Reason women don't belong in politics #2370293847

I give you Maira Kalman.

Is this illustration intended to commemorate, perhaps, Easter Sunday? Why, no, of course not, this is the New York Times. It's about the inauguration of our new Messiah, President Barack Hussein Obama. The creator is one Maira Kalman, whose Wikipedia entry claims she is both "an American" and "born in Tel Aviv." To me, those two statements contradict each other, unless she 1) was born to American parents who happened to be living in Tel Aviv, or 2) is naturalized. A Google search for biographical information her found no sources which might explain whether either of those two things is true.

Anyway, you can look at the entire entry by clicking on the link above. Apparently, her "blog" at the Times consists of pages of these illustrations. This one contains a list of all sorts of different reasons we should exclaim "Hallelujah!" upon the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama. If you have traditionalist sympathies, the list provides as good a reason as any why women should not have political power. For example, my favorite is the third-to-last panel: "For being smart again. And sexy again. And optimistic again." Because God knows, America just wasn't sexy enough under George W. Bush. This reminds me of how, the day after the inauguration, several of my female classmates were discussing how much they loved Michelle Obama's dress and how excited they were to have a First Lady whose fashion they can follow closely.

I was alerted to Maira Kalman's blog by a classmate who posted the above entry as, uh, his or her Facebook status. I'll give you three guesses as to the sex of this individual.

Re-enfranchised and it feels so good

A week or two ago--I don't remember, medical school has become such a blur--I received a new voter registration card in the mail. I never did receive a return phone call from the clerk at the board of elections, but someone must have discovered that I did sign whatever I needed to sign after all. Was my vote counted? The world may never know.

I had always dismissed left-wing concerns about voting problems in America; the process has always seemed so well-controlled to me. However, after this experience, I'm a little more willing to believe that there are large numbers of people whose votes aren't being counted properly. Not, of course, because old white men in top hats twirling their mustaches and smoking cigars are pulling the strings to keep brown people down, as the left thinks, but simply because so many people can't be counted upon to do their job right. As the quotation often apocryphally attributed to Napoleon goes, "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

(The title of this post is a play on the 1978 hit "Reunited" by Peaches & Herb.)