Archives for May 2006

Ever wish you could join a book group that always meets exactly when you want it to? Now you can, with the CNW Online Book Group! It’s easy — just register for the Discussion Boards and join the conversation any time of the day or night.

Our first book is Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil, by Cunt author Inga Muscio:

…[T]he so-called history we learn in school is no more than a brand, developed by white men who, often unjustly, won the right to spin their stories as hard facts. With Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil, it’s Muscio’s turn and she’s taking it in order to hip the masses to the truth about the American history they think they know. Whose country is it? Has democracy ever really existed? Why does our culture celebrate certain figures and ignore others? Do schools teach kids to perpetuate white supremacist ideologies? Muscio delves deep to answer these questions, marveling at how personal history is to everyone, while challenging people to expand their thinking on America’s past and encouraging them to consider how their own histories might read.

You can get talking about it right here all through June.

Posted by CNW at 05:32 PM
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YOU.

Political Groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay “protection money” for their websites and online features to work correctly.

Nonprofits—This very website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.

Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.

Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

Small Businesses and Innovators—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the “slow lane” with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.

And of course I would add that women and people of color will be disproportiontely hurt, as we’re much more likely to have much less money than the white men at the telcom companies.

The good news: Congress is grappling with this issue right now, and they’re paying close attention to what their constituents want (ah, election years!). Even better news: it only takes a minute to call your Rep using this handy list.

Want more info on Net Neutrality and how it works? Check out this clever video and post over at AlterNet.

Posted by CNW at 03:09 PM
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In the righteous blog feministing today comes a preview/review of a film I didn’t know about but now can’t WAIT to see.

It’s Byron Hurt’s new documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip Hop Culture — and it’s coming straight from Sundance to a PBS station near you.

Here’s what Courtney E. Martin had to say about it. (Excuse the long quote, but she saw it and I didn’t, and even if I had I probably couldn’t say it better):

The film’s got great footage. Hurt captures Busta Rhymes leaving the interview like a coward the second homosexuality comes up. (To my horror, Mos Def followed right on Busta’s heels.) He’s also got the CEO of BET giving him a pointed brush-off the second he brings up video ho culture and Russell Simmons looking like a fool trying to shrug off his own responsibility. In contrast, Chuck D was so articulate and insightful I wanted to elect him president of something important.

My favorite parts were when Hurt hung around with wantabee rappers outside of BET festivals and the like, recording their tired lyricism, then confronting them directly afterwards about their violent/sexist messages. 17-year-old dudes posing as hard thugs a moment before instantly became sweet-eyed boys admitting that they don’t slang rock, they slang water—that this is the only persona they know will get them noticed. Essentially, a generation of teenage boys has decided that putting on 21st century black face is worth it for a record deal.

You can check out a snippet featuring L.L. Cool J and Cornel West here.

Posted by CNW at 04:24 PM
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That’s the current ratio of men to women writers in national “general interest” magazines, according to the handy website WomenTK, which is solely devoted to tracking these things. That’s almost three articles by men to every one by a woman in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The worst offender is Harper’s, coming in at a whopping 6.92 male bylines for every female one.

Want to break down the old boys’ club? Start by writing letters to the Editors of each of these literary lights, and then be sure to sign up for the WAM!2007 announcement list so you can be part of the change for good…

Posted by CNW at 04:46 PM
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In this seamless narrative, part memoir and part reportage, she draws on her own experiences as well as those of other women who live outside the bounds of security. Whether in her own personal life or in interviewing Bosnian refugees or war protester Cindy Sheehan, Ensler shows how fears both global and personal have resulted in a less secure existence.

Wangari Maathai
Unbowed: A Memoir
In which the global shero, environmentalist, feminist, and human rights activist lays it all out, from how she argued her way into an education through her remarkable acts of civil disobedience, to the establishment of the Green Belt Movement and her key role in transforming Kenya into a democracy. You want to know how to make real change? This is gonna be the book to read.

More sneak peeks to come, I promise. Meanwhile, leave your comments below to let us (and the folks who control the tour schedules) know how much you want to see these authors live…

Posted by CNW at 02:03 PM
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And generally, welcome to our brand-spankin’ new site. I don’t mind telling you how much work and time has gone into making it a reality. Three people in particular need to be thanked: Anh Dao Kolbe, whose photographs capture CNW like nothing else, Maria Kogan, whose graphic design make this site feel so perfectly ours, and Kevin Shay, web programmer extraordinaire, who not only said “yes” to our every “can we make it do X?” question, but made it happen elegantly, efficiently, and in plain English.

We hope you’ll come back often, not only to the site (did I mention it includes multimedia programming, discussion boards, and an interactive community calendar everyone can use?), but to this very blog. We’ll be keeping you posted on the goings on here at CNW, of course, and giving you a sneak peek behind the scenes for sure. But we’ll also be talking about our favorite new books and writers, thinking about getting women heard better and more often in media and politics, and who knows what else.

Don’t forget to join the conversation by sharing your own thoughts and experiences in the comments section. Let the blogging begin!

Posted by CNW at 09:35 AM
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So the news came down yesterday that Commander in Chief has been not just non-renewed, but big-time effective-immediately cancelled. As in, they’d rather show extra editions of “Primetime” than air the episodes already in the can. Let the post-mortem begin.

My prediction? We’re going to hear lots about how the country “just wasn’t ready for a woman President,” not even on TV. That it pandered to much to the feminist fringe. Or, from some quarters, that it pandered too much to the mainstream.

The truth is, it pandered too much to the Afterschool Special audience. Which hasn’t existed for at least a decade. Seriously. Witness the ratings and buzz when the show started lo these many months ago in September. The country was plenty ready for a real, complex, kick-ass woman President, at least on TV. But instead of West Wing: the MacKenzie Allen Years, we got a series of one-hour morality plays featuring SuperMom (Leader of the Free World Edition), delivering wooden dialogue from a botoxed mouth, never failing her family or her country in any way that couldn’t be resolved by the end of the episode. Who needs character development, sophisticated plotting and moral gray areas when you’ve got an “Independent” President who embodies goodness and looks great in a ball gown pitted against a cartoonish nemesis so completely nefarious I kept expecting Donald Sutherland to sprout a handlebar moustache and start twirling it?

So no. It wasn’t that we weren’t ready. It wasn’t even American Idol. It was the writing, stupid. Because stupid is one thing women most certainly aren’t, but the Commander In Chief writers never seemed to figure that out. I, for one, won’t miss it.

Posted by CNW at 10:06 AM
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Found this lovely video poem on Alison Bechdel’s blog this morning. (Did you know she’s coming to CNW on June 23?)

Enjoy it as the rain settles in.

Posted by CNW at 09:13 AM
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