Wait – What just happened? A roundup of the week in news, June 9, 2013
Oh Swiffer…
Rosie the Riveter. A cultural icon who represented the women in the United States who tirelessly worked in factories during World War II while their men were fighting overseas. Rosie “convinced” women that it was their patriotic duty to join the workforce and in doing so, inspired a social movement that allowed women to take off their aprons, put on coveralls and become the main breadwinners for their families, nearly doubling the amount of working women in the U.S. in a period of two years. Rosie has become a feminist symbol…and now a symbol for…clean floors?
As reported by
Thinkprogress.com:
“The image is perhaps particularly insulting as it comes out just days after the news that, more than ever, women are becoming primary or co-breadwinners in their households. But Swiffer does get one thing right in their targeted advertising: As women are doing more work in the office, they are still expected to provide most of the help in the kitchen.”
“For her” advertising is outdated and offensive, and yet ad agencies and product companies still keep getting it wrong.
BIC Crystal For Her was mocked to death on Amazon (do yourself a huge favor and read the comments). The
ePad Femme, a pink tablet, was released with apps geared towards cooking, fitness and “pleasing your man”. And the list goes on.
Given the extreme backlash at the ad, Proctor & Gamble pulled the campaign. We screamed loud enough and they folded. To quote Rosie, “Yes we can!"
How did America get to be so mediocre?
This was a question asked on Tuesday, June 4, at a Washington Post live event on child literacy.
Mississippi governor Phil Bryant’s response?
“I think both parents started working. And the mom is in the work place.”
Republicans love to blame. Their two favorite targets? Well number one is, of course, President Obama. And following up as a close second? Women. Last week on Lou Dobbs’ show on Fox News, an all male panel asserted that women in the workplace are destroying the family. Contributor Erick Erickson asserted that "Having mom as primary bread winner is bad for kids and bad for marriage." He suggested it is "anti-science" to reject this claim, as it is biological in nature that men should be in the "dominant" role in the nuclear family.
Even Fox contributor Megan Kelly couldn’t let this one slide, having Erickson and Lou Dobbs on her show and asking , "What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and made you scientist-in-chief?”
Racial profiling: comes in all shades of brown.
The ACLU this week released “the War on Marijuana in Black and White”, one of the most comprehensive reports to date on the billions wasted on racially biased arrests.
While Blacks and Whites use marijuana at roughly the same rates, the arrest rate differences by race are staggering.
While those arrested for possession makes up a
quite small share of our prison population, when it comes to arrests, marijuana possession charges make up nearly half of them. Even states where carrying a small amount of marijuana has been decriminalized, the racially disproportionate number of arrests did not change.
And then there’s the terrorism double standard. Recently, a ricin-laced letter threatening NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was sent from a right-wing gun enthusiast from Shrevesport, Louisiana regarding Bloomberg’s stance on stricter gun control. Identical letters were sent to President Barack Obama and Bloomberg’s lobbyist group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”.
The letters stated:
“You will have to kill me and my family before you get my guns. Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional, god-given right and I will exercise that right till the day I die. What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you.”
Ricin. Death threats. Not just plain old death threats - death threats to political figures, including our president. And yet no one is calling this terrorism. Had Islamic extremists sent these letters instead of a white right-wing extremist from the south, you’d better bet this would be considered domestic terrorism.
A 2010 study by Duke University and the University of North Carolina found that Islamic extremists perpetrated only six percent of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. between 1980 and 2005 and the Center for American Progress reported in 2012 that “fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists.”
And yet Bloomberg himself, the object of the most recent attack “has presided over a massive, illegal covert domestic surveillance and ethno-religious profiling program that have targeted, alienated and traumatized Muslims throughout the Northeast, despite the fact that, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, more Americans have been killed in right-wing terrorist plots than by Islamic terrorists.”
Yoga. The Devil’s Workout.
Virginia’s candidate for Lieutenant Governor E.W. Jackson (R), believes that yoga leaves the unsuspecting vulnerable to possession by Satan. According to his book “Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life”:
“When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. . . . The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. . . . [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want.”
This is not Jackson’s first tangle with crazy. He’s also come under fire for comparing Planned Parenthood to the KKK. Even going as far as to say that
Planned Parenthood is worse than the KKK ever was and is committing “genocide” with the help of the Democratic Party and Black civil rights allies.
Oh yeah, he also may have mentioned that the theory of evolution is wrong because chimps can’t talk.
Have I mentioned that this man is running for office?