One of my favorite things about traveling with my intergenerational feminist panel is the slumber party. Courtney and I are here holed up in the hotel with chocolate chip cookies and Airborne and I’ve promised her I’d post this event. It looks SO FAB!

The American Hero and the American Dream:
Reflections on Our Contemporary Political Narratives

Date: Sunday, September 28
Time: 2-4 pm

Location: The Forum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum

In this interactive panel, academics, journalists, and comedians discuss the dominant narratives–perpetuated by both the campaigns and the media–during this unprecedented election. As they explore the ways in which these two presidential candidates and their VPs have been framed, they will also be examining the way the American public still thinks about race, class, and gender, and how this election has served to defibrillate so many beating, bleeding political hearts.

Moderator: Courtney E. Martin

Panelists:
Charlton McIlwain, Assistant Professor of Culture and Communication, NYU
Gloria, Feldt, author and blogger at Heartfeldt Politics
Ramin Hedayati, associate producer at The Daily Show

To make up for the quiet over here today, I bring you a late-night newsbreaking post from our very own Virginia Rutter. With all the chaos down on Wall Street these days, I’m finding it hard to maintain a sense of the larger larger picture. Virginia offers us that. Read it, and, well, weep. -GWP

How ya doin’?

by Virginia Rutter, PhD

Framingham State College

There’s an awesome new report out from John Schmitt and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), called “The Reagan Question.” It starts like this:

In his closing remarks during the final presidential debate of 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked the American people: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

The CEPR report reprises the question for us today. And, besides having higher blood pressure and a lot of irritatsia, CEPR tells us, on 23 out of 25 economic indicators, we are doing worse.

Among the indicators is employment for women—which is down. So is employment for men. But check this out:

Inflation rate—up from 3.3 to 5.4 percent.

Unemployment rate—up from 4.0 to 6.1 percent.

Uninsured—we got millions more now.

Poverty—we got millions more now.

Personal savings—that we’ve got a lot less of now.

Even the good news isn’t really good news: Family income is better now than before, by a whopping 262 dollars after 8 years. That’s not the irritating part. Here’s the irritating part. Under Bush, our productivity is the other indicator that is up. Our productivity grew by 22 percent in the past 8 years. In 2000, our productivity was up just 16%. That’s good! (Our “fundamentals”—the workers—per McCain.) So, we have become more productive! We’re doing great! But wait, where are the profits? Where are all the advantages? Not with us. Check out “real wage growth”: under real wage growth wages were up in 2000 8.2 percent. In 2008, wages were up 1.8 percent. Feh. Feh. Feh.

Do take a look at this report. It is carefully constructed (lots of great citations to the data at the end) and above any of the particulars, you get the point. How ya doin’? Not so great.

GWPenner Elline Lipkin is trying to collect girls’ responses, as well as responses from their mentors, for her forthcoming book with Seal Press on Girls Studies by October 15th. Please take the survey for girl mentors, pass it on, and pass the other survey links onto the girls in your life!”

Survey for Girls Mentors

Survey for Girls ages 6-10

Survey for Girls ages 11-18

Apologies for the lack of posting today! A GWP anomaly, and I missed you all!

I spent the day traveling to Washington DC, where my intergenerational feminist panel spoke tonight at George Washington University before the Women’s Leadership Program–and an amazing group of women those WLPers are. Pictures coming soon. Tomorrow, we’re keynoting at the Association for Women in Communications conference, and I’m excited to attend some of their sessions (and swim in the hotel pool) as well.

More from me tomorrow, I promise!

This just in, via The White House Project:

Just in time for the first presidential debate, The White House Project is thrilled to announce that President Barbie is back on shelves! Exclusively at Toys R Us, this is President Barbie’s third term in office since Mattel and The White House Project joined together in 2000 and 2004 to let both little girls and boys know that a woman can be President. As Marie Wilson says, “To make change, you’ve got to go where the people are. More and more girls think they’re going to grow up to be president and call a join session of Congress because their dolls can.” To give a child in your life their very own President Barbie, click here.

Have any of the mamas out there bought Prez Barbie for their girls? Would be curious to hear your thoughts!

(Tina Fey glasses sold separately.)

I recently received an advance copy of a new book by Alix Kates Shulman, To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), which is excerpted in Salon this week. Many of you will know Alix from her much earlier novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Her latest–a gut-wrenchingly true-to-life memoir this time–is breathtaking in its poignance. That’s all I’ll say. You can read from it right here.

And from a book publicity perspective, I’m fascinated at the way savvy authors now are doing video trailers. Alix has a wonderful one–check it out, here. And to hear Alix on writing, check out this podcast. Kudos to the ex-prom queen on each and every front.

And speaking of adding 2 cents to the HuffPo forum on women and Palin (see previous post, below), here’s Virginia Rutter chiming in already with 8 cents of her own! -GWP

Here’s why. Because I believe that the “women against” gambit feeds into the identity politics of Sarah Palin that make her so damn scary. Ironically, by mounting a “women against” campaign, we make her a “woman’s candidate.” And that is what is driving us f-ing crazy. (At least one poll shows a boost in support from Republican women.) Maybe I read too much Foucault back in the day (or perhaps have more recently seen too much Rove?), but I am telling you this looks like a tough one to handle.

Her identity politics are about “I’m a hockey mom so respect me.” “I am an authority figure, so don’t question me.” “I’m a Christian, so don’t doubt me.” “I am a woman, so don’t get feminist with me.” On the facts, womenagainstpalin are totally right. On the politics of it, it doesn’t work. So, I am not going with womenagagainst. Instead I’m sticking with “she’s more Bush than Bush.” (Pun intended? Oh gosh, no.)

Do check out this forum compiled by Feminist.com’s Marianne Schnall over at HuffPo today. Marianne asked a number of women (and I’m honored to be one of them!) to answer 3 questions about Sarah Palin and the election. Explains Marianne,

As a woman, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed and shaken by this election season, the highs and lows of it all. On the one hand, I have been feeling powerful — everyone is talking about women and our decisive influence in this election. Even the cover of the September 22nd issue of Newsweek is asking, “What do women want?” It’s a good question. So many important themes and dialogues have been raised during this election season — about identity politics, what we expect from a woman leader, sexism in the media, diversity in the feminist movement, what masculine and feminine values are, and about Sarah Palin and the “Palin effect.” It all made me want to talk to other women, to get clarity, to gain insight. I tried to think about what I, personally, could do to contribute to this dialogue.

I can’t wait to read what the others wrote–the others being Isabel Allende, Joan Blades, Eve Ensler, Melissa Etheridge, Gloria Feldt, Kim Gandy, Elizabeth Lesser, Courtney Martin, Kathy Najimy, Amy Richards, Deborah Siegel, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem, Loung Ung, Alice Walker, Jody Williams, Marie Wilson.

Come stop by and add your 2cents!

Today’s tidbits on a new generation of men:

1. Men with sexist views earn more dough. According to a new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, sexist men in the workplace are likely to out-earn their more modern thinking counterparts. Um, really? The BBC reports, and feministing and Broadsheet respond.

2. More single men live at home with Mom and Dad than do single women. While as recently as 1980, only six percent of men reached their early 40s without marrying (compared to five percent of women), by 2004, that percentage had increased to 16.5 percent of men (and 12.5 percent of women). Even more telling, 55 percent of American men aged 18 to 24 live with their parents and 13 percent between 25 to 34 years of age still live at home, compared to only eight percent of women. Read the rest in HNN.

3. Teenage fathers are on the decline. But boys who become Baby Daddies face unique challenges as young men thrust into responsibility. As reported in ABC News, Levi Johnston, the expectant father of Bristol Palin’s unborn child, joins a small minority of his peers by becoming a teenage father. Overall, only 1.7 percent of teenage males were fathers in 2002, a decline since the early 1990s. In fact, the majority of teen mothers are impregnated by men age 20 and older. And ABC News reports that while there are many support services for teen mothers, teen fathers are often left out, despite studies showing that they are more prone to delinquency, reduced educational attainment, financial hardship and unstable marriage patterns.

(Thanks to CCF for the heads up on items 2 and 3)

Via Bitch PhD comes news of an Obama fundraising campaign engineered by Ayelet Waldman (writer, DNC Blogger, former HipMama) whereby you donate $250 through this link, forward your email receipt to Ayelet along with your mailing address, and she’ll send you ten randomly-picked signed books by one of these authors.

Free books AND support for Obama (who, unlike SOME presidents of ours, actually reads)? It doesn’t get much better than that!