A 'War On Boys', You Say? Damn Right There Is!

Click here

to listen to Dan Cirucci

chat with Christine Flowers 

on The Big Talker, 1210 WHPT radio

about the war on boys.

Don't miss this!

Stimulating, Provocative, Enlightening, Fearless!

A couple of evenings ago we saw the daring, provocative, brilliant scholar Camille Paglia speak at The Free Library of Philadelphia as she launched her book tour for her new collection, Free Women, Free Men.
The photos you see here were taken during that event.
Paglia is one of the most dynamic, passionate, intense, articulate and thought-provoking speakers we've ever seen or heard anywhere. And, we've seen and heard a lot of them over the years.
It's almost impossible to take notes during a Paglia lecture/performance because the good professor talks so fast that it's all you can do to follow her in your mind, let alone via pen and paper or keypad. She's nothing less than breathtaking.

When the Free Library posts the podcast from the event we'll link to it.
But, in the meantime, here are excerpts from a splendid interview with Paglia just published at Broadly, which is part of Vice (www.broadly.vice.com):

"What I'm saying in Free Women, Free Men is that women can never be truly free until they let men too be free—which means that men have every right to determine their own identities, interests, and passions without intrusive surveillance and censorship by women with their own political agenda. . . . 

"It is an absolute outrage how so many pampered, affluent, upper-middle-class professional women chronically spout snide anti-male feminist rhetoric, while they remain completely blind to the constant labor and sacrifices going on all around them as working-class men create and maintain the fabulous infrastructure that makes modern life possible in the Western world. . . . I've seen figures indicating that 92 per cent of people killed on the job are men—and it's precisely because men are heroically doing most of the dangerous jobs in modern society. The bourgeois blindness of feminist leaders to low-status working-class labor by men is morally corrupt! . . . 

"One of the themes running through my book is the excessively bourgeois or white middle-class assumptions of so much feminist thought today. For example, I find Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg insufferably smug and entitled. I thought her bestselling book, Lean In, was utterly dishonest in failing to acknowledge how the affluent lifestyle of women executives like herself requires a rotating squad of servants and nannies, whom she has carefully kept invisible. I argue that country women of the agrarian era were physically and mentally stronger than today's high-profile, feminism-spouting women careerists, doing their Pilates and spinning routines at the pricey gym. . . . 

"The great irony is that too many of today's privileged white middle-class girls at elite schools can't seem to express themselves forcefully enough even to manage their own dating lives. They have to run to parental proxies on campus grievance committees to intervene for them. This isn't feminism—it's neurosis and hysteria. . . . 

"Young people have been far too passive about the degree to which their lives are being controlled by commissars of social engineering who pay lip service to liberalism but who are at root Stalinist autocrats who despise and suppress individualism."

We URGE you to read the entire interview!

As Schools Reopen: Let Boys Be Boys!

AEI resident scholar Christina Hoff Sommers explores the growing gender gap in education and its implications for future generations.

A War On Woman? Yes, From The Left . . .

The great Christine Flowers has indeed detected a "war on women" but she perceptively sees it coming from the left and not the right.
Here's an excerpt from Christine's latest post:

After weeks of poo-poohing the idea of a ‘war on women,’ I’ve had a change of heart.
There is indeed a war. And it’s being waged from the left flank.
By now, anyone not attached to life support has heard what Hilary Rosen said about the GOP front-runner’s wife: “Ann Romney never worked a day in her life.”
The moment those words exited from her smug and supercilious mug, Rosen realized what she’d done. She’d just shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand. She’d bombed Pearl Harbor. Or, to reduce it to terms any feminist could understand, she’d launched her own Teat Offensive. 

Click here to read more.

Barbara Bush: I Respect Ann For Her Decision

“There are choices in life, and I think it’s great. But I also think that if you stay at home and raise five great children, which I immodestly say I have done, why, I think it was worth the trip, and I respect her a lot. And I do also know that you have an opportunity to give back by volunteering, and the Romneys do. That’s their background.” – First Lady Barbara Bush

“America Live”
Fox News
April 12, 2012

Click Here To Listen To First Lady Barbara Bush

MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS: “Another woman who chose to stay at home and raise a family is our former First Lady Barbara Bush. She joins us right now by phone. Mrs. Bush, thank you so much for being here with us.”

BARBARA BUSH, FORMER FIRST LADY: “Not at all. Ann Romney spoke so well. I don't need to say anything. But raising five boys [who] are hard-working, decent, honest, giving children is not bad. Plus Ann did choose to stay home with her children, and does a lot of volunteer work. I don't think people are very understanding of the fact that she has MS, works very hard for them. She’s had breast cancer and she works very hard for at-risk youth. You know, some people choose to stay at home, raise their children, but some people really aren't built that way, they can do both. But five boys is a handful, trust me. Raising George Walker was not easy.”

KELLY: “And as our viewers know, not only were you married to a president, you raised a president, you raised a governor. But I want to ask you about this comment, because this seems to be something that's really struck a chord with a lot of our viewers. This pitting stay-at-home moms against working moms, or the suggestion that if you choose to stay at home and raise your children as you did, that you don't or cannot well understand the plight of working women. Your thoughts on that?”

BUSH: “Well, I think I can understand that, and I was lucky, my husband worked very, very hard, and I could afford to stay home. And I realize it's a luxury, and I know Ann does, too. She is a good friend of mine, but she also knows that it's very important that you give back, and she has and is giving back. I think she is a wonderful woman. And I'm not criticizing Hilary what's her name. I'm being corrected, but whatever her name is…”

KELLY: “Hilary Rosen.”

BUSH: “… If Hilary Rosen chose to do it the other way, that's fine. There are choices in life, and I think it’s great. But I also think that if you stay at home and raise five great children, which I immodestly say I have done, why, I think it was worth the trip, and I respect her a lot. And I do also know that you have an opportunity to give back by volunteering, and the Romneys do. That’s their background. I knew his mother and father. They were the greatest volunteers in the world. He actually started the feeling for George for the Points of Light foundation, which has helped thousands and millions of Americans. So I'm not critical of Hilary, but I'm just sorry that she took a knock at those of us who chose and were able, I must confess, able is a very important part of that, to stay home and take care of their children.”

Schlafly Video: Ann Romney Owed An Apology

A special message from Phyllis Schlafly:

Dear Friend,

Today's headlines are focused on Democratic strategist and DNC adviser Hilary Rosen's criticism of Ann Romney, saying this mother of 5 and grandmother of 16 has “never worked a day in her life.”  Don't you think that Hilary owes Ann an apology? I do.

I started Eagle Forum to be a voice for the family against attempts to discredit the fulltime homemaker, and against undermining one of fundamental building blocks of America's foundation of prosperity and freedom: families with a mom and a dad. We fought hard against the Equal Rights Amendment, and we won. We must speak out against off-base comments like Hilary's insult of Ann Romney.

Please forward this video to your friends and family: Phyllis Schlafly thinks Ann Romney deserves an apology from Hilary Rosen.

Join me and Eagles from across the nation to celebrate the Fulltime Homemaker at this year's Eagle Council on September 21-23, 2012 in St. Louis, MO. Every year, I present a Fulltime Homemaker Award to celebrate the value of the fulltime homemaker and her worthy contributions by providing a stable environment for teaching morals and values to the next generation. 

Past Fulltime Homemaker Award winners include Mrs. Ken Cuccinelli, Mrs. Pat Boone,Mrs. D. James Kennedy, Mrs. Rick Santorum, Mrs. Howard Phillips, Mrs. James Dobson, Mrs. Mike Huckabee, Mrs. Rush Limbaugh Sr., and many more.
On Friday night, Sept. 21, we will honor Pam Tebow, mother of New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow. Pam will share with us her personal story that will be encouraging to all.

Meet me in St. Louis for an Eagle Council you don't want to miss!

Letterman Was Wrong

From Maria E. Andreu at the Newark Star-Ledger:
David Letterman's joke about Sarah Palin's daughter, Willow Palin, getting "knocked up" was over the line.
I'll admit to not having been a fan of Sarah Palin during the campaign. And although I believe that children of politicians should be off-limits, I was even okay with the scrutiny that Bristol Palin's teen pregnancy received, as it highlighted the gap between her mother's abstinence position and the realities of teen sexual activity.
But as I watched Palin today talking about David Letterman's joke about her daughter Willow, aged 14, being "knocked up by Alex Rodriguez" during the seventh inning of a Yankee game, I couldn't help but agree with her, mom to mom. It's tough enough to raise girls in a culture that too often views them as objects. Every time we let a comment like that slip by, we demean what it means to be a woman. Sure, it was a joke. And, no, my nine-year-old was not up at that time watching Letterman. But making a remark like that trivialized and sexualized a little girl who has no responsibility for what her older sister did and should have a right to not be lampooned as an object of amusement. Every time it's mentioned on the news, little girls watching think, "I guess it's okay to make lewd jokes about women being used."
As a long-time Letterman fan, I still find it hard to give him a pass on this. "I was just kidding," doesn't cut it. And his lame excuse that he was talking about Bristol, who is of age (barely) but wasn't at the game, doesn't pass muster either. It wasn't that he was making a snide remark about the sexual promiscuity of one or the other of the Palin children. He was exhibiting the attitude that, because of Bristol's pregnancy at a young age, the Palin girls are fair game sexually, easy girls, the kind of girls kids snickered about behind the bleachers at school. Except he's too old for behind-the-bleachers mocking. More importantly, that attitude demeans all girls and women in the struggle to own and respect our sexuality and personal integrity.
David Letterman, apologize to the Palin family. When you're done with that, come over and explain to my daughter that you've learned it's not okay to talk about girls that way.

Why Are Feminists Silent?

Warning: The following post contains strong obscenities. These were retained to remain faithful to the original quotes and the author's intent.
From Amanda Fortini at Salon:
If there was any question that a stubborn strain of old-school sexism persists in Obama's America, one has only to look at certain leaders of what the right wing loves to call the "liberal media" but which is sounding and acting, recently, more like the frat-house media. There, like a virus hiding in the body before, perhaps, staging a comeback, misogyny has found a place to lurk almost undetected, at least by the usually sharp eyes of progressive feminists.
Examine the symptoms of this infection, beginning with David Letterman's comments (widely noted but insufficiently analyzed) about Sarah Palin "buying makeup at Bloomingdale's to update her slutty flight attendant look," as well as his joke about Palin's teenage daughter: "Sarah Palin went to a Yankees Game yesterday … during the seventh inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." (Letterman insists he was talking about her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, who actually had been, well, knocked up, not her 14-year-old, Willow, the daughter who attended the game.) A week before these remarks aired, there was an uglier outbreak of the contagion in the pages of Playboy -- never a bastion of egalitarian forward thinking, but still -- where writer Guy Cimbalo published a list of 10 conservative women he'd like to "hate fuck," a term that various observers interpreted as rough sex, sex tinged by rage, or rape. (Gabe Winant wrote for Broadsheet about the "Hate Fuck" story, which has since been yanked by Playboy.) Worse than the violence of the general sentiment was the graphic specificity of the "Hate Fuck Rating" appended to each woman -- a list that included Michelle Malkin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Dana Perino and Laura Ingraham. On Hasslebeck: "You'd be better served sucking off Regis Philbin." On Malkin: "Worse than fucking Eva Braun." . . .
Imagine if, say, Michelle Obama, or Rachel Maddow, or Nancy Pelosi became the target of similar invective. The outcry from the left would be deafening. Shouldn’t liberals exhibit the same sort of decorous treatment we demand for ourselves? Sexist comments like Letterman’s and Cimbalo’s also evoke a troublingly insular, clubhouse atmosphere in lieu of an inclusive political party. What's more, the gender-based stereotypes they conjure are as stale and ignorant as any voiced by the old Neanderthal right: Pretty women are de facto stupid, sexually promiscuous and low-class. Indeed, it's the latter slight that has been least remarked upon and is, perhaps, the most disturbing. “Slutty flight attendant” is not just a sexual put-down; it's a socioeconomic one. Likewise, when Cimbalo says, of right-wing blogger Pamela Geller, "Even a Silkwood shower won't get rid of the stench of Fascist divorcee and Elizabeth Arden's Red Door," the classist sentiment is unmistakable. It's a combination of gutter misogyny and snobbery, a return to a 1950s kind of insult. This is like saying a woman has a "reputation," that she's "that kind of girl," one from "the wrong side of the tracks." Cimbalo seems to be holding his nose not at the smell of some supposedly déclassé perfume but at the stench of working for a living, of being middle-class or having middle-class tastes.
And what's the problem with sexy women, anyway? The facile answer is to say that female sexuality is threatening in some visceral, primitive way. But maybe the deeper fact is that pretty women remind us that the world is essentially unfair -- and if the world is unfair, then the progressive quest for fairness may be quixotic and unnatural. There is no more free market economy than your average singles bar. In any case, stern conservative strength in a woman has undone the left for ages: See Margaret Thatcher. Liberals would probably contend that these women present much to argue with, propounding odious views with real-world implications -- they do, they do -- but why not attack their ideas rather than insult them? Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh incite their share of leftist rage, but I have yet to hear Gingrich maligned as a bimbo, or Limbaugh as a slut (just a "big fat idiot," to borrow a phrase from Al Franken, an impersonal and genderless slight). Partly, of course, this is because no such terms exist for men -- another digression entirely.
Asking why it is that liberal women do not often take liberal men to task for these attitudes is well worthwhile. Maybe we don't want to appear shrill and humorless, unable to take a joke. Or maybe it's thought that conservative women are too ideologically reprehensible to merit a defense. But to challenge this kind of sexist talk is not the same thing as agreeing with a woman's politics. If the left is allowed to remain a refuge for this sort of misogyny, if this virus in the body politic is allowed to flourish, then it is likely only a matter of time before it is once again directed at liberal women who are threatening in some way, as happened to Hillary Clinton. Call Pamela Geller racist for her anti-Islamic views, but leave her "top-heavy frame" aside.