Frances Tobin -- Politics Daily

Published: 02/23/10

Title IX's Looong-Term Effects on Women's Health, Education & Weight

It's been almost four decades since the passage of the landmark federal education legislation known as Title IX, which created the opportunity for girls and women to break into the male-dominated realm of school athletics. The law, a component of the Education Amendments of 1972, was originally sponsored by U.S. Reps. Patsy Mink and Edith Green and stipulates that schools receiving federal money cannot discriminate based upon sex. (In 1974, the federal government developed regulations to implement Title IX and determined that implicit in the law was a mandate that schools give female ...

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Published: 02/20/10

Tiger Woods a Changed Man? Not So Fast . . .

Mary and Luisita, I wish I could share your optimism about Tiger Woods' reach for redemption. But I'm skeptical -- mainly because he timed his supposed mea culpa to coincide with the W.G.C.-Accenture Match Play golf tournament in Arizona. I couldn't help but see that as a craven and immature dig at Accenture, which had dropped its sponsorship deal with Tiger. The act was certainly its own statement, that's for sure. At the same time he was apologizing directly to the camera, he chose to work in a spiteful jab at a company that no longer wanted to endorse his image (now I can see why). It ...

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Published: 02/11/10

Polygamy: 'Big Love' Is as Close as I Want to Get

Once a week, I'm swept away into the alternate reality that is HBO's "Big Love." The show, which is half-way through its fourth season, centers on Mormon fundamentalist Bill Henrickson (played by Bill Paxton), who practices polygamy with his three wives Barb, Nicki and Margene (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chlo� Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin, respectively). Though as a teen he was cast out of Juniper Creek, a (fictional) Mormon fundamentalist group compound in Utah, Bill continues the practice of polygamy as a central tenet of his Mormon faith – a high-wire act considering he and his ...

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Published: 02/10/10

Is Meghan McCain, Miss Maverick, Undermining Her Daddy?

Last weekend's National Tea Party Convention continues to color this week's new cycle, though the majority of headlines that have come out of Nashville thus far have tacked away from the positive in the direction of the down-right comical. (I can't be the only one crossing my fingers in hopes that a Tina Fey "palmprompter" sketch is in the works for "SNL.") As PD's Mary C. Curtis reported, convention attendees showed up for the political red meat and, boy, did they get it. Though Sarah Palin was the belle of the ball, it was former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) who really made some news with his ...

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Published: 02/5/10

Rahm, Rush and the 'R-Word'

I was stunned and saddened when, during my "Cultural Diversity and the News" class, a number of students giggled at this headline as it appeared on the projector screen: "Outrage After White House Chief Drops 'R-Word'." The article was about White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's use of the phrase, "f----ing retarded." According to the article, "The comment was reportedly made back in August at a meeting of liberal groups and White House aides after some suggested running negative advertisements about conservative Democrats with qualms over the proposed health care ...

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Published: 01/25/10

California's Prop 8 Trial and Its Cast of Compelling Characters

The trial to determine whether same-sex couples in California have the right to marry -- and whether it's constitutional for voters to have a say about it -- has wrapped up its second week. On Jan. 11, before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, the case known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger began in a San Francisco federal courtroom that didn't have an inch of room to spare. Reporters, spectators and activists both for and against gay marriage filled the courtroom, anticipating a trial that is likely to trigger appeals all the way to the Supreme Court, regardless of the outcome. Perry v. ...

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Published: 01/20/10

More Men Marrying 'Up,' and What We Think About That

Have modern marriage, women's income and education levels intersected in such a way as to foment "The Rise of the Sugar Mama"? Some signs certainly point that way, including a new Pew Foundation report that says more women today are marrying men with less education and less income than they themselves have. The "Rise of Wives" report focuses on the economics of marriage and U.S.-born men and women aged 30-44, "a stage of life when typical adults have completed their education, gone to work and gotten married," say Richard Fry and D'Vera Cohn, the report's authors. "Americans in this age ...

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Published: 01/9/10

Do Bra Colors on Facebook Serve a Purpose?

Black. Beige. Pink. Leopard. Throughout the day on Thursday, my Facebook feed was sprinkled with such single-word status updates from many of my female friends. I knew another Facebook meme had made its presence known, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit crabby that no one had let me in on the details -- so much so that I even refused to do a simple Google search to find out. It wasn't until around 5:30 p.m. that I received a message: ". . . Help spread the wings of breast cancer awareness by putting the color of your bra as your status. Just the color, nothing else. Send this on to ONLY ...

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Published: 01/8/10

Is Oakland Ready? Jean Quan Hopes to Crack Mayoral Glass Ceiling

If all politics is local, Oakland City Council member Jean Quan should get a fair shake in that town's mayoral race this year against former California state Senate leader Don Perata. Quan, one of 12 women to ever serve on the City Council (and the first Asian-American woman), hopes to give Perata a run for his money (and he is said to have much more of it than she) on the merits of her two-plus decades of community-oriented work in Oakland. It was Lailan Huen, Quan's 27-year-old daughter, who eventually convinced her to run for mayor. "She said, 'Mom, you'll always wonder what a difference ...

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Published: 12/18/09

Where McCartney Is Right: The Need For New and Inventive Green Solutions

Recently, my fellow contributor Joshua Chaney wrote a post in which he argued that environmental policy is rooted in faulty economics. I fundamentally disagree with his claim. In the piece, "McCartney's Meat Free Mondays: Letting a Few Bad Apples Kill the Entire Tree," Joshua raised several examples of what he believes fits this theory. First, as the headline of his post implies, Joshua criticized the efforts of Paul McCartney to promote Meat Free Monday, an "environmental campaign to raise awareness of the climate-changing impact of meat production and consumption," (according to the Web ...

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