PoliticaObscura

Blogger Writes About Organ Donation:

Wonderful piece about the power of organ donation and the ability of weblogs to tell important stories.

Maureen Dowd - Woman Hater:

The following is a Maureen Dowd piece on a remake of The Stepford Wives.

The question one is left with is, "Who is she writing about?" Granted, one of the fun things about reading the NY Times (and often The Boston Globe) is the fact that their writers don't know any "real people", only wealthy, Leftist Nuts. But even this latest Dowd piece goes beyond the typical useless Times drivel...a fun read....I can't wait to show it to my wife so she can learn from Dowd what typical American women worry are worrying about....

In the long interval between the two [Stepford Wives] movies, women have turned themselves into Stepford wives.
They can no longer wince at their mates because they have frozen their faces with Botox. They're sedated with Prozac, Zoloft, Xanax and Paxil. (As one mother told New York magazine about rampant pill-popping: "People say `I'm anxious' and I think, how quaint.")
Women puff their lips, balloon their breasts and suck fat from their hindquarters. The spring fashions were so hourglass sexy, frothy and pastel, they were dubbed "Stepford style" in the Times fashion section.

Martha Stewart (a haywire robot with a team of lawyers) led women — and culture — back to the wifely arts of cooking, gardening, decorating and flower arranging. Hillary Clinton, once so angry about tea and cookies, is now so eerily glazed and good-natured that she could be the senator from Stepford.

If 70's feminism produced the squat and blunt Betty Friedan, this decade has produced the sensual and zaftig Nigella Lawson, who wryly calls herself a "domestic goddess" and is a purveyor of what fans call "gastro porn." More of a male fantasy than Stepford husbands could ever conjure up, the British cooking show hostess is always in the kitchen purring hot home economics advice such as mangoes are "best eaten in their natural state, and preferably in the bath."

There's even a retro trend among women toward deserting the fast track for a pleasant life of sitting around Starbucks gabbing with their girlfriends, baby strollers beside them, logging time at the gym to firm up for the he-man C.E.O. at home.

As Mr. Rudnick slyly points out: "Men and women are working in tandem to create the Stepford wife of tomorrow. Once the technology advances, there'll be a Botox babe who runs on solar power."

Slight Criticism of the Hub Blog:

Just a small bit of criticism about the Hub Blog today.

Blogger Jay Fitzgerald includes this following entry:

'The repeal was gaveled through on a voice vote,' Part III: Brian Moroney makes all the right connections: Clean elections, the smoking ban, bilingual education, charter schools. What the hell else did they put in that bill? ... Moroney makes another interesting connection: Why the hell didn’t Republicans ask for a roll-call vote? Maybe that explains why Mitt has been so quiet on this issue. ... Wayne Woodlief is covering roughly the same ground (pay-to-view).

In the above entry, Hub Blog links to Boston Herald columnist Woodlief's article that bloggers must pay to read.

On principle, I am against bloggers linking to "pay per view" columns. One of the most critical aspects of the Blogosphere is the ability to discuss a subject or column or idea and link to some of the primary sources regarding the topic being discussed. To remain part of the "biosphere dialogue", those whose ideas wish to be included must keep the links to those ideas free and unencumbered. It is for that reason I won't link to pay per view columns nor to Boston Globe or NYTimes pay per view archived articles.

Perhaps this the beginning of a discussion the wider world of blogs should discuss....Blogger Ethics: Pay Per View Links and Archives....discuss amongst yourselves....

UPDATE: Hub Blog responds-

"I usually don't link to pay-to-view columns for the reasons mentioned. But in this case, the Herald columns all dealt with issues I've been hammering away at in recent days. Peter Gelzinis, in particular, broke the Reilly/Billy story in a paid column -- and it's turned out to be one of the biggest stories in Boston in recent days. So I linked to him both yesterday and today. I've been hammering away at the Voice Vote antics of the lawmakers over the past few days, and Wayne was writing about it today. So I linked to him. Sometimes linking to pay-to-view/subscriber material is necessary to further and/or bolster an argument. ... As for your line: "Perhaps this the beginning of a discussion the wider world of blogs should discuss....Blogger Ethics: Pay Per View Links and Archives....discuss amongst yourselves" .... Ugh. Double ugh. Let's end the discussion right here. You're starting to sound like a stuffy non-blogger journalist. No 'Blogger Ethics,' please. To each his own, I say."