Originally posted at Talk to Action

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-five

What does McCain's use of Catholic Right icon Deal Hudson as a campaign advisor and surrogate tell us about the presumptive GOP nominee's view of American Catholics?  Simple: just like President George W. Bush, his Catholic constituency is not the rank and file faithful, but a small reactionary faction in the hierarchy here and in the Vatican.

This is significant for many reasons, not the least is that it signals a disregard for one of American Catholicism's most recent painful episodes.

I keep a notebook with me most of the time.  It is full of random thoughts, mad scribblings and general blather.  I'm thinking and hoping that what I'm slinging into the notebook might eventually make a diary, but that doesn't always happen.  There are dozens of random thoughts on various pages, each interesting but not anywhere near developed enough to merit a diary.

So, it's time to clean out the notebook.  Here is a collection of random thoughts, from the past two weeks out of my notebook.  Perfect for a Saturday afternoon.

I was just starting to like humanity, but  then Dennis Prager wrote this:

Second, "sexual harassment" is so all-inclusive as to be largely meaningless: "sexist comments about their academic abilities, sexist comments about their athletic abilities unwanted romantic attention, demeaning gender-related comments, teasing based on their appearance, and unwanted physical contact."

If a girls bra is snapped in elementary or high school; if a girl is told she should learn to throw a ball "like a guy does"; if a boy pursues a girl and fails in his pursuit -- these are all instances of sexism and sexual harassment.

What this thinking leads to is girls and women seeing themselves as victims, and almost as often to the emasculation of boys. (And then women looking to marry a man wonder where all the masculine men are).

Viggo Mortensen's "Master Chief" slaps around Demi Moore as "GI Jane" pretty badly at one point in the movie. They're doing SERE training, and he starts getting carried away with it because he doesn't want to actually see her pass the course and go into live combat situations.

So he pops her a good one in front of the rest of the trainees, who are frothing at the mouth seeing this guy beat up on a woman, and he's explaining to her that this is what the bad guys are gonna do for real and yadda yadda yadda like that, and she replies: "SUCK! MY! DICK!"

This totally destroys the whole scenario. All the guys crack up laughing, and it totally busts the Master Chief's balloon, and SERE training is over for the day, thank you, time to go home now.

Today I went to see Lioness, a movie about some of the women who are being thrust into combat situations for real.

Anthony Gutierrez, general services director for Democratic Ohio Attorney General, Marc Dann, has been accused of sexually harassing two 26 year-old women, who are part of his staff.  The harassment allegedly happened at a condo Dann shared (he moved out in December) with Gutierrez and communications director, Leo Jennings.

I heard this reported in the most lurid terms on a Dayton, OH, television station tonight and, I must say, I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle.  Dann was instrumental in the investigation into Coingate and is currently working to solve our state's problems with foreclosures, predatory lenders and failing charter schools.

The reason he is under fire for the bonuses is the fact that he and his subordinates have settled sexual harassment lawsuits, discrimination complaints etc, with dollars from the VA. To the tune of 500,000 dollars in the past few years.

While going thru all of this, and the Regional Office is in disarray and veterans wait for years to have their claims adjudicated and get stuck on the hamster wheel, the VA management decided he was doing such a great job, they awarded him 50,000 dollars in bonuses. It must be great to be a VARO Manager in the Veterans system.

I read this blockbuster item in MSNBC's FirstRead, and my jaw dropped open upon reading the article below, which details Hillary Clinton's involvement with a company that has been accused of sexual harassment, and is currenty being investigated by the EEOC.

Didn't see this on DKos yet so I thought I'd post it.

MSNBC's First Read has the following article on how the Clinton campaign is refusing to return a $170,000 donation from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment.

A call to arms in support of decency, autonomy and justice.  PLEASE NOTE AND ALERT: may be a severe TRIGGER EVENT for multiple forms of PTSD for assault survivors or others.

Yes, this is real news.

Lauterbach's uncle, Pete Steiner, said his niece didn't have any kind of relationship with her attacker and that Lauterbach had been forced to rent a room off base because of harassment at Camp Lejeune.

"She was raped," Steiner said. "The Marines, unfortunately, did not protect her, and now she's dead."

Lauterbach's attacker was the baby's father, Steiner said.

They did nothing to prevent the suspect from fleeing.

I am a football fan.  I grew up in a football family.  My dad was an assistant coach with the high school football team and I attended more scrimmages and football games than I can count.  This is one reason why I'm so appalled at reading this article (h/t Linda Hirshman at TPMCafe):

At Jets Game, a Halftime Ritual of Harassment

But first, a word from our sponsors...

There is no quick fix or instant makeover for society, the everyday work of equality is tedious and complicated and requires a long-term commitment. One need only look at the dismal approval ratings of Congress and the president to know that the divide in political representation exposed by the hearing still exists.

In 1991, I thought the Thomas hearing was an anomaly, a byproduct of the country's combined unresolved issues of gender, race, and power disparities. Today, I see the event as emblematic of many public disappointments that eat away at our confidence in government.

Recently Clarence Thomas published his autobiography.  That inevitably leads to a revisitation of his confirmation hearing, in which the testimony of Anita Hill almost torpedoed his confirmation.  In an op ed in today's Boston Globe Professor Hill revisits some of the issue that were exposed as a result of that hearing.

cross-posted at Hot Flash Report

There’s a curious storm brewing in Texas over sexual harassment and a U.S. District Court judge appointed by  George H.W Bush.  And it's about to go national. In other words, another Republican sex scandal. Can’t these boys keep their hands to themselves? And there’s the possibility of corruption as well, another favorite Republican pastime.

Here's the direct way.

That's what Anucha Brown Sanders said about sexual harassment in the workplace, reflecting upon her courtroom victory yesterday against the Knicks, Coach Isiah Thomas, and Madison Square Gardens. The former Knicks executive was awarded $11.6 million in punitive damages, with compensatory damages that are yet to be determined. She told newspapers that she hopes this lawsuit will serve as a wake-up call for employers that are tolerant of sexual harassment.

More after the jump...

Today in Manhattan, seven jurors, after viewing all of the evidence and testimony, held Madison Square Garden liable for 11.6 million dollars for a pattern of egregious conduct mostly by New York Knicks basketball coach Isiah Thomas.

While the good ole boys at MSG and certain jockasses in the media will try to portray this verdict as excessive, the facts say otherwise and it appears the jurors got it right.    

A couple of days ago, someone tried to chase me out of his diary about sex discrimination because, you know, only women can be victims of sex discrimination.  Put me in my place he did.  To him, I'm not a woman.  So I was never a victim of sexual harassment in my place of work, but maybe some other kind, I guess.

But he has "impeccable liberal credentials," so, you know, I should just shut up.

I can't do that.  I am morally and ethically incapable of shutting up.

So I remembered a piece from long ago, written in June of 1994, less than a month before the beginning of Diary.

Four and a half months ago, in response to controversies involving this site and more general issues of discrimination, underrepresentation, devaluation, harassment, stalking of and FBI-investigated death threats against women bloggers, a Take Back the Blog event took place at my humble, now soon-to-be  blogospherically defunct site.  It did not change the world or even necessarily the blogosphere, but it provided a forum for education and for the expression of personal experiences of women bloggers and women generally in the face of patriarchal expectations, patriarchal conduct and patriarchal privilege.  I consider it to have been a modest but real success.

Now I need your help.  If this diary is an improper venue in which to request this help, I request guidance and direction from Kos Media and will comport myself accordingly.