Surfette

ABC News focusing on women who blog

I'm happy to report that ABCNews.com has focused some daytime programming on women who blog. Earlier this week, Tory Johnson of Women for Hire taped two segments with me and the amazing Susan Wagner (Friday Playdate, Friday Style, BlogHer Contributing Editor).

For once, I love these segments. Despite the fact that Susan is on her deathbed with the worst flu ever, she proved yet again that she is one amazing, articulate woman. Bravo Susan! Tory definitely did her research. And while I look like I've had a glass of wine before hitting the air, I promise it was the blinky, half-lidded effect of that much eye makeup. Blink. Yeeeeow. Blink.

But don't take my word for it -- here are the links:

Susan Wagner: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4187069&affil=kgo

Me:   http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4187036&affil=kgo

Now what BlogHer really needs is our own show so that we can show off the incredible diversity (by topic and by every measure) of women who blog. Starting with these editors.

Off to the drawing board...

Love vs. lust: Gloria Steinem vs. Surrender Dorothy blog

I loved Gloria Steinem's op-ed in today's New York Times. Steinem writes like the senior stateswoman she is, strengthening her relationship with her existing followers and building bridges to new ones.

But I lust after Surrender Dorothy today. There and on BlogHer.com, Blogger Rita offers up the muthavoter version of Steinem's message:

Voting for Hillary for the Same Reason I Lost My Virginity

"...This country needs to just go ahead and elect a woman already. It's time. We all know it's time, are itching to just GET IT OVER WITH, get a woman in office and put an end to the questions of whether or not her PMS is going to interfere with her foreign policy. Hey, I'm a woman, and I'm an emotional wreck, but I'm not the kind of woman who is going to run for public office. The kind of woman who runs for public office has big, brass balls of her own that she wears on a pearl strand around her neck. The kind of woman who runs for office stands next to her husband while he's talking about whether or not he had his dick sucked by an intern and then the next year runs for Senate. Folks, Hillary isn't going to break into tears over much. She's a female politician, and she's tough. Give her the job. Let's get this over with.

"I am going to vote for Hillary because this country needs practice accepting a female leader, and Hillary can handle being the first. She may not be the best candidate I can think of to be Leader of the Free World, but she's good enough to pave the path for better candidates of the female variety in the future. Allowing women to take a viable swing at our nation's highest office will bring twice as many candidates to the table in future elections.

"Our entire judicial system is set on precedent. Our Constitution, on which we base all of our laws, is one big precedent. It's the way we structure our beliefs in this country - we believe that if we've seen it happen once, it can happen again. But until we've seen it happen, we doubt. I've got an opportunity to vote to make it happen. Listen, if Hillary were a right-wing Republican, I wouldn't vote for her just because she's a woman. She's not. I do think she's a moderate Democrat. I'm way more liberal than Hillary, but she's got good positions on healthcare and education, and she's learned from her mistakes on Iraq. She's a good, Democrat woman, up against good, Democrat men. Apples to apples, I'm taking the pear..." Read the whole thing

Pow! Whether you agree with her choice of candidate or not, Rita can work a metaphor.

Me? Still undecided about our next president. But loving every minute of this. How about you?
 

Hillary Clinton is no Pat Schroeder: "This is one of the most important elections Americans have ever faced"

Full disclosure: I'm an undecided voter who is still disappointed in President Bill Clinton for four main reasons (China, Bosnia, Haiti, Monica), but I have to weigh in because I just reviewed this clip after reading all the commentary on Morra Aarons-Mele's BlogHer post and every where else.

My two lira: Bravo Hillary. More please, whether I vote for you or not.

This video captures a master debater at the height of her game. She's stretched just thin enough to say something real and heartfelt -- and then she does a deft job of sticking it to her opponent(s). What a surprise to watch this moment of truth in the same day I heard her allow NPR's Renee Montagne turn a Morning Edition interview  into a discussion of Sen. Barack Obama and how important it is that Clinton not lose to her primary opponent, Sen. Barack Obama. 

Finally, we see Candidate Hillary saying something that sounds remarkably unscripted. Goodbye, floral couch from which the Stepford candidate announced her candidacy, hello, woman who understands me.   As for her other commentary, hell, it's a cold winter and there's not a woman alive who isn't worrying about working out and that extra piece of pizza, girl, whether we need to or it's just in our heads.

For the VERY first time I found myself thinking, wow, she might get my vote. Followed by: Wow, if she doesn't earn the nomination, somebody should give this woman Brownie's old job heading up FEMA, and then we can work her way up to Secretary of State.

One parting thought: For anyone who hasn't ever watched a presidential candidate in the heat of a campaign, I recommend you re-watch the video and look at only the background: See the flashbulbs? There was a media mob assembled to watch these voters watch Hillary that probably wasn't the size of an inky dinky press pool.

How the senator managed not to burst out with, "Could you PLEASE get those klieg lights OUT of my EYES and hand me a BEER" is beyond me.

So you'll know if I ever run for office. I'll be the one with the port-a-keg.

Okay, done ranting. You may now watch the candidate for yourself, in peace:

Dying to know your opinion: Do you agree with me or not?
 

Two smartest, funniest women covering Election 2008 for other women who are guarding their votes carefully

I am basically wiping away tears of joy. Where else can we find smart, insightful commentary on the NH ABC/Facebook debate scene -- from the "changiest" candidates to the correspondents and their UGG boots -- with such a fantastic lack of pomposity and nary a whiff of punditry?

Why, from BlogHer's righty and lefty correspondents, Mary Katharine Ham (of Townhall.com) and Morra Aarons-Mele (also of Womenandwork.org), who posted Morra and MKH in New Hampshire: Contest for the Changiest Candidate! this morning.

And they're just the tip of the omnipartisan iceberg over at BlogHer last night. The BlogHer community's live-blog commentary on our open thread put the racist and sexist commetns on Facebook to shame. As Professor Kim Pearson put it,

"Wonder how much people making the inane comments on FB even understand the discussion taking place here. By the way, this discussion is a like a grad school seminar, while the Republican panel had the tenor of a barroom argument. No one has called anyone else a liar or smirked (as Romney did) while his or her opponents make their points."

See for yourself:

Think kind of voter intelligence will turn the tides on the lack of attention BlogHer's Election 2008 guide has managed to obtain from presidential candidates, which I've blogged here: Women bloggers to presidential candidates: Stop ignoring us and don't pander if you want our votes?

If I were one of these candidates, I'd want a personal interview with one of these videobloggers and an opportunity to speak directly to a network of more than 8 million influential women who blog. Wouldn't you?

What if women were an endangered species?

I recommend reading a brilliant new post by Snigdha Sen: India's missing girls -- nipping them in the bud?

She begins:

"Gender-based abortions in India is no longer the man-bites-dog breaking news story. It's such a pervasive  practice that it probably doesn't outrage us enough to tackle it on a war footing. It is recognized as a problem by law, it makes some men shift in their seats and many women unhappy. In other words, it runs the risk of becoming just another addition to the endless list of gender issues that we know the country needs to deal with, and hope that time and a robust economy will drive it to its natural death."

I was immediately reminded of sci-fi Author Frank Herbert's book, The White Plague, which poses the question, "What if women were an endangered species?" Here's the amazon.com write-up:

"It begins in Ireland, but soon spreads throughout the entire world: a virulent new disease expressly designed to target only women. As fully half of the human race dies off at a frightening pace and life on Earth faces extinction, panicked people and governments struggle to cope with the global crisis. Infected areas are quarantined or burned to the ground. The few surviving women are locked away in hidden reserves, while frantic doctors and scientists race to find a cure. Anarchy and violence consume the planet. The plague is the work of a solitary individual who calls himself the Madman. As government security forces feverishly hunt for the renegade scientist, he wanders incognito through a world that will never be the same. Society, religion, and morality are all irrevocably transformed by the White Plague."

When I read stories like Snigdha's, I often do raise my eyes to heaven and thank God for the rights American women enjoy. Then I start making demands on the universe, such as the one where I insist that when I next wake up, I'll be Oprah Winfrey, with the bank account of Croesus and enough international influence that I can invest in a woman-to-woman system for outreach, encouragement, economic partnership and (forgive me for getting all kumbayah, ya''ll, but) love.

But I'm not Oprah, and her Swarovski clutch is nowhere in site. Sans moolah, I think the only way that we can help change the world is one woman and one family at a time. And in this case, Snigdha has started the process by driving traffic and exposure to this issue and a fantastic list of blogs by Indian women, many of them parenting blogs -- women truly in the trenches on this issue. I've written to three of these bloggers to see if they're interested in applying to join the BlogHer publishing network when it re-opens in February. We provide ads, yes, but as if not more importantly, we syndicate member headlines across our network of 1,200+ women writers.

I'm talking about exposure, baby. We are committed to getting our exceptional writers READ. Our mission has never changed. Women this right, given the soapbox they deserve, will be much harder to wrong.
 
Okay, now bring me back to earth...(ducking)

2008: No spectators

"The moral: Don't Talk. Do. Don't yammer. Launch. Release. Ship. FCS, you know?"
Hat-tip: Chris DiBona's Ego Food

If you're reading this and you're not my mother, welcome back. I hope you don't stroke-out from shock at seeing an entry on this blog. Yes. Lisa. Blogging here.

As a birthday gift to myself, I've carved out time to get back to Surfette. I learned in the past year that if I don't carve out time to WRITE -- the whole reason I got addicted to this blogging thang in the first place -- it just doesn't happen.

I had this same experience at Women.com from 1998 - 2001, when I became so busy working with the community that I just didn't chisel out time to allow ME to be creative too. That's the one mistake I made in Web 1.0 that I've repeated. I plan for it to be the last.

As before, I'll liberally cross-post from BlogHer.com, where I am happy to report that the community continues to blow my mind.

Yay.

Now I'll stop yammering and start doing, as the man says.

Peace,

Lisa