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Melonyce, I don't know if you are the only one who "finds RNC Chairman Michael Steele's dorky grasp at urban credibility a little endearing." but I surely do not. Why does Steele even need urban credibility? To relate to that large and growing GOP demographic of young black men who wear baggy pants and listen to Jay-Z, Lil' Wayne, and T.I.? I'd be willing to wager they aren't lining up outside the RNC's headquarters, and neither Michael Steele's election as chairman nor his urban-cool, or should I say urban-fool, way of speaking is going to change this.
In what way is Steele more sincere than his predecessors? Ken Mehlman went on listening tours before black organizations and black journalists and publicly acknowledged GOP mistakes and apologized for playing racial politics in the past. He courted black voters and didn't talk down to them. His efforts may not have gained the GOP tons of new black voters, but it earned Melhman some respect. Steele, by comparison, wants to give the GOP "a hip-hop makeover"? (I'm rolling my eyes here because I have no idea what that even means) and has banned the word outreach.
If it's the golf shirt set—whether black or white—that Steele is after, then why not speak to them in their own language, like a serious-minded adult? Given Steele's many missteps that have already led members of his party to call on him to step down, I don't think anyone could argue that he has made the GOP look looser or more dazzling. If anything, he looks just as befuddled and grapsing as his discredited party as it tries to change its image overnight after having been soundly rejected by voters in November.
If Steele really wants to shake up his party he should take a page from Colin Powell, an unapologetic black Republican who was not afraid to criticize the GOP or take positions against party dogma on such things as affirmative action. Black Americans may not have voted with Powell or agreed with his support for the Bush administration, but they respected him. Steele is losing fast what little respect he has with black folks, and with white folks, too, for that matter, and it has nothing to do with whether "he's black enough." It has everything to do with whether he's credible enough. He isn't.
Steele would be more defensible if he would just embrace his inner geek and stop trying to sound hip by using outdated hip-hop terms. I mean is it really necessary for him to sprinkle "off the hook" throughout every conversation? We get it, Mike; you know black slang, congratulations. Bling, bling for you and all that. But trying so hard to showcase your skills in black vernacular makes you seem like you're trying way too hard. It's called pandering, and as a black independent voter who tries to keep an open mind about black Republicans (as hard as that is), I find it deeply insulting. I don't want to be talked down to, or patronized, by a Republican of any color who is stupid enough to think I can be persuaded to give the GOP some love if he slings silly slang my way. This is just as transparent as reluctantly selecting a black man to lead the Republican Party soon after a black Democrat is elected to the White House and selecting an Indian-American to give the Republican response to the new black president's address to Congress and selecting a black Republican carpetbagger and perpetual candidate from Maryland to run against a popular black Democratic candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate in 2004. (The same Democrat who would become president four years later.) It reeks of rank desperation and recalls the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia when the genius organizers of that pseudo-diversity fest bused in black preachers and black church choirs to perform at the convention. That party leaders actually believed this would ensure their big-tent, we-are-the-world bona fides, was the subject of many late-night talk-show jokes.
The GOP would do better to simply try to address some of the issues important to black voters, such as racial inequities in the criminal justice system and the warehousing of black men in prison and on death row. How about they tone down their hypocritical hostility to social programs (Republicans prefer the term "entitlement programs") that help lift black families out of entrenched poverty? How about they at least pretend to be just as outraged over the level of corporate welfare that took place under the last administration and that enriched Republican fat cats and contributed to the economic morass we now find ourselves in? How about if Michael Steele got a clue?
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The Hollywood Reporter posted last night about a musical version of Heathers, the 1988 black comedy film (oh, has a genre epithet ever seemed more inadequate?) starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. I'm dubious and excited at the same time. This is sacred material we're talking about here: What slightly offbeat, sorta-smart girl in the late '80s to mid-'90s didn't identify with Ryder's Veronica Sawyer? She was like a proto-Daria, only less acidic and with a higher body count. Girlfriend rocked a monocle!
On the other hand, the thought of finally seeing a fully choreographed version of "Teenage Suicide—Don't Do It!" fills my heart with gladness. Just take a look at all these great Heathers quotes that would make excellent song lead-ins:
Heather Chandler: Corn Nuts!
Veronica Sawyer: Plain or BQ?
Heather Chandler: BQ!
Veronica Sawyer: This isn't just a spoke in my menstrual cycle.
Veronica Sawyer: I just killed my best friend.
J.D.: And your worst enemy.
Veronica Sawyer: Same difference.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to report that while researching my "Explainer" today about the global uses of the mother-incest insult, I discovered that Heathers is offered as an example in the Oxford English Dictionary of "f-ck me and elaborated variants: expressing astonishment or exasperation." The linguistically significant quote—and if you're a fan, you've probably used it a dozen times yourself—"F-ck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?" That's lyrical gold right there.
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Am I the only one who finds RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s dorky gasp at urban credibility a little endearing? He’s getting flak for trying to give the GOP a “hip-hop makeover.” But isn’t that kind of what it needs—loosening up, a bit of dazzle? Who better for the golf-shirt set to relate to than a middle-aged guy who uses the word bling unironically? And, guess what, the golf-shirt set includes people of all colors who come from diverse economic backgrounds. Steele’s flailing stab at inclusion seems more sincere than what any of his predecessors tried.
We can’t all be as cool as 44; Steele knows he’s the Steve Urkel to Obama’s Stephan Urquelle. And is that so bad? Politicians like Steele and Obama are constantly having to straddle the line between the black community and the mainstream. Calling Steele out for being out of touch with hip-hop culture smacks of the “not black enough” heat both he and Obama have faced—an experience many a bookish black kid can explain in detail.
Steele ran into bigger problems today with his anti-abortion bona fides being called into question by his own party members. Instead of backpedaling about abortion and Rush Limbaugh, he needs to put this plan to build a more ideologically and socially diverse party into overdrive. There should be room under that big GOP tent for everybody. Squares of all stripes need a party to believe in.
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Some of the other "XX Factor" women and I took that interactive quiz Abby mentioned from the Center for American Progress in order to find out how progressive we are. Turns out, we are quite the bunch of liberals. (I know: shocker). Twelve of us took the quiz, and on a scale of 0 to 400 (0 is the least progressive; 400 is the most progressive), we came out with an average score of 245. To put that in context, the mean score for liberal Democrats is 247 and 160.6 for conservative Republicans. Our median is somewhere in the mid-290s; our high is 313, and our low is 112.
Abby, I don't know what Meghan McCain's score on the progressiveness scale would be, but here's an interesting tidbit on Ms. McCain from Think Progress. Apparently this morning on Fox and Friends, Meghan said that she thought the earmarks in the spending bill were "disappointing and scary" while she found the prospect of a second stimulus package nonsensical. This is in direct contrast to what Meghan said last night on The Rachel Maddow Show (bold from Think Progress):
McCAIN: Spending freeze? You know, econ—economic things, I said this last night on Hannity, I said is my—I didn’t even take econ in college. I don’t completely understand it so I’d hate to make a comment one way or the other. That’s—truly of all the things—I keep reading and I just don’t understand it.
She seems to understand it just fine when she's criticizing Democrats!
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I have to agree with you, Susannah. Could someone please get this girl off Twitter long enough to read the news? Even if you're only 24 and just want everyone to get along, is it too much to ask that you deliver a one-liner about your opinion on the economy? Which would lead me to assume that the whole buying an apartment in NYC thing that Maddow asked her about is really Daddy buying her an apartment in NYC. (How many houses are we up to now, Sen. McCain?)
I think Meghan is right that the Republican Party needs some charismatic leadership in order to reach out to more young people—or just more people in general. But she's case in point that there's no sense in reaching out if you can't even articulate what you believe and why.
And speaking of figuring out what you believe, I'd love to know Meghan's score on this interactive quiz from the Center for American Progress. I love it—it's like this number could be the new political secret handshake, essentially your political SAT score! Would love to hear how you XX ladies score—it takes about two minutes and will give you a number to quantify your political slant. Let's just say I bring the average down ...
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Thanks, Jessica, for the YouTube clip of Meghan McCain on Maddow's show last night. Now can I have my IQ points back? From start to finish, it's a profile in Republican idiocy, from mini McCain offering herself up as some type of towheaded neo-poster girl for the right to her faltering faux-platform that consists solely of her picking a fight with Ann Coulter. That's like picking a fight with Hitler. I mean: What? Are we supposed to be impressed she doesn't like the She-Devil? McCain takes Republicans to task for being too extreme and offers her idea of an alternative: "Be more moderate and reach out to people." That's. So. Deep. What's delightful is to see her paired with such a brilliant interviewer. Every word that comes out of Maddow's mouth only serves to make the New Poster Child of the Republican Party appear even stupider. What's a tougher call is that McCain and her commentaries are so insipid, her presence begs for the question: Who's worse? Meghan McCain or Ann Coulter? Tough call, in my opinion. At least Coulter has a brain. What she does with it is the problem.
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Speaking of Facebook, or at least the Facebook generation, Meghan McCain was on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, ostensibly to discuss her burgeoning feud with Ann Coulter. For those of you who missed it, Meghan McCain wrote an article for the Daily Beast called "My Beef With Ann Coulter." Her "beef" is that Ann Coulter "perpetuates negative stereotypes" of Republicans. Not exactly a revolutionary screed, as others have pointed out.
Meghan is trying valiantly to revive the image of the Republican Party, but like Bristol Palin before her, Meghan doesn't exactly have the political chops to do so. She freely admits that she doesn't really understand the financial crisis. What I don't understand is why the Republican Party can't find a smart young woman to represent their movement who does understand the recession. Perhaps someone without a political legacy! Anyway, John Cook at Gawker says that Meghan "made a fool of herself." While I think she was short on substance, I don't think Meghan looks like a fool. She's incredibly poised and camera-ready, and compared to Bristol she sounds like a rocket scientist. But, again: The bar is pretty low. Watch the clip below and tell me what you think.
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Hey, crankypants—or is the right term crankybra? Yes, I'm talking to you, Hanna Rosin. Your generation may not have "found an easy way into Facebook," but my peeps—as amazing as it may seem with my youthful visage and my love of TV shows featuring high school kids, I'm older than you are—are all over it.
You see, my peeps aren't my birth cohort or any other demographic slice; they're my partners in procrastination and time-wasting. Facebook attracts people who watch a lot of television, have a lot of opinions about pop culture, and don't have very well-developed impulse control (check out some of my photos, Sam!). My peeps. Your peeps are way too busy writing brilliant books and numerous genius magazine pieces.
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Samantha, I understand your disappointment that Facebook isn't the cozy place it used to be, but can I chime in on behalf of the old folks? While it might be desirable to make your profile more "professional" if you're going to be using it for work, please don't think that we're all a bunch of humorless, judgmental old biddies. I, for one, refuse to detag the photo that a friend recently posted of me from college in which another friend and I are posing in the men's room of our co-ed dorm. It brings back too many funny memories. (Just like every generation thinks it invented sex, I suppose every generation thinks it's the first to get away with underage drinking and similar craziness. I assure you, there's probably little your generation can do to shock us.)
And I trust as you get older that you will see the other benefits of Facebook. I don't feel like I'm that old, but I've been out of school long enough to have had a half-dozen jobs in three states. I've always left behind people I adored but didn't manage to stay in touch with, which happens when you get married and start popping out kids. (Let me warn you, kids are a time-suck!) Thanks to Facebook, in the past few months I've found childhood friends, college friends, old co-workers. Granted, I don't spend hours obsessively e-mailing my long-lost pals, like some of Hanna's friends do, but it's great for catching up after years of silence and then occasionally responding to comments or posting. Back in January, I survived Ohio State's loss in the Fiesta Bowl by trading wall comments with a friend from first grade. When two beloved teachers from my high school passed away a couple months apart this winter, not only did I learn about their untimely deaths via Facebook, but I was able to come together with former classmates as we shared favorite stories about them.
Facebook, I guess, is like every other aspect of growing up. It might not be as carefree and fun as it used to be, but it offers its own rewards.
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Sam, your post about how adults have ruined Facebook got me pondering a brain teaser: What happens when we, our generation of twentysomething, Original Gangsta Facebook users, becomes—gasp!—grown-ups? (And, if we're not now ... when? Though I wish it weren't so, we definitely qualify as "adults" to a decent number of users already.) What happens when we're the boss ladies? Will people still feel compelled to edit their drunken photos for our benefit? Or will it just be understood that we've got them, too, and so long as you're not breaking the law in any of them, it's all good? And is that even something we would want our one-day inferiors to see, with a click of a button, us authority figures flush-faced, droopy-eyed, and whooping it up while drinking everclear and punch out of red plastic cups? Probably not. So, while it might hurt a little now, I think all these adults on Facebook are just doing what adults are supposed to do and pushing us "youngsters" to grow up. Or, at least to behave like grown-ups, which often comes before feeling like one but is a necessary part of the process. This whole maturing thing can be a drag, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need doing.
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Sam, you're grieving that adults have crashed Facebook? Get over it. This will happen, in various ways, to everything in your life. It's like the restaurant in that Yogi Berra line: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." What is exclusive becomes inclusive; in the process, it is irretrievably changed.
But so are you-changed, and changing. Nostalgia for the early Facebook years is like nostalgia for flower power and anti-war rallies. Don't get too attached to your generational pleasures lest you turn into one of those old folks who can't stop griping about how young people these days don't but should appreciate, oh, waltzing or the Rolling Stones. The world around you-political, social, cultural-is constantly changing in ways that will seem utterly incredible in about 15 more years: You'll look up and say, "Wait a minute, when did everyone start believing XYZ, which was so unthinkable when I was young? I thought everyone was against war/homosexuality/virginity/drugs/obscenity on the radio/regulation/deregulation, so how did policies get changed in this utterly weird direction? Where did these crazies come from, and how exactly did they start running the world? I want my intimate little Facebook back!"
Won't happen. Might as well start getting used to it now.
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Sam, you hit us where it hurts. It's true, my generation hasn't found an easy way into Facebook. I have friends who use it obsessively, like teenagers, and I'm sort of embarrassed for them. I have others who use it like Linked In, to make professional contacts. And others who are so ambivalent that in all their photos they hide behind their kids. Most, like me, just start a page and then neglect it. But I guarantee you, once you're in my shoes and actually start the breast-feeding phase of life (see cranky breast-feeding me in my Atlantic story), as opposed to just dreaming about it (see giddy, insouciant Sam on breast-feeding here), you'll neglect/misuse Facebook too.
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Like Hanna, I, too, am finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for the White House Council on Women and Girls. Obama's heart is certainly in the right place, but this council seems amorphous and somewhat random. What I can get onboard with is all the funding increases for sexual and reproductive health programs coming out of the omnibus bill the Senate passed last night. Providing more money for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and 14 million less for abstinence-only programs seems like a much more concrete, results-oriented way to keep improving women's lives. I was also encouraged by the bill's inclusion of the Affordable Birth Control Act, which restores access to birth control to low-income college-age women whose contraceptive resources were restricted under the Deficit Reduction Act in 2005.
No less important, of course, was the restoration of U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund, providing a total of $545 million for family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide.
With all of these councils being created, bills being signed, and funds being allotted to various women's interests, it is easy to forget that much of the recent progress has been a mere correction of Bush administration policies like the global gag rule. The White House Council on Women and Girls is the first truly nonreactionary measure Obama has taken with respect to women, so it will be interesting to see how the council, as it hopefully takes a clearer direction, defines Obama's own vision for American women and girls.
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I second Jess' call for you to become fans of Double X on Facebook. But as happy as I'll be to share that virtual connection with you, I'm not happy this is what Facebook has become. I joined Facebook in the golden years, back when the bulk of its users were friends of friends of Mark Zuckerberg. Younger than Friendster and more exclusive than MySpace, Facebook let us figure out college life as a group. We shared snippets of this strange new experience with the kids we met in class that day and kept tabs on our scattered high-school friends. Facebook let us grow up and apart within view of each other. And then, suddenly, also within view of the grown-ups. And that's when the fun ended.
In preparation for the launch of the Double X page, I started off on a mission to "clean up" my FB profile. I'm friends with my bosses now, after all, so it's time to get profesh. But the same drunken pictures that I know I should untag are also the ones I most love revisiting—driven by that intense nostalgia that causes me to reread my humiliating middle-school diaries every time I visit my parents' apartment. Ever since adults crashed the party, though, Facebook profiles are more like cover letters than diaries. So I embark on my Facebook makeover grudgingly, because I'm way more embarrassed to reveal myself as self-promotional than drunk.
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The XX Factor blog is spinning off into its own site called Double X in the spring (more on that here). If you want to stay informed about our latest stories, news, and events, you can click here to follow our Twitter or click here to become a fan of our Facebook page. We're so excited to bring you the new site and will be keeping you posted.
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Hanna, I feel pretty much the same about Bristol Palin’s predicament as I felt about the Crihanna debacle. The baby beaus weren’t going to stay together anyway, so why stay together in the midst of such drama? At these young ages, there are no guarantees—and actuarial tables, if not common sense, would counsel against making puppy love permanent. Sure, Rihanna and Brown became the breadwinners for their older family members at 21 and 19, respectively (a whole different story), and the 18-year-old Palin became a “role model” before even leaving the province of underaged handle-chugging, but someone (um, you know, parents) should have reminded them: You are not adults.
So of course Levi isn't "hands on." We should applaud Palin—however belatedly, she came to the right decision. But why don’t we teach kids that it’s OK to break up? Give it two years, max—and if by then you’re over 25, split or get married. Seems clinical, but is it any worse than this surreal mythology of true romance that allows teens to tear at each others’ emotions until, one day, there are bruises—or a baby on board?
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I'm not sure what to make of the new White House Council on Women and Girls. Seeing that snapshot of Pelosi and Boxer up there had a throwback feel, and not entirely in a good way. (Back to the tokenism!) And coming in a week when the Washington meme is Obama doing too much, this seemed like a frenzied afterthought. That said, Obama's words were just right, or at least they spoke to me.
"I've seen it in Michelle, the rock of the Obama family, juggling work and parenting with more skill and grace than anybody that I know. But I also saw how it tore at her at times. How sometimes when she was with the girls, she was worried about work; when she was at work, she worried about the girls."
Now that women are nearly half the workforce, it's high time we had some national policy to figure this out, or at least tried. What we have now at the top of the pay scale is pretty good—a lot of flexibility in certain kinds of jobs. But the burden is on each individual woman to carve her own path. At the bottom, of course, it's a different story. As Jennifer Barrett wrote recently in Slate, it's not exactly true that the stimulus bill is shafting women. It's just that when it comes to women, there are not many decent industries to stimulate. Women work in service jobs, not the high-paying union construction jobs.
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We should have guessed it would end this way. Of course, Bristol and Levi have broken up. In America of 2009, stories that begin with the words pregnant and high school don't end in fairy-tale summer weddings. And I suppose if Bristol were going to become a poster girl for the Real Lives of Evangelicals, she might as well go all the way—pregnant at 17 and unmarried. In the semirespectable news stories that followed the tabloid stories, Bristol complained about people cashing in on her name and Levi complained about false Internet rumors. But those rumors were pegged to his own sister, according to Radar. Mercede, they reported, "says Bristol even told him that she hates him and, when she learned she was pregnant, wished the baby wasn't his."
"Bristol's just crazy," said Mercede. "That's the nicest way I can put it. She and Levi actually broke up a while ago!" Then she debunked the whole "hands-on" dad thing—a soundbite from the Greta Van Susteren interview of last month. "Levi tries to visit Tripp every single day, but Bristol makes it nearly impossible for him. She tells him he can't take the baby to our house because she doesn't want him around 'white trash.' She treats him so badly!" (Wait until he applies for a state trooper job.)
Next on Jerry Springer, a Connecticut group is starting the first draft Sarah Palin group.