You've read the stories about "former" soldiers who thought their obligations were complete but had been called back to active duty?

Almost to a man they claim they were sure their obligation was complete and further claim the military was unlawfully calling them back.

Eh, not really.

I had the opportunity to talk with MG Sean Byrne who commands the US Army Human Resources Command about the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). The IRR is a pool of former active duty soldiers who are serving out the rest of their contractual obligation to the military. What most people don't seem to understand, obviously to include some service members, is that the 2 to 4 years you serve on active duty are only a part of the 8 year obligation you sign up for at that time. It is in the contract signed by every enlistee.

One of the common misconceptions is that when they receive that DD 214 at the end of their active service, they are done. The belief that the receipt of that form, which is a release from active duty, ends their obligation, is false. It only separates the soldier from active duty, but does not discharge them from their reserve obligation.

In fact, when they process through the separation transfer point, each soldier signs his DD 214 which specifically states he or she is subject to recall to active duty if the need arises (block 6). The form also tells them exactly how much time they have left (block 18).

How big of a problem has this been in reality? As we all know, newspaper stories only report the plane that crashes and not the thousands of planes that land safely daily.

The present pool of IRR soldiers stands at 72,000. The number recalled to active duty at this moment is 6,500. The number of stories that you've read about? Maybe 50.

We asked MG Byrne if there isn't a better way of ensuring that soldiers are more aware of this obligation to insure that there are fewer such stories.

I think these comments provide the best answer to that question:

My active duty enlistment was supposed to end in June 1992, but I was still deployed for Operation Desert Storm and I was placed under the Air Force’s stop loss policy. I went back to my base in Italy three months later and was outprocessed in 2 days (through New Jersey if I remember correctly).

I wasn’t the only one kept in because of stop loss, and everyone seemed well aware of the rules.

Furthermore, looking at my DD Form 214, it has a big black box around 6. RESERVE OBLIG. TERM. DATE with a year, month, and day. Then it has (among other things) under 18. Remarks: "Extension of service was at the request and for the convenience of the government.—Subject to recall to active duty and/or annual screening."

I don’t know how much the form has changed during the past 16 years, but I suspect it’s pretty much the same.

And...

In 1987, I enlisted and it was made very clear to me that I had an 8 year total obligation. In July 1990, I left active duty aware that I had 5 years of an 8 year obligation left. Considering this was before we got to reap the "peace dividend" and still had 18 divisions, I never thought I’d be called back in. In 1991 I was called back to active duty, for Desert Storm, not in my plans, but I knew it wasa possibility. I have no sympathy for any of these guys, the havd a bad case of selective listening. Most of these guys have already been told by countless squad leaders, 1SG’s and CO’s that with a war on, their skills were needed, and they were offered some very generous reenlistment incentives. They chose to play the odds, and lost. They got the job training, GI Bill, and a clearance from Uncle Sam, now they’re paying off the rest of the bill.

And best of all...

People who claim they don't know they have IRR time are like people who seem to remember what the adjustable means in adjustable rate mortgage and then scream when they can't afford payments when they could barely qualify for the house under some of the lowest interest rates in history (comparitively speaking). They are people who just throw their hands up like a 3 year old when they realize it affects them and says " I dont know"

Yep. If you fail to pay your attention bill, eventually you're going to find yourself sitting in the dark. As Gomer Pyle used to say, "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!"

Now, to be fair... while I understand the young men's motivation (I was once a raging pile of hormones myself), someone should really pull these guys aside and have a talk with THEM about self respect.

I think this is something that frequently gets overlooked. We're used to warning the young ladies about the predatory male, and the good news is that some (e.g. Katelyn) are also recognizing that they bear some responsibility for their actions too (didn't we just have a long conversation about women being fully capable of taking care of themselves recently?). But other than pointing fingers at the young men and shouting "RAPIST! J'accuse!" they seem to get a pass on their own behavior.

Basically, all I am saying is that there's some middle ground between being a slavering bestial monster bent on deflowering helpless maidens and being an incompetent fool who is mentally disabled by testosterone flowing through his bloodstream. These guys are NOT idiots. Nor are they monsters. If you lay out to them that sexual conquest is not a game, and that if they don't respect themselves how is anyone else going to (and let's not forget the "would you really want some other dude treating your sister/daughter like that" logic... cause guys hate that), then I suspect the world might be improved.

I'm no Pollyanna... I know what college dorm life is like. I also know that it took me till the ripe old age of 24 to get my head out of my fourth point of contact. But dammit, let's have more respect for guys (and for them to have more respect for themselves) and grant that hormones do not cause men to become Neanderthals.

These are the points I tried, as a mother, to drive home to my young sons. It's not always easy for a woman to talk to teen-aged boys about sex. For one thing, your street cred isn't all that impressive. You can't exactly tell them "When I was your age..." stories since you lack the comparable road gear. In addition, boys are often a bit uneasy when Mom brings up a subject they're intensely curious about, but is also intimately connected with their impending voyage into that great unknown we call the wonderful world of adulthood. Let's face it: who wants to tell his friends, "Yeah, I learned all about birth control from... [not Playboy or Penthouse or a camping trip with Dad in the Adirondack, but... wait for it!] my Mom!" But when Dad is gone most of the time, someone has to do it if you don't find the idea of being the youngest Grandma on the planet even mildly attractive, so you find a way.

What I tried to teach my sons is that there is nothing wrong with sex. It's wonderful and enjoyable, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of life. Adult men and women should have enough respect for themselves that they remain in control of their emotions and impulses: a healthy sense of balance is what distinguishes a mature adult from a child. This is what annoyed me so about some of the arguments on the Military exchanges post. It is almost comically demeaning to seriously contend that the ability to procure skin mags from the local PX is an essential force multiplier, without which we might as well run up the white flag. This obscures the real issue: there are far stronger arguments to be made for not unnecessarily infringing upon the rights of service members.

But the reason I wrote about that issue, and the reasons I continue to bring this (and tangential issues) up here at VC are twofold:

1. It continues to bother me when I see conservatives ostensibly defending freedom of expression by reflexively flinging ad hominems at anyone who dares to raise a point they happen to disagree with. Any time this happens, I'm going to get my back up. I have often urged women to be more assertive about voicing their opinions on the 'Net, but there are valid reasons why many women are reluctant to do so.

One reason is that when certain subjects are raised, some of the very men who would be the first to maintain that women are mean spirited and overly emotional proceed to defend their positions with.... [wait for it] mean spirited personal attacks and essentially emotional arguments. This doesn't mean that women are good and men are bad. It means that both men and women are fallible, and when it's our own ox that's being gored, each sex tends to react with something less than our usual equanimity. The thing is, if your best argument against porn is that "normal men don't enjoy that sort of thing" or that men who do are rapists in training, you've left the realm of the rational.

But if your best argument against women who object to porn is that women "shouldn't object to/feel threatened by it" or that women who do, do so because they are "ugly, fat, and don't like sex" or are "joyless scolds who like to control men", you're not exactly looking like the poster child for reasoned discourse, are you?

2. Grim and I have probably gone at least 50 rounds on this subject, and we seem to have come at last to an understanding (I think) that I have no desire whatsoever to ban pornography. Never have. Never will. What disturbs me is the mainstreaming of porn into everyday culture. The reason this concerns me, frankly, is well illustrated by stories like this:

Time was, when a girl had a crush on a boy, she sent him a note in class.

Today, as at least one local school district has learned, she might use her cell phone to take a naked picture of herself and send the photo to him.

The Pioneer Central School District over the past two months has discovered three cases of teenage girls — ages 13 to 16 — electronically sending nude photos to male classmates.

“All of the situations we’re dealing with, the images are of a girl in a provocative and seductive position, and in the nude,” Pioneer Superintendent Jeffrey Bowen told The Buffalo News.

What I have argued against, repeatedly, is not the existence of porn but the easy access to porn. Pornography has been around for centuries. It will continue to be around as long as human beings enjoy sex. No one is ever going to "get rid" of porn. It's that simple. What you hope to do - what I hope to do - is keep it out of the hands of children who are not nearly old enough to possess the judgment to handle it yet.

When I see young girls having plastic surgery to make themselves look more like porn stars, that really bothers me.

When I see 15 year old girls sending nude photos and movies of themselves over cell phones and email, that bothers me. And the most disturbing thing of all is passages like this:

In the third and most recent case, a female high school student at some point sent a naked photo of herself as a text message to her boyfriend, a fellow high school student.

“That picture then was forwarded somehow from that phone to another phone and was distributed from there,” Schultz said.

...The teens initially didn’t realize the consequences of what they were doing, Bowen said, but now they do and they are upset.

Most of us talk to our children about unprotected sex.

How many of us talk to our children about unprotected email? A single careless email can be forwarded in an instant half-way around the world without your knowledge or consent. If your child is foolish enough to attach an indiscrete photo, it could end up on the Internet, where it could be found by future employers and colleges, ruining any chance he or she might have of finding employment. In one careless moment, your child's reputation could be utterly ruined.

And the real kicker here is that our don't come up with these ideas on their own. Their behavior reflects the world they see and hear every day: they mimic the values we create and defend.

Think about that for a moment: Monkey see, monkey do. As Mike so perceptively noted, men hate being told, "Would you really want some other dude treating your sister/daughter like that?" And yet it often seems to me that even conservatives, increasingly, just wish away the conflict between their professed values and their own behavior. The truth is that children pay far more attention to what we do than what we say, and they notice far more than we give them credit for.

The problem, as I see it, is not that porn exists at all. It has always existed. The problem is that it has become so mainstream that people's appetites are sated. When you can dial up the most hardcore entertainment right on your home TV set, when even lingerie ads and prime time television shows have become semi-pornographic, nothing is tantalizing or forbidden. And our children are getting that message loud and clear: nothing is off limits anymore. Nothing is unthinkable. Because adults (and many conservatives) ridicule what we used to call modesty or restraint, there is no barrier to keep them from doing things that can and do harm them.

Sex occurs primarily in the mind, and in order to feel that forbidden thrill it's only human nature to push the boundaries farther and farther out. Where once the mere sight of a woman's uncovered ankles was unbearably enticing, now we see nearly naked women on billboards; consequently it takes something truly shocking (how about a 15 year old sporting that freshly f*cked look?) to get our collective juices flowing. But what effect, when adults refuse to rein themselves in, does this have on our children?

Easy. Fifteen year olds are mailing videos of themselves engaging in sex acts over the cell phones their parents gave them so they could 'keep in touch'.

The kids are in touch all right. Nice work.

Equally maddening must be the reaction that sometimes greets performers in Sex Signals, an improvisational show on date rape whose venues include Harvard, Yale, and schools throughout the Midwest. “Sometimes we get women who are advocates for men,” the show’s founders told a Chicago public radio station this October, barely concealing their disbelief. “They blame the victim and try to find out what the victim did so they won’t do it.” Such worrisome self-help efforts could shut down the campus rape industry.

“Promiscuity” is a word that you will never see in the pages of a campus rape center publication; it is equally repugnant to the sexual liberationist strand of feminism and to the Catherine Mac-Kinnonite “all-sex-is-rape” strand. But it’s an idea that won’t go away among the student Lumpenproletariat. Students refer to “sororistutes”—those wild and crazy Greek women so often featured in Girls Gone Wild videos. And they persist in seeing a connection between promiscuity and the alleged campus rape epidemic. A Rutgers University freshman says that he knows women who claim to have been sexually assaulted, but adds: “They don’t have the best reputation. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that kind of stuff.”

Rape consultant David Lisak faced a similar problem this November: an auditorium of Rutgers students who kept treating women as moral agents. He might have sensed the trouble ahead when in response to a photo array of what Lisak calls “undetected rapists,” a girl asked: “Why are there only white men? Am I blind?” It went downhill from there. Lisak did his best to send a tremor of fear through the audience with the news that “rape happens with terrifying frequency. I’m not talking of someone who comes onto campus but students, Rutgers students, who prowl for victims in bars, parties, wherever alcohol is being consumed.” He then played a dramatized interview with a student “rapist” at a fraternity that had deliberately set aside a room for raping girls during parties, according to Lisak. The students weren’t buying it. “I don’t understand why these parties don’t become infamous among girls,” wondered one. Another asked: “Are you saying that the frat brothers decided that this room would be used for committing sexual assault, or was it just: ‘Maybe I’ll get lucky, and if I do, I’ll go there’?” And then someone asked the most dangerous question of all: “Shouldn’t the victim have had a little bit of education beforehand? We all know the dangers of parties. The victim had miscalculations on her part; alcohol can lead to things.”

In a column this November in the University of Virginia’s student newspaper, third-year student Katelyn Kiley gave the real scoop on frat parties: They’re filled with boys hoping to have sex. She did not call these boys “rapists.” She did not demonize their sex drive. She merely offered some practical wisdom to the “scantily clad” freshman girls trooping off to Virginia’s fraternity row: “That frat boy really is just trying to get into your pants.” Most disturbingly, she advised the girls to exercise sexual control: “So dance with that good-looking guy. If he offers, you can even go up to his room to get a mixed drink. . . . Flirt. But it’s probably a good idea to keep your clothes on, and at the end of the night, to go home to your own bed. Interestingly enough, that’s how you get them to keep asking you back.”

You can read thousands of pages of rape crisis center hysteria without coming across such bracing common sense. Amazingly, Kiley hasn’t received any of the millions of dollars that feminists in the federal government have showered on campuses to prevent what they call rape.

Clearly our education system is failing these young women. One weeps...

Does the Obama campaign want to downplay their support among the black community? Judith Klinghoffer points to the story from the Financial Times where a reporter notices this manipulation of visuals during Obama's visit to Charlotte.

About three-quarters of the 9,000 people who turned up to see Barack Obama at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday evening were black. Yet, the section of seating directly behind where he spoke was filled overwhelmingly by whites.

Admittedly, one report doth not a pattern make. But how about two in a row:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

How about making it a trifecta?

Reporters in the hall saw Obama campaign workers usher photogenic white families toward the platform as they entered. The scene they composed was an effective, calculated rebuttal of the Clintons' effort to portray Obama as a black candidate whose victory depended on race -- a way of killing "this possible racial narrative before it could be born," as Gal Beckerman wrote in a perceptive dispatch on the Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk blog ( http://www.cjr.org).

Such manipulation has become so commonplace that few other journalists bothered to mention the Carolina campaign tableau in their coverage, even though Beckerman estimated that 85 percent of the crowd was African American.

The problem with 'killing this potential narrative" is that, as Daniel Henniger notes, it happens to be true:

Barack Obama, the first "postracial candidate," is heading to the Democratic nomination almost entirely because of his near-universal support from black voters in the Democratic primaries. In both states Tuesday, his share of that vote was 90% or more. If one resets the black vote to the norm of earlier elections, Hillary Clinton is the nominee.

An enormous amount of media attention has been devoted to Hillary Clinton's recent observation that her campaign has managed to secure the support of a majority of working class white Democrats. For voicing an observation which is not only demonstrably true but has been aired by countless television news anchors, Senator Clinton has been accused of waging a "divisive" campaign with "disturbing racial undertones". She has also been accused of subtly discourging whites from voting for Barack Obama.

The more pernicious interpretation of the 'discouragement' argument is that Ms. Clinton's remark subtly encourages racism. To appreciate the full irony of this ludicrous charge, consider these facts:

In the last two Democratic primaries, approximately 60% of white voters have pulled the lever for Senator Clinton.

Approximately 90% - a virtual shut-out - voted for Barack Obama.

Let's stop and think about that for a second. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, it means that statistically speaking, if you took a hypothetical Democratic voter and you knew nothing about that voter other than the color of his or her skin, you could predict his or her vote correctly 90% of the time if that voter were black.

If the voter were white, your chances drop to about half the time.

And yet, to hear the mainstream media tell it, Obama is the candidate who will help us finally transcend race and his support in the black community has nothing to do with race. Oh, and by the way: those 40% of white Democrats who aren't voting for Obama?

Racists, every last one. It's the only possible explanation for their refusal to vote for him. In the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson energetically fans the flames of racial discontent. First Robinson claims she's playing the race card:

From the beginning, Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That's why she is falling short -- and that's why she should be persuaded to quit now, rather than later, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines.

If that sounds harsh, look at the argument she made Wednesday, in an interview with USA Today, as to why she should be the nominee instead of Barack Obama. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Senator Obama's support . . . among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on."

As a statement of fact, that's debatable at best. As a rationale for why Democratic Party superdelegates should pick her over Obama, it's a slap in the face to the party's most loyal constituency -- African Americans -- and a repudiation of principles the party claims to stand for. Here's what she's really saying to party leaders: There's no way that white people are going to vote for the black guy. Come November, you'll be sorry.

How silly of me. I thought the Democratic Party believed in a colorblind America.

Funny. When did achieving a 'colorblind America' depend on the near-monolithic support (90%) of black voters and the racial gerrymandering of the crowds behind Barack Obama to give the illusion that he's not a "black candidate"?

Several months ago, in a deep state of Romney-induced funk, I wondered what most people look for in a Presidential candidate? The answer, it seems, is fairly simple: it all comes down to someone we instinctively like and trust. My problems with Barack Obama go far deeper than my disagreement with his politics. Even setting aside the political calculations needed to win the Oval Office, I find that I simply cannot trust the man.

Several weeks ago, Grim took me to task for accusing Obama of subtle race baiting with the remark about his grandmother reacting like a 'typical white woman'. I did not use the term lightly, and it was not meant to be inflammatory. I see Barack Obama as a man who is half black and half white, but who (perhaps more importantly) was raised by a white family.

This is important, I think. Grim and I have consistently differed in our reactions to the Wright/Obama brouhaha. He was initially impressed by Obama's willingness to stick by his mentor and later revolted by his willingness to abandon Wright:

The first time Obama spoke about his preacher of twenty years' standing, I said that I was impressed by one thing: that he did not disavow the man. That took courage, and showed a certain decency of character. The worst and most damning thing about Obama's more recent statements is that they show the Reverend Mr. Wright was right about him: he is doing "what politicians do."

My own viewpoint is diametrically opposed. I tend to see both reactions as calculated. Obama intentionally distanced himself from Wright as soon as he declared his candidacy, refusing to allow him to deliver the invocation. From that time on, the two men were on a collision course, with Wright behaving more outlandishly as time went on.

And yet, Obama would not distance himself from his pastor. Why not?

Simple: he did not wish to endanger that 90% black vote. Obama has been less than honest about many things: about whether he was aware of Wright's controversial preaching (first denying, then admitting he was aware of it, then denying it again); about how mainstream black liberation theology is in the black church tradition (he claims here that Wright's preaching is out of the mainstream):

His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.

Yet as James Taranto noted several months ago, when asked, black pastors themselves saw nothing out of the ordinary in Wright's remarks:

I asked Davis what his personal reaction was when he saw video clips of sermons in which Rev. Wright said, "God damn America," called the United States the "U.S. of KKK A," and said that 9/11 was "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost." "As a member of a traditional Baptist, black church, I wasn't surprised," Davis told me. "I wasn't offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct. . . . The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that's how it's said."

...in an effort to gauge just how "out there" Wright's sermons are in the context of the African-American church tradition, Newsweek phoned at least two dozen of the country's most prominent and thoughtful African-American scholars and pastors, representing a wide range of denominations and points of view. Not one person would say that Wright had crossed any kind of significant line.

It's awfully hard to have an honest dialog on race with a candidate who engages in nothing but doublespeak:

MCCAIN CAMPAIGN: "We have all become familiar with Senator Obama's new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is. . . . We understand why Senator Obama doesn't want to engage in a debate over leadership and judgment with John McCain, but the American people demand that debate take place."

Background here. Obama wants to run a training-wheels campaign while demanding that his opponents walk a tightrope. Well, hell, who wouldn't want that?

Funny. It's beginning to sound like Obama's 'change' is just more of the same old snake oil we've been sold for years. Only the packaging is different. And that's if you can believe that the charismatic young black candidate who promises to unite America along racial lines, isn't really black and isn't cleverly manipulating America's racial fault lines behind the scenes.

Urushiol

Nothing drives a man wild like a little contact dermatitis! You don't really want to kill anyone, you just want to make them wish they'd died. Found in the Poison Ivy plant , when you touch someone, the itch can last forever.

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Quizzes and Personality Tests]]> 2008-05-09T14:31:35Z 2008-05-09T13:20:54Z tag:www.villainouscompany.com,2008:/vcblog//1.2929 2008-05-09T13:20:54Z

It is a riveting tale, full of sound, fury, desperate yearnings and Giant Princess-Eating Spiders From Hell. In the wee hours of the morning, your hostess donned her game face and tripped off through the Beltway traffic to quench her mad, unrequited passion for the First Pooch.

On her way in, the Princess tried her best to look suspicious and up to something. After all we've heard from the likes of Keith Olbermann about draconian security measures and innocent civilians being whisked off to Gitmo to have the frilly panties of fascism pulled over their frantically protesting heads to the undulating strains of Christina Aguilera CDs, it seemed not unlikely that with the right behavior, she ought be able to get herself pulled aside and frisked by one of those good-looking young Secret Service agents at the gate. But to her chagrin, the big bullies had the temerity to call her "Ma'am" and politely wave her through the line.

Whatever. The nerve of some people... and with all the taxes she paid, too.

In previous visits to the Big House, the Princess had a close encounter with the Commander in Chief of the war on terriers. We exchanged barks down a long hallway, but she was unable to convince him to abandon his watch. Perhaps this time would be different? Perhaps this was to be her lucky day?

The sun was shining on the South Lawn, illuminating gaily decorated picnic tables bedecked with red and white tablecloths. As she loaded her plate with a luscious array of fresh fruit and a to-die-for cheese empanada, her eyes scanned the crowd search for a glimpse of that rakish, devil-may-care fellow who made her heart beat faster. But he was nowhere to be seen.

After a brief petite dejeuner, the Princess, Carrie, Cyndi and a new friend the Princess met on her way into the fete (Gloria) strolled over to greet a few friends. There was HF6, munching away on goodies.

About 6 feet behind her stood Secretary Gates. Her back was to the Secretary of Defense.

Pau was Hawaii casual. Perhaps Blue Hawaii casual. "Yeah.... whatever. We do this sort of thing all the time. The SecDef and I... yanno...we're peeps. If I pay too much attention to him, he'll probably want to TALK to me... [yawn]. Men..."

The SecDef was quite good looking in person. Much better than the way he looks on TV. He also struck the Princess as being extremely patient and gracious. He gave a short introductory speech, and then the President arrived with the guests of honor.

Still no Barney. Grrr.

As the Princess sat quietly listening to the President's speech, she espied an enormous, woman-eating spider crawling up the back of the person at the table directly in front of her. Frantically she looked around for one of those worthless Secret Service agents.

But isn't that just like a man? Never around when you want one, always sticking their noses into your business when the MasterCard bill shows up. Taking matters into her own hand, she leapt to her feet and wrestled the Giant, Woman-eating Spider to the ground, it's 8 legs thrashing violently. Dusting her hands off, she quietly returned to her seat as though saving perfect strangers from ginormous arachnids were nothing out of the ordinary.

Still no Barney.

Moments later, she felt a nudge. HF6 whispered in her ear:

"Dear Lord WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE... THE GIANT WOMAN-EATING SPIDER IS HEADING STRAIGHT FOR YOUR JUGULAR!"

It was true. The Giant Princess-Eating Spider From Hell was on a collision course with my left toe, making a beeline (OK fine - a spiderline) straight across the lawn towards my foot. And_not_a_Secret_Service_Agent_in_sight, thank you very much.

And still no Barney.

That's it. Barney and I are through. The Princess cannot keep desperately hanging around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like some deranged groupie, wrestling with oversized insects in the hopes of one day being noticed by a diminutive pooch.

She has her pride, you know. And there is always Barneycam.

[sniff]

Two

Three

Well I never went to college, babe
I did not have the luck
Rolled out of Indiana in the back of a pickup truck
With no education higher
Than the street of my hometown
I went lookin' for a fire
Just to burn it all down

You've got a real fine love
You've got a real fine love
One I am unworthy of
You've got a real fine love, baby

I thought I had a line on something
Maybe no one else could say
And they couldn't find it in their hearts
To just get out of my way
Then out of nowhere, and from nothing
You came into my life
I'd seen an angel or two before
But I'd never asked one to be my wife

Well you can sprinkle all your teardrops
Across the evening sky
But you cannot hide the twinkle
Of starlight in your eye
Well I left my map way back there, baby
I don't know where we are
But I'm gonna pull my pony up
And hitch my wagon to your star

Well now the babies are all sleeping
And the twilight's givin' in
She looks like you, he looks like her
And we all look like him
Well maybe it's just the little thing
The way I feel tonight
A little joy
A little peace

Some of the artists of the 1960s are revising their hits with new lyrics to accommodate aging baby boomers.

Herman's Hermits --- Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Walker

Ringo Starr --- I Get By With a Little Help from Depends

The Bee Gees --- How Can You Mend a Broken Hip?

Bobby Darin --- Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' a Flash

Roberta Flack--- The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face

Johnny Nash --- I Can't See Clearly Now

Paul Simon--- Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver

The Commodores --- Once, Twice, Three Times to the Bathroom

Marvin Gaye --- Heard It through the Grape Nuts

Procol Harem--- A Whiter Shade of Hair

Leo Sayer --- You Make Me Feel Like Napping

The Temptations --- Papa's Got a Kidney Stone

Abba--- Denture Queen

Tony Orlando --- Knock 3 Times on The Ceiling If You Hear Me Fall

Helen Reddy --- I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore

Leslie Gore--- It's My Procedure, and I'll Cry If I Want To

Willie Nelson --- On the Commode Again

Now this sounds like a game to the Princess. She came up with a few of my own to start you off:

Papa's Got A Brand New Dose of Viagra - James Brown

I Knew A Place...once - Petula Clark

All Day (And Several Times At Night) - The Kinks

Have at it, peoples. To help you out, here's a great link to old song titles.

'Cause I'm a wooooooman

"Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires."

- Notebooks of Lazarus Long

What is a real woman? Via Tigerhawk, the question seems to be generating some interesting commentary:

...there’s really not a lot of mystery about what everyone agrees a “real” man is. We all know “real” men are:

Mentally, emotionally, and intellectually strong, even if not physically (crippled and elderly men can still be “real” men). Hardworking, honorable, honest, dutiful, protective of family and country. Brave, courageous, rational, reasonable, kindhearted, and respectful. Knowledgeable about how to survive in rough times and how to solve problems. And so on.

What I started wanting to know when I was about 16 was just how in the hell any of those things were (or should be) exclusive to men. I realized even then that in fact, they are not. All adults should have every one of those personality and character traits as a matter of course.

So then I started wondering why anyone bothered with the phrase “real man” at all. Don’t they just mean “real adult”? As a young girl, shouldn’t I strive to be exactly the kind of person I kept hearing a “real man” would be? I thought so, and I still do. Maybe that’s why you never hear me whining about how my butt looks in these jeans or crying that no one pays enough attention to me. Who gives a crap? I don’t need any reassurances about silly shit because apparently, I am a “real man”, secure in my own “manliness”. Even though I’m a woman.

Now, what the fuck? Why can’t I just say I’m a “real woman”? Because no one ever talks about that. Except in the context of how “real women” have curves and “real women” don’t look like Heidi Klum. Of course, of course it always comes back to looks and sex when you’re talking about women. Google it. The first result you get on “be a real woman” is a site that says stuff like:

A woman shouldn’t solve man’s problems. This prerogative is male. A man is the one supposed to take care of a woman.

A real woman can’t ever be had over the barrel. She is always well-dressed with her hair and make-up done. Be ready that anything can happen all of a sudden. You’ll say it is hard to look nice all the time – for a real woman it’s a habit.

A real woman always has a couple of really good and expensive dresses in her wardrobe. They play the role of a parade costume for cases when it’s necessary to make an impression.

A real woman can let herself twist men round her little finger. She may stay mysteriously silent, complain that she’s bored, act stupid or start a passionate scientific argument. Nobody can make a woman answer a question if she doesn’t want to, and nobody can force her explain the reasons for doing/not doing this or that. Acting so capricious and unbalanced is a simple way to get a man attached to a woman. Don’t hesitate to make a man spend as much money on you as he can afford – he will never leave an object of capital investments.

A woman knows her worth, but makes everyone believe she’s priceless…She knows how to make men dance to her tune and she really enjoys it.

Christ with a cigarette.

The other results you get from the search “be a real woman” are almost completely equally pointless or niche-like, nothing general about all women and what it takes to be a “real” one. There’s stuff about being a good chaste Christian woman, stuff about “real beauty”, and stuff about sex changes. By the end of the FIRST PAGE of results, the search phrase is not even found. But Google “be a real man.” It goes on and on, page after page, about honor and strength and hard work and discipline and how to fix shit around the house.

Once again I feel the most appropriate question to ask at this juncture is what the fuck?

You know what I think? I think women have utterly FAILED each other. It has almost nothing to do with men, at all. Men have this shit worked out, they have a code by which they judge each other, and it’s a good code for the most part. There’s no mystery among men about how to behave in order to be taken seriously and have a life you can look back on when you’re old and feel pride.

What do women do? We sit around and we either bitch about men or we bitch about other women. Men don’t do what we want them to do, and other women are competition for all those men we don’t even want because they don’t obey us, so we’re never happy.

What we don’t do, or at least I don’t see it very often and believe me, I’ve looked, is establish our own code for judging others based on qualities that really matter, like men have.

Oh dear. I'm about to say some things that are going to make a whole lot of people very, very angry.

Again. Yee ha.

First of all, I agree with Rachel to a limited extent. But I also take issue with part of her argument. She blames the difference in standards squarely on women, claiming that men have defined their own standard for themselves and that women have, unlike men, singularly failed to do likewise:

I think women have utterly FAILED each other. It has almost nothing to do with men, at all. Men have this shit worked out, they have a code by which they judge each other, and it’s a good code for the most part. There’s no mystery among men about how to behave in order to be taken seriously and have a life you can look back on when you’re old and feel pride.

But is this really the case? I don't think it's that simple at all.

Neither men nor women exist in a vacuum. We react to rewards and disincentives, to signals we receive in response to our actions as we interact with other human beings. These are all cues we use to adjust our behavior and bring it into line with what society expects of us. To the extent that some of us are adept enough to figure out how to give other people what they want (i.e., to trade what pleases others for what we want in life), we are "successful". We get hired, date, marry, breed offspring. And it's not a simple equation either. Mere physical attractiveness isn't the only thing that matters. We've all seen people who aren't all that good looking, but who charm their way through life by virtue of their vitality or their ability to win the affection of others. But at the end of the day, I have always suspected that what really drives all of this is biology.

So the "real man" qualities Rachel quoted:

Hardworking, honorable, honest, dutiful, protective of family and country. Brave, courageous, rational, reasonable, kindhearted, and respectful. Knowledgeable about how to survive in rough times and how to solve problems. And so on.

A woman shouldn’t solve man’s problems. This prerogative is male. A man is the one supposed to take care of a woman.

Because - according to the biological imperative - men love the chase and despise anything won too easily we learn (sorrowfully, because duplicity is not our nature) to cultivate at least the appearance of being hard to get:

A real woman can let herself twist men round her little finger. She may stay mysteriously silent, complain that she’s bored, act stupid or start a passionate scientific argument. Nobody can make a woman answer a question if she doesn’t want to, and nobody can force her explain the reasons for doing/not doing this or that. Acting so capricious and unbalanced is a simple way to get a man attached to a woman. Don’t hesitate to make a man spend as much money on you as he can afford – he will never leave an object of capital investments.

Oopsie. Did I say a bad word? Open an issue of Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Maxim... guys, I can stop any time now. Are any of those women NOT WEARING MAKEUP?

Let me put this to you another way. HOW MANY OF THOSE WOMEN, IN PROPORTION TO... SAY, THE POPULATION OF WOMEN WALKING AROUND INSIDE YOUR AVERAGE GROCERY STORE (where we go to stare at each others clothes, hair, makeup, and enormous breasts, HAVE HAD THEIR BREASTS SURGICALLY AUGMENTED?

I rest my case.

Yeah. Women alter our appearance in often painful ways "for other women". Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

BULLSHIT.

We do these things for the oldest reason in the book: to attract men. Just as men learn to be "sensitive" for the oldest reason in the book: because women prefer mates who look like good husband material. We want a guy who will, at least occasionally, appear to listening raptly when we yammer on about our feeeeeeeeelings.

I think there is a 'real woman' standard.

I just think that it's harder to describe that the male one, because being a woman is not as straightforward as being a man. Women have many roles in life and unlike the way men deal with the work/home disconnect, with women everything in life is wrapped into one big ball. You can't separate the different pieces of our lives - we don't compartmentalize. Most of us don't go to work and "turn off" Mom/sister/wife/friend/lover mode from 9 to 5. There is no 'off' button to help us detach ourselves. We are constantly performing a mental juggling act: the regression equations are competing with Aunt Edna's tumor and little Joey's forgotten homework and our sister's failing marriage and the argument we had last night with our spouse. We can't help it. It bites, sometimes.

Carrie and I were talking last week about the problem of training young military wives to be more self-sufficient on long deployments. I observed that the Marine Corps does such a great job with training Marines. They obviously know a great deal about leadership, and yet they apply none of this knowledge when it comes to helping young women deal with family separation. It's puzzling: it's as though the Marine Corps views wives as somehow not fully human. But we respond the same way men do to inspiration and leadership. We are not children who need to be taken by the hand by the Nanny State and given Free BabySitting and Mental Health Counseling.

I will never forget the first year I was married. I was nineteen on my wedding day.

As a young bride with a newborn baby, I struggled to adjust to living far from home, family and friends. I had recently quit college and my job to stay home with the baby. Our parents (on both sides) helped us, but still we had very little money and only one car, which went off to school with my husband every day. It was as if I had been pulled up by the roots and abruptly left on the sidewalk somewhere like a forlorn little seedling someone forgot to plant. My husband was busy. He was taking a full course load and had a job, plus he played rugby and was in a fraternity. This did not leave a lot of time to massage my fragile ego: he had been thrust into a man's responsibilities at a tender age. Even then, I realized how lucky I was to have him. He is one in a million.

Back then, there was no calling people long distance. That cost too much money. There was no Internet or email. And we couldn't afford a television set. I laugh now when I read about young military wives struggling with loneliness and 'paycheck-to-paycheck' living. We had no health insurance. We had to pay the hospital a $700 non-refundable deposit just for the 'privilege' of not being turned away when I went into labor.

Been there. Done that. As I recall, there was no T-shirt.

I also recall not being all that miserable most of the time, even with four months of fairly bad undiagnosed postpartum depression that I got through just fine because I was too dumb and to know what was wrong with me. I just thought I was a big sissy until I quit nursing and the daily crying jags disappeared like magic.

The thing is, when I was first married I started off all wrong and it was my own damned fault.

I am a straightforward person. When I love, I love with my whole heart. And I do love my husband, so I threw my whole being into my new marriage. Every day he went off to school and I stayed home with the baby. And I was bored out of my mind, and a Bored Princess is a Very Bad Thing. I had been to an Ivy League school once. He was attending a very good college in Virginia. There had never been any doubt I am his intellectual equal, but now there was a bit of a disparity in our stations: he was in college and I was a homemaker. So I read voraciously and tried to make our little apartment welcoming when he came home. I took the baby for long walks and picked wildflowers to put on the table. I made elaborate meal plans and tried recipes (how many ways can you cook Armor chipped beef? Dear God help me, I can tell you). And the harder I tried, it seemed, the more strained things became between us.

Did I mention earlier that men like the chase? That they never respect that which is won too easily?

It's true, you know. It took me a long time to figure out what had gone wrong. It takes me an even longer time to lose my temper. A year and a half, to be exact. But on those extremely rare occasions when I finally do, the fireworks are generally worth the price of admission.

I threw a glass of Sambucca at him. Fortunately, I throw like a girl. I missed.

Did you know Sambucca eats holes in drywall? Or was that the glass?

Anyway, it made for one of those 'funny stories' that aren't funny at the time and I learned an important lesson about myself. It was that if you do something for another person, you must only do it because you enjoy the doing. Never because you secretly expect something in return. I see women do that a lot: we 'trade'. And men react by withdrawing because it makes them feel guilty. They know they are being set up, and they rightly resent being manipulated. Relationships have to be roughly equal. They won't survive long if one party or the other feels indebted.

Women, though, will often throw themselves into friendships, marriages, jobs without considering the personal cost. We are little builders. In an article I read recently, the author uttered a thought I've often had myself: we women often forget that it's awfully hard to help others if we forget to put the oxygen mask on our own faces first. This may well be the mother in us, and not all women are like this. In fact, we don't uniformly behave this way throughout our lives. As my children have grown up and my marriage has matured, I have found myself behaving less like a traditional female and more like a man (though I'll never be exactly like my husband).

And he has, in his turn, become far more thoughtful and considerate than the already remarkable young man I married all those years ago. This is the best thing about marriage; we take on the best parts of our partners, growing and changing over the years to resemble each other. The truly strange thing is that as traditional marriage declines in popularity, I believe societal pressure is beginning to effect the same strange transformation on men and women that matrimony once did. Women are becoming slightly more aggressive and outspoken and men are becoming more considerate and thoughtful. As long as it is not taken to an extreme and neither sex is made to feel ashamed of the essential qualities of femininity or masculinity, I do not think this is a bad thing.

As Rachel observed so insightfully, the "real" man or woman is, after all, a good adult. But I also think women have, for all the bashing they endure in the blogosphere (and it has become something of a spectator sport to bash women of late online) a bit harder job because, in general, we do more things in life. The real woman is expected to perform all the tasks a real man is expected to do. She is already expected to be hardworking, honorable, honest, dutiful, protective of family and country. Brave, courageous, rational, reasonable, kindhearted, and respectful. Knowledgeable about how to survive in rough times and how to solve problems.

You know this woman. After all, she raised you.

She is your mother, and she taught you everything you know about life. And after she raised you, or even while she raised you, she may well have held down a job outside the home, too.

The real problem is that in today's society, it is no longer fashionable to admire virtue, and so we neither recognize nor respect a real woman when we see one, unless she is cast in a male mold. Because women are expected (and rewarded) for doing everything men do each day and for doing these things well, but at the same time we are rewarded by mother nature for pretending to be fragile, feminine, and somewhat clueless, women are the Rodney Dangerfields of the world -- forever doomed to be loved, but to get no real respect.

What a shame. We don't even respect ourselves for all the very real reasons for which women deserve respect. Women are not men. They will never be men. But we have our own virtues that are worthy of admiration in their own right.

And until we learn to love and value ourselves, no one else will ever respect us.

We bloggers like to think we're important. All too often though, we just end up listening to the sound of our own bloviation. How many times do any of us do anything which has a lasting impact, that truly changes the world we live in?

How many of us can say we have ever saved a human life?

The United States is a spoiled and complacent nation. We tend to see liberty as our birthright, whining like spoiled children when we are expected to do what free men all over the world understand is the duty and responsibility of each generation: to defend our rights, lest our children grow up to know a world in which every word is uttered under the shadow of fear. We lap up the deranged ravings of journalists like Keith Olbermann when they froth at the mouth about how our civil liberties have been eroded under the evil Bush administration. But we in this country have no idea what having our "civil liberties eroded" really feels like:

While the USS Cole bombers are all free in Yemen, my friend the Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani will be sentenced May 21 in a bogus trial and likely will get the death penalty or a long prison term. He is charged with insulting the president and demoralizing the military with an article about the Sa’ada war. He is an internationally renowned journalist and one of Yemen’s most prominent and outspoken democracy advocates

...Since he was released [from prison] in 2005, Al-Khaiwani has been beaten, kidnapped, censored and imprisoned. His paper was cloned, his website blocked and his children threatened.

Al-Khaiwani was badly beaten during his arrest in June 2007. His daughter, six year old Ebba, was slapped by police so hard that she fell unconscious. After Al-Khaiwani’s arrest and release on bail, he was kidnapped and badly beaten again. The US State Department issued a statement from DC noting his abduction pointed to, “disturbing trend of intimidation and harassment of Yemen’s journalist community.”

Al-Khaiwani was charged on July 4 with aiding the rebel movement by publishing war news. As you may know, the war in Sa’ada has been called a state sponsored genocide with strong parallels to the Sudan. I published photos of the damage in Sa’ada caused by indiscriminate (or deliberate) government bombing. I interviewed rebel spokesman Yahya al-Houthi, and posted it. (This website is now banned in Yemen.) By the standard of “demoralizing the military”, I’d also be subject to the death penalty if I was in Yemen. So would half of the bloggers here in the US.

As al-Khawiani’s sentencing approaches on May 21, fear is growing in Yemen and internationally that a guilty verdict in his case will open the door for a brutal crackdown on Yemen’s already endangered journalistic community.

Here in America, journalists can and do insult the President:

Why are you wasting my time with Colbert, I hear you ask. Because he is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

They can, and all too often do, disparage and demoralize the military:

Challenge the good General on his testimony. Challenge him on the facts if you wish. But check the ad hominems at the door. Just because he wears the uniform of the day doesn't give you carte blanche to take cheap potshots at medals that commemorate battles where better men than you will ever be have fought and died for ideals they believed were worth fighting for, even if you do not.

How about a little respect? I don't see the good General treating his questioners with contempt. From where I sit, Mr. Cavett, you are beating up on the military precisely because you know they cannot - by law - fight back. How about a little decency, which used to be called ordinary politeness in the civilian world.

We listen to an almost endless amount of blather from American journalists about how they are 'speaking truth to power'. The truth is that they risk nothing and suffer no consequences for their so-called truth telling. It requires absolutely no courage to insult and demoralize those you know will not strike back at you.

Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani (unlike Keith Olbermann or any of his compadres else here in the U.S.) is a man who truly has been speaking truth to a brutally repressive dictatorship. He has paid dearly for his defense of journalistic freedom. In 2005, Jane mobilized the blogosphere in his defense.

In response to the uproar she created, the Yemeni government spared al-Khaiwani's life:

This is the guy I made the online petition for in March 2005 and the bloggers all helped and he got amnesty. Since then he and I have become good friends. He loves democracy as much as I do. And he’s paid the price for it.

Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani is a vivid reminder that liberty comes with a steep price tag: free men must be willing to risk their lives to defend their rights. Let the Yemeni government know that the world is watching, and that the United States of America does not condone the sadistic and brutal repression of Yemen's free press.

If for no other reason, do it to annoy Keith Olbermann. And pass the link on to everyone you know.

A slow turning, baby
But you learn to sway
A slow turning
Not fade away
Not fade away

Turn it up.

In a tale fit to freeze the very marrow of your bones, not only the administration of Dartmouth College, but those 18-22 year old intellectual bully-boys have inexplicably managed to make a fully-equal and intellectually capable female professional look like a complete idiot:

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Quelle horreur! Can one imagine anything more unprecedented or alarming to a progressive eco-feminist than a classroom full of American college students arguing about ideas? Unless, perhaps, it is the prospect of a classroom full of young people Questioning Authority?

Clearly the dominant patriarchal hegemony is rife with rigid, authoritarians threatened by anyone who challenges their ideas... by which we mean Ms.Venkatesan, who not only cancelled a week's worth of classes in a fit of pique, but sent the following unintentionally hilarious email to her students:

Yesterday evening, to the students of her winter class, Ms. Venkatesan dispatched this message:

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
To: “WRIT.005.17.18-WI08”:;, Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit

Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:

I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom [sic] shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [sic] discrimination laws.

The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit.

I am also writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day.

Priya

But it gets better (oh yes - you knew it would). Ms. Venkatesan sent a similarly illiterate email to a smaller group of students against whom (she said) she was planning to file suit specifically. Joe Malchow responds with withering commentary:

At least seven members of the Class of 2011 received this grave epistle, indicating that they are to be named as defendants in a legal outing under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The students, of course, are entirely safe; as they do not employ the writing instructor, it can only be said that their evaluations of her performance—de rigueur, frank, and ostensibly anonymous—did not flatter, and that she is upset. But of course the students could not have discriminated against her.

Ms. Venkatesan also informs Dartblog that she is “pursuing a legal suit against members/former members of the Dartmouth community,” those being Christopher H. Lowrey of the medical school and his four-person research team. “Another faculty member,” Ms. Venkatesan tells us, “that figures prominently in my list of grievances…is Thomas H. Cormen, Ph. D., Director of the Writing Program (now the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric) and Professor of Computer Science.”

This column solicited a thought or two from Priya Venkatesan, and was rewarded with the following:

The students I am naming in this suit were mostly from Winter 08 term with a few from Fall. Essentially, I am pursuing litigation to see if I have a legal claim, that is, if the inappropriate and unprofessional behavior I was subjected to as a Research Associate and Lecturer at Dartmouth constitutes discrimination and harrassment [sic] on the basis of ethnicity, race and gender. This includes not just students, but a few faculty members that I worked with. At this stage, I am making a detailed list of names in a chronology of what people said and did while I was at Dartmouth in a very factual manner and approaching a New Hampshire attorney who specializes in professional malpractice with the chronology and he will make the determination if I have grounds for litigation.

A redaction of errata seems a suitable place to begin. A class action suit? This involves a population of plaintiffs similarly aggrieved; Ms. Venkatesan is contemplating legal action against a population of defendants similarly, in her mind, guilty. Classes bring suit; they do not answer it. Thus it is not a class action, but a series of civil complaints against students and employees of the College and, perhaps, the College corporate.

Title VII does not include language about harassment—only about discrimination. Courts have occasionally elected to find harassment illegal under the code, but only, like discrimination, employer-perpetrated harassment. Since students are not Ms. Venkatesan’s employers, they cannot be named as defendants in a Title VII case.

Finally, there is the bit about “pursuing litigation to see if I have a legal claim.” This is not an advisable course of action. In fact, legal experts consulted by this page suggest that litigating to explore the possible existence of a legal claim is the precise opposite of how the modern judicial system operates.

The big bully. He is undoubtedly motivated by a desire to crush her strong, womanly essence. And isn't that just_like_a_man?

In a final update, our Derring Doyenne displays more of the singular steadfastness of purpose and mental acuity that have made her a veritable poster girl for the eco-feminist movement.

All of which just goes to prove what we often remark: Charlotte Allen was right. Some women seem determined to play into the worst stereotypes about females. In fact, we just made that a category.

Moron...

Update: The Editorial Staff swears we did not make this up to make Ms. Venkatesan look smarter:

HEH. The biter, bit. "It seems that white feminists and Leftists are a big bunch of racists, too. . . . White Privilege was to blame… No wonder Amanda Marcotte thinks Free Will is overrated."

And doesn't this echo (eerily) our earlier Obama post?

You're not racist because of the content of your character, you're racist because of the color of your skin!