Daughter of No Comment -- February 2007

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Well in the new year we'll start with academia and then on to entrepreneurship and we're off... Administrative officials at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, used a theology professor's gender as grounds to dismiss her, the AP reported Jan. 31. The professor, Sheri Klouda, was originally hired in 2002 to a tenure-track position, but claims that the seminary's president, Paige Patterson, told her in 2006 that women are biblically forbidden to teach men and refused to consider her for tenure. Klouda was finally terminated in late 2006. This reminded me that in the November 1957 University of Chicago paper, the Maroon, undergraduate Ray Caparros wrote "I am beginning to see why Macbeth is such a favorite at the U. of C.. Where else would it be so easy to find three hags to play the 'witches'?" Since daughter never saw a female teacher, let alone professor when she went there she looked up the percentage of faculty who were tenured women in 1950 and in 2000. Progress wasn't even glacial, it was nonexistent. So is daughters support of an institution which doesn't get it. What slow learners. Lisa Ann Taylor, known professionally as Melissa Wolf is out on $27,000 bond, charged with prostitution, racketeering and conspiracy to possess cocaine. A web site showing Taylor, a former Penthouse Pet, advertised services ranging from $300. for one hour photo shoots and up, way up. Police raided her mansion and found what they described as a high class brothel and the headquarters of a call girl ring whose customers received favors limited only by their imaginations. Among the services offered was sex with the Penthouse centerfold and other women for an entire weekend for $10.000 District Attorney Danny Porter said. Whatever services were asked for had a price and the customer lists included professional men of note in the Atlanta GA area who might be very nervous about now. The lawyer says she really is a successful real estate developer and a single mother. This gives Southern Belle a whole new meaning. Eric Keroack deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services who is a Ob-Gyn and is in charge of the $280 million Title X program designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them has a way with words. In a 2001 letter to the Massachusetts Legislature he explained the logic of performing sonograms on women considering abortion "Even Midas lets you look at your old muffler before they advise you to change it." Writer Stacy Schiff says "There are many ways to define demeaning." We have a lost a pioneering woman, 98 year old Judge Jane Bolin who was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, Her father, a lawyer didn't want her to go to law school in 1928 and told her that lawyers had to deal "with the most unpleasant and sometimes the grossest kind of human behavior." She told the New York Times that a few Southerners at the law school had taken pleasure in letting the swinging classroom doors hit her in the face. She chose not to wear judicial robes so the children in her courtroom would feel more comfortable. She was outspoken on civil rights issues in many areas and said about her home town of Poughkeepsie that the town "is fascist to the extent of deluding itself that there is superiority among human beings by reasons solely of color, race or religion." In 1958, speaking on women's rights, she said, "We have to fight every inch of the way and in the face of sometimes insufferable humiliations." Her words are still true today but few have the courage to challenge the culture of hubris and misogyny. One who spoke with wit and could be delightfully acerbic was Molly Ivins who died much too young. In 2006 she said "The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy." We also can use language as our weapon. It can be very powerful. Here is the educational tidbit you have been waiting for. This quote is from Jim Rutz, Chairman of the Megashift Ministeries, writing on WorldNetDaily.com "There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture...Soy is feminizing and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical...blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented...but avoid tofu," Notice how easy it is to rhyme Rutz!