One of those moments

My boss is smart. She has a Ph.D. She’s done research in aquatic biology, conducted wetland restoration work, taught at the university level, and now she’s running the premier environmental organization in my region. She’s got a quick mind, strong opinions, and makes friends easily. Because she works in a field that has been traditionally […]

Another year, another post like this

I may have told you this story before. Perhaps not. Whatever the case, I’m not sure what it is about this time of year that seems to bring this sort of thing out. Last year around now, I was writing about Harvey Weinstein. The year before that, Donald Trump and locker room talk. Maybe it’s […]

And Here We Are Again

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A man holds a position of great power and influence. He’s at the top of his field, the top of his company. He rubs shoulders with the rich and famous and influential. He is rich and famous and influential. With a word, he can make or break […]

“The Doctor is a–“

In 1974, Mel Brooks released Blazing Saddles, which is at once a brilliant and intelligent satire of racism and a typical, infantile Brooks film. In the movie, the Attorney General of some unknown state tries to force the residents of a town to sell their land cheap in order to build a railroad through it. […]

In Which I Make a Horrible Admission: Locker Room Banter

(Author’s note: I wrote this piece yesterday in Writers’ Circle. I’m very much troubled by the recently-unearthed audio of Donald Trump on the “Access Hollywood” bus with Billy Bush. This has been very difficult to write, and pressing the “Publish” button is a little scary. I fear I may not have articulated things that well. […]

Better Things

I’m feeling a bit disjointed as far as posting this morning. I really, really want to post about Curt Schilling. I have a 4 page mess of a draft that I was working on yesterday and the day before, but time is short this morning (Fridays are early days for the Catbird) and I don’t […]

Am I the Only One…

…who sees a problem here? As you may have heard by now, super-famous author John Grisham did an interview with the British paper earlier this week in which he made some…interesting…statements (the interview will run on Saturday). Somehow in the course of the interview, they ended up on the topic of incarceration. And from there, […]

Anita Sarkeesian and More Ranting!

As you’ve been aware, I’ve been somewhat irritable and ranty lately. Oddly, I don’t actually feel quite so cranky this morning (just tired, mostly); nonetheless, this post is likely to come off in a similar vein to recent posts. In this case, it’s the subject matter as opposed to my general mood. Some items of […]

Rick Ross and the Unlearned Lesson of Steubenville

This weekend, I was tooling around on the internet and a headline grabbed my eye. “Rick Ross speaks on rape lyrics controversy.” Now, I have to be honest, I have no idea who Rick Ross is. I have now read this story, I even searched out the song in question, and I still really don’t […]

A lot of time and analysis these days is spent on examining women in the media and rethinking how they are presented. We want—we need—to see more quality presentation of women and girls in movies and TV in particular (books are far better at presenting women who are not merely arm- or eye-candy, or there […]