las meditaciones de victoria

Bush's Secret Rendezvous with Michael Crichton

In the Sunday Times article “Bush’s Chat with Novelist Alarms Environmentalists” the world is offered another embarrassing illustration of Bush Administration economic desire prevailing over truth and science. This article, written by Michael Janofsky, describes the meeting between President Bush and Michael Crichton discussed in Fred Barnes' recent book, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush.”  Michael Crichton’s date with the President demonstrates, yet again, Bush’s willingness to grab for anything that can qualify as research to support his modus operandi – even if it comes from one of our nation’s most popular fiction writers. Apparently, Bush is now courting Michael Crichton for counsel on how to debunk global warming. They "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement" Barns recalls. This meeting was kept on the down low, although I’m not sure why. One would have to ask the insidious Karl Rove who set up the meeting and probably arranged for its secrecy as well.

Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes aside, the UN sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has consistently asserted that human activities are influencing global warming. These scientists have called on nations to curb activities that contribute to global climate change.  Meanwhile US media has offered a biased amount of coverage to global warming skeptics which has benefited Bush, who has consistently used dissenting voices from scientific theory to fuel policies favoring industry over regulations that protect our planet. This pattern of favoritism not only affects the environment.  Recent tragedies, like Hurricane Katrina, were also  influenced by the Bush model of economics and partisan political gain over security when money was diverted away from necessary projects like levee repair to fund vestigial structures such as foot bridges in Alaska.  With the recent mining disasters, similar misfortune has befallen the Mine Safety and Health Administration whose standards have been weakened in favor of industry since Bush took office in 2001.

For me it’s clear that debunking global warming serves only two purposes – partisan political gain and juicy fictional environmental thrillers. Otherwise, what are the debunkers fighting for? Curbing modernization? Limiting energy conservation? Reducing efficiency? As for Crichton, I encourage him to stay off the senate floor and to stick to ER’s and man-eating dinosaurs so we don’t end up in the ER ourselves, or worse off extinct! 

Coretta Scott King: Observations in Passing

I watched the funeral of Coretta Scott King and cried. I cried from my living room floor as I sorted CDs and filled a grocery bag with Grammy winners that had gathered dust and were pushed back behind the righteous classics and new favorites. By the time Bernice King took the pulpit, I was vacuuming. I turned off the vacuum to hear her mother’s challenge, “Choose this day,” and wondered why so few leaders have chosen non-violence. It’s so clear that the only future our leaders will lead us to when they choose the alternative is no future at all. I cried tears for a past I wasn’t yet born into and for a future I cannot be certain I will survive. Michael Bolton sang a song he wrote for Coretta Scott King, and I cried some more. I cried for all the people who missed the opportunity to say goodbye to a woman who knew more courage than I will ever know. When Jimmy Carter spoke I felt like an old friend was scolding me. George W. Bush grinned from behind President Carter as he reminded the nation of the mistake we once made wire-tapping the woman lying in the coffin before him. As he spoke his age and wrinkles slipped off his face, and he became the very first President I ever saw on Channel 8 warning the nation about the copious amounts of foreign oil we consumed. I watched as he predicted the mess we are in today. Reverend Lowery rhymed, Maya Angelou sang, Bill Clinton smiled, and embassies burned. Who will have the courage to choose this day to fight for true justice, to walk as far as it takes for true freedom, and to stand in non-violence where Coretta Scott King had found her true holiness? I wish I could say “me, I commit,” but non-violence isn’t just an idea I can sign up for. It is not just a belief I can choose to believe in; it is not a political party I will have the opportunity to vote for in November. I have to be willing to sit down on a dirty sidewalk for non-violence, to resist an angry mob for non-violence, to boycott my comforts for non-violence, to change everything I know and love for non-violence. I cried as I said goodbye to Mohandas, Martin, Cesar, Rosa and Coretta lying flower-draped in a room filled with fear and apprehension and certainly not the hope with which our past leaders once filled us so completely.

Looking Backwards

In my recent research for a new start-up I came across two trends in women’s publishing (or lack thereof) that I had previously overlooked. In an article called “Feminist Fatale,” on the website Independent Women’s Forum, author Charlotte Allen remarks that contemporary female intellectuals have limited their public appeal by restricting their subjects to feminist ideology. She mourns the loss of public female intellectuals and reflects on the great women thinkers of the past. At the same time Maureen Dowd, in her recent book Are Men Necessary?, discusses the abysmally low contributions of women to our nation’s op-ed pages.

Charlotte Allen’s article was inspired by the death of Susan Sontag, a leading female intellectual. Her article points out that highly articulate female public intellectuals – the Hannah Arendt’s of our past – whose readership was not limited to the walls of academia and whose subjects covered the full range of social and literary issues has become nearly extinct. Allen notes that contemporary women’s intellectual writing is narrowed by the lens of feminist ideology. She sees this as a failure of feminism to produce female public intellectuals by stripping women of their appetite for ideas that range beyond this narrow perspective.

Unfortunately, this trend is uniquely female. As Allen points out there is no shortage of contemporary male public intellectuals. These men write for readership beyond their fields and debate a variety of subjects including science and politics, high and low art, literature, evolution, the Iraq war, campus sexual mores and the origin of the universe. On the other hand, modern female intellectuals – Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, Deborah Tannen, and Natalie Angier – qualify as professional feminists not public intellectuals because what they write about rarely expands beyond the scope of feminist ideology.

Has this trend affected women’s presence on the op-ed pages or is their low representation the continued result of male-dominated territory? Maureen Dowd is not alone in her criticism of this trend. Susan Estrich went public with her complaints to Los   Angeles Times’ editor Michael Kinsey. Anne Applebaum, of the Washington Post admitted, with much sarcasm, that she’s getting lonely. Maybe Dowd’s next book should be Are Women’s Opinions Necessary?

Cynicism aside, women’s opinions are very necessary. We see the world from a point-of-view that is unique to our gender and to our experiences as women.  Given the importance of women’s opinion, do we share any of the responsibility for our scarcity by limiting our intellectual voices to issues of feminist ideology? While publishers must be made aware of the sorry state of affairs on their op-ed pages, women need to expand beyond their base and work harder to reach the general public.  We must tackle the same broad political and social issues that male public intellectuals regularly address today. If not, we will continue to rely on Susan Sontag, Simone de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein, Mary McCarthy, Simone Weil and the other brilliant women who engaged in public intellectual thought. We will look backwards rather than forwards.