ambiguous and cautious discussion of abortion rights than in any previous summit...
...In late August, Gingrich came out for mass executions of drug smugglers...
...A little pressure from the far right, and he buckles...
...The Clinton Administration has granted federal waivers to state after state for each of these experiments in cruelty, and the President now seems more eager even than Bob Dole or Phil Gramm to push a punitive welfare bill through Congress...
...She promises unlimited hope— not a guaranteed result.' —Pete Wilson, misreading the Statue of Liberty Prejudice in the Court There's a real ugliness lurking just below the surface of the "English Only" movement in America...
...Beverly La-Haye, founder and president of Concerned Women for America, criticized the discussion of domestic violence in the Beijing platform...
...How any gays and lesbians could be Republican in this day and age is hard to fathom...
...Yet feminists continue to be the ones who call for better family policies, parental leave, health care and nutrition for mothers and children, and high-quality, affordable day care—issues that were current in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's time...
...And such an apology it was...
...No way...
...After he got egg on his face in Iowa, Dole moved quickly to appease the bigots in the Christian Coalition...
...That a judge can make such an outrageous ruling and issue such obnoxious statements isn't surprising...
...Chip and Dole You know Bob Dole, the guy with the giant chip on his shoulder, the guy who shoots from the chip...
...He also took the opportunity to endorse the U.N...
...bombers haven't hit all the targets on their first sorties...
...Clinton kicked off the current wave of draconian welfare experiments, and Republicans and Democrats are competing with each other to be the toughest on poor women and children, capping AFDC and food stamps, forcing single mothers into the workforce without making any provision for their children's care, and deepening the cycles of poverty and despair in which millions of women and children find themselves trapped...
...How many civilians have we killed...
...In the United States, one in every three women experiences some physical violence in her long-term relationships...
...Days later, the Pentagon began to speak ominously of Iraqi troop build-ups...
...So what are U.S...
...Gingrich's proposal may apply even to individuals who bring in small quantities of drugs for their personal use, and soon he intends to submit his proposal in the form of Congressional legislation...
...It's not an instrument we should be using...
...Actually, his "housemaid" comment was the only one the judge apologized for...
...And he managed to imply that Spanish-speaking females are fit only to sweep floors and clean toilets in the houses of the English-speaking...
...It's a no-brainer for Clinton...
...In many ways, our national feminist consciousness hasn't improved much since the suffragists faced jeering crowds in Washington early this century...
...The anniversary of suffrage and the international conference in Beijing remind us that the struggle for women's rights is continuous...
...Republicans, and members of the Christian right, who insist that women's rights should take a back seat to family, culture, and tradition...
...There's all this talk in Washington about how the bombing of Bosnia will bring everyone to the peace table...
...Isn't there something vaguely familiar about that rhetoric...
...Why, we'd be the envy of the ancient world...
...What did the bombs hit, then...
...Saddam Hussein is an easy whipping boy," one diplomat told The New York Times...
...To understand America is to see it through this lady's eyes...
Vol. 59 • October 1995 • No. 10
