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By Larkin Callaghan • 12 years ago

Ed Schultz, the NYPD, and the burden of victims

Three fairly prolific things have happened in the past week that I found to be misogynistic, sadly unsurprising, and deeply troubling. They all incorporated the ways in which women are attacked in the public eye, how the media shapes the representation of female victims, and what we think are crimes worthy of solving and what kind of help is worth giving.

Let’s start with Ed. Given the obviously hard liberal bent of this blog, I’m guessing most of you have already determined that my views are aligned with many on MSNBC, despite not usually watching TV for my news (I prefer to read my news, because I hate commercials and because I’d rather get the straight facts than deal with a sensationalized version of a story with a reporter’s personal opinion bending it one way or another). This past week, Ed Schultz referred to Laura Ingraham as a slut.

This frustrated me for a number of reasons. First of all, I don’t care about Laura Ingraham’s sex life. I don’t care how many people she’s slept with, who they are, or what they’ve done. Why does anybody? Why does Ed? To use that as a platform of attack is insulting, crude, sexist, and entirely irrelevant to the argument. Schultz was angry and wanted to be mean – and the best way to be mean to women in America is by calling them out as sex-crazy animals. It’s a double shot – you’re calling them dirty and ...
By Larkin Callaghan • 12 years ago

The Name Change

On the Today show this morning, Hoda and Kathie Lee (yes, you read that right), had a guest on who was discussing the issue of women changing their names when they get married. I have never planned on changing my name when I get married – I’ve been Larkin Callaghan my whole life, and I plan on staying that way. Changing my name to my future husband’s name doesn’t make sense to me. I can be in a equal, loving partnership with someone while maintaining the sense of independent self I’ve developed over the course of my life.

The guest they were interviewing kept saying that women weren’t changing their name because they ...

On the Today show this morning, Hoda and Kathie Lee (yes, you read that right), had a guest on who was discussing the issue of women changing their names when they get married. I have ...