Daughter of No Comment -- November 1997

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Turkeys provided many of us with wonderful dinners but there are still way too many stupid turkeys out there saying really dumb things. Here are some nuggets from the latest crop that daughter has gleaned. Home Depot's agreement to pay 65 million dollars to settle a class action sex discrimination suit that focused on advancement and promotion opportunities for female employees will mean about a 21% drop in third quarter earnings. There is a 22.5 million dollar legal fee on top of the settlement which should help keep the boys focused on how to improve so they don't have to face future law suits. When Cracker Barrel fired around 20 people because they were gay or lesbian and the company directive said not to employ those who fail to meet normal heterosexual values the company retracted the policy but none of those fired were re-hired. While they say they no longer discriminate it is easy to buy elsewhere. Three star general Claudia Kennedy (the Army's first) says that Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique taught her If you want equality, you have to have equal responsibility. She also says that sexual harassment is a huge problem but she does feel the Army is making progress. The Maggie L. Walker Site in Richmond VA is the restored house of African-American entrepreneur Maggie Walker who was the first woman in the U.S. to found a bank and serve as its president. It's at 600 North 2nd Street. The newly designed Barbie Doll which will be a little less extreme in shape and have even more variations in clothes and professions is merely a thinly disguised plot to get little girls to want to buy more dolls. Jean McKenzie who heads up the Barbie division at Mattel says There's no limit to what we can do. Who knows? Maybe in the future Barbie will have a friend who is a little heavyset. The CEO at Mattel, Jill Barad, is the most prominent woman in corporate America. Some advice from De Beers Consolidated Mines for male diamond shoppers.Watch her as you browse. Go by how she reacts, not what she says. She may be reluctant to tell you what she really wants. Then once you have an idea of her actual taste, don't involve her in the actual purchase. Is this a new definition of manipulation? D.C. Chief Financial Officer, Anthony A. Williams said about following the law when money is spent We want to make sure Martha Stewart is in the kitchen cooking the food and not in the finance office cooking the books. A gratuitously stupid attack or has daughter lost her sense of humor? Phile Chionesu, a black woman from Philadelphia who came up with the idea for the Million Woman March said Black women have taken care of everyone else since the time we've been in this country. We've taken care of white women, white men, white children...our own men, our own children. And now it's time that we take care of ourselves. Sounds like a verse from the song we have all been singing to daughter. Fashion Note-Designers are going to new lengths with silhouettes that are minuscule but powerful, turned out in cling knits, often with a hint of glitter, and paired with sky-high heels, they create the look of mile long legs-the season's chicest accessory. Daughter has never thought of legs as an accessory. With stilettos, each step is a controlled fall says Carol Frey, an orthopedic surgeon. These gross heels are also implicated in auto accidents and severe foot injury. In a recent survey, 9 out of 10 women wore shoes that were too small, that hurt their feet and they even said they expected their feet to hurt. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, commenting on her 5 inch heels said If I stopped to think about how I can walk in these, I probably couldn't. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, Steve Forbes said he supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion except for rape, incest and the life of the mother, But he acknowledged that the exceptions are inconsistent with his view that life begins at conception and that it is logical to rule out exceptions for an abortion ban based on his belief that all life begins at conception. The right to life is Creator-endowed not state endowed and governments role is to protect that right. This is a matter where life trumps liberty. His views are bringing him support from the conservative religious groups who felt that earlier he had been squishing around on abortion. I'm doing my bit for the women's movement. The women have always been naked in movies and now I am just desperate to take my clothes off as much as possible. Actor Ewan McGregor. Can he spell Bimbo? ( Daughters spell check suggested Bimbo might be replaced with Bambi) Gabrielle Reece of the Women's Professional Volleyball Association says The game is very balletic, and the beach players are evolved women. The athleticism overrides the sexuality, but then the athleticism makes them sexier. Women normally are looked on as objects, and the moment the object is functional, it becomes threatening-and that can be very sexual. A judge in FL gave custody of two children to their father after he declared their mother, Pam Albridge was addicted to the web. Another judge in W.Va., Joseph Troisi pleaded no contest and resigned after biting a defendant on the nose in court. And judge Lorin M. Duckman was removed after he had ignored a woman's pleas for protection and helped release her ex-boyfriend, who then killed her. This New York judge had also said domestic violence should not be a crime and he had told one prosecutor that he liked her in short skirts. And still on the legal front. Prince William County, Virginia has the first conviction in the Washington Metro area for a Rohypnol (date rape pill) rape of a 15 yo girl. A Hollin Hills, (Fairfax County, VA) crime report talked about a masked man with a knife, he abducted a woman and made her go to a bank and afterwards it says she was criminally assaulted. She was criminally sexually assaulted or raped but apparently the citizens association didn't think rape was important enough to include in the neighborhood alert. Hospital and university AFSCME union organizer, Kristine Rondeau says We build relationships through hundreds of small meetings. Women build bonds of trust in such gatherings more effectively than in large rallies traditionally used. Employers find her tenacious, but fair. The anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum had a luncheon slide sex talk in the capitol presided over by Rep. Tom Coburn, M.D. He says the fear or threat of infertility is more potent (no pun intended) than the fear of death in getting people to change their sexual behavior. We have an epidemic in this country-a sexually transmitted disease epidemic. The thrust of the meeting was to make sex outside marriage sound very dangerous. The FDA told drug companies in 1993 to include women in all phases of drug testing but in a study of 4000 clinical trials performed in the last three years they found that 25% still excluded women solely because they could have become pregnant. Even if a drug is suspected of causing birth defects, they have to give the woman the right to make the decision says deputy food and drug commissioner Mary Pendergast. Ex-football coach and promise keepers leader, Bill McCartney and columnist William Raspberry see from a biblical and reporters viewpoint that for reasons ranging from the success of feminism to the failure of the welfare policy, men and boys are losing the certainty of their place in things, Part of the sense of placelessness may be the result of the emerging belief that gender-specific roles are an anachronism best done away with. They get it and they don't like it. On the other hand, writer John Ellis wonders why, now that most of the limiting conditions that once chained women to domestic duty no longer exist, do so many female scholars dwell on oppression and gender theory at the expense of humane studies? The answer is a flawed premise. Chromosomal Gap: Declining sales and skyrocketing losses should have been enough proof of Apple senior management stupidity in recent years; but you can also add crude Continental sexism to the list of Infinite Loop follies during the Gil Amelio era. Cupertino sources say that at a company wide communications meeting, a top executive -- speaking about female peers Heidi Roizen and Ellen Hancock -- remarked, "I love the women. I love them on the top, and I love them on the bottom." Charming. But at least Amelio appointed women: Roizen left early this year and Hancock was pushed out in Steve Jobs's subsequent purge of Amelio hires, reducing the current number of senior female executives at Apple to zero. How is it that American Suzuki was a sponsor of the Women's Motorcycling Conference, but when it came to its Buy a Marauder, Get a Free Jacket promotion, they only had them available in men's sizes 34 to 54? asks Michalene Polise of Belleview, NJ. 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