BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

from THE NEW AGENDA Harry Reid Discovers Domestic Violence by Amy Siskind After hearing barely the utterance of a women’s issue out of Harry Reid’s mouth for as long as I can recall, imagine my surprise yesterday to hear Senator Reid speaking out on domestic violence. What you might ask gave Senator Reid this epiphany on this escalating crisis in our country? While violence generally in our country has been flat to down for the better part of a decade, violence against women continues to soar. And of course, the untold crisis of teen dating violence continues to froth unnoticed by politicians like Senator Reid. Here’s some recent stats put out by MADE (Moms and Dads for Education to Stop Teen Dating Abuse ), or which TNA is a national partner: 1 in 3 teens who have been in a dating relationship have experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, or threats of physical harm. 1 in 2 of all 14 – 24 year olds has been the target of some form of digital abuse. Nearly 1 in 4 teens in a ...

Why am I not surprised? I am not sure about whether Wal-Mart being unionized would be a good thing (it would make them a lot less price-competitive); except that maybe they would clean up their act about how they treat their employees and forcing them to go on Food Stamps and SSI instead of providing health care and a living wage. But outright manipulation of people's voting & employee intimidation? No! Wal-Mart Employees Speak Out About Mandatory Anti-Union Meetings, Political Intimidation Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wal-Mart has been warning its managers that a Democratic victory in the fall would lead to unionization at Wal-Mart stores. “ In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings” discussing the downsides of unionization and not-so-subtly telling employees NOT to vote for a Democrat. Wal-Mart Watch notes that the article “would not have been possible without the several brave Wal-Mar...

by Sheila Gibbons The general election hasn't even begun yet but already we're getting early snippets of retrospection on the campaign coverage so far. In a look at the public's news interests over the past year the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that while women and men might not be on different planets, there's still plenty of statistical daylight between them. Women consistently express more interest in stories about weather, health and safety, natural disasters, crime and celebrity news. Men tend to be more interested in international affairs, Washington news and sports. However, men and women often express comparable levels of interest in the top news stories of the day, the study found. The presidential campaign, for instance, has attracted only modestly greater interest among men than among women. In five weekly news interest surveys in 2008, 37 percent of men and 32 percent of women say they have followed campaign news very closely. Inter...

I dislike Oprah. There. I said it. Yes, I realize I am in her demographic. Stay-at-home (by disability), children, between 30-60, female. But, UGH! She is just so FULL of herself since becoming a TV icon. The celebrity interviews are insipid. The newsmaker interviews are just a click away from Barbara Walters "fluff" pieces. And her give away surprises make the whole thing look like a used car lot event. Yes, every once in a while a friend emails me to say "so-and-so is going to be Oprah, you have to watch." I tune. And I tune out. When OPRAH magazine launched and she made herself permanent (airbrushed) cover-girl I felt naseous. About 11 years ago I was part of a group from a national advocacy group who was pitching Oprah's producers to do a show about our shared illness. After a couple months of playing phone-poker with us, they took a pass for a really idiotic reason. Their reason was, the story wasn't "uplifting enough." We were a...