Mark Steyn Remembers the High Coward Days of the World Press

 Mark Steyn chides cowards alot and there are countless cowards arround.  Most, but not all, are lefties.

Journalists are near or at the top of his coward list and refers to the collapse of the Western male to Islam’s bad breath emitted particularly during the saga of the Danish cartoons.  Mark wrote then: 

“The western media have managed to produce a uniquely creepy synthesis of craven capitulation and self-serving pomposity. As the great Australian wag Tim Blair observed:

Journalists can spend entire careers mouthing off about their commitment to free speech without ever having the chance to properly demonstrate it. I once had a theory that the lack of repression in modern democracies drove journalists to invent McCarthyesque threats, so much did they crave an opportunity to stare down those who would silence them. 

This story meets all the clichés of journalistic self-aggrandizement: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”, “News is what someone doesn’t want you to put in the paper”. But it seems it’s one thing to “speak truth to power” when the power’s George Bush or John Ashcroft, quite another when it’s an Islamist mob coming to burn your building down. Needless to say, reflex blowhardism is so ingrained in the media class they couldn’t resist passing off their prioritizing of self-preservation as a bold principled stand. Or as Philip Lee, professor of journalism at St Thomas University in New Brunswick, put it:

Freedom of the press means you can publish, or not. Not publishing is also an expression of freedom. 

Up to a point, Lord Jello. That’s a valid position if you’re the editor of, say, The Ottawa Citizen and some fellow mails you some cartoons about Mohammed and you say, “Interesting idea, old boy. Unfortunately, not quite our bag.” But that’s no longer tenable when the cartoons themselves are the story. Then it’s not even simple news judgment; it’s the headline and you’ve no choice in the matter. In Nigeria the other day, 15 Christians were killed by Muslims over these cartoons, because they’re “offensive”. Exercising Professor Lee’s “right to not publish” becomes, in effect, a way of supporting that proposition. It’s summed up by the CNN technique: whenever the story comes up, they show the cartoons but with the Prophet’s image pixilated. Watching, you wonder briefly if it’s not your own face that’s pixilated. Maybe you dozed off and fell face down in the blancmange and you’re not seeing it properly. But no, you grab a towel and wipe your eyes and, when you look again, they’re still doing it: the graphics department of a major news network is obscuring the features of a cartoon face. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d assume Mohammed must have entered the witness protection program.

But, of course, its meaning is the exact opposite: it’s CNN that’s entered the witness protection program, or hopes it has. The BBC, disgracefully, did the Islamists’ work for them, spreading around the world the canard that one of the cartoons showed Mohammed as a pig. No. That was one of the three fake cartoons added by the Danish imams in part because the original 12 were felt to be insufficiently incendiary. If it’s an outrage for an infidel to depict the Prophet, isn’t it an even greater one for a believer to do so? Who did those Danish Islamists hire to cook up the phoney cartoons and have they killed him yet?

Anyone who’s spent any time in the Muslim world cannot help but be struck by its profound ignorance. The famous United Nations statistic from a 2002 report – more books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand – suggests at the very minimum an extraordinarily closed society, which in turn explains its stunted political development. For example, the editor of The Yemen Observer, Mohammed al-Asadi, wrote a strong editorial denouncing the Danish cartoons, but, like this magazine’s editor, decided to show its readers what they looked like. As a result, he’s now in jail. The point about Islam is that it’s beyond discussion. No corner of the earth would benefit more from the ability to debate ideas openly.

Yet what is Mr al-Asadi to conclude from his jail cell about freedom of expression in the western world? Out of “respect” for Islam, the BBC and CNN and The New York Times and Le Monde have shown less of those cartoons than his government-published Yemeni sheet. If you’re a Toronto printer who’d rather pass on a job printing up gay propaganda, our oh-so-correct Human Rights Commission will fine you and sternly remind you that your religious beliefs are fine within the confines of your own home but they’ve got to be left inside the house when you close the front door behind you each morning. But, if you’re a Muslim, your particular conventions – many of them relatively recent and by no means universally observed – have now been universally extended throughout the public square.

In contrast to Professor Lee, the Boston Phoenix was admirably straightforward. It declined to publish the cartoons, it said, “out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do… Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at The Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy.”

I was the subject of an attack in The Phoenix a year or two back. As hit pieces go, it was a pretty feeble effort, and I didn’t feel it was worth driving all the way down to Boston just to kill a few members of staff and burn the building down. But it makes you think. In our multicultural society, the best way to get “respect” from others is to despise them; the surest way to have your views boundlessly “tolerated” is to be utterly intolerant of anybody else’s. Those who think Islam will apply these lessons only to op-ed cartoons or representations of Mohammed are very foolish.

Meanwhile, we prattle on about “moderate Muslims”, telling ourselves that the “vast majority” of Muslims aren’t terrorists, don’t support terrorists, etc.

Okay, why don’t we hear from them then?

Because they live in communities where the ideological bullies set the pace, where the price of speaking out is too high, and so they find it easier to say nothing, keep their heads down. And why would we expect them to do any differently when the mighty BBC and CNN do the same? If there is such a thing as a “moderate Muslim”, he’s surely thinking, “Well, if the CBC and The Toronto Star have to knuckle under to the imams, there’s no point me tossing in my two bits.”

It’s odd to hear so many eminent media mandarins patiently explaining that their principal role is deciding what we don’t need to know. Simply as a commercial proposition, for the press to trumpet its professional judgment in knowing when to withhold information seems a recipe for the slide in circulation to turn into an avalanche: they’re going to need great recipe columns and film listings if that’s the basis on which they approach news reporting. But, beyond that, for the media to play the role of ceremonial maintainer of the multicultural illusions is to damage its credibility on the central issue of our time.

The Islamists picked the right fight. The Danish cartoonists are not Salman Rushdie; Jutland is not literary London. No modish metropolitan semi-celebrities are flocking to the cause of the latest faraway country of which we know little. But it was not an accidental target. Denmark was the first country to recognize the demographic and cultural challenge of Islam and to elect a government committed to do something about it. This is the imams’ way of warning Norway and Sweden and Belgium and all the rest not to follow in the footsteps of their neighbour. Judging from the formal statements of Continental politicians, they got the message loud and clear.

It’s often observed that when President Kennedy famously declared he was a Berliner he actually said “I am a donut.” If ever there was a time to say “I am a Danish”, this is it. Shame on all of those whose cowardice will bring disaster.

from Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West

Comment;  I am wondering if Mr. Steyn believes today that Barack Hussein Obama is America’s principal coward in our battles for freedom of the press, or does Mark believe the president is free speech’s principal American enemy.

My Last Summer’s Visit to Puerto Lempira, Honduras: Part II

Just a little over a year ago I wrote a blog article at this MN Prager group site about my visit to Honduras, Puerto Lempira, Honduras to be more specific.  I expected to continue writing about my experiences in this poor country and my visit to a lefty American friend,  whom I admire  very much and lives there. 

Honduras, a few, too few, of you may remember was being threatend by a coup from the outside.   A certain  Hugo Chavez  conspired with Honduras Prime Minister, Manuel Zelaya, of this somewhat fragile democratic republic to corrupt the country’s constitution to permit Mr. Zelaya to become dictator a kind of carbon copy of Mr. Chavez’s steps to become dictator of Venezuela. 

Democratic forces in both the major parties of the country, led by a leader in Zelaya’s own party,  took action to remove the prime minister  from his  office and sent him unpacked and  in his pajamas to San Jose, Costa Rica.  All was done correctly step-by-step according the legal and democratic requirements of the law……..with the exception of  the unpacked trip.

 Mr. Zelaya was taken at Honduras taxpayers expense, to San Jose in Costa Rica.  By Honduran law, he was supposed to go directly to jail without the trip in his pajamas. 

The  reason for Manuel Zelaya’s  free in-pajama trip to San Jose, stated by the surviving government was that it feared possible rioting from leftists and an armed intent to overturn the government.

Honduras  had a long history of such coups……the main reason it’s prime ministers were limited to one 4-year term of office.

The world of the Left led by  Hugo Chavez screamed.  The United Nations, led by its Muslim bloc, demanded Zelaya be returned to his office. 

The president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, screamed early, insisting  Mr. Hugo Chavez was right…….the Organization of American States agreed.  The Honduran government must pay a price.

Democratic Honduras, imperfect as all democracies are  (we, Americans,  have to suffer from and endure the imperfections of Barack Obama) was under siege, alone.

America’s conservatives in Washington said nothing…………….and then there was Dennis Prager…..

…..who became  ”mad as hell”….and so did I.

The Obama world began to strangle the impoverished nation economically to pressure it to cave in and allow Zelaya to finish out his term. 

Honduras is considered the second poorest nation in the New World…..second to Haiti.  Obama’s  Marxist-oriented Latin America policy people railed against the Honduran government as if it were broadcasting from Havana and the Castro brothers.  Dennis interviewed its representative, Vikki Gass, who coldly professed Manuel Zelaya was a saint,  abused  by military criminals.  It was Obama’s Liberal duty to restore Manuel.

Dennis went to Honduras to broadcast his show from Tegucigalpa, its capital.  Transmission was shaky, but the message came across ‘loud and clear’.   Honduras’ democracy  needs America’s help.  Please do whatever you can.

My lefty, but good American friend, who lives  in east Honduras, a cardiologist,  gets her daily dose of news from al jazeera television.  ”I’ve  learned so many things about America I didn’t know, she told me.”

She lives in Puerto Lempira, and it was my mission to go visit her and,  therefore, help Honduras economically in the only way I could.  It was a twelve day trip.   And, I wish I could do it again.

As, we now  know, democracy was not crushed by the Obama-Chavez-UN-OAS assault against it….To be fair the Obama administration decided  not to take a hard line Marxist-like attack economically or otherwise against the tiny nation.  He  preached against Honduras.  He gave us lessons why we should side up with Hugo Chavez.  But Obama silence became Washington’s strategy.

 I am confident that this softer approach,  perhaps resulting from  the stupidities of Manuel Zelaya himself, helped stabilize the temporary government.  Zelaya,  having sneaked  back into the country to stir an uprising, which never occured, wound up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa…a ‘guest’ of that government….where Zelaya had sensations and visions that Israeli commandos were trying to poison him. 

What would this world do without Jews?

It all turned out for the best, long after my twelve day visit.

My friend and I had exchanged emails before I arrived in San Pedro Sula, a major city in the northwest of the country.  Our schedules worked out perfectly.  I wanted to walk around the city for several days…..see where the action was, talk to people….I knew very little Spanish, but many there, especially folks working in shops and malls, knew English well. Many travel seasonally to New York City, I discovered.  Taxis were not expensive.  Walking was cheaper, although many told me that someone  tall, old and very white might meet some trouble…drug gangs were alive and well… I walked anyway, but dressed poorly.   Gringos were expected to carry money.  I had little, and carried less.

At city center pulsed the Zelaya crowd……young, male, and graffiti in black painted everywhere defacing buildings including the walls of the main cathedral of the city. 

I took meticulous notes of nearly everything I did and everywhere I went, particularly to make it easier for this old mind  to remember more accurately his experiences, including quotes.

But disaster……My book,  rich in the vulgarities I had recorded off the walls of  ”downtown” San Juan del Sul, disappeared somewhere in the air terminal in Atlanta, Georgia when I was returning home. 

Many Hondurans have family in the United States.  Some, I learned, have suffered their way northward, through the treachery of Mexico, up to and if lucky, across the Mexican-American border into the U.S. as illegal immigrants.  

I hit it off well with all of those many folks who spoke English with me…..mostly workers at the hamburger stops in the malls, or when I visited  the small shops or stands scattered around  the city.  Unlike Harvard, Yale and Princeton students, no one seemed embarrassed working at a hamburger stand.

My American  friend, so generous and so compassionately driven to do good, introduced me to many others wanting to share and do ‘good’.  “Some mixed their Christianity in with their physical care.  

As it turned out the word ‘faggot’ was the word most often painted on downtown San Pedro Sula,  by the graffiti writers, the supporters of Manuel Zelaya.  The persons of note receiving this description were the leaders in Manuel Zelaya’s party who  led the process to remove Zelaya from office for his acts of  treason. 

It should be duly noted that the leader of this antiZelaya  group, whose name I lost in my note book mishap, called  chief ‘faggot’ in Spanish so many times on the walls of the buildings at the center of San Pedro Sula, was truly a  hero.  He was a lefty leader in the proceedings against Zelaya, a man of his own political party,  he was next in succession to replace the prime minister. He did not accept the role.  

My major encounter with the conservatives who supported the Zelaya removal, was during my first hours after landing in the San Pedro Sul.   A huge rally was taking place somewhere in the country.   The colors of this political alliance were blue and white.  I had turned on television the moment I entered my hotel room to catch some flavor of the struggle.   More than twenty thousand people were crowded in a park-like area listening to speakers. 

When I discovered that the rally I saw on television was going on at that very moment in that very city, San Pedro Sula where I was watching  the political events on television, I tore out of the hotel to catch a cab……and  in seven minutes I wound up  in a crowd of Honduran conservatives…..and it felt friendly, almost as if I were with conservatives at home.

I didn’t feel threatened when I visited the town center where the lefties were stationed.   I was looked at as an alien and the look was not a happy one.   In and about the restless young men were watching  ’merchants’, selling candies, papers, billfolds…empty and new…taking pictures, shining shoes….I bought candies, papers and had my picture taken by these folks.  The merchant types  all spoke some English….and were opponents of Zelaya.   Those  in groups standing, sitting and observing were  his guys.

I know that I spent my nights sleeping in a fine hotel.   But I walked everywhere I could for four days…..rode in taxis other times just to get around…and asked questions.   Some cabbies owned their own vehicles.  Some did not.   Didn’t make any difference.  No one I met except for one  student, liked Zelaya…..they were quite aware of his attempts to rig the constitution to lenthen his term of rule.   The student was being teased about his politics by another guy at a local hamburger spot at a downtown mall.   They spoke English for my sake.  They were friends but political opposites…a student versus a young father who managed the hamburger stand.  How appropriate.

I was to meet my friend on the fourth day of my stay.   She was prompt and business-like as always.  She had good work to do….also as always.   My friend was doctoring in every way she could for children,  some from La Ceiba, where she owned a small space, and others from Puerto Lempira,  farther to the East. 

My friend M. was traveling to San Pedro Sula to review treatment straightening out the legs of a child who had been born somewhat crippled.  She would pick me up in her chauffered van.  I would be added to the numbers in the van she was helping, including the mother and child.   We made a stop at a clinic.   The mother who spoke no English was obviously very pleased by something occuring at the clinic.   Through my friend’s actions and care, the girl, maybe two years old, had been operated on some time earlier to correct the leg disorder. The mother had just received the news that  the operation had been a success.  The little girl  would be able to walk a normal walk.  Friend M made all of the arrangements and covered all of the costs.

We drove to La Ceiba where the mom and daughter lived.   The next day M. and I flew to Puerto Lempira.  It was warm, wet and humid….very humid.

The Mess Obama Has Got Us Into In Afghanistan Clarified by Charles Krauthammer

Obama got into the Afghan War commitment claiming this was the only “just” war, not Bush 44′s Iraq “advanture”.  

Charles Krauthammer wrote the following article at National Review Online:

“From the beginning, the call to arms was highly uncertain. On Dec. 1, 2009, commander-in-chief Barack Obama orders 30,000 more Americans into battle in Afghanistan. But in the very next sentence, he announces that an American withdrawal will begin after 18 months.

Astonishing. A surge of troops — overall, Obama has tripled our Afghan force — with a declaration not of war, but of ambivalence. Nine months later, Marine Corps Commandant James Conway admitted that this decision was “probably giving our enemy sustenance.” This wasn’t conjecture, he insisted, but the stuff of intercepted Taliban communications testifying to their relief that they simply had to wait out the Americans.

What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war while announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn’t have his heart in it. One who doesn’t really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture. One who thinks he has to be seen as trying but is preparing the ground — meaning, the political cover — for failure.

Until now, the above was just inference from the president’s public rhetoric. No longer. Now we have the private quotes. Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, drawing on classified memos and interviews with scores of national-security officials, has Obama telling his advisers: “I want an exit strategy.” He tells the country publicly that Afghanistan is a “vital national interest,” but he tells his generals that he will not do the kind of patient institution-building that is the very essence of the counterinsurgency strategy that Generals McChrystal and Petraeus crafted and that he himself adopted.

Moreover, he must find an exit because “I can’t lose the whole Democratic party.” This admission is the most crushing of all.

First, isn’t this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns — John Kerry’s and then Obama’s — argued vociferously that Afghanistan was the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the War on Terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan war all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively antiwar?”

Whatever the reason, is it not Obama’s job as president and party leader to bring the party with him? This is the man who made Berlin coo, America swoon, and the Nobel committee lose its mind. Yet he cannot get his own party to follow him on what he insists is a matter of vital national interest?

Did he even try? Obama spent endless hours cajoling and persuading individual members of Congress to garner every last vote for health-care reform. Has he done a fraction of that for Afghanistan — argued, pleaded, horse-traded, twisted even a single arm?

And what about persuading the country at large? Every war is arduous and requires continual presidential explication, inspiration, and encouragement. This has been true from Lincoln through FDR through Bush. Since announcing his Afghan surge, Obama’s only major speech that featured Afghanistan was an Oval Office address about America’s leaving Iraq — the Afghan part being sandwiched between that and a long-winded plea for his economic policies.

“He was looking for choices that would limit U.S. involvement and provide a way out,” writes Woodward. One can only conclude that Obama now thinks Afghanistan is a mistake. Maybe he thought so from the very beginning. More charitably and more likely, he is simply a foreign-policy novice who didn’t understand what this war was about until being given the authority and duty to conduct it — and then decided it was all a mistake.

Fair enough. But in that case, what is he doing escalating it?

Senator Kerry, now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked many years ago: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Perhaps Kerry should ask that of Obama.

“He is out of Afghanistan psychologically,” says Woodward of Obama. Well, he may be out, but the soldiers he ordered to Afghanistan are in.

Some will not come home.”

Comment:  Woe is the way of the devious political tongue!   a lesson never learned by Barack H. Obama and John F. Kerry…..and many others who unfortunately occupy seats in Congress, male and female.

Updating Lefty “Feminism” and the Horror of “Mixed Messages”

The view from Left Field, the voice of Marx-America:  today’s article by Jessica Valenti.   Who Stole Feminism? she asks in its title.

“Sarah Palin opposes abortion and comprehensive sex education. While mayor of Wasilla she made sexual assault victims pay for their own rape kits. She also calls herself a feminist. Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell has said that allowing women to attend military academies “cripples the readiness of our defense” and that wives should “graciously submit” to their husbands—but her website touts her “commitment to the women’s movement.” Pundits who once mocked women’s rights activists as ugly bra burners are abuzz over the “new conservative feminism,” and the Tea Party is lauding itself as a women’s movement.

The right once disparaged feminism as man-hating and baby-killing, but now “feminist” is the must-have label for women on the right. Whether or not this rebranding strategy actually succeeds in overcoming the GOP’s antiwomen reputation is unclear (see Betsy Reed, “Sex and the GOP“). After all, Republicans have long supported overturning Roe v. Wade, voted against family and maternity leave, and fought groundbreaking legislation like the Lilly Ledbettter Fair Pay Act. When it comes to wooing women’s votes for the GOP, there’s a lot of damage control to do.

Feminists are understandably horrified—the movement we’ve fought so hard for is suddenly being appropriated by the very people who are trying to dismantle it. But this co-opting hasn’t happened in a vacuum; the mainstream feminist movement’s instability and stalled ideology have made stealing it that much easier. The failure of feminists to prop up the next generation of activists, and the focus on gender as the sole requisite for feminism, has led to a crisis of our own making.

Conservative women have been trying to steal feminism for more than a decade—organizations like the Independent Women’s Forum and Feminists for Life have long fought for antiwomen policies while identifying themselves as the “real” feminists. But their “prowoman” messaging didn’t garner national attention until actual feminists paved the way for them in the 2008 presidential election. During the Democratic primary, feminist icons and leaders of mainstream women’s organizations insisted that the only acceptable vote was for Hillary Clinton; female Barack Obama supporters were derided as traitors or chided for their naïveté. I even heard from women working in feminist organizations who kept mum on their vote for fear of losing their jobs. Perhaps most representative of the internal strife was a New York Times op-ed (and the fallout that followed) by Gloria Steinem in which the icon wrote, “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.”

Soon after, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University, responded in a Democracy Now! segment, “Part of what, again, has been sort of an anxiety for African-American women feminists like myself is that we’re often asked to join up with white women’s feminism, but only on their own terms, as long as we sort of remain silent about the ways in which our gender, our class, our sexual identity doesn’t intersect, as long as we can be quiet about those things and join onto a single agenda.”

The argument was not a new one—women of color and younger feminists have often taken white second-wave feminists to task for focusing on gender inequities over a more intersectional approach that also takes race, class and sexuality into account. But this intrafeminist skirmish over identity politics took on a life of its own in the aftermath of the bitter primary struggle. By pushing a vote for Clinton on the basis of her gender alone, establishment feminists not only rehashed internal grievances—they opened the door for conservatives to demand support for Palin for the very same reason. Unwittingly, the feminist argument for Clinton gave credence to the GOP’s hope that the mere presence of a female on the ticket would deliver women’s votes.

Is it any wonder, then, that everyone from Palin’s supporters to the mainstream media was eager to paint the vice presidential candidate as a feminist? If all it took was being a woman, well, then Palin was it! The Wall Street Journal called it “Sarah Palin Feminism.” The New York Post called her “a feminist dream,” while the Los Angeles Times ran a piece headlined “Sarah Palin’s ‘New Feminism’ Is Hailed.”

In much the same way Obama-supporting feminists were criticized, women who didn’t back Palin were swiftly denounced as hypocrites by those on the right. Rick Santorum called Palin the “Clarence Thomas for feminists,” blasting women who didn’t support her. Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America said, “Even feminists—who supposedly promote women’s equality and the so-called ‘women’s rights’ agenda—are questioning a female candidate’s ability to get the job done.” The criticism of women who failed to back Palin even indulged in sexism. Dennis Miller said that women who weren’t behind Palin were simply jealous of the candidate’s sex life, and Time magazine reporter Belinda Luscombe wrote that some women had a “hatred” for Palin simply because she was “too pretty.” (My favorite, however, was Kevin Burke’s argument in National Review that women who didn’t support Palin were suffering from “post-abortion symptoms.”) Palin even managed to divide some feminists. Elaine Lafferty—a former editor of Ms. magazine who had endorsed Clinton but then signed on as a consultant to the McCain campaign—condemned feminist leaders for “sink[ing] this low” and called feminism an “exclusionary club” for not welcoming Palin with open arms.

If there was ever proof that the feminist movement needs to leave gender essentialism at the door—this is it. If powerful feminists continue to insist that gender matters above all else, the movement will become meaningless. If any woman can be a feminist simply because of her gender, then the right will continue to use this faux feminism to advance conservative values and roll back women’s rights.

Ensuring feminism’s future doesn’t stop at embracing intersectionality—we must also shine a spotlight on the real feminists. Part of the reason Palin and her cohort are so successful at positioning themselves as the “new” women’s movement is because we fail to push forward and support new feminists of our own. This is not to say that younger women aren’t at the forefront of the movement—they certainly are. But their work is often made invisible by an older generation of feminists who prefer to believe young women are apathetic rather than admitting their movement is shifting into something they don’t recognize and can’t control.

For example, in an April Newsweek article about young people’s supposed apathy over reproductive rights, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan suggested that it was only the “postmenopausal militia” on the front lines of reproductive justice. Yet when I asked a NARAL spokesperson about employee demographics, I was told that people younger than 35 make up around 60 percent of the organization. And when they’re not ignored, young feminists are painted as vapid and sexualized. Take feminist writer Debra Dickerson, who wrote in a 2009 Mother Jones article that today’s feminists are all about “pole-dancing, walking around half-naked, posting drunk photos on Facebook and blogging about [their] sex lives.” This insistence that a new wave doesn’t exist or isn’t worth paying attention to has left open the cultural space for antifeminist women like O’Donnell and Palin to swoop in and lay claim to the movement.

If the new wave of feminists—the leaders of small grassroots organizations across the country, the bloggers who are organizing hundreds of thousands of women online, the advocates for reproductive justice, racial equality and queer rights—aren’t recognized as the real advocates for women, then the future of the movement will be lost.

Women vote for their interests—not their gender or age—but they still want to see themselves represented. If the only young women Americans see identified as “feminists” are those on the right, we run the risk of losing the larger cultural battle and the many younger women who are seeking an answer to the mixed messages about what feminism really is. And frankly, if we position vibrant young activists front and center, there will be no question as to who is creating the best change for women.

So instead of wringing our hands every time a new female candidate with distinctly antiwoman policies pops up, let’s use it as an opportunity to re-establish what feminism is about and to support the up-and-comers in our midst. Let’s focus on building power for the new wave of feminists by giving money to the organizations that best represent the future of the movement (like SAFER, NY Abortion Access Fund and Girls for Gender Equity); by providing media training and placing young activists on television and in the op-ed pages (as the great Women’s Media Center does); and by pushing young feminists—not just women—to run for office.

Feminism isn’t simply about being a woman in a position of power. It’s battling systemic inequities; it’s a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged. What’s most important to remember as we fight back against conservative appropriation is that the battle over who “owns” the movement is not just about feminists; feminism’s future affects all American women. And if we let the lie of conservative feminism stand—if real feminists don’t lay claim to the movement and outline their vision for the future—all of us will suffer.?

Comment:  “Women vote for their interests”, the breeze from left field asserts.  “Battling systemic inequities” blows in.   “Social justice movement” must defeat “sexism, racism, and classism”.

Can a woman be a feminist simply because of her gender?  Marxist Robert Jensen, a leading hater of America of the University of Texas School of Journalism, advertises HE is a feminist despite his gender.  Is he a misfit feminist, too?

Perhaps the butch part of the feminist cult simply wore out its welcome.

“Professor” Robert William Jensen, A Tyrant of the Academic World, An Enemy of the Search for Truth

 Getting to know a Marxist -hate-for-America better!

 

Robert William Jensen (born July 14, 1958) is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin College of Communication. He joined the faculty in 1992 after completing his Ph.D. in media law and ethics in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in media law, ethics, and politics.

In his research, Jensen draws on a variety of critical theories. As a strong pro-feminist, Jensen has focused much of his work on the radical feminist critique of pornography and of masculinity. He also has written about white privilege and institutionalized racism.

In addition to teaching and research, Jensen writes for popular media, both alternative and mainstream.^[1] His opinion and analytic pieces on such subjects as foreign policy, politics, and race have appeared in papers around the U.S. He also is involved in a number of activist groups working against U.S. military and economic domination.^[2] He also works on progressive community projects in Austin, TX.^{[3]   (from wikipedia)}

The University of Texas offers this biography for public review:

Jensen joined the UT faculty in 1992 after completing his Ph.D. in media ethics and law in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a professional journalist for a decade. At UT, Jensen teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.

In his research, Jensen draws on a variety of critical approaches to media and power. Much of his work has focused on pornography and the radical feminist critique of sexuality and men’s violence, and he also has addressed questions of race through a critique of white privilege and institutionalized racism.

In addition to teaching and research, Jensen writes for popular media, both alternative and mainstream. His opinion and analytic pieces on such subjects as foreign policy, politics, and race have appeared in papers around the country.

Mr. Bensen spreads his Journalistic wings:

Professor writes on White Privilege in the Baltimore Sun:

“White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one’s identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn’t live near a reservation, I didn’t even have exposure to the state’s only numerically significant nonwhite population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I “fix” myself, one thing never changes – I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don’t look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me look like me they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves – and in a racist world, that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I’m white.

My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don’t know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it’s possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn’t meant as an insult to anyone, but it’s a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them. I am not a genius – as I like to say, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full time for six years and I’ve published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, is worth reading. I worked hard, and I like to think that I’m a fairly decent teacher. Every once in a while, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my pay check, I don’t feel guilty. But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from among other things, white privilege. That doesn’t mean that I don’t deserve my job, or that if I weren’t white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white.

All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position by the predominantly white University of Texas, headed by a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one nonwhite tenured professor. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself, and my work, I do not have to believe that “merit” as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege. At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture’s mythology that I couldn’t see the fear that was binding me to those myths.

Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn’t really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn’t heroic or rugged, that I wasn’t special. I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn’t special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked to my benefit. Until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate – that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose – then we will live with that fear.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.”