Karen Finney on Evolution

On MSNBC  this past weekend,  Columbia University linguist Jonathan McWhorter, upon whom I have long harbored an intellectual crush,  differentiated slow (small step) evolution, from sudden (giant step) evolution and proceeded to recommend Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter by Terrence W. Deacon which I now have on order. That mind/matter question has fascinated me since my undergrad days when I delivered an extensive oral and written report on Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man for a  philosophy course.

De Chardin made a statement that blew my 18-year-old mind when he pointed out a difference of a single atom between the structures of largest macro-molecule and the smallest micro-organism calling whatever existed in the margin between the two the true “missing link,”  thereby implying that he expected the progression to be a small step rather than a giant leap.  He spoke of a “pre-soul” in rocks, implying that all that is organic has some form of a soul – music to the ears/eyes of a pet owner.

A Jesuit and long-time missionary in China,  de Chardin’s work was refused the imprimatur of the Roman Catholic Church.  Consequently, he left his papers to Julian Huxley who published them after de Chardin’s death.  As time went by,  I did encounter Catholic clergy and religious who, like me, found in de Chardin’s brilliant work a way to accept the theory of evolution within a decidedly religious, and I would even say Catholic,  framework.

McWhorter prefaced his remarks on evolution by stating that he does not believe in God but thinks there is some kind of catalyst that activates giant steps in evolution.  I think it is God, Jonathan will have to figure out his own explanation.

Whenever we are in a political season, the subject of evolution arises in some form.  In the past, we have heard Christian fundamentalists decry the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools.  This season, however,  it has appeared in a metaphorical form, and not from the right, but rather from the incumbent Democratic administration.  We are told by spokespeople that the president’s position on gay marriage is “evolving.”   He, himself, has said as much.  This has been a small step evolution over a long period of time.  One wonders what catalyst the president requires to come to full blown evolution on this issue.

Karen Finney’s latest column in The Hill,  Evolve on marriage addresses the question with her typical balance of brilliance and empathy.  There is a cool strategic approach tempered by a heartfelt personal argument based on her own background.

One part of Karen’s personal story that always tugs at my heart is her delayed introduction to her grandfather’s home.  I just cannot imagine a granddad not being delighted with a granddaughter such as she,  so I was more than pleased to come across this paragraph in her column from yesterday.

When I was a teenager, my grandfather explained to me that the reason I wasn’t welcome in his Greensboro, N.C., home was his belief — on legal and moral grounds — that mixing of the races was a sin against the laws of nature. (He did come to realize he was wrong.) The legal and moral arguments made today about same-sex marriage being against the laws of nature or threatening the institution of marriage sound hauntingly familiar to the bigoted excuses of my grandfather and others.

Read more>>>>

There are early summer days coming.  The sun will be warming and the water in the pool will still be cold.  There will always be that one kid sitting on the edge of the pool who will not just jump in and get it over with.  In some cases, he might wade in gradually.  In other instances, his friends might simply push him in.  Sooner or later, we expect him to end up in the water.  Karen hopes the president jumps in sooner rather than later based on a background she feels she shares with him.  I have never been certain that he sees himself quite the same way that Karen sees herself.  Certain formative experiences have been different – have even occurred in different cultures on different continents.  My take is that Obama would do well to listen to her experience and reasoning on this issue.  She has, as has the Rev. Dr. William Barber (NAACP,NC President) placed the issue in the ethical/moral frame.  It is time for President Obama to take a giant step much the way Karen’s grandfather did on mixed marriage.  If he does not do this soon, he will be left behind.  As I have said before, I prefer to follow those who lead from the front lines – like Karen.

Cherry-Picking Leadership: Obama and the Boyz-Gone-Wild in Colombia

While I cannot say I was floored to hear commentators from Democratic Party defend President Obama’s innocence in the Secret Service scandal, something was eating at the back of my mind hearing comments like “It’s not the President’s fault,”  “It’s not the President’s scandal.”  Really?

Not only was the Secret Service involved,  all four branches of the military also took part.  When the CIA Director launches a raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound, Obama is the Commander-in-Chief.  He brags about it.  Takes credit. He mentioned that raid in a speech tonight without taking any responsibility for the culture that permitted the security breach in Colombia.  Sure. sure, I know.  People were worried that the President might be in danger.  I get that, but as Commander-in-Chief he also played a role, and it goes far back.

While my sisters in the party rant and rave about the attitude toward women spotlighted by the incident and how the poor President has nothing to do with this scandal, I would like to remind everyone of exactly what kind of leadership Obama established regarding incidents degrading women even before he took the oath of office.  From these pages, I offer this post from December 2008.   Please read it all the way through … especially those of you who continually contend that I have never defended Sarah Palin.  Then come back for the discussion at the end.  I am reposting it in full.  I can since it is mine.

Hillgropegate

December 13, 2008 by still4hill | Edit

OK,  mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  I left this story percolating for a long time before posting here about it.  By now everyone knows what this picture is about and who is in it.   Part of the reason it hasn’t appeared in this very appropriate blog is because Hillary’s own response to the “affair” was so typically succinct and  pithy that I could never have done better.   But while I let the pot simmer, pressure cookers were exploding all  over Hillaryland.  Here is some of the fallout,  or should I call it “shootout”?

1. Barack Obama should have jumped on this issue. Agreed.  But then,  we should know by now that his modus operandi is to sit tight, do nothing, and hope it all goes away -  that hopey/changey posture.  When the hurricanes were hitting the Gulf this season and Obama was scheduled to appear on SNL, he cancelled his appearance due to a hurricane and hurried home to Chicago and took the weekend off.   That was his chance to high-tail it to the Gulf and fill sandbags with “the folks” as McCain had for the previous hurricane (you remember  – the one when Obama sent you 3 or 4 emails from his Blackberry asking you to donate to the Red Cross – through HIS WEBSITE).  But he did not visit the Gulf that weekend.  He stayed home.  We know this about him,  he lets his chances go by.  The Hillgrope Affair was his chance to make a statement against sexism.  Of course he blew it because uh -uh  he really isn’t against sexism,  aaaaaaannndd um the new SoS is hot.  You can’t blame “the boys,” can you?!

2. Jon Favreau should be fired. Well, if he didn’t do #1, he was not about to do this.  Case closed.

3. It’s not the real Hillary, y’all!  She’s only cardboard! I might mention that it’s a very cute likeness of a very cute Hillary.  One of the many disadvantages of being female is the male misconception that physical attractiveness is the equivalent of an invitation or permission.   But the larger issue is that of symbolism.  To many, the image of Hillary represents Hillary, therefore groping the image approaches molesting the person.  (And we Homegirls are dedicated to protecting her from such invasions.   These Hillary cutouts lack Secret Service Details so the job falls to us.)  If a picture (image, graphic) is worth a thousand words, lets look at a few other image-related incidents.

There’s this:

Well we all know what THIS means, don’t we?  Anti-noose sentiments were so strong after the Jena, Louisiana incidents that at Halloween this year,  there were serious objections to decorations involving “ghosts” made of sheets hanging from trees.  Now one would think that if there were retribution in this world it might take the form of sheeted figures hanging from nooses, but even these free-form figures of white were somehow considered racist and offensive.

Meanwhile in LA (the CA one) we encountered this Halloween “decoration.”

Unlike “ghosts” which cannot be identified as personalities, this figure was highly identifiable.  And I ask you, is she not hanging from a noose?    I heard, and you might have also, that a similar display involving Obama had been erected somewhere else.  I could not find a photo of that probably because it was taken down under public pressure very quickly.  This one was allowed to remain for days “because it’s LA!”  Well, I don’t know.  I think,  even in LA, had it been Obama hanging there I might not have found the picture.   So hang her high! And hang her why? Well, she’s  Republican, and LA is historically Democrat.  She has five kids (at least three of whom have seen this display) – she’s overpopulating the planet – and she’s not pro-choice! Aaaaannnnndddd.  She’s only a woman.  It’s just a joke, folks!  Have a sense of humor.

Well the Jon Favreau Hillarygrope was also supposed to be a joke (actually, I think he’s hot for Hill).  Some jokes are insulting, offensive, and should be self-censored.  Some of us remember the cock-fight joke of Reagan’s that Nancy inadvertently leaked to the press and caused a mild dust-up in the 70′s.   Everybody let it slide.  They still loved Reagan and voted for him nonetheless.    In hindsight, we have seen Solidarnosc, lived through a brilliant and much-loved Polish Pope, and come to feel our families are not that different from that of Tony Soprano (even Bill and Hill identified).

If it were not for thousands of years of subjugation and mistreatment of women in societies and cultures the world over from which some of us had hope our own country might finally be emerging,  I might laugh too and say “How cute!”   But it isn’t cute, Jon.  Not cute, Barack.  Offensive and threatening to many women who in the past week have attested to their own reactions to this photo.  Some of these women were molested in scenes very similar to this.  The picture did not bring happy memories.  I have to agree with them.  Letting this go encourages this behavior by not condemning it.

So I stand with my sisters who say, “Barack, please fire him before he ever attends a staff meeting where Hillary is present.”

As for Hillary, here’s how she handles “bad and evil men” and “men who are obsessed with her.”

Fishslapped!!!  (For you Monty Python fans).

It is the task of the leader to set the tone and to call out violations of principle.  When Obama did nothing to discipline his speech writing posse, he gave passive permission to their antics.  He turned a blind eye and allowed a culture to grow in the speech writing room that resembled that of a frat house.  I referred to it as such several times in these pages back then.  These same frat brothers are the ones who so cleverly diverted all of Secretary Clinton’s voicemails to a phone-sex number while she was in Cairo supporting Obama’s big, historic speech there.

This set a tone.  It sent  a message.  It clarifies exactly how much this President really cares about women, our issues and concerns no matter what he says on the stump.  At the core is a failure of  leadership.

So, I argue that yes, the President bears responsibility, as Commander-in-Chief, for the behavior of the Secret Service and the military in Colombia.  He has never addressed  the incidents of 2008 and 2009 with any authority.  He has never put his foot down and told the offenders that the White House and presidential entourage are not appropriate venues for frat parties.   Abandon all hope that he ever will.  He is Commander-in-Chief when his military is capturing and killing terrorists, a role he relishes.  But he remains removed and aloof when his troops go astray – particularly when the behavior somehow demeans women.

Just sayin’.

War Among Women?

Perhaps Adam and Stacy closed down Texts to Hillary a  day too soon.  While many would agree that, indeed, they closed it at its absolutely unforeseeable pinnacle, events over the past two days resulted in a situation that simply cries out for one of their meme texts.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that for many weeks Republicans in a variety of positions: Congress,  presidential campaigns, state governments, have waged a brutal war on women, specifically our right to have access to and make decisions about our own health care.  One presidential candidate has maintained that according to his wife, who regularly meets with women on the campaign trail, the economy is of concern to women and birth control … not so much.

This position ignores the elephant in the room that women’s health care is in the context of the economy, but let’s not worry about that little wrinkle.  Mitt Romney believes that this is not an issue because his wife,  Ann,  has told him so.

Yesterday, CNN consultant  Hilary Rosen  remarked on the air  that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life igniting the age-old (it seems) battle between working moms and stay-at-home moms.  So now we have a war within a war.  Now we have a war among women – again.

The meme I was thinking of had Ann texting HRC for advice on how to answer the other Hilary based on this National Journal article.

Ann Romney Tweets; What Would Hillary Do?

By Beth Reinhard

April 12, 2012 | 8:59 AM

You’ve come a long way, baby? Somehow the 2012 campaign has regressed  back to 1992 (some would say even decades earlier) when Hillary Clinton kicked up a storm for saying “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

The perceived knock on homemakers by the Yale-trained lawyer who went on to become First Lady came to mind when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen scoffed on CNN Wednesday that the wife of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney “has never actually worked a day in her life.” It was an insulting comment that revealed a lesson still unlearned from 1992. Work is work, whether it’s a paid office job or unpaid and generally thankless child-rearing. In a move clearly aimed at ginning up outrage among stay-at-home moms, Ann Romney joined Twitter to shoot back: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”

Read more >>>>

Reinhard makes excellent points.  In the course of the war on women, many have cited our preponderance in the population and pointed out that this majority is under the control of the minority faction, that this 52% of the populace should pull together and grab the controls.  Why should we not have a larger voice?   Well, my sisters, that is never going to happen while there is division in the ranks.  She may not have meant to, but Hilary Rosen opened an old wound.  She has countered that her remark was not about Ann Romney but about single, working moms.

So, on second thought, perhaps it is fortunate that the meme site closed.   The last thing we need is gasoline poured on this fire.  Women need to get past this false division and focus on what unites us and is in our best interests.   We will never prevail and have control over our own destinies if we do not.

The War on Caterpillars

As a little girl, I liked to play with caterpillars.  I did so very gently because they were so delicate, pretty, and harmless.  Caterpillars neither bite nor sting.  Sometimes I would put one in a jar with leaves and branches and airholes in the lid hoping, eventually, to have my own butterfly.  My mother always convinced me, at the end of the day, to free the little creature into the wild where it belonged.

My next-door neighbor, Johnny, liked to squash caterpillars or decapitate them.   I think the more horrified I was by his actions, the more fun he had doing terrible things to tiny, harmless, helpless creatures.

In denial that there is a Republican War on Women, RNC chair Reince Priebus likened that claim to “a war on caterpillars.”  What an interesting allusion!   What we women are calling “the war on women” is rooted in various stances taken by  Republican candidates for president this primary season, candidates  who would ban Planned Parenthood from public funding  and oust women from the workplace,  in tandem with actions in the Republican Congress that would limit women’s access to health care.

These extreme anti-female actions and commentaries have been compared to attitudes held by the Taliban.  Looking at the life-cycle of the lowly little caterpillar, we see some validity in the metaphor.

Eventually, the fuzzy little caterpillar winds around herself a silken shell of her own weaving, the pupa stage,  wherein she wears something akin to a burka and hangs out on a branch – forbidden to circulate in public, as it were.

Science Dictionary

pupa  (py ‘pə) Pronunciation Key (click for larger image in new window) Plural pupae  (py ‘pē) An insect in the nonfeeding stage of development between the larva and adult, during which it typically undergoes a complete transformation within a protective cocoon or hardened case. Only certain kinds of insects, such as moths, butterflies, ants, and beetles, develop as larvae and pupae. Compare imago, larva, nymph.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source

Ultimately, the lovely, and equally delicate butterfly developing inside, breaks out out her shell and flutters away – but wait not in the Taliban world.  Only in the privacy of her husband’s presence may the woman free herself of the confinement of the burka.  He rules everything about her life in much the same way the Republican men (yes, I will be specific here since Olympia Snowe  has announced the end of her congressional career in opposition) appear to want to control the lives of women from their health care options through their right to work outside the home.

Using  either an unfortunate or purposeful metaphor,  Priebus cast women into a Kafkaesque role with his remarks.  Last night I went to bed as a woman.  I woke up this morning a larva.   Is there any lower echelon to which women may be assigned?

Aung San Suu Kyi’s Apparent Election Win

Secretary Clinton has released remarks about the election which I have yet to find.  When I do, they will be posted at Still4Hill.   Meanwhile, with the results still unofficial,  Aung San Suu Kyi,  carefully claims victory.  Here is this morning’s brief from Foreign Policy.

 

Monday, April 2, 2012

Aung San Suu Kyi hails ‘new era’ after apparent election win

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Top news: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi appears poised to win a seat in parliament in just the third election the country has held in the last 50 years. According to her National League of Democracy’s own tally, it won 43 of the 44 seats in contested in Sunday’s by-election. Official results have not yet been released.

“We hope this will be the beginning of a new era,” Aung San Suu Kyi said in a speech at her party headquarters in Yangon. If the results are confirmed, it would be a remarkable turnabout for the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has spent most of the past 22 years under house arrest since her victory in the 1990 general election was overturned by Myanmar’s military government.

Read more  >>>>

Great Read! Panel: Chelsea Clinton, Moderator, with Christine Quinn, Sandra Fluke, and Nicolle Wallace

OH!  This is one of those moments when I so wish I could have been in that crowd. This is a great read!   Everyone knows who Chelsea and Sandra are. New Yorkers know Christine well.  She’s the one with the auburn hair who stands just behind Michael Bloomberg’s shoulder in every shot she can get into and is probably going to be the next mayor.  Nicolle Wallace?  What can I say?  Anyone who worked as hard as she did to try to get Sarah Palin to understand campaign tactics and foreign policy (or even history and geography) gets an A+ in my book!  Wish I had been there.  Fun read.  HRC  looms large,  Rosenblum notes.

Chelsea Clinton, Christine Quinn and Sandra Fluke look forward, in different ways

The panelists after the debate. Dan Rosenblum

 By Dan Rosenblum

10:27 am Mar. 29, 2012

It’s been more than 30 years since women began to vote in greater numbers than men in presidential elections, and four since Hillary Clinton almost became the Democratic nominee for president. 

But of course Hillary didn’t make it, and it’s going to be at least another four years before a woman is nominated by either of the major parties.

“We’re either not having the right conversation,” moderator Chelsea Clinton told the seven-woman panel and a full audience last night at the 92^nd Street Y, “or we’re not being heard loudly enough, whether we’re running in heels, or flats or boots.”

READ MORE>>>> (YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!!!!)

Spring Cleaning, Ladies? Here’s a Twitter Site for YOU!

I found tweets from here on Karen Finney’s Twitter feed.  Do you have clothes you have grown or shrunk out of hanging around in your attic?  Here is a great way to share while you do your Spring cleaning!

CharltiesNSN

@CharltiesNSN

Power of 140 Characters chance 2 help local Women’s Shelter donating 1 pair of jeans or spring dress. Tweet back 4 info

North America · http://NoStressNews.com

I almost asked for more info, but the whole point seems to be the use of Twitter.