[speechlesstx]

Great link! :)

You're welcome.

[speechlesstx]

Yesterday the Associated Press removed "illegal immigrant" from its vocabulary. Jay Leno helped them out with the new proper term.

“And in a groundbreaking move, the Associated Press, the largest news gathering outlet in the world, will no longer use the term ‘illegal immigrant.’ That is out. No longer ‘illegal immigrant.’ They will now use the phrase ‘undocumented Democrat.’ That is the newest – ‘undocumented Democrat.’”

[excon]

Hello again, Steve:

You're just jealous.. You COULD have had 'em, but you were too mean. I don't know WHY you guys like to shoot yourselves in the foot.

Let me see. Obama won by 3 million votes, and you guys GAVE us another 11 million... Whewwweee. Looks like you're out of the picture for the foreseeable future...

excon

[speechlesstx]

No I just thought it was funny.

[speechlesstx]

This is funny, too... Obama is going to teach us "how to budget responsibly." No really, the man who hasn't gotten a single vote for any of his bloated budgets is going to help us with responsible budgeting.

You just can't make this stuff up.

[paraclete]

You just can't make this stuff up.

No you are right, watching your politics is better than watching a sitcom

[speechlesstx]

It's come to this, and though it's been evident for years that the feminists and other leftists have some inherent disdain for a domestic role for women (unless it comes to their hired servants I'm sure), THIS is pathetic.

Gender Questions Arise in Obituary of Rocket Scientist and Her Beef Stroganoff
By MARGARET SULLIVAN

Yvonne Brill’s accomplishments as a scientist made her a natural subject for a Times obituary last weekend. Those staff-written obituaries, which recognize only the tiniest fraction of people who die on a given day, are intended not as tributes but as news stories of those who lived highly distinctive lives.

When this particular obituary appeared online Saturday, though, it caused many readers to do a double-take because of its emphasis on Mrs. Brill’s domestic life.

When it initially appeared online and in the first print edition, the first two paragraphs read as follows:

She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

But Yvonne Brill, who died on Wednesday at 88 in Princeton, N.J., was also a brilliant rocket scientist who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.

Many people responded negatively to what they saw as sexism.

Typical was this Twitter message from Aaron Bady:

Hey, ‪@Sulliview‬‬‬ what’s up with that disgraceful obituary for Yvonne Brill? “was also a brilliant rocket scientist”? For real?

Others, like Amy Alexander and Ron Charles — humorously but with an edge — wanted The Times to know how they would like to be remembered when the time comes.

For the record, please note that my ‪#Obit Dish is my “mean penne farfalle with zucchini.” Just ‪#FYI ‪@nyt ‪@JAWS ‪@sulliview

Dear NYT, just in case you’re prewriting obits of obscure book critics, everybody says I make delicious chocolate chip cookies.

Amy Davidson, a senior editor at The New Yorker who writes its Close Read blog, said on Twitter that it was striking how Mrs. Brill’s “work was both mentioned and somehow invisible,” given the emphasis in the obituary. Ms. Davidson also noted that the eight years off from work apparently wasn’t entirely the case; Mrs. Brill continued to work part time as a consultant during those years, the obituary said further down.

Later on Saturday, after the flurry of negative attention, the culinary reference dropped out and some other language changed in the online version of the obituary. And when it appeared in later print editions, its first paragraph still mentioned her family life but also included her profession, and the beef stroganoff was nowhere to be found. (It’s not unusual for The Times to make changes to articles online. When a factual error is corrected, that is drawn to the reader’s attention, but otherwise, incremental changes are not generally noted.)

This didn’t satisfy everyone:

Julie Rehmeyer, a freelance science writer from New Mexico, e-mailed:

The change in the lede for Yvonne Brill’s obituary only makes it worse, in my opinion. Yes, the original reference to beef stroganoff was inappropriate in the extreme — but having any reference to her parenting or spouse in the first paragraph of her obituary is also inappropriate. Fixing the beef stroganoff reference without fixing the misguided nature of the article as a whole doesn’t solve the problem; it minimizes it through its insufficiency.

An additional problem with the article is mentioning the “Diamond Superwoman award” immediately after her National Medal of Technology and Innovation, as if the two awards were comparable.

You can see the changes on NewsDiffs.

Others disagreed with those who complained.

Jennifer King, a journalism student who is studying obituaries for her master’s thesis at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, wrote to me:

I feel Mr Martin was subtly pointing out the irony of a woman in that era not only being a remarkable scientist but also a great wife and mother. The reference to her cooking was, I believe, to add context to Mrs. Brill’s extraordinary achievements in an era where women were not encouraged to be anything other than Domestic Goddesses.

Anyway, I think it has been an all ’round learning experience for everyone and has drawn attention to the art of obituary writing, which can’t be a bad thing! Best of all, while some may be critical of the obituary, at least we now all know about Yvonne Brill, which must be a positive outcome, don’t you agree?

This all may seem to be a tempest in a Crock-Pot, but it actually raises some significant questions related to gender – which is under much discussion at a time when Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” has hit the top of the nonfiction best-seller list.

When it’s highly unusual for a woman to do what she did professionally, to what extent does that merit notice? Should gender be ignored in a profile or obituary? Should it be treated as the main event?

A recent article in Columbia Journalism Review gives guidelines for writing about women in this context. Curtis Brainard quotes the science writer Christie Aschwanden, who objects to journalism about women in science that “treats its subject’s sex as her most defining detail.”

I talked to William McDonald, the obituaries editor, on Monday morning about the reaction.

“I’m surprised,” he said. “It never occurred to us that this would be read as sexist.” He said it was important for obituaries to put people in the context of their time and that this well-written obituary did that effectively. He also observed that the references in the first paragraph to cooking and being a mother served as an effective setup for the “aha” of the second paragraph, which revealed that Mrs. Brill was an important scientist.

Mr. McDonald said that he was consulted about the changes on Saturday night by editors who were working then and who believed that the negative reaction should be listened to. But, he said, he would have preferred to leave the obituary as it was.

Yes, heaven forbid an accomplished woman get recognized for her delicious beef stroganoff and being a good mom when she passes. Really people? Get a life.

[NeedKarma]

Another day, another outrage over any incident.

[speechlesstx]

Another day, another outrage over any incident.

Yep, feminists getting pi$$ed and demanding revisions of an obituary over cooking is pretty stupid.

[excon]

Hello again, Steve:

You want to know what's UNFAIR? I make a MEAN chicken and sausage gumbo... Will it be mentioned in MY obit?? Hell no. All they'll talk about is me being a captain of industry.

It ain't right, I tell you.

excon

[speechlesstx]

Hello again, Steve:

You wanna know what's UNFAIR?? I make a MEAN chicken and sausage gumbo... Will it be mentioned in MY obit??? Hell no. All they'll talk about is me being a captain of industry.

It ain't right, I tell ya.

excon

Hey, I'm good with just saying I was a good dude that made some smokin' baby back ribs.

[speechlesstx]

On one of his perpetual campaign trips, Obama informed us we don't have time for a perpetual campaign, he could get a lot done with Pelosi as speaker and my favorite thing he said with a straight face was about Pelosi herself, "She never lets ideology cloud her judgment." No, really, he actually said that.

[tomder55]

One can only conclude that his sole 2nd term agenda is to campaign to get a Dem majority in the House.

[speechlesstx]

Heck, he doesn't need congress anyway.

[speechlesstx]

Again, you just can't make this stuff up. The city of Phoenix apparently has too many white lifeguards. Apparently drowning blacks and Latinos can't relate to being rescued by a white person. So as long as you're a minority, no strong swimming skills are required.

In Phoenix, A New Quest For Diverse Public Pool Lifeguards : NPR

[tomder55]

Maybe that's why bodies can sink undetected to the bottom of pubic pools unnoticed for 3 days .
3 ordered to quit after body in pool went undetected for days - CNN.com

[speechlesstx]

Maybe that's why bodies can sink undetected to the bottom of pubic pools unnoticed for 3 days .
3 ordered to quit after body in pool went undetected for days - CNN.com

Just wait until Obamacare forces unqualified providers on us.

[talaniman]

Maybe that's why bodies can sink undetected to the bottom of pubic pools unnoticed for 3 days .
3 ordered to quit after body in pool went undetected for days - CNN.com

The investigation determined that poor water clarity was the primary factor that kept lifeguards from being aware of the drowning and finding Joseph after her death. In fact, the 12-foot-deep pool was so cloudy that it should not have opened the day she drowned, authorities said.

This was your point?

[talaniman]

Again, you just can't make this stuff up. The city of Phoenix apparently has too many white lifeguards. Apparently drowning blacks and Latinos can't relate to being rescued by a white person. So as long as you're a minority, no strong swimming skills are required.

In Phoenix, A New Quest For Diverse Public Pool Lifeguards : NPR

I can see training and learning, but they make it seem as if there are no good swimmers in the minority community. As for the innuendo that the bar is lowered for minorities, I dismiss it as a lack of understanding on your part since you miss the part about starting from scratch with the willing.

Or are you saying this willing fellow cannot develop as good a skill as his white counterparts, or the efforts of one guy getting a chance to learn screws up the whole system and they should forget it?

[speechlesstx]

I can see training and learning, but they make it seem as if there are no good swimmers in the minority community. As for the innuendo that the bar is lowered for minorities, I dismiss it as a lack of understanding on your part since you miss the part about starting from scratch with the willing.

Or are you saying this willing fellow cannot develop as good a skill as his white counterparts, or the efforts of one guy getting a chance to learn screws up the whole system and they should forget it?

Let's just apply this logic to other areas, like health care for instance.

And just curious, why would blacks and Latinos have a problem with white lifeguards? Would they really rather lower the standards than be rescued by an experienced white guy? If so then the minority community needs to do some soul searching.