Criticism

Enough with the commentary and analysis. Make way for criticism! Went back to grad school today, plunging right in with English 602: “Critical Theory and Literary Criticism.” U Md. let me take classes in graduate school on “advanced special status.” My tax dollars at work! (We’ll see if I’m still “special” after 14 weeks.) My fellow students are a nice mix –theater majors, poets, comp. lit scholars, and a few brash young PhD students who naturally knew the secret to finding the textbook before the first class, even before the prof. posted the info. The professor is, well, a self-described Theory “Jane” (not Jock, thank you very much) whose first hour lecture seemed devoted  to scaring us into dropping the class. I have confidence that my classmates will stay put, or even urge their friends to register! We’ll bloody well learn from divine Professor S!

Tantrum

Was anyone else as annoyed as I was by Howard Kurtz’s tantrum
in today’s Washington Post? Waah, waaah, waah, someone forgot to kiss up to the press! Oh, puhleeze. Why can’t the press, oh, say, do its job and report the campaign?

Tracers

My daughter N. often exclaims, “everything traces back to Chicago!” Those were certainly our formative years. Chicago is where I started my career, met my husband, bought my first home, birthed my two older daughters, forged my deepest friendships, gained my political education, discovered labor history, and confirmed my enduring passion for my native Great Lakes bioregion.

Spending the 80s and 90s in Chicago also meant that we crossed paths with lots of prominent Democrats. (I blogged about this before, here.

Back in the 80s, the public interest law firm in Chicago to work for was Davis, Miner, Barnhill, and Galland. True, serving an assistant corporation counsel during the Harold Washington administration, as I did, also won progressive brownie points, but Davis, Miner was hot, hot, hot. Name partner Judd Miner became Harold’s second Corporation Counsel, following James Montgomery’s return to private practice. Name partner Allison Davis, who was later to provide technical advice to the producers of the film version of Phillip Roth’s The Human Stain, was extremely successful in real estate practice, and also did his own real estate development. Chuck Barnhill moved to Madison, Wisconsin, but somehow stayed affiliated with the firm. And curly haired George Galland was active in the progressive bar association, the Chicago Council of Lawyers. The brilliant Brigette Arimond, then an associate at Davis, Miner, joined the corporation counsel for a time, and years later popped up with my dear friend Cyd as a fellow Bell magnet school mom .

Naturally, I had to chuckle when I read today’s Washington Post column, “The Fact Checker,” in which Michael Dobbs susses out a line of attack against Senator Barack Obama. I sat right up when I reached the fifth graph, quoting Obama’s “supervisor at the law firm,” William Miceli. Bill Miceli was at the corporation counsel when I arrived in 1985; at that time he and his wife occupied the Rogers Park apartment directly beneath my friends Ken and Caryn. Bill was one of the least partisan guys I knew. He was one of the legions of skilled City attorneys whose fine work was overshadowed by an office reputation sullied by decades of patronage sloth. Bill’s fine work, fortunately, drew the attention of the top dog, Judd Miner, who wisely took Bill with him when it was time to return to private practice. And it was completely fitting that a talented, public-interest minded, Ivy-educated community organizer-turned-attorney would later be snapped up by Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. Look where he is now!

I haven’t shown my daughter the news clip yet. She’ll just grin and nod knowingly. Another tracer, back to Chicago.

Blog for Choice

My darling daughter N. reminded me that today is “blog for choice” day, in honor of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and in observance of the importance of freely (yes, that’s my word–freely) available contraception and family planning for all women. Unlike Senator Hilary Clinton, who departs from her otherwise strong pro-choice record by declaring every abortion a “tragedy”, I join feminist writer Katha Pollitt in stating that abortion is desirable and necessary. Full stop.

In the News . . .

I just love seeing my college classmates (Mount Holoyoke 1979) in the New York Times. Today it was Priscilla Painton (MHC ‘80, because she took off a year in France), who was in my German conversation class freshman year. Priscilla, who recently left Time Magazine, was heralded on p.C3 of the Times  as a newly named  editor-in-chief of a section of Simon & Schuster. Although the division’s name, “adult trade” sounds vaguely pornographic, Painton has made a wonderful career move.  Just think, getting paid to promote all those books!

Priscilla’s good friend and Mount Holyoke ‘79 classmate Elizabeth Taylor made a similar leap from Time’s Chicago bureau a few years back, joining the Chicago Tribune as its Literary Editor. Although the Tribune moved the Sunday book section to the Saturday paper about a year ago, Taylor is still listed as “Magazine Editor and Literary Editor” in the Tribune’s staff e-mail directory.  Just think, getting paid to read, think about, and write about all those books!

The “old girl network” pipeline from MHC to Time worked pretty well back in the day. Ellie McGrath, ‘74, was a Time reporter who mentored Liz and other cub Time reporters, and Headley Donovan, Editor-in-Chief, was a trustee of Mount Holyoke. (If memory serves, his daughter attended Mount Holyoke, although don’t hold me to it.)

Star Struck

I loved the 60s Southwest Missouri State College (SMS) basketball Bears. For three seasons, Curtis Perry, an impressive forward from Washington, DC, led the team. Perry made the 1970 draft to San Diego. A young Perry later showed up in a George Pelecanos crime thriller, in an early 60s chapter.

SMS produced actors, too. It was known for Tent Theater, the summer stock drama program. My dad still reminisces about his favorite performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ” in the 70s. John Goodman was Bottom. Kathleen Turner was Titania. Tent Theater also featured Tess Harper back then, who later starred in a Texas movie with John Malkovich and was never heard from again. A kid named Pitt from Kickapoo High School made the big time. On Sell’s bio page IMDB erroenously reported that Pitt spent time at SMS but Pitt actually attended Mizzou. Known as Brad, made his big screen debut getting offed in a parking lot by Susan Sarandon. My brothers played little league with Pitt’s brothers.

Springfield produced TV notables, too. Our neighbor Wilbur taught Price is Right host Bob Barker at Drury College when Barker was an economics major in the 1940s. My friend Kathy’s parents entertained Donna Douglas, “Ellie Mae” of the Beverly Hillbillies, at their boat up at Lake of the Ozarks. Kathy’s family met Donna when an episode was filmed in Missouri. Branson had not yet become the entertainment mecca we know today. Back then, the Shepherd of the Hills pageant was the biggest show after Silver Dollar City.

My cousins lived a block from the Ciccone family in Rochester, Michigan. The Ciccone’s oldest daughter graduated from Adams High School with my cousin Tom in 1976, and attended his graduation party. My late Aunt Kathy recalled that the girl came to the party barefoot, her feet dirty. Aunt Kathy also sold an a used girls’ bike to Mrs. Ciccone. My cousin Marie once espied the neighbor girl under the school stadium bleachers, smooching another girl. When the neighbor girl became famous in show biz. she dropped her family name and went by her first name, Madonna.

A guy I knew from high school, Rod Sell , spent time at SMS, but then became a stage actor in Chicago in the 80s. I used to see Rod in plays. He was great in Bob Meyer’s brilliant production of Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” Rod got into movies. Years later, I watched a home video of “Groundhog Day.” Who should be playing the mustachioed town mayor, but Rod! Over and over and over again, Rod presided over the big town rally with his shoulders shaking, belly rolling and voice booming : “Hey, there, what can I do yah for!!” “Hey, there, what can I do yah for!!”

My NYU law school classmate Marc Platt produced the law school musical every year. Marc is now a fabulously successful Hollywood and Broadway producer with more insight into the entertainment needs of my teen and pre-teen girls than I’ll ever have. See, e.g., Wicked; Legally Blonde; Legally Blonde II, Wicked, the movie, Legally Blonde, the musical . . . .

I studied piano in Chicago with Mrs. Evans, whose daughter Andrea Evans was a soap opera star. Mrs. Evans is in one of the pictures on Andrea’s website. I now study piano with Mrs. L, whose actress daughter Robin starred in an HBO series where Robin’s character cussed up a storm. Mrs. L. is not on Robin’s website.

My husband’s college classmate Chris Murray finished filming the new season of Zoey 101 at the end of August last year. Chris’s star-struck seven year old daughter was so excited to meet Jamie Lynn Spears at the wrap party! Chris was so pleased to be working for Nickelodeon! When Chris came to visit my daughters were so thrilled to meet a star from cable! We can’t bring ourselves to phone Chris and ask him his plans for next season.

How Far is “Far?”

With certain exceptions, most U.S. Supreme Court cases are heard as appeals from decisions by lower courts, so the justices may only rely on evidence developed in the trial court “record” below. No question, Justices reviewing cases also draw from their life experiences. For example, in the last Supreme Court term Justice John Paul Stevens invoked his Chicago upbringing as the child of tavernkeepers in a case concerning interstate liquor sales. But typically Justices may not incorporate facts from outside the record unless it is a matter of which they may take “judicial notice,” such as the time of sunrise on a date certain. The question of personal knowledge affecting a case brings me to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, son of a Bethelehem Steel company executive, who grew up in the comfortable environs of La Porte County, Indiana, where he attended a Catholic boys’ boarding school before he left for college–eventually, Harvard and Harvard Law.

Last week, Chief Justice Roberts cited, without reference to the record on appeal, personal assumptions about Indiana geography during oral argument in Crawford v. Marion County Elections Board. Crawford is a suit challenging recently enacted, burdensome Indiana Voter ID laws. Plaintiffs charge that the law places the unconstitutional burden on Indiana voters who lack the specified form of ID now required, because, among other reasons, these voters must now travel to the county seat to”vote by affidavit” each time they wish to cast their ballots at their local polling place.

Polling places tend to be extremely convenient to voters and located a short distance from home. But now, no matter how well known to the poll watchers and election judges, no matter how many years a citizen has cast her ballot at the location, no matter how identically her signature matches up with the signature card on file, an Indiana voter without the newly imposed, specified form of “official” photo ID must travel from the polling place to her county seat to fill out the required affidavits to cast a provisional ballot.

Attorney Paul M. Smith presented this argument to an unreceptive Court. Smith tried to explain that the county seat isn’t necessarily close , or easily accessible, to the voter, but Smith could not punch through the gauzy memory of Chief Justice Roberts. To Roberts, and to at least one of his Republican colleagues, “close” is just a gassed up car at the ready. Chief Justice Roberts openly scoffed at Attorney Smith, demanding “how far away is the furthest county seat for somebody in the county,” only to cut off Smith’s reply , “I don’t know the–” interjecting his own evidentiary conclusion:

Chief Justice Roberts: “County seats aren’t very far for people in Indiana.”

But the underlying question, forthrightly presented by by Attorney Smith, and dismissed by the arrogant Roberts, boils down to this: how far is “far?”

Smith continued: “If you’re an indigent person, Your Honor, in Lake County, in Gary, Indiana, you’d have to take the bus 17 miles down to Crown Point to vote every time you want to vote. And if you’re indigent that’s a significant burden, and. . .”

Here, the indefatiguably arrogant Justice Antonin Scalia interrupted with his signature combination of bullying and arrogance:

“It’s not a burden if you’re not indigent?” Responded Smith, “Well, it’s–it’s less of a burden, Your Honor, considerably less of a burden. You–

The ever bombastic Justice Scalia interrupted again: “17 miles is 17 miles for the rich and the poor.”

So there it is, Republican jurisprudence in a nutshell. Gosh, it’s just as burdensome for a Bethlehem Steel executive whose passport was stolen yesterday to drive to La Porte to vote by affidavit as it is for the low-income Gary resident who needs bus fare, frequent bus service, possibly para-transit (which has to be reserved days ahead), child care, or half a day off from her hourly job to “dash” off to the county seat. Which neatly summarizes the open antagonism of the Republican party toward the poor, the infirm, and the elderly. It also reflects the right wing power structure’s naked desire, reaching its fullest expression through these Reagan-Bush II Supreme Court appointees, to eliminate from public discourse and public life the voices of any individual with the bad judgment to lack middle class income, or its accoutrements of ease and entitlement.

The cavalier pose of Chief Justice Roberts is as self-centered and clueless as that that fictional scion of Northern Indiana suburbia, the eponymous Jerry Engels from the novels of the late Thomas Rogers . Nothing is far for a guy with a car.

Known Associates

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” so goes the old saw. My political bona fides span four decades, three states, and two continents. Here are some of the public figures whose paths I’ve crossed since my Missouri childhood.

Our Catholic Archbishop for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Archdiocese in the 70s and 80s was a Bostonian named Bernard Law. The Vatican sent a series of up-and-comers through that Ozarks posting, a hardship position and a great training ground for Bishops of potential rising through the ranks. Truly the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” Springfield boasted the world headquarters of the international Assemblies of God, sponsor of the local affiliate Evangel College. Two other fundamentalist colleges graced our fair city, Central Bible College, and Baptist Bible College (alma mater of the late Jerry Falwell.) The President of Evangel College in whose years was a man named Ashcroft, whose son graduated the Springfield public schools before heading off to Yale, and Yale Law, of whom more later.

Bishop Law’s predecessor, a kindly, bald and bespectacled fellow named Baum, bounded off to Rome from Springfield, landing a high level policy job and his Cardinal mitre with barely an intermediate stop in Kansas City. The Vatican welcomed him as “Cardinelli Boom.” Cardinal Law also launched his rocket climb up the hierarchy from his seat as Archbishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. After Springfield, Bishop Law rose to Cardinal and Archbishop of Boston, where, sadly, he gained notoriety for his morally bankrupt, his politically inept, obstructionist rejection of allegations of priestly child abuse in his archdiocese. Law ended up in Rome, after all, put out to a pasture by a Vatican desperate to keep him out of sight and equally desperate to quell the Catholic public uproar.

My connection to Law dated back in the mid-1970s, when Law was counselling my sweetheart Mike S. (who dubbed Law “Bernie”) during Mike’s years in priesthood prep at St. Meinrad’s Seminary in rural Indiana. Bernie often reminded Mike that Bernie, originally from Boston, attended Harvard before he enrolled in his own ecclesiastical studies. Bernie spoke of those years with a wink-and-a-nudge, innuendo that was reassuring to a seminarian struggling with a future of forced celibacy. I recall Mike taking me by Law’s archdiocesean offices in downtown Springfield for an introduction and visit, and I would like to believe no wink or nudge passed between the men that day.

Incidentally, Mike’s late father, a public school educator, was a social studies teacher in his early career. One of his prized students at Study (rhymes with “Judy”) Junior High, on Springfield’s North side, was none other than the young John Ashcroft. As he lay ill with cancer, Mr. S. still referred to Ashcroft fondly as one of “his boys.” By then, Ashcroft had been elected to county, then statewide office,well on his way on the trajectory that (he credited Jesus for fueling) put him in the Attorney General’s seat in George W. Bush’s first term. I later wondered whether then-Missouri Attorney General Ashcroft ever met with then Bishop Law, in those quiet years before both burst onto the national scene. My father played pick-up basketball games with Ashcroft from time to time from the 1960s through the 1980s on the campus of what was then Southwest Missouri State College. Ashcroft avoided the draft by teaching business at SMS for a few years in the 60s; my dad was an English lit. prof. there his whole career.

My mother attended Wal-Mart shareholder’s meetings in Arkansas in the 1980s. She met Bill Clinton at one such meeting. Mom described looking up at the “best looking man she’d ever seen.” Bill Clinton taught my friend Marin’s Constitutional Law class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in the 1980s. Marin did not ask Professor Clinton for a reference at the end of the semester. Marin’s friend, who did, won a cushy job at State in 1993.

In the late 80s, my Chicago chum E. became the first chief of staff for a newly-created ABA Commission on the Status of Women in the Law, whose champion and creator was the wife of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, his Yale Law School classmate Hilary Rodham. Rodham added “Clinton” to her name, made her fortune in commodities trading, left her mark on the ABA, then returned to Arkansas to tackle the state’s education system. E.stayed at the ABA, but moved from the Commission on Women into the Torts division by the mid-1990s. By 1992, Governor Bill embarked on his presidential campaign, back in the days the primary season stretched from February to August. E. and her then-husband, an aspiring Chicago Alderman , hosted a series of small gatherings to introduce candidate Bill Clinton to the locals providing my one and only chance to meet Mrs. Clinton. I saw her up close in an event at the executive offices of the YWCA in early April of that year.

Ah, the Chicago years. Those were the days. My book group included the future wife of Rahm Emmanuel.My closest friend in Chicago–who coincidentally attended high school with Rahm–married a speechwriter for a Democratic presidential frontrunner. Our 1988 Wedding guest roster included one sitting and one future member of Congress; several Illinois legislators, one sitting and one future Chicago Aldermen; the eventual chief of Staff to mayor Daley; an eventual Evanston School Board Member; Congressional staffers; policy wonks, and various other unsavory types. I had been an attorney for the City of Chicago in the exciting days of the progressive administration of Harold Washington, the Black mayor of Chicago who unseated the political machine.The following year I went to work for the venerable Leon M. Despres, who had been the most notable and accomplished dissident Alderman to oppose the first Mayor Daley in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. In 1990 my husband, who had worked for a Congressman, then an alderman, then as a lobbyist for a consumer group, was a volunteer fundraiser and supporter of the upstart U.S. Senate campaign of the late, great Paul Wellstone.

These days, my connections are remote, the politics tame. Having moved to Australia for three key years in the late 90s, then relocated to the Washington, DC area on return stateside, the Chicago glory days of political elbow-rubbing are but a distant memory. These days I even have to scrape up connections to Republicans: my mother-in-law’ friendship with Richard Armitage’s mother-in-law; my brother’s former job as pitchman for Amway products under Doug Wead, who later becaume a staffer in George W. Bush’s first term; or my college chum who served as a town council member in her Pittsburgh suburb.

The elected officials I now encounter run along the lines of our PTA executive board. In a company town where government is the industry, rubbing elbows with politicians seems like work–and triggers yawns, not thrills. Oh, I’m officially a “Friend” of an impressive freshman member of Maryland’s House of Delegates, Tom Hucker. And I finally stepped up to the plate to campaign for Donna Edwards, an exciting progressive challenger to our sclerotic incumbent Congressman. True, my oldest and dearest friend in DC is an elected official, but ours is a personal, and not political, connection. I have fun tweaking her Hill colleagues when they see us together at dinner,especially when they appear to worry that I’m “someone” they should remember.

My dear Chicago friend’s husband still writes those Presidential campaign speeches, but most of the elected officials at our wedding have left office. Chicago Mayor Harold Washington died 20 years ago November. We lost our beloved Paul and Sheila Wellstone in 2002. My husband went back to work for the Aussies last year, and I practice law just part-time, on contract, for Maryland and DC employment lawyers who support good Democrats. Politics should be essential, urgent, and vivid. But these days I’m blogging, opining, listing known associates. Taking stock alongside, no longer inside, politics.

Gloria Gets It Wrong

Gloria Steinem’s rant in yesterday’s New York Times, apparently written over the weekend, may have been the second most popular op-ed piece in the Times this week, but not because she was right–or accurate. Except for the brief few days of post-victory bounce enjoyed by Senator Barack Obama between the Iowa caucus and yesterday’s New Hampshre primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the front runner in nearly every national and local poll of likely Democratic voters. Forget her high negatives; never mind nagging voter concerns about “electability;” Clinton has been the top choice of the plurality, if not majority, of self-identified Democrats for many months. So Steinem’s tirade about women “never” being “front-runners” rings false, and sounds whiny.

Steinem also misses the mark with her attack on Senator Obama’s biography. In the guise of a thought experiment interrogating the role of gender, Steinem huffily demands whether a woman with an identical c.v. might claim the “biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate?”

Has Steinem now forgotten that in long-ago 1992, the same year Bill Clinton won the Presidency, the good people of Illinois elected an African American woman to the United States Senate? Remember Carol Moseley-Braun? Senator Moseley-Braun, a lawyer and former state legislator, was born and raised and made her political base on the South Side of Chicago. Unlike Steinem’s fictitious “Achola Obama,” Mosely-Braun boasted no Ivy League degrees, although she graduated from the top-ranked University of Chicago Law School. Also unlike her fictional counterpart, Moseley-Braun hailed from an intact, African-American family. Moseley-Braun was, however, divorced–from a white ex-husband, with whom she had a son. During her senate term she forged an exceedingly a close attachment to her chief of staff whose first name, Kgose, was at least as exotic as either “Barack” or Steinem’s made-up moniker, “Achola.” Finally, if memory serves, Moseley-Braun in 2003 formed an exploratory committee as she pondered a run for the presidency.

Neither race nor gender “restricted” Moseley-Braun in her race for the U.S. Senate. In fact, she was the beneficiary of widespread feminist and civil rights-activist based outrage at incumbent Senator Alan Dixon’s judiciary committee vote in favor of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. And, yes, her presidential trial balloon fell absolutely flat. No one ever touted Moseley-Braun for her charisma, but look how far she went nonetheless? No goose-cooking there.

No question, 20th century American voters traditionally discounted women seeking high political office, strong or not. I vividly recall the late Harriet Woods describing her 1982 campaign against [the phlegmatic] John Danforth for the U.S. Senate seat in Missouri. Her polling revealed that the majority of Missouri voters would never elect “a woman” at the head of a ticket, irrespective of “qualifications,” “charisma,” “experience,” or even party identification. By 1982 Woods was already an elected Lieutenant Governor, a post she had handily won, and had served with distinction in St. Louis county politics. Still, the voters had a visceral reaction against elevating her to the top. And Danforth, who was Missouri’s incumbent Attorney General (where he mentored a young Yale Graduate named Clarence Thomas; see above), sailed to victory.

So who now holds that very U.S. Senate seat in Missouri? A woman, former Missouri Auditor/Attorney General/Jackson County Prosecutor Claire McCaskill, elected in the Democratic sweep of 2006. McCaskill is one tough cookie, an ambitious, savvy, career politician who was already in the Missouri State House of Representatives back in 1982.

Like Missouri’s Democrats, millions of American voters act ready to knock back the phantom “sex barrier” Steinem divined in the Iowa results. Together with her friends and allies, Steinem, a fearless second-wave feminist foremother, achieved so much in the latter third of the 20th century. She rallied and organized and exhorted and cajoled women and men alike, to name, and then resist the sexism, patriarchy, and gender oppression that held women back and prevented a just society. Look how much we’ve gained! Here we are, with a woman front-runner! I just wish Steinem would step back and take credit for the successes her movement achieved.

Smart Girls

Glenn Greenwald made this observation today in his roundup of press reports of and blogger reactions to an otherwise minor Iowa campaign trail snippet:

Just contrast the frosty, petulant reception they gave Hillary when she entered their bus with the way White House press reporters at the President’s news conferences, for years, cackle at his every attempt at humor and light up with glee when he deigns to engage them in his insulting frat-boy repartee. But in contrast to George the Popular Jock to whom they’re grateful for any attention, Hillary is the overly competitive, know-it-all girl at the front of the class with all the answers, and so instead of acting like professionals and just treating like her like a candidate running for President, and taking the opportunity to ask questions when she entered the bus, they instead band together like they’re in eighth grade and give the mean, unpopular girl the cold shoulder.

Is it any wonder that Hillary never boards the press bus? Personally, I’d rather be in Siberia than be in Iowa around all of that.

Hoo, boy, does that trigger rotten memories of my Ozarks grade school, junior high, and high school years in the 60s and 70sl! Like Glenn, I don’t have to support Hillary to be pained and disgusted by the story. (We know-it-all Seven Sister grads still need to stick together!) I’m disgusted to see that pack anti-intellectualism still reigns supreme, and pained to be reminded of behaviors I’d hoped to escape when I left Missouri more than 30 years ago.

Unlike Glenn, I don’t conflate “mean” with “smart.” A brainy girl who knows the answers was bound to be unpopular in 1960, but not necessarily because she was “mean.” I still recall, vividly, the hatred directed across the classroom toward my eagerly waving hand. The meanness came at me, not from me. Our freshman civics teacher, Coach Roweton, chided three of my female classmates who equaled or out-scored me on pop quizzes: “Donna, Peggy, you’re hiding your intelligence,” he’d say. Donna and Peggy were no dummies. Coach was right about that. Each shrewdly kept her light under a bushel, knowing full well the key to popularity was an apparently empty head. I can’t speak to classroom dynamics in Park Ridge, Illinois, but I have to imagine that it wasn’t far ahead of Parkview High School a decade later. Like Hillary, I fled the hostile middle west for an all-women’s college out East where achievement from young women was expected, not resented.

And, like Hillary, I’ve had to learn the hard way that, no matter how far we flee, lots of folks still dislike gals who know stuff. Having been chided at Washington dinner parties for my command of “facts,” I know all too well the malice aimed toward the female, gifted, and smart. “Walking dictionary” is still an epithet, not an accolade.

There was an internet joke circulating a few years back, calculating the comparative dollars/per/second earned by Michael Jordan versus Bill Gates. “Nerds rule!” they chortled. But smart, confident girls? Rule? Remains to be seen.