Dear Readers,

On the occasion of Elena Kagan's presumptive confirmation to the Supreme Court, http://http//www.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?abbr=daily2_&page=NewsArticle&id=25389&security=1201&news_iv_ctrl=-1, I'm posting my piece, "The Supremes, and We're Not Talking Motown Here," which appeared in the Huffington Post and in RH Reality Check earlier this summer.

Since I first posted this piece, I've received a whole lot of interesting comments--a lot of people care a whole lot about our Supreme Court, and that's a wonderful thing: Whoever said civic engagement has diminshed, that we're "bowling alone" (these days) isn't part of (our) crowd. And I, for one, am very grateful for knowing that.

A great first-2010-August-weekend to all.

Rebecca
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THE SUPREMES, AND WE'RE NOT TALKING MOTOWN HERE

So, maybe, there’s yet another big difference between the sexes: While nice boys finish last, nice girls finish first.

Just look at today’s news: I ask you, what’s a bigger achievement than being selected as a Supreme Court Justice? Yup, just pause, and think for a moment about those words, “supreme” and “justice,” next to your name. How cool would that be?

In his first year in office, President Obama has had the amazing good fortune to get two Supreme Court picks. In both cases, he picked a girl from New York. [How cool is that, for a(nother) girl from New York: me. Let me count the ways. But keep reading; it's not all that good.]

OK, so let’s be serious here. Do you see a pattern here? And, this time, I’m not talking about the one in which all the brilliant New York girls are being picked for starring roles.

The pattern is: Make sure you're a really nice girl, first and foremost.

What’s that, you ask?

Well, taking a page from the Sonia Sotomayor/Elena Kagan, New York, nice girl (no, "New York" and "nice" is not an oxymoron) playbook, it’s study really hard; get really good grades; go to Princeton (both); go to Harvard Law (Elena), or go to Yale Law (Sonia); have important male mentors; stay single as you’re making your way up the career ladder, so no husband’s choices get in your way, or put you in a bad light; well, you get the drift.

In fact, these two women who finished first: Elena, the one about to have “supreme” and “justice” next to her name, and Sonia, the one who already has it, are nice girls, in all the ways that actually matter, if you want to have words like “supreme” or “justice” next to your name.

In fact, these days, as Sonia and Elena have now proved, you can even safely forget the baby-making and the finding a nice guy, or even a(nother) nice girl (keep reading on the latter point). Just don't forget to study hard, and never, never talk out-of-turn.

And, do forget, for sure, that old saw, which used to make some of us feel better: “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” http://thinkexist.com/quotation/well-behaved_women_rarely_make/180481.html.
In fact, those badly behaved women, and, believe me, I know where-of I speak, only make history of the upset-the-apple-cart kind, not the kind that leads to “supreme” and “justice” next to one's name.

In sum, these two New York nice girls, just like those two nice Illinois girls, Michelle Obama (Harvard Law) and Hillary Clinton, she of the when it came right down to it I did stand by my man school, (Yale Law), have never met a test they couldn’t ace, and, well, cooking or housekeeping, the used-to-be sine qua non of nice girls; well, there’s help for that: Just ask Michelle or Hillary.

On the personal front, Sonia Sotomayor seems kind of like Valerie Jarrett (Michigan Law, daughter at Harvard Law). While married early-on, there was no husband around during the formative years of her career, when the difficult decisions needed to be made, when one’s decisions might have required consideration of the desires of another ambitious adult.

On the other hand, Elena Kagan has never married, and, at least as far as we know so far, she hasn’t had any long-term intimate relationship, (male or female), requiring accommodation to that person’s career or personal goals.

And, doubly lucky for Elena Kagan (we have made some real progress here), the White House seems to be comfortable handling, albeit somewhat defensively, the assertions that the President may have just nominated a LESBIAN to the SUPREME COURT! [It really is delicious when you think about it.]

So, what’s my point in all this, you ask? Well, my point is it’s that gosh-darned “nina modela” thing, that “nice girl”/model child syndrome one more sickening time.

So, that’s ridiculous, you say? It's ridiculous to feel bad when a woman finished first--when lord knows not many women, of any kind, finish first anywhere, much less in the run-up to the Supreme Court?

Well, it's not ridiculous, I say, because it’s the bad girls, like me, who make these good (nice) girls’ dreams come true. And, to add insult to injury, these nice girls can maybe even be lesbians!

We screamed, and scream; we hollered, and holler. And what do we get? Somebody’s back, as they shut the door in our face(s). “She’s a pistol," they say, and not with admiration.

What do they get? The Supreme Court (Elena and Sonia), or the West Wing (Valerie), or, for that matter, and not so bad either, the East Wing (Michelle and Hillary).

Fact is, Elena stood silent, while I screamed. Fact is, Elena was "canny," while I was fervent. Fact is, Elena was a coalition-builder, while I was an advocate. Fact is, Elena didn’t express her political views, while I did nothing but. Fact is, Elena wrote little, while I wrote untold speeches and press releases, all with the same basic headline: We (women) want more. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/us/politics/10kagan.html

[NOTE: I’m using myself as a stand-in for those women lawyers who will
never be considered for “supreme” and “justice” next to their names. I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t run this race.]

Is this ironic, or what? This is Elena, the putative lesbian, we’re talking about. This is Elena, who, odds-are, will be doing nothing but express her opinions for the next forty or so years, if her’s and the President’s good luck continue, and just because she kept her mouth shut in the early rounds. It's not only ironic, it's bewildering.

Ironic? Let me count the ways.

--Let others do the political talking, so you don’t have any politically-incorrect YouTube videos.

--Let others do the writing, so you don’t have any controversial law review articles.

--Let others interrupt their careers to follow a spouse, or pay for a spouse’s education, while you forge ahead in line.

--Let others fight for women’s reproductive rights, while you benefit from that fight.

--Let others advocate for women as a group, while you advocate for yourself.

Yes, all this said, I’m still very happy that a(nother) non-Protestant (more progress, here) woman from New York is going to be a Supreme Court Justice. That makes the Supremes, in case you’re counting, the (really cool, not Motown, but Big Apple) Supremes: Ruth, Sonia, and Elena.

But I’m not that happy: In fact, as I think about it, I think I was happier when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, a woman who found a way to be a women’s advocate, and a wife, and a mother, as well as a way to be a brilliant lawyer and judge, and, finally, yes (!), a Supreme.

And, as I think about it, Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be a better role model for today’s young women than soon-to-be Justice Kagan or now Justice Sotomayor. For, unlike Kagan and Sotomayor, Justice Ginsburg has
lived the life that most women live, and yet she found a way to be a Supreme, notwithstanding.

Labels: Elena Kagan, Hillary Clinton, Huffington Post, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Michelle Obama, rh reality check, U.S. Supreme Court, Valerie Jarrett

Dear Readers,


Here is my July Today's Chicago Woman/ChicagoNow blogpost.
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Maybe you’ve noticed that a lot of my Today's Chicago Woman blogposts have a history flavor to them.

This is no accident. I love reading, and writing-about, American (women’s, especially) history: So much so that I studied American history in graduate school, and wrote my master’s thesis on Jane Addams and the relationships among the women who created Hull House.

But, shortly thereafter, I realized that the role of college professor wasn’t right for me. I loved the stuff I might get to profess about, but I needed to find a more vital and public venue in which to study history and find it instructive—for today’s Chicago woman, for that topic was my real passion.

Well, one of those venues is this one, the pages of Today’s Chicago Woman.

Indeed, I think that today’s Chicago woman can benefit, in myriad ways, from understanding (keep reading), the work and life of her foremothers and fore-sisters, most especially the work and life of those with deep Chicago connections (again, keep reading).

So, here goes my women’s history lesson for this month’s—Independence Day’s month—(today’s) Chicago woman. Notably, I’m thinking July Fourth, Independence Day, as I write.

Though I admit I’m actively thinking about those last few days off baking in the sun, going to the beach, and hanging-out with friends and family, never far from my mind these last (June, May, April) —and soon-to-be, July!—days is the Gulf oil spill, the disaster BP has wrought.

To give credit where credit is due, as we discussed the “BP massacre” one recent night, my husband reminded me, Rebecca, the amateur historian and fierce political blogger, who should have this fact on the tip-of-her-tongue at all times, that it was an amazing woman, who first said what time it is about “Big Oil.”

That would be Ida (Minerva) Tarbell, who, over a century ago, wrote: “They [“Big Oil,”] had never played fair, and that ruined their greatness for me.”

And that’s one of Ida Minerva’s milder comments.

And who was Ida Minerva writing about? Well, none other than Standard Oil (at its last, headquartered in Chicago and employing hundreds of today’s Chicago women), a cousin of BP, bought by BP a few years back.

In 1904, Tarbell published The History of the Standard Oil Company. “…[o]ne of the most thorough investigations ever written of how a business monopoly exploits the public by using unfair tactics, [it] has been called…’arguably… the single most influential book on business ever published in the United States.’”

Now, this bit about Ida Minerva isn’t some obscure bit of women’s history trivia, of interest only to those of us whose favorite form of trivial pursuit is the one about women in American history.

No. This bit about Ida Minerva is really, really important for all today’s Chicago women, today and everyday.

Why? Well, because Ida Minerva had the guts, the guts to get to the gut (wrenching) heart-of-the-matter, as I noted above, over a century ago, about Big Oil’s avaricious and unending willingness to exploit women, men, the environment, the vanity of public officials, you-name-it; the guts to write about the willingness of Big Oil to exploit whatever in pursuit of its holy grail, Big Profits.

You could say that this is all a justifiable, totally reasonable, smart (businessman’s) reaction to the American public's "stuck-on-stupid" approach to (not) saving our environment, because of our well-of-desire for cheap oil, but I think this analysis too facile.

No, there is something bigger at-hand here, and that something is our repeatedly-apparent, for over two centuries and counting, unwillingness to understand and take-hold-to what Independence Day is really about: American days un-dogged by the willful and injurious actions of British, or, for that matter, any other, kings.

Hear this: Ida Minerva, just like another amazing American woman journalist named Ida, Ida B. Wells, who I’ve also written about in these pages did what we all need to do everyday, not just on the Fourth of July: She celebrated the Fourth of July, Independence Day, not by going to the beach, but by writing tirelessly and unceasingly about the meaning of the Fourth of July, Independence Day: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,”un-dogged, even in the dog days of summer, by the willful and injurious actions of kings.

Forget the beach, the barbecue, and the brew: July Fourth is about our independence from kings’ oppression. On July 4th 1776, it was the oppression of King George; on July 4th 2010, it’s the oppression of another, and no better, British king, British Petroleum.

Go here, today’s Chicago women: and tell the BP British king to go back where he came from, just like our ancestors told King George he should do; we today’s Chicago women, are just not having you here on our shores.
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Sincerely,

Rebecca

Subscribe to my blog here.

Labels: BP, Fourth of July, Gulf Oil Spill, Today's Chicago Woman