[video]
“Let’s hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators who won’t abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector.” —
Jay Townsend, the GOP spokesman who should be out of a job, right now, no questions about it.
Look, everyone who’s reasonable hoped that, after a serving lawmaker got shot in the head awhile back only because she was a serving lawmaker, folks who earn a living by making sounds with their mouths about politics, et cetera, would cool it with violent, incendiary rhetoric. No dice. And why, exactly, are Townsend’s remarks so seriously, terribly, blatantly incendiary? GlobalPost, just today, reported (emphasis mine):
Over 8,000 instances of violence against women were recorded in Pakistan last year, according to the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights organization. Of those documented, 44 were acid attacks, many perpetrated by assailants on motorbikes who drove up to victims on the street and threw acid on their faces and bodies, sometimes burning the skin off to the point of melting bone. Other attacks took place inside homes and are categorized as domestic abuse. Throwing acid on women has become a common punishment for those who have insulted or dishonored their husbands in some way.”
And it simply can’t be a coincidence that Townsend chose to advocate this very specific form of oppressive violence without knowing it inflicts real harm on a lot of women. He knows acid attacks are common. He just doesn’t care. Which makes his “joke” not a joke at all. Did he make a public threat against lawmakers because they are women? I’m on the fence about whether or not his speech should even be legal. (via kfadich.tumblr.com)
Among 35 major national print publications, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, men had 81 percent of the quotes in stories about abortion, the research group said Thursday, while women had 12 percent, and organizations had 7 percent.
In stories about birth control, men scored 75 percent of the quotes, with women getting 19 percent and organizations getting 6 percent. Stories about Planned Parenthood had a similar ratio, with men getting 67 percent, women getting 26 percent, and organizations getting 7 percent.
Women fared a bit better in stories about women’s rights, getting 31 percent of the quotes compared with 52 percent for men and 17 percent for organizations.
— Men Rule Media Coverage of Women’s News - The Daily Beast (via librariesandlemonade)
(via)
[video]
Women wrote 20 percent of op-eds in the nation’s leading newspapers—The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal—between September 15 and December 7, 2011, according to a byline survey conducted by Taryn Yaeger of The OpEd Project, an organization that aims to diversify public debate. …
And women were practically absent in the debate of many hard news subjects, with their opinions accounting for 11 percent of commentaries on the economy, 13 percent on international politics, 14 percent on social action and 16 percent on security. Perhaps just as striking, women produced just over half—53 percent—of commentaries on “women’s issues.”
Three directors oversaw — “oversaw” — risk at JPMorgan. Here are their qualifications — “qualifications” — for that gig, according to Bloomberg:
“The committee, which met seven times last year and hasn’t changed its composition since 2008, approves the bank’s risk-appetite policy and oversees the chief risk officer, according to the company’s April 4 proxy statement.”
“[I]f Trump and his ilk want to be fair about it, a white presidential candidate with a foreign-born father deserves to be badgered into releasing his birth certificate just as much as a black presidential candidate with a foreign-born father.” — Dana Milbank