So, in a six month period, The Nation ran 181 more men than they did women. Did you know that was our fault? Apparently it is.
The Nation notified us (via an e-mail to C.I. last week): "The imbalance of men to women appearing in print is disturbing and should be corrected; but the extent to which 'third estate' absolutely excoriates the women who DO write is also problematic. There is a cry and a call for more women to write, and then a disproportionate level of criticism of women who write in the magazine than men."
This was the thing that upset C.I. Not get upset and tell them they are full of sh*t. If a complaint comes in, C.I. considers it. If the complaint seems sincere, C.I. takes it so seriously that it's sick to the stomach time. Now the rest of us called it what it was ("sh*t") immediately. C.I., between trips to the bathroom to throw up, kept ticking off the writers and trying to see if that could be true?
It wasn't.
Unless they're saying AlterPunk's a girl? AlterPunk, we didn't say that. In fact, we've acknowledged your wee wenus before. (Remember the parody "The Elector"?)
Were we really unfair to women? Were we focused on them to the extent of ignoring the men?
We've reviewed the topic at length. (After being sick repeatedly and reviewing, C.I. knew it wasn't true Tuesday night.)
Let's talk reality. In "The Nation Stats" figures, any one was up for grabs. That's the last feature we would do (yes, even after the editorials), we were all tired. But read over them. Very few women writers get more than their name and the title of their piece.
The magazine has three columnists who are women: Katha Pollitt, Patricia J. Williams and Naomi Klein.
Katha Pollitt. Pollitt was first critiqued here negatively when we included Virginity or Death! in a book discussion. We immediately included another collection by her in the next book discussion (and critiqued it favorably). That was back when we were Nation cheerleaders. Those days are gone. Page 45 of her book she mocks Kweisi Mfume (then president of the NAACP) for being bothered by the representation of African-Americans on TV. (Pollitt calls it the "absence of black faces.") To back up her point (or hide behind Black face), she mentions the centrist African-American who butters her bread with attacks on Cynthia McKinney among others.
As Betty can tell you, that centrist columnist cannot move freely around Atlanta. "Black people have her number and have had it for years," says Betty.
But let's get to the issue Katha Pollitt says is a non-issue. Katha's White daughter certainly got to see herself growing up on screen. So maybe Katha doesn't grasp the importance. Cedric, Betty and Ty did but, then, they aren't White. Now Katha can talk all her love of The Ego of Us All (didn't write about Coretta though) but is Katha available when Betty's daughter next asks where the people like her are on TV?
Betty's oldest son finally wised up to the score. She now lets both of her sons watch Everybody Hates Chris and the youngest "really is too young for that show but he kept asking and finally said 'It's got people like me on it'." Her daughter, the youngest of the three, has been lulled (briefly) into believing Betty that some of PBS' various animated animals are actually African-American.
So since Katha doesn't think it's a pressing issue, could she please give Betty her phone number because her daughter's about to get to the age her sons were when they finally started asking the very serious question as they saw one program after another without a person of color in the lead and sometimes without even a person of color in the cast.
"She can dismiss it all she wants, but if it was the other way around and it was her child or children, she'd realize how serious this is. It's true of the cartoons, it's true of PBS, it's true of all TV. This isn't a minor issue and I find it insulting that she treated it as something to laugh about. I think White people should think twice before they attempt to tell people of color that representation doesn't matter and that includes David Corn," says Betty.
So that's a very serious issue. It's a serious one to Betty, it's serious to Ty and Cedric and it's serious to all of us. That stood out more than anything else in her book to Ty, Cedric and Betty.
Then there's the issue of what Pollitt has elected to write about. Iraq? "BE HONEST." That's what she said when she finally included the topic in one paragraph of a column. The woman who hadn't written about Iraq in 2006 (slamming CODEPINK isn't writing about Iraq especially when Pollitt ignored Abeer at the same time). In 2007, she finally wrote a column about Iraq. But Abeer Qassim al-Janabi got her first mention in the magazine not by Pollitt but by Alexander Cockburn ("Here Comes Another 'Crime Wave'," April 2nd). Cockburn contribute two paragraphs on Abeer and one of her gang-rapists (Paul Cortez). Pollitt finaly got around to writing about Abeer for the May 28, 2007 issue. Here is her commentary on Abeer in full:
Think of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, the 14-year-old girl raped and then murdered with her family by US soldiers in Mahmoudiya in March of last year.
Abeer was gang-raped. And an article about violence against women in Iraq might need to mention that both her mother and her five-year-old sister were killed. Seven sentences are spent on the "Romeo & Juliet" love affair of a 17-year-old woman and how she was stoned to death. An Iraqi killed by other Iraqis, Pollitt can call out. (Even though, outside of the footage of the stonings, some say the facts on that remain murky.) But US soldiers that are supposed to be guarding an area instead leering at and touching (Steven D. Green ran his fingers on her) a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, unnerving her so that she tells her parents who make plans for her to leave the area but, before she can, the US soldiers put together the plan to gang-rape her and kill her as well as her family? That's reduced to a single sentence and goes into print a year after Ellen Knickmeyer and others have already told Abeer's story. Pollitt was too busy bird-dogging CODEPINK for bird-dogging Hillary Clinton to write about Abeer last year.
Recently, Katha Pollitt wanted to get down to brass tacks and decry the lack of focus on economics. What is that? In bar tabs? What we mean by that is she also offers her endoresement of the Mud Flap Gals and, yes, we will call that out. The raunch culture passing itself off as feminist is something we'll call out.
But outside of noting how sad it is that a grown woman 'learns' something constantly from a site that's 2006 sole contribution on Iraq appears to be noting only that a book entitled C*nt was brought into an Abu Ghraib hearing (by a woman), we've only said "Sista Katha" and that's in regards to her dismissive treatment of the issue of representation.
Patricia J. Williams. Before Patti went goo-goo for Obama, she never had a harsh word or even a joke from this site. Apparently passion dulls her senses because she's gone all mushy since going public with her crush on Obama. The turning point for Patti came with that embarrassing interview on KPFA (and, no, it wasn't Andrea Lewis' fault). Now we aren't insisting that Patti put down People and pick up Essence, but we do think she needs to be aware of African-American writers. When she stated that only the likes of Fox 'News' was questioning Obama's commitment to race, she revealed she doesn't read Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberely. Her loss. They have more passion and fire than she ever will. In the same interview, a woman from a Middle Eastern country phoned in to talk about how she saw Obama's stance on the illegal war. Patti made like the Cookies ("Don't Say Nothing Bad About My Baby"), cutting off the woman and insisting Obama was against the war while offering as proof that he didn't vote for the authorization in 2002. Now, not having gone slack jawed over the sight of Obama, we're aware he didn't vote for it, he wasn't in the Senate then. How Patti thought offering that up as proof of Obama's strong anti-war credentials would sway an audience, we don't know. Patti came off foolish, light headed and elists when she offered the Harvard Law Review as proof of why Obama was fit to be president. After the anger subsided, we all burned that on disc and we listen to it the way we would a Nichols & May CD. It's hilarious. Cedric is still furious that Patti thought African-Americans and dogs could be compared. Cedric says, "I don't know if she thought it was a step up from gorilla but this African-American never sees 'progress' when someone compares my race to animals. It's sad that a law professor can't see the historic problems with that sort of comparison in this country."
Naomi Klein? Never wrote a word against her. C.I. did note at The Common Ills (we believe it's in April) that a college crowd brought up the fact that Klein's not written about Iraq since returning to the magazine and that the crowd isn't planning on Klein's forthcoming book as a result. Klein left to write that book with a reputation for being one of the strongest writers on the topic of Iraq. That was years ago now.
Who does that leave? Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and she is publisher. She's responsible for not publishing an equal number of women in the end. She's been ridiculed for that. She's been ridiculed for being "The Peace Resister." We stand behind both and would do the same if she were male. We would further add that writing about topics like American Idol when Congress is voting on the supplemental leave her open to ridicule. Ava and C.I. nicely addressed an embarrassing, on air moment by Katrina vanden Heuvel in 2005. She's prone to those moments and, were one to happen today and we couldn't avoid witnessing it, we'd write about it. (C.I. avoided the Democracy Now! episode last week because KvH was on and C.I. didn't want to address it. For those not in the know, KvH's 2005 meltdown left Krista so humiliated by comments she'd shared at The Common Ills, she vowed never to share again. It was only because of Gina and C.I. that Krista agreed to start a private forum to share in, the gina & krista round-robin.)
We've written mockingly/humorously whatever about Matthew Rothschild. And at much greater length. But, thing is, Rothschild's never written a post about American Idol. Let alone written it while Congress was voting on the war supplemental. Nor has Rothschild made a post disappear as KvH did. Days after KvH's gushing over American Idol, Cindy Sheehan issued her goodbye noting that some adults care more about American Idol than they do about the Iraq war. At which point, KvH's post vanished. (Preserved online by this community thanks to a tip off to C.I. from The Nation.) If you don't want to be mocked or treated humorously, don't waste everyone's time, as you close in on fifty, writing about something as dumb and unimportant as American Idol. When KvH was devoted to The Apprentice, C.I. notes, she at least had the good sense not to blog about it.
Who does that leave us with? Lakshme? Exactly what magazine does she write for? C.I. and Ava cover TV for this site. That means when Lazy joined another magazine's staff and decided she would cover TV from time to time, they'd get e-mailed about Lazy's latest blunder, usually being asked, "Is this true?" No, it wasn't. They noted that repeatedly and never named Lakshme. They wrote one piece when Lakshme played dumb (it was playing, right?), went gunning for Nora Eprhon and took Susan J. Douglas' theme over to The Nation. For those not paying attention, the area Lakshme has tried to carve out for herself is already covered, and covered very well, by Susan Douglas. If Lakshme wants to play Eve, better believe we'll defend Margot. (And we're not even going into the whole Mike issue. Mike will be writing an F-you to Lakshme in his final post and there's not any reader of this site, or member of the community, that doesn't know what Mike's going to be writing about.) Lakshme's problems are her own.
Who is the most mocked person at The Nation? The Cindy Brady of the Faux Left, AlterPunk. The Nation can research it. From one liners to whole pieces devoted to him, it's AlterPunk.
Who else at The Nation has gotten a single piece devoted to them? (Lakshme doesn't work at The Nation -- and Ava and C.I. were no harder on her than was CJR. A point The Nation seems to miss.) Well, Dumb Ass got a feature when he wrote the response to Elizabeth Holtzman's call for impeachment. Who else? Christopher Hayes has at least two features, here and here. Who else? Christopher Phelps.
C.I. was informed The Nation Isle has especially pissed off The Nation. (Informed over the phone.) It's a parody and it's funny. People are cast in roles for Gilligan Island. This is one of our allegedly 'error filled pieces'. We love that. We love that The Nation thinks there are errors in a piece set many years in the future, based on Gilligan's Island, obviously played for laughs. (You'd think they'd at least enjoy the illustration!)
Are women treated worse in that? The worst would probably be being turned into Gilligan. No woman's turned into Gilligan. Patti gets made fun of. KvH gets made fun of. In the original draft Liza Featherstone was a joke and a joke for being stupid. Ava and C.I. rewrote all of Liza's lines but two and they did so to make her a strong character. They take serious offense to any suggestion that Featherstone comes off badly in that feature. Prior to the overhaul Ava and C.I. did, Featherstone was a carbon copy Mrs. Howell. (Which is why she's called "Lovey" early on.) They added fire and strength to the character.
Two women are jokes in the feature, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Patricia Williams. Two men are as well, ____ and Richard Dreyfuss. Doug Henwood lost out (we think he's now neutral) because Ava and C.I. were adamant that Featherstone was not going to be a doormat. We think Liza Featherstone, in that feature, is the most likeable character and the response to it, from outside The Nation, demonstrates that most people do as well.
Again, AlterPunk's had multiple features. Christopher Hayes has been loudly called out. Christopher Phelps was rightly called out and mocked. So was a Texas professor who went out East and got discovered by The Nation. The only woman who has gotten the treatment in an article just for her is Lakshme. And technically, she's not really part of The Nation, now is she? We've called out Stab for her dumb ass repeating on NYT lies. She has posts online at The Nation. She writes for another magazine (in print) but we guess The Nation can call us out for that if they like. Strange though, she spits out NYT lies to slam Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. And does so to get a cheap laugh at a highly public event. She's lucky we've held back. We find her tired, boring and a bad writer. Slam Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, you get what you deserve. [And to one e-mailer last week, we're not linking. The Gloria Steinem factor. Your writing attacks her. We stand with her. Sorry, no link from us as a result.]
The Nation needs to work on their math skills.
They also need to work on the issue of whom they feature. Amy Goodman has pointed out that when she asks network and cable news why Noam Chomsky can't be a guest, she's told they don't know him personally. The Nation's being run the same way. That's one of the reasons the Slow Creep of the Centrists has taken place. (And people at the magazine know it too.)
Women are not treated more harshly here. If you're a War Hawk, you'll be called out. Regardless of gender. But there's not a word that ever makes it up here about a woman that isn't vetted and re-vetted. Ava and C.I. will ask that a joke be explained. Not for why is it funny but what's underneath it. They will pull jokes that are actually funny because they are uncomfortable with them. (A Madonna joke, that was funny, to a friend who was once involved with her, took three hours of persuasion before they'd agree to it. The friend had told them to put it in. We were telling them to. Jim's father was telling them to. It took three hours to get that joke in.)
Questioning their feminist credentials may make The Nation feel better about their sorry record of publishing women. Pushing the blame for that record off on us may make them feel better. But the reality is that The Nation, led by Katrina vanden Heuvel, is solely responsible for how many women they print or do not print.
Prior to the summer of 2006, we never said a word against the magazine here and noted it repeatedly. Only three people with the magazine wrote about that. (We did hear from friends of C.I.'s but we're not counting them in this tally.) Lately, it's non-stop crying and whining from the magazine. We'll listen to most of it and consider it but when the magazine wants to blame us for their sorry record of publishing women or wants to call into question Ava and C.I.'s commitment to feminism, we won't stand for it.