Palin's Newsweek Cover

Just to have it on hand ... sexist or not? My favorite touch is the flag.

Women in Hollywood

As I empty my inbox of various links I've been saving, here is critic Courtney Young's take on women's film roles in 2009. The upshot: Dead women + Twilight.

Nan Robertson Remembered

Betsy Wade's piece about Nan Robertson, an extraordinary journalist and author of The Girls in the Balcony, an account of women's landmark anti-discrimination lawsuit against The New York Times.

Women Dominate Online Gaming

A student of mine--an active gamer himself--wrote a great research paper about female gamers last year. He was surprised to find that women, especially older women, play more than men do. Apparently others are reaching the same conclusion.

One interesting finding is that women underreport their gaming more than men do. (C'mon, girls. Don't be afraid to smash those stereotypes.)

Thanks, Ellen

Here's a great column by Ellen Goodman looking back on her coverage of the women's movement. Goodman will retire Jan. 1, 2010.

Gender/Transgender Video

A basic educational video, about 20 minutes long, from the Gender Identity Project:

A Lie by any Other Name ...

Eric Alterman has a great piece up at Media Matters, which you can see here, where he discusses how the current practices of the mainstream media prevent them from calling a spade a spade—or a lie a lie. In a front-page story written by Jonathan Weisman, The Washington Post tiptoes around the issue of the "L-word," calling it "taboo." The headline on the story refers to "untruths."

This is not surprising to me. The Post, in particular, has a history on this count. As a wee copy editor there years ago, I was told, quite vehemently, that it was a fine choice of words to say a politician was "dissembling"—which, as I had pointed out, simply means "lying." I wondered why we couldn't use the simpler word. "Our readers know what the word dissemble means," the reporter sniffed.

I would imagine the Post's readers also know a lie when they see one.

It is a sad day for journalism when reporters and editors have to consult their mind's thesaurus to say what they know to be true.