Hey Jello Heads! Now We Are One!

Yup, it's been one year ago today since I started this blog. Did I pick good year, or what?! This blog has undergone a few changes over the past 12 months -- a name change, a design change -- and much like Hillary Clinton once said, during the course of this journey "I found my voice."

I also found a lot of other great voices out there. And as I ponder the mysteries of life -- Why is there war? Why do some on this planet have so much more than they need, while others have nothing? Will I see an end to sexism and racism in America in my lifetime? Why can't I ever seem to lose that last 5 pounds? -- I have found wonderful insight and thoughtful words. As well as some delicious snark.

I've tried to collect a helpful list on my blogroll to the right, so I hope you visit any or all of them. But I do also want to highlight a few individual bloggers whom I enjoy reading, and who often stop by here as well. So, in no order at all, I highly recommend you stop by the following blog establishments, and support your independent blogger:

Political Voices of Women

FranIAm

Princess Sparkle Pony

Quaker Agitator

Suzi Riot

Pam's House Blend ... always steamin'

Suburban Lesbian Housewife

Blue Gal

Tennessee Guerilla Women

Mauigirl's Meanderings

Divine Democrat (Oh, M.E., I know you're on hiatus closed for business, but I continue to hold out hope that your blog returns some day ....)

Mock, Paper, Scissors

Unrepentant Old Hippie

Yikes!

PoliTits

Mid-Life Clarity

Some of my favorite blogs I have found by clicking on blogrolls at these folks' blogs. So check 'em out --you never know what you might find. And then let me know if you discover one that you think we might enjoy here. I'll gladly add to the blogroll any time!

Jello photo from Edgewriter

And this is why "Slate" is no longer on the blogroll

I removed Slate from my blogroll quite some time ago when it became clear the site had become just another in the long line of unabashedly pro-Obama love-fests. I mean, it's one thing to be a blogger who promotes one candidate -- I do it. But you know this is all my commentary here, and I know it's commentary when I visit another blogger who supports Obama. We are speaking with our own voices, giving our personal opinions.

But the sites of larger, "professional" organizations -- Slate, Huffington Post, Raw Story etc. -- used to have a more balanced tone. These sites have many writers on staff and on-call, and they used to publish diverse opinions on topics of the day. Because it became all one voice over there, I really haven't visited Slate in a long time. But apparently I haven't missed much. Tennessee Guerilla Women did a little survey on Slate's ... ahem ... "journalism" and reports:

Hillary Sexism Watch: Slate's Arrested Development

By now we've had our faces repeatedly rubbed in the fact that the historic bid for the presidency by the first ever viable woman is nothing more than an opportunity to wallow in cheap misogyny by the mainly male media.

The historic campaign that means so very much to girls and women all over America, as viewed by the apparent adolescents at Slate:

Hillary's "Lapse" Dance by Mickey Kaus

Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess By Timothy Noah

The Hillary Deathwatch By Chadwick Matlin

The Hillary Deathwatch Index

The Hillary Deathwatch Widget for your blog, iGoogle, or Facebook page

Please go visit the Tennessee Guerilla Women. They do good stuff over there.

Who wins and who loses in the Democratic candidate war?

Light posting today, as I'm paying for my day off yesterday (but yes -- the lettuce, and even the spinach, are in the ground and the fish pond pump is back up and running, so it was a productive day!).

I came across an interesting post over at All Spin Zone. Blogger Richard Blair has done an admittedly unscientific study of the site traffic at 5 "A-List" progressive sites over the past month. You will recall that I wrote about my personal decision to stop visiting certain sites where I no longer felt welcome as a Clinton supporter. Well, apparently I was not alone in that decision:

A quick review of the graphics below tell a surprising tale: traffic is down significantly on the pro-Obama sites (30% or more over the past month), but about level on the pro-Clinton and “neutral” sites. What does this mean? I have no friggin’ idea. But the trends are clear and appear to be statistically significant.

AmericaBlog (leans Obama): As the candidate wars have escalated, AmericaBlog has experienced a 40% drop in peak weekly traffic over the past 30 days. From a pure statistical standpoint, both the traffic peaks and valleys are both lower, and consistently so.

Daily Kos (leans Obama): In one month alone, DKos shed nearly 1/2 million unique visitors (on peak traffic days) between the beginning of March and April’s Fool day.

Atrios’ Eschaton (neutral): I’ll give Atrios this: he’s managed to build a nice little empire, and a heck of a stable (traffic-wise) community. Eschaton has taken pains to maintain site neutrality in the candidate wars, even if the community members seem to lean more Obama (but not rabidly so, as is the case on DKos and AmericaBlog). As a result, Eschaton has been able to maintain a relatively flat slope on traffic gains or losses.

Talk Left (leans Clinton): If the Obama-leaning sites have driven off Clinton supporters to other sites, the defection isn’t particularly apparent on the two blogs reviewed that lean toward Clinton. There hasn’t been a significant increase in traffic at Talk Left - but there hasn’t been a decrease, either.

MyDD (leans Clinton): Again, for a self-identified pro-Clinton blog, the traffic at MyDD has remained fairly static at the height of the candidate wars. It’s hard to say if this is because defecting Obama supporters are being offset by an influx of disaffected Clinton backers from other blogs, or if the traffic patterns on MyDD are just “mature”, due to the longevity of the blog.

You can read more and see the graphs here.

Celebrate Women's History Month by recognizing your favorite lady blogger!

Even though somehow my name was left off the ballot, you have a chance to vote for your other favorite woman blogger at Women's Voices Making History.

Ah well, there's always next year ....

Is this Liberal America's nasty little secret: We're still bigots?

I guess none of us were prepared for the intense examination of prejudice in America that this Democratic primary has brought with it. We have such an ugly history of being one of the last civilized nations to allow slavery, and then even when that was abolished we continued to have legal (and socially accepted) discrimination against women and people of color for several more generations. My mother — not some ancient ancestor — had very few places she could lunch with her best friend in Washington DC in the early 1950s: her friend was black, my mother is white. But in DC now? Neighborhoods are mixed, the faces in the restaurants are mixed. People of all shapes and colors intermingle daily.

So it has come as a shock that in this supposedly enlightened time in which we live, blatant discrimination still exists. Look, I'm not naive. I grew up in 1960s Virginia and have spent a lot of time in the South. And I'm a professional woman who also happens to be gay. So I know discrimination exists in America, 'k?

What I didn't know, however, was how much discrimination exists within the progressive, liberal population of this country.

With our choices narrowed down to 2 candidates, it's as if some in the Democratic party feel free to criticize and attack at the most vile and base level. And yes, it's happening with both Obama and Clinton supporters.

We seem to have a perfect storm for our underlying prejudices to be exposed. At the same time that we have a public forum as powerful as the internet, we also have the incredibly emotional and historical firsts of a person of color and a woman within reach of the White House. It has all come together to produce a sense of righteousness and anonymity among some bloggers and commentors, who say things online that I cannot believe they would say in person.

I keep thinking back to an online discussion I had a few months ago with an Obama-supporting blogger who had criticized Hillary Clinton. I took issue with his comments about her "cackle" and her appearance in general. I said look, criticize her policies all you want, but these are extremely sexist comments you're making. He was furious. He said that he is a "bigger feminist than Alan Alda" and how dare I call him "sexist." We went back and forth a bit before I realized what the problem was.

This blogger — and many many others just like him on both sides of this campaign — have a disconnect between what they say and what they value. In this case, I took a step back, and said look, I'm not calling you sexist. I'm saying the words you use are sexist. He still resisted, taking this as a personal attack. So I gave him this example: if I say a phrase, and a person of color tells me they find it racist, do I say "no it's not — I'm not racist!" or do I say, "I'm sorry, I didn't know. Can you tell me why that is racist?"

When I was a corporate trainer, I taught a course on diversity. The bottom line in that course was, view your interactions with other people as a learning opportunity. Ask questions. Ask for clarification. But don't get defensive.

This campaign season has certainly tested my abilities to stay calm, and in the end I decided to simply avoid certain blogs that seem to have gone off the deep end in their attacks of Hillary Clinton. When I try to point out how a comment is sexist, I'm labeled "a Clinton operative" or my comment is simply ignored. I see no point in reading comments posted by people with closed minds. It defeats the whole purpose of having a comments section.

While many fellow Democrats are worried about "the party" coming together once a nominee is chosen, I will be honest with you: I am much more worried about my fellow Democrats themselves and the state of our country. The insidious discrimination and prejudices of so many liberals may well be much harder to fight than even the legally segregated lunch counters my mother and her friends faced.

Pooky comes out

No, not as a lesbian — I did that years ago. No, today I decided to post my image with my profile.

You may have noticed that I've changed the template here. I'm trying to create a blog that is both informative and visually pleasing for my visitors. As part of that, I thought I'd take the plunge and put my picture up here as part of the re-design.

I began this blog in May of this year as a way to improve my web development skills after taking a new job. I have certainly learned a lot technically, and have also found a wonderful community of bloggers. Sometimes blogging is like being at a rowdy after-dinner discussion. Wit and passion, (sometimes people are just so wrong! How can they not see my point of view!).

I've always enjoyed writing, but posting things for the world to read was a little intimidating at first, to say the least. As I've grown in confidence with my writing, I've been posting at other sites as well. In doing so, I have sometimes felt I was hiding behind a picture. The name, I don't mind. I mean really, Pooky Shoehorn is awesome! It means everything ... and nothing.

So perhaps at some point I'll get something nicer than a web cam image, but for now, here goes!

Women, Politics, and Blogs

This is really shaping up into an interesting year for women in politics. For the the first time in U.S. history, a woman has a real shot at becoming president. A woman is already in the Speaker of the House for the first time, and in my hometown of Baltimore, we are looking at the 99% probability that we will have women in the positions of Mayor, City Council President, and U.S. States Attorney. I think it is really a pivotal time in U.S. politics for women.

Not surprisingly, this change has brought about a lot of discussion in both the MSM and the blogosphere about women in politics. Recently I told you about a wonderful list gathered by Catherine Morgan at InformedVoters of A List of (Over) 100 Women Blogging on Politics. That list is now at more than 200 sites!

One of the reasons Catherine posted this list was because of a story that appeared in the New York Times entitled “Women, Politics, and the Internet.” Author Katharine Seelye states: “We know that women slightly outnumber men online. But at least anecdotally, it seems as if more men are on the political blogs, writing specifically about politics, reading about politics and putting in their two cents in the comments sections.”

What do you think? Seelye received a storm of comments about her article. I encourage you to check it out here and let me know what you think. I suspect there are going to be a lot of informed women voters going to the polls in 2008.

Where to find the women bloggers

It was a wonderful surprise to come back to my blog after being sick for a few days and find that I had been included on something called “ 100 Women Blogging on Politics.” My blog has been such a fun, creative outlet for me that it is truly an honor when I am reminded that anyone else out there in the world is stopping to take the time to read what I have to say.

I do truly try to stay informed and only post things that I have researched (that is, I try to never post anything that smells of “rumor,” unless of course, it's concerning the possibility of Jenna Bush being pregnant, because the hypocricy of that would just be too wonderful). I try to alert you to news stories that you may not have heard in the mainstream media, and I hope that above all, I give you something new to think about.

However, I'm fully aware that this blog is still basically an outlet for my opinions, no matter how informed they may be. So, thank you for reading, and thank you for commenting. I encourage you to check out InformedVoters, which created the list (now at almost 200), and also to check out the sites on the list. It's a wide variety, from Michelle Malkin to, well, me!