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Valerie Jarrett Makes You Forget Other Women In Power Ever Existed
New York, 12:00 AM
Thu Nov 26
42 posts in the last 24 hours
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Valerie Jarrett Makes You Forget Other Women In Power Ever Existed |
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11/16/08
Seriously, the eyebrows confused the hell out of me.
11/16/08
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11/15/08
For those questioning his Democratic credentials, there's no issue. He worked for the Reagan administration when he was in grad school, and it was a very prestigious staff position. The hiring for the job (CEA staff economist) is not political. The folks there now will stay on after Obama comes aboard.
There are a lot of reasons not to hire Summers, and a lot of reasons to hire him, but if Obama is going to go with someone else, it should be for the right reasons.
11/15/08
I buy someone as a male feminist if and only if he's willing to listen to women when they disagree with him. When he pats them on the head and tells them their objections aren't germane, and/or starts whining they're taking poor him out of context and nailing him to a politically correct cross, all without taking the time actually to listen to what they're saying, that's just the elite intellectual snob version of sexism.
11/15/08
A post by a former Summers student who went to work for him is not terribly persuasive. I also recall reading that after the debacle he sought to hire some women academics whose work bolstered his "difference" theory.
11/15/08
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11/16/08
11/16/08
It's this refusal to engage with people who were criticizing him at the time that earned him the drubbing he very rightly took. Had he made any kind of good faith effort to listen to the women who were talking to him at the conference and given them the respect they were due, it's doubtful any of this would have blown up in the way it did. He fucked up in making a stupid argument, and then fucked up worse in not having the humility to listen to criticism and admit it when women told him so.
Honestly, I imagine you and I are on the same team in a number of ways, but I'm so mortally tired of hearing how terribly victimized he was. The person responsible for the shitstorm that overtook Larry Summers is Larry Summers.
@bugsbark: Are you really arguing that when someone who was at time the leader of one of the most important educational institutions in the world makes an inane argument based on gender essentialism that affected the people he was in charge of hiring and firing he shouldn't have gotten called on it? Or that women - more than half the human race, let's just remember - should be so grateful that such a man deigns to discuss topics of concern to them that they should just clam up and take whatever he says on faith?
I supported Obama from early in the campaign. The two things have nothing to do with each other. In fact, right now you're reminding me those who said that black people should be so grateful to the Clintons for "everything they've done" that they had no right to support Obama. Both ideas are absurd. Either people are really our allies or they aren't. If they are, they're willing to listen to us when we set them straight. If they're not, they pat us on the head and expect us to be grateful.
11/15/08
1) He'd love to talk to the Iranian madman (ie.negotiate with a terrorist).
2) A man with the name Obama Hussein becomes president after 8 years in which our country was attacked by and went to war because of men named Osama and Hussein (yeah, yeah, and Bush and Cheney).
3) He was a friend of a terrorist in Chicago.
4) His new top aide is Iranian born - and her dad was a geneticist (no doubt involved with stem cells)
5) He wants to put "vast right wing" conspirarist and reputed secret sapphic Hillary Clinton in charge of foreign affairs.
6) He's picked an Israeli as his chief of staff.
7) One of his transition teams first explicit edicts was it would disciminate because of gender, sexual preference, gender identity.
Me? I got know problem with any of the above. So spare me your attacks. My point is to just show you what these rabid red-staters could be/are likely thinking and understand how and why no matter what Obama does, they oppose him from BEFORE Day One.
11/15/08
11/15/08
Sorry if you were offended ... there... feel better?
11/15/08
I've tried to post already that you are a twit for not knowing the difference between "know" and "no." I've got "know" problems with your ignorance.
11/15/08
You're taking this very "hold tight everyone, these are brand new ideas nobody's ever had" stance, and then coming out with a lot of obviousness. Not to mention the parts that are just plain wrong ("A man with the name Obama Hussein"?) I halfway think this is a troll, it's so goofy.
Plenty of people who comment here were born and raised in the so-called "Red States". We don't need them explained for us, especially by someone who seems to buy into a good deal of the low-grade "thinking" they're so helpfully enlightening us about.
11/15/08
Haha, how dare people object to Summers, you mean? Because a considerable number of people voted for "change" which might exclude somebody whose background in the Reagan administration, destroying what was left of New Deal economic policies, who blocked efforts to provide stronger regulation for credit swaps in the Clinton administration, whose contribution to assisting Lithuania in its transition from Soviet economy to free markets doubled that country's suicide rate, making it the highest in the world , whose crazy-assed World Bank Memo argued that Africa was under-polluted and presented as "logical" that toxic waste should be sent to lower-wage countries with lower life expectancies, --because, haha, who gives a shit about prostate cancer when you're not going to make it to 50 anyways?--whose career at Harvard both featured his fascinating "thought experiments" on the potential genetic inferiority of women in the sciences, AND pot-shots against Cornel West might not suggest change, much less the "change we need".
And maybe his costly defense of his protégé who did his part in the destruction of the Russian economy doesn't suggest the kind of person the grassroots "change" constituency want to see at the Treasury in this slightly delicate time.
How dare they, indeed. Constituents have every right-- and arguably, a duty-- to make their concerns known, and insure that their vote actually meant something. No?
11/15/08
11/16/08
11/15/08
Seconding the Baroness on the eyebrow issue, however, she is for some reason reminding me of Barbara Corcoran in this photo.
11/15/08
Between this and his continued belief in Wall Street deregulation orthodoxy, Obama doesn't need this clown in his administration.
11/15/08
I think we could put this whole "women aren't good at math" topic to rest through Gawker media. Just make all the girls over at Jezebel and the guys at I09 take a math test. Compare results.
11/15/08
He offered as further support of female inferiority in math and science the fact that his toddler daughters gave their toy trucks names.
It was later pointed out that men have been known to name their machines and cars.
11/15/08
The top three names on the masthead at io9 are all female as is the vast majority of the staff.
(And I loves them all.)
11/15/08
Deadspin mathletes vs. Jezebel mathletes seems appropriate enough.
11/15/08
But I do like the idea of Deadspin and Jezebel. They seem to be the two branches of the empire that are the farthest apart.
(Which is not to say that it is inherently that way for any reason, just that it is that way.)
11/15/08
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11/15/08
Her undergrad degree is in Psych, which is awesome. You know she sees through a lot of bullshit. Thank you, Barack, for being the kind of man who listens to women.
11/15/08
11/15/08
Yeah, black people produced her all by themselves, although she does look like she could be the offspring of S.P. and K.R.
To have a great-grandfather who was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T. -- extremely impressive.
BTW, not to any way diminish the achievements of this lady -- she seems great -- notice that her family has been doing well for several generations and she's very well-connected. Among other things, Wiki said that was Vernon Jordan is her great-uncle. Actually, the reference was there last night; it's now missing from the entry, but if you Google her name and Vernon Jordan it still comes up.
So it's the old story, in addition to one's innate abilities, being established and being connected helps.
Good Luck to her!
11/15/08
not to in any way
11/15/08
11/15/08
I hope so. Many years ago, an African American writer reviewing a book on the black bourgeoisie in the NYT said that a lot of white Americans did not want to believe that black people like this existed.
They do.
Incidentally, I had never heard of the black bourgeoisie before college.
11/15/08
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11/15/08
Caribou Barbie WILL return to the obscurity from whence she came. Any day now. Please, god. Any day now.
11/15/08
arrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, where her father, Dr. James Bowman, ran a hospital for children as part of a program that sent American doctors and agricultural experts to developing countries to help jump-start their health and farming efforts. At age 5, the family moved to London for one year, then returned to Chicago in 1963. Her father, who is of African American descent, is a pathologist and geneticist. He is currently Professor Emeritus in Pathology and Medicine, University of Chicago.[3][4] Her great-grandfather was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T., her grandfather was Robert Taylor the first black man to head the Chicago Housing Authority, and her father, Dr. James Bowman, was the first black resident at St. Luke's Hospital. Her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, is an African-American early childhood education expert and co-founder of the Erikson Institute for child development.[5][6]
She graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon, a New England boarding school, in 1974. She also received a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981.
11/15/08
I promise, I personally do really get it:
Her parents both hated our country so much they left to live in the country that tried to keep us from existing in the first place, and since that wasn't enough, they decided to help develop our mortal enemy and lay the groundwork for a generation of future America-haters both through genetically modifying super-soldiers and through training them from birth through early education programs.
11/15/08
Interesting eyebrow choices, however.
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11/15/08
Hey, you're a fellow Hillary fan- what are your thoughts about the possibility of her accepting the Sec. of State offer.
She's a fantastic senator, but I think she'd be brilliant in that role.
11/15/08
And Sweetie, I'm really liking the idea that overt sexists like Lawrence Summers are finding it's not a cakewalk to get appointed.
11/15/08
I think she'd be great at it. And I think Obama wants her for these reasons: surrounding himself with rivals as is his Lincolnian goal, having someone as intelligent as Hillary in that role, and
Obama knows that Hillary would be the perfect face of American Diplomacy whilst still being very STRONG. You know what I mean?
I love the idea.
11/15/08
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I'm loving this.
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