The Nation may need to rename itself The Men's Nation. This despite having a woman holding the post of editor and publisher (Katrina vanden Heuvel pictured above as she enters the room for a staff meeting).
May 14, 2007 issue. Another special issue. On Iraq? Don't make us laugh! It's Cuba.
Editorials & Comment
"Changing Course on Cuba" -- unsigned
Bruce Shapiro's "Virg. Tech: Only Connect"
Richard Kim's "One of My Own" (another Virginia Tech feature)
Andre Schiffrin's "Sarko vs. Sego in France"
"Nation Notes" -- kind of a mini-Talk of the Town feature
5 pieces
Score: O females, 3 males
Columns
Calvin Trillin's "A Bring-the-Troops-Home Rally in Baghdad"
Alexander Cockburn's "Is Global Warming a Sin?"
Katha Pollitt's "Regerts Only"
Naomi Klein's "Sacrificial Wolfie"
4 pieces
Score: 2 females, 2 males
Articles
Julia E. Sweig's "A New Stance Toward Havan" -- hey, do you read Extra!? We do. In the March/April 2007 issue, Michael Dolny contributes "Think Tank Sources Fall, but Left Gains Slightly" on pages 24 & 25. Guess what the second most quoted think tank in the mainstream media is? The Council on Foreign Relations. Right behind the centrist Brookings Institute. (CoFR is centrist.) The first non-right wing, non-centrist think tank to make the top 25 is Economic Policy Institute (at number 10). Note that these are Extra!'s i.d.s for the orgs. We agree, but that darn mainstream media. Pushing that Council on Foreign Relation. Thank goodness we have an independent media that doesn't promote centrist organizations, one that is free of organizations like CoFR. What's that you say? Yes, Sweig is a part of CoFR. Want another shocker? When the left is promoting centrists organizations, what chance do left think tanks have of being cited in the mainstream?
"The Changing of the Guard" roundtable featuring Peter Kornbluh, Alberto Coll, Saul Landau, William LeoGrande, Philip Peters and Ramon Sanchez-Parodi
Peter Kornbluh's "Terror and the Counterterrorists"
Max J. Castro's "Miami Vise"
Gore Vidal's "Ferdinand VII"
John Dinges' "Watching the Reporters"
Rosa Miriam Elizalde's "A Dangerous Little Beehive?"
7 pieces
Score: 2 females, 10 males
Critics
David Yaffe's "The Art of the Improviser"
Tara Gallagher's "The Beautiful Things . . ."
William Deresiewicz's "Cafe Society"
3 pieces
Score: 1 female, 2 males
Total score: 5 women, 17 men
Year to date score: 47 women, 191 men.
May 21, 2007 issue, another theme issue. Iraq? Stop, you're making us laugh so hard we'll have an accident in our pants. It's education.
Editorials & Comment
"Showdown on the War" -- unsigned
David Corn's "George Tenet's Evasions"
Katrina vanden Heuvel's "Yeltsin's (Real) Legacy"
Jon Wiener's "The Chutzpah Industry"
Air Melber's "Dems Tangled in the Netroots" -- someone thought it was a cute title, we'd argue that forget roots, someone's ass is showing (and not one worth looking at)
Lynn Randolph's "Scenes from Hell (art)"
6 pieces
Score: 2 women, 3 men
Columns
Calvin Trillins's "Another exasperating Account . . ."
Eric Alterman's "The Post-Imus Conundrum" -- where AlterPunk promotes a false correlation between rappers and Don Imus and flaunts his stupidity in otherways as well. Apparently research for AlterPunky Brewster meant watching a few episodes of MTV Cribs. New artists in any genre, do not reap in a windfall from a huge album. Not only that, but AlterPunky writes as though he's not even aware of what a high royalty rate on sales would be. He accepts the myth that there are millionaires, those rappers. Just like the Doo Wop groups, just like the stars of the 50s and 60s. He saw people living above their means on MTV cribs and has never heard what awaits. We'd recommend he call MC Hammer, but Alterpunky would probably be more comfortable speaking to Vanilla Ice. Pure fiction from the world's most detached mind.
2 pieces
Score: 2 men, 0 women
Articles
Linda Darling-Hammond's "Evaluating 'No Child Left Behind'"
Pedro Noguera, Velma L. Cobb, Deborah Meier's "Responses"
Thomas Pally's "The Flaws in Rubinomics"
Christopher Hayes' "Look Who's Taxing"
4 pieces
Score: 3 women, 3 men
Critics
Roberto Gonzales Echevarria's "Eshleman . . ."
Graham Foust's "Poem Windy and Continued (poem)"
Russell Jacoby's "Barber . . ."
"Discovery/ The Nation '07 Prizewinners"
3 pieces
Score: 3 men
Total score: 5 women, 11 men
Year to date score: 52 women, 202 men
May 28, 2007 issue. And there's another theme. We know none of you said: "Iraq!" The theme this time is thick tomes reviewed in such a way that you'll never want to pick them up. By comparsion, this issue makes The New York Review of Books look like Sassy. Stuffed shirts across the nation will be thrilled.
Editorials & Comments
"Morality Gets a Massage"
Patricia J. Williams' "Invisible America" -- Professor and chef Patricia J. Williams cooking up more disasters. Here she's suddenly concerned with those who cannot see racism and yet, strangely, her usual object of drool festing is Obama. Patricia, Gina wishes you'd make the time to meet Margaret Kimberley. Barring that, why don't you read Kimberley's "Should We Want a Black President?" (Freedom Rider, Black Agenda Report) but, warning, afterwards you may feel the need to take your Obama posters down from the walls.
The Pooper's "Laboring for Edwards"
Andre Schiffrin's "France A Droite"
Calvin Trillin's "Studs Terkel, Listner"
"MacArthur Park"
6 pieces
Score: 1 woman, 3 men
Columns
Calvin Trillin's "Three Out of Ten . . ."
Alexander Cockburn's "Who Are the Merchants of Fear?"
Katha Pollitt's "'Democracy' Is Hell" -- Pollitt weighs in on Iraq -0- so we'll be kind.
3 pieces
Score: 1 woman, 2 men
Critics
Michael Anderson on Ralph Ellison
John Lenoard on DeLillo
Rachel Cohen on Brown v. Board
Daniel Lazare on books about the Lord Jesus (Praise Be!)
Brenda Wineapple on Edith Wharton
Fatin Abbas on 3 books
William Deresiewicz on 2 books
James Miller on Debray
Gene Seymour on Dick
Michael Wood on Murakami
10 pieces
Score: 3 women, 7 men
Year to date score: 57 women, 214 men
June 4, 2007 issue. No theme (other than the non-stop election coverage).
Editorials & Comment
"Dems Sell Out on Trade" -- on this they can get outraged. On Congress selling on Iraq, they go wobbly.
Micki McGee's "The Secret's Success" -- cutesy but it helps KvH say, "I am publishing women!" Very important now that more and more people are pointing out the very disturbing pattern.
Robert L. Borosage and Katrina vanden Heuvel's "New Energy for America" -- of course, self-publishing has helped increase the numbers for women in the magazine.
Vijay Prashad's "The Third World Idea"
4 pieces
Score: 2 women, 2 men
Columns
Calvin Trillin's "Exit Tony Blair"
AlterPunk's makes like Joan Rivers and offers "Can We Talk?" We eagerly await his accessory line which may include gold plated safety pins for diapers and a chrome pacifier.
Gary Younge's "Labour Crowns King Brown"
3 pieces
Score: 3 men
Articles
Ari Berman's "Hillary Inc."
Spencer Ackerman's "Training Iraq's Death Squads"
Jehangir S. Pocha's "The Last 'Competative Advantage': Letter From China"
3 pieces
Score: 3 men
Critics
Richard J. Evans' "Why It Happened the Way It Did"
Colin Flemin on Russian literature
Arthur C. Danto's "Cinema Studies"
Adrienne Rich's poem "Even Then Maybe"
4 pieces
Score: 3 men, 1 woman
Year to date score: 60 women, 225 men
That raises women's profile. Now the way it works is that 3.75 men are published for every 1 woman. Of course the number of pieces with female bylines would have to increase as well. Currently women are 165 bylines behind men and we're not even to the half-way mark of the year. An accomplishment if ever there was one!