Weekend Links I Like to Link to - Two Things You Should Never Mention at a Dinner Table Edition

via MarkO:
Teaching Boys and Girls Separately
Yeah. Separate but not equal? Actually, cheap shot aside, it sounds like a good idea, though I think it needs some modification. For instance, the gender roles need to go. And same sex classes may be good for periods of time, but generally speaking, for social reasons, boys and girls need to mix.
'Cause that how the real world works.

The evangelical Christian pollsters at Barna released a study finding that "November Election is Obama's to Lose". What I found interesting (well, one of the things I found interesting) is that I would probably still fit into their category of born-again evangelical but I would be in the small minority (less than 10%) that is going to not vote Republican this year.
What I have noticed is that even though the evangelical movement is making tremendous strides in consciously moving and being active in social justice causes (thanks in no small part to Bono. Could you have imagined that ten years ago?), many who would otherwise lean towards Obama are hesitant because they see abortion as a make-or-break issue. The mantra still being pushed is that if a politician will not protect the lives of the most-underrepresented and vulnerable, then how can he or she claim to represent our rights or to be socially just?

And, to tie the two together:
I thought that both the racism and the sexism evident in the recent (and hopefully completed) Democratic primaries were just off the charts. Although I will not argue about who had it worse, I think it ludicrous and insulting the charge by supporters of Clinton's campaign that Obama was demeaning and sexist towards their candidate. So far, my impression of that charge are that he ran and won when it was clearly her turn to win it all. But Obama did not do the Clinton '08 campaign in; the Clinton '08 campaign did the Clinton '08 campaign in.
Having said all that, the mainstream media (and especially the all-talk cable news outlets - Fox chief among them) should be very much ashamed of themselves. The truth is, they had to find subtler ways of attacking Barrack for his race (the scary preacher, anyone?) while they could largely go unpunished for making these lewd and disturbing comments about Hillary's sex. Notice:



It's no secret that I am not a fan of the way that Hillary ran this campaign (although, to her credit, IMHO she would make a better president than any Republican contender and her tactics were not as slanderous or injurious as, say, the Willie Horton ads of the '80s) and am certainly not a fan of the bitterness that the supporters of either Democratic presidential hopeful have towards the other (did somebody say Geraldine Ford?), but, please, wrong is wrong. And this is definitely wrong.


h/t to Eugene Cho for this one.