"Why Don't More Law Schools Teach Reproductive Rights Classes?"

Asks Alexandra Harwin over at Slate's XXfactor. What a phony issue!

The subject is taught as part of Constitutional Law, which virtually every law student takes. In the Constitutional Law casebooks I've seen, it's the main subtopic under the Due Process Clause. Yes, a lawprof might decide to offer an upper-level seminar concentrating on reproductive rights, but the absence of a course like that scarcely means students walk away from law school without studying the key cases on birth control and abortion.

It would make more sense to complain about how much time is spent in Constitutional Law trying to comb through the multiple discordant opinions in these cases, considering the limited usefulness of the enlightenment to be derived.

Slate's June Thomas thinks Dan Savage is "bullying" Marcus Bachmann.

June Thomas's Dan Savage is the "it gets better" guy:

[T]he man who launched the “It Gets Better Project,” an effort to stop the bullying of gay teens, was acting like a big bully. As Savage always notes, the kind of smear-the-queer taunts that can cause so much pain to young people aren’t aimed only at kids who are gay, they’re often aimed at boys who don’t live up to some mythical standard of masculinity and girls who just aren’t girly enough. I can only imagine how listeners who happen to have the kind of lisping, effeminate speech and affect that Savage was ridiculing felt upon hearing the attack.

Marcus Bachmann makes money in what I consider to be a reprehensible way: offering “reparative therapy” to “cure” gay people. Judging from the testimony of people who have sought Bachmann’s help, it’s no exaggeration to say that he tries to “pray the gay away.” But that doesn’t justify bullying, and it’s not a good message to send.

I cut Savage some slack. He is a proud gay man who has done amazing work for the community, and I know from having watched the It Gets Better video that he made with his husband, Terry, that he has been bullied and victimized.

Oh, spare me! Thomas's warm, fuzzy Savage is bullshit. Savage is sharp, merciless, and aggressive against homophobia, hypocrisy, and puritanism wherever he thinks he finds it. Based on listening to dozens of his podcasts, I think he bristles at "It Gets Better" as the thing he's famous for, that it irritates him to be reduced to that middle-America-friendly PR campaign.

June Thomas reminds me of people who think John Lennon is all about "Imagine." 

"The Tea Party is often seen as being made up entirely of cranky middle-aged people who don’t like paying taxes."

"But here is [a] smart, engaging young woman speaking with the poise of someone older.... There is much debate over what long-lasting impact the Tea Party will have, if any. If there are many more like Tricia Willoughby, I wouldn’t underestimate it."

Rachael Larimore, in Slate.

"I guess O'Donnell could have deliberately inserted a casual malaprop to enhance her populist appeal and distinguish herself from the nitpicking media elite..."

Hey! What if these rubes are just pretending to be rubes?

"How feminist blogs like Jezebel gin up page views by exploiting women's worst tendencies."

Emily Gould in Slate:

As of this writing, [last week's Jezebel post titled "The Daily Show's Woman Problem"] has generated almost 1,000 comments and nearly 90,000 page views. It's a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap into the market force of what I've come to think of as "outrage world"—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate's own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. 

Ha. A lesser degree. Hidden question: How can we get those page views?

They're ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business. But they promote the exact opposite of progressive thought and rational discourse, and the comment wars they elicit almost inevitably devolve into didactic one-upsmanship and faux-feminist cliché. The vibe is less sisterhood-is-powerful than middle-school clique in-fight, with anyone who dares to step outside of chalk-drawn lines delimiting what's "empowering" and "anti-feminist" inevitably getting flamed and shamed to bits. 

Consider the radical idea that women are human beings.

The male re-enfolds its female.

DoubleX, having emerged from Slate, is reabsorbed.

The decision is being made for business reasons rather than as an editorial judgment.

You'd think breaking out the female-oriented content would be a good way to get advertising. All that shampoo and makeup. All that diet and baby food. Apparently, not.