Tag Archives: feminism

CNN Lets Pro-Abortion PAC Spout Its Anti-Palin Talking Points

CNN’s Jessica Yellin, a one-time ” prominent feminist activist ,” helped forward the talking points of the pro-abortion lobby by devoting part of a segment on Tuesday’s Rick’s List to EMILY List’s new anti-Sarah Palin ad. Yellin aired their left-wing accusations against the Republican and her endorsed candidates without providing the other side and/or fact-checking them . Anchor Rick Sanchez introduced the issue by bringing up the Republican’s recent “mamma grizzly” ad: “It seemed like a very effective ad that Sarah Palin had put out . I mean, professionally speaking, it was very clean, very well put together – the whole ‘grizzly mom’ ad that everyone was talking about- and, apparently, there’s some blowback on this now. What is that?” Before playing the PAC’s video, which featured women dressed and made-up to look like bears, in mockery of Palin’s “mama grizzly” term, the CNN correspondent noted that EMILY’s List is a ” political action group that raises money for Democratic women pro-choice candidates , and they are now unveiling a new get-out-the-vote effort that’s hitting back on this idea that Sarah Palin speaks for women voters…EMILY’s List’s campaign is called ‘Sarah Doesn’t Speak For Me,’ and they’re taking the whole idea of ‘momma grizzly’ quite literally.” She then played a clip from the ad. During the clip, the unnamed women launched standard attacks from the left against the former Alaska governor and her endorsed candidates: ” Want to know what threatens me? My daughter not having the right to choose. The fact that if you were in charge of this country, my little cubs wouldn’t have health care….Unemployment benefits…something that you and your gang of candidates want to do away with .” Sanchez and Yellin shared a laugh over the ad, and the correspondent continued that EMILY’s List is “trying to drum up interest among Democratic voters who aren’t that energized right now, compared to Republicans, by taking on this whole idea, and with a little bit of humor.” Neither CNN personality provided any response from a pro-life organization or individual, something that CBSNews.com brought up in their Tuesday article about EMILY List’s campaign: Anti-abortion rights group the Susan B. Anthony List , which recently concluded a 23-city bus tour designed to spotlight its support for candidates who oppose abortion rights, quickly hit back with a statement suggesting “EMILY’s List is running scared.” “EMILY’s List is busy perpetuating what it purports to abhor: using women candidates with whom they disagree as punching bags,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser. “On the eve of the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage, the SBA List calls upon EMILY’s List to come to grips with reality.” Yellin also said nothing of whether Palin and her endorsed candidates actually are against health care for children and seek to “do away with unemployment benefits.” Obviously, the former governor and most, if not all, of her picked candidates are pro-life. It’s not surprising that Yellin would omit doing this, given her past as a leader of Harvard-Radcliffe Students For Choice , and, as The Harvard Crimson described her , a “prominent feminist activist in her own right .” During an April 10, 1992 interview with The Crimson , she actually lamented the apparent opposition to women’s studies at Harvard when she was an undergraduate there (Yellin was a political science and women’s studies double major): “For people interested in women’s issues or gender studies, this is an overtly hostile environment .” The transcript of the relevant portion of Jessica Yellin’s segment on Tuesday’s Rick’s List, beginning at the 19 minutes into the 3 pm Eastern hour mark: SANCHEZ: Let me ask you about the Sarah Palin situation going on, because- you know, we saw the ad, and I thought- and I had said on television- in fact, you and I were watching this- that it seemed like a very effective ad that Sarah Palin had put out. I mean, professionally speaking, it was very clean, very well put together- the whole ‘grizzly mom’ ad that everyone was talking about, and, apparently, there’s some blowback on this now. What is that? YELLIN: That’s right. Well, that Sarah Palin ‘momma grizzly’ ad has caught a lot of attention, and driven a lot of media interest, at least in Palin and this movement of women candidates she’s endorsing. But EMILY’s List is a political action group that raises money for Democratic women pro-choice candidates, and they are now unveiling a new get-out-the-vote effort that’s hitting back on this idea that Sarah Palin speaks for women voters who are- quote, ‘conservative momma grizzlies.’  EMILY’s List’s campaign is called ‘Sarah Doesn’t Speak For Me,’ and they’re taking the whole idea of ‘momma grizzly’ quite literally. Watch this. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 1 (from EMILY’s List ad): When my cubs are threatened- (unidentified woman roars like an animal) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 2: But want to know what threatens me? My daughter not having the right to choose. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 3: The fact that if you were in charge of this country, my little cubs wouldn’t have health care. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 4: When the salmon stopped coming down the stream and I didn’t work for three months, guess how we survived? Unemployment benefits, which is something that you and your gang of candidates want to do away with. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE 5: You know, Ms. Palin, that really gets under my skin and my-   SANCHEZ (live): (Yellin laughs) Oh, my God. Did we have to stop it there because the bear was going to really get mad? (Sanchez laughs) YELLIN: It was going to climb out of the TV screen and get you. (Sanchez laughs) So, you see what they’re doing. It’s a get-out-the-vote campaign. That’s on their website. They also ask people to go in and sign a pledge that they’ll turn out to vote. Obviously, they’re trying to drum up interest among Democratic voters who aren’t that energized right now, compared to Republicans, by taking on this whole idea, and with a little bit of humor- SANCHEZ: Yeah. YELLIN: I think that’s humorous. SANCHEZ: Humor both ways- we will let the viewers decide. My thanks to you, Jessica.

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CNN Lets Pro-Abortion PAC Spout Its Anti-Palin Talking Points

CNN’s Yellin Cites Her Own Liberal Harvard Days in Defense of Kagan

On Tuesday’s Rick’s List, CNN’s Jessica Yellin harkened back to her college days at Harvard as she defended Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan against charges by conservatives that she is anti-military: “When I was at Harvard, a full decade before she was dean of the law school, there was already institutional opposition to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’….it steeps the whole university.” Yellin, actually, was a key left-wing student agitator during her time at the university, as she revealed in several interviews with The Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard. She was labeled a ” prominent feminist activist in her own right ” in a June 10, 1993 profile of Sheila Allen , her first-year roommate and self-proclaimed “dyke of the Class of ’93.” The then-student certainly earned this label, as she helped resurrect Harvard-Radcliffe Students for Choice after a “relatively inactive period,” was a women’s studies major, and, in an April 10, 1992 interview , bemoaned how Harvard was apparently opposed to her feminist agenda: “For people interested in women’s issues or gender studies, this is an overtly hostile environmen t.” In a May 1, 1992 article , Yellin expressed how the acquittal of the four police officers involved in the controversial Rodney King arrest was ” the most blatant evidence of the indelible racism… in this country .” Anchor Rick Sanchez brought on the correspondent just after the top of the 4 pm Eastern hour as the nominee continued her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committe. Sanchez first referenced how Senator Jeff Sessions was “grilling Kagan about banning military recruiters from an on-campus recruiting facility when she was Harvard Law dean.”  He then asked the correspondent, “Is it fair, based, Jessica, on what happened at Harvard, to charge, as Sessions seems to be saying- or alluding to or suggesting- that Elena Kagan has a bias against the military?” Yellin defended  Kagan from the very beginning and immediately cited her time at the Ivy League school: YELLIN: I think that’s apples and oranges, Rick, because, when I was at Harvard, a full decade before she was dean of the law school, there was already institutional opposition to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ It was alive and well . So, beginning in 1979, when Harvard instituted this no-discrimination policy, there were people in ROTC- the Reserve Officers Training Corps- who could not train and drill on campus because, initially- a holdover from Vietnam- it continued because of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ That was a decade before she was there. Then, when General Colin Powell was invited to speak at graduation in 1993, there were massive protests over ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I can’t emphasize enough how this- it steeps the whole university . She was continuing with prevailing beliefs on campus, and this whole debate feels very out of context for someone who was at Harvard, because- to suggest this didn’t predate her- saying that’s a left-wing talking point is like arguing that reality is a left-wing talking point. The correspondent does have a personal memory of the 1993 commencement, as she graduated from Harvard that year. The Clinton administration had introduced the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy just months earlier, shortly after coming to office. Later, the CNN correspondent excused Kagan’s open opposition to military recruiters on the Harvard Law campus as merely a manifestation of the left-wing environment at most “elite” institutions of higher learning: SANCHEZ: She was there in 2003. YELLIN: Yeah. SANCHEZ: Isn’t this about the same time, though, that there was a lot of questions? Michael Moore had this movie that came out about that time [Fahrenheit 9/11], as I recall, where a big part of his movie was questioning whether recruiters had a right to go out there and get people to join the military, and that they were, maybe, not being all that honest with them. I mean, if you put it in the context of that time frame, there were a lot of questions being raised about recruiting by the left. YELLIN: There have been since the Vietnam era, when some of these organizations were kicked off of these elite campuses then. I mean, there are a number of colleges that have resisted allowing military recruitment. But that’s hardly unique to Elena Kagan or to Harvard. It might be- you know, some on the right have argued that that’s the culture of elite universities, that are- you know, anti-military in some way. I don’t buy that. I think that there’s a tension there, but this is- the fundamental point here is that it’s in no way special to her , and there were 24 faculties that joined in the lawsuit against this policy of requiring these military recruiters. Hers wasn’t even one of them. So she wasn’t even leading the charge on this.

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CNN’s Yellin Cites Her Own Liberal Harvard Days in Defense of Kagan

CBS’s Katie Couric Fawns Over Left-wing Feminist and Her Outrageous Claims

“[Carly Fiorina’s] position on taxation would deprive women of childcare.” The Hyde Amendment “penalizes poor women terribly.” “You can’t be a feminist who says other women can’t” have an abortion. These are just some of the outrageous statements left-wing feminist Gloria Steinem made during an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric on the latest installment of “@katiecouric,” which was posted to the CBSNews.com Web site on June 23. Couric’s responses to the “godmother of the modern women’s movement’s” absurd claims ranged from silent agreement to reflexive endorsement.              Although the former Playboy Bunny railed against the legislation that banned federal funding of abortion, Couric responded approvingly – “right!” – and changed the subject to the hockey mom every liberal feminist loves to hate: Since we’re on the subject of reproductive rights, can you be a conservative feminist? Sarah Palin recently, I think, rankled some traditional feminists by calling herself a feminist, despite the fact she doesn’t espouse many traditional feminist, uh, points of view. Instead of challenging Steinem’s feminist litmus test, Couric, turning to liberal activist Jehmu Greene, asked, “Do you agree with that?” “I would say that Sarah Palin does not represent many of those same sentiments,” Greene responded. The most vigorous defense Couric could muster on Palin’s behalf was, “In what way? I mean, why?” On Steinem’s bizarre correlation between low taxes and less access to childcare, the “Evening News” anchor uttered not a decibel of skepticism. Eschewing her journalistic duty to hold interviewees accountable for their pronouncements – particularly the outlandish and unsubstantiated ones – Couric once again undermined her credibility as a professional newswoman. Click here to view Katie Couric’s June 23 interview with Steinem and Greene in its entirety. –Alex Fitzsimmons is a News Analysis intern at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.

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CBS’s Katie Couric Fawns Over Left-wing Feminist and Her Outrageous Claims

Bachmann Responds to ‘F— Michele Bachmann’ Concert Fliers: ‘We Don’t See an Outrage Coming from the Media’

It is way beyond comprehension – the dislike, hatred for Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., a relative backbencher in terms of congressional clout , but a strong outspoken conservative leader. Fliers ( posted below fold ) have been surfacing around Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. advertising a “F— Michele Bachmann 2010” tape party featuring the hip-hop artist G-Biz . And on Sean Hannity’s June 17 radio program, the Minnesota congresswoman responded to it and likened it to other shots taken at her. “It was just brought to my attention yesterday,” she said. “This is part of a pattern. I know you reported on this before – the Playboy article. They have highlighted various conservative women and talked about very lewd, derogatory, hateful violent things that they wanted to do toward those women. I was one of those women and this is a concert series, as you said, where they’re using degrading terminology. Also in Minneapolis, there’s a comic book series that was written showing me in a similar light.” Flier Posted Below Fold

Let’s Fight About a Gay-Sex Videogame This Christmas Season

Dragon Age : Origins has taken the terribly awkward genre of videogame dialog and melded it with gay romance and, also gay sex scenes.

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Let’s Fight About a Gay-Sex Videogame This Christmas Season

The Hidden Subtext of Christmas Specials

You think that the animated holiday specials we all grew up with were just teaching you about Santa and presents and winter wonderlands? You’re wrong! They were sending you hidden signals both excellent and devious.

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The Hidden Subtext of Christmas Specials

Scoring Sunday’s Nuptials: Feminism’s Fallen to Talking Points, But Not White Dresses

Every week, Phyllis Nefler scores the NYT’s Weddings & Celebrations pages for the various Times -reading women and gay men who need their own special version of sabermetrics , and the straight men like me who deny reading them. These are Altarcations

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Scoring Sunday’s Nuptials: Feminism’s Fallen to Talking Points, But Not White Dresses