The Tyranny of the Resolutionaries

Folks have been writing a lot about New Year's resolutions lately. How to diet. How to exercise. If you can possibly talk about one without the other. This is, in part, why I personally despise New Year's resolutions. They're naively optimistic about the beginning of a new year only to be met with severe disappointment. And since no one seems to keep them, who cares? Mostly, they're the butt of a lot of jokes.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B. Exhibit C. You get the idea.

But all those "eat better," "exercise more," and "lose weight" resolutions are one of the most frustrating things for regular gym goers (or even semi-regular gym goers, because let's face it, almost everyone has skipped the gym for happy hour or sleeping in at least a few times). The flood of new faces at the gym that you see for a week or a month at the beginning of January is super irritating. They take up treadmill space. They wander aimlessly around the weight lifting machines. They put those annoying and always-bored trainers to use.

The Washington Post's style section, in a surprising turn of events, wrote an amusing piece about this phenomenon. These so-called "resolutionaries," which is a word I love and wish we had the opportunity to use more than once a year, it turns out, irritate lots of people. The piece is filled with quotes from fitness instructors, gym workers, and regular gym goers, pretty much all of which are wonderful:

"They're banging on the machines," the new guys are, says Mike Sponseller. "It's like watching '2001: A Space Odyssey,' " the scene where the ape uses a bone as a club, only instead of discovering a use for tools, the newbies are trying to figure out how to turn on a StairMaster."

[...]

"January is kind of like our tax season," says Dave Reiseman, a spokesman for Gold's Gym, which has 50 locations in the D.C. metro area, and which can see 100% increases in gym attendance during the first month of the year. "We do a lot of preparation to make sure that new guests" have everything they need for a strong start. Gold's offers an equipment orientation. An eight-week customized health and fitness plan. An infinitely available staff.

[...]

"I think that in their mind, the new people might have this feeling that the gym is supposed to be like [HBO's] 'Oz,' " says Steve Farina, who has been a member of the Gold's Gym in Ballston for five years and witnesses the arrival of the resolutionaries every year. "Like they're in a prison yard," and they have to prove their strength by hulking out, set after set, oblivious to those waiting in line."

[...]

"The spin instructor always asks if anyone is new," says Carmela Clendening, a WSC regular. "But the new people don't raise their hands." Why do they not raise their hands? Someone would help them if they would just raise their hands."

Now, that's not to say that it's not OK to be a newbie at something. If you don't work out regularly, I understand that for some this is as good of a time as any. What's frustrating is when "resolutionaries" clog up the machines for a few weeks and then just disappear. The middle of winter, when it doesn't get light until late and gets dark again early, seems like a very poor time to dedicate oneself to exercise.

In any case, well done, Washington Post.

Black Leaders and For-Profit Schools

Recently the Atlanta Post ran an excellent piece criticizing some African-American leaders for opposing new regulations proposed by the Department of Education that would improve accountability of for-profit schools. The idea behind the proposed regulations, which Campus Progress supports, is to removefederal financial aid from college-level training programs if a large percentage of their students fail to find work or end up with high levels of debt. Seems like a good idea for all students—including students of color, right? But according to the editorial:

Interestingly enough, Black leaders like Jesse Jackson and members of the Black Caucus are opposed to these new regulations. William Gray, a Pennsylvania Democrat and former Black Caucus member, has been tapped to lobby on the behalf of the for-profit schools.

Why some black leaders are suddenly on the for-profits’ side of the debate is unclear, but he Post piece raises some questions:

… it’s questionable whether the black leaders challenging the Department of Education’s attempts are inspired by lobbying duties or genuine conviction. The for-profit industry is spending a lot of money to fight these proposed regulations and lobbying politicians constitutes a legal way of buying favors. According to Bloomberg, ten education companies have increased their spending on lobbying by $1.3 million over the last year. All that influx of money makes it difficult to discern why William Gray and Jesse Jackson are defending these schools[.]

Jackson and Gray might be on the side of the for-profit schools, but not all prominent black leaders are on board. Inside Higher Ed recently reported that for-profit lobbyist Lanny Davis asked to include prominent black leader Al Sharpton on an ad campaign to oppose the regulations, but Sharpton objected. In an email he reportedly sent to Davis, Sharpton said:

Though I agree that there is a need for the services the schools provide, especially in communities of color, we should weed out the abusers of this service. … To attack the Department rather than engage them is a bad strategy in my opinion. I think the President and Sec Duncan are not the enemies here. In fact I think they have done more for closing the education achievement gap than they have been given credit.

Furthermore, Julianne Hing’s reporting in Colorlines points out that minority leaders taking a stand against regulations that cut off funds from bad programs doesn’t make sense:

According to the Career College Association, which represents for-profit schools, 43 percent of students are people of color; in the United States, 23 percent of blacks and 18 percent of Latinos with associate degrees went to for-profit schools.

Most notably, for-profit schools teach 12 percent of the nation’s post-secondary students—and counting—but receive 23 percent of the nation’s federal student aid money. This alone is not a bad thing—students deserve an education and help to make their education affordable. But 40 percent of students from for-profit schools eventually default on their loans; the national average for all higher education institutions is 20 percent. And the dropout rate from for-profit schools is also alarmingly high—a whopping 57 percent never graduate.

Those are some pretty startling figures. If anything, black and other minority leaders should be calling for stronger regulations so that students of color aren’t left with huge piles of debt and dismal job prospects.

Cross posted.

Scalia on Sex Discrimination and Abortion

(Flickr/The Higgs Boson)

Real words from a certain Supreme Court Justice:

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

Sigh. (via)

Justice Brennan, Sexism, and Desegregation

OK, so admittedly over the break I geeked out on Supreme Court stuff. Majorly. I read a tome of a biography on now-deceased Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. called Justice Brennan: Liberal Champion by Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel. The book itself is an engaging and fascinating read and it made me wish that one day I have the opportunity to write such an interesting and well-written biography of someone admirable.

But Justice Brennan, as admirable as he was -- he was considered moderate when he joined, but eventually became one of the most reliable liberal votes on the Court -- he was by no means perfect. One of the points the authors take pains to describe is that Brennan, despite reliably voting on behalf of the rights of women and minorities, did little to integrate either into his professional or personal life in a meaningful way. He even once declared that he might have to resign if he had to serve on the Court with a women. (When Sandra Day O'Connor joined in 1981, Brennan did not, in fact, resign.)

They even describe during the early 1970s his reluctance to hire female law clerks, including distinguished UCLA law professor Alison Grey. When Brennan again rejected another female candidate on the basis of her sex, it took a letter from Brennan's former law clerk Stephen Barnett to convince Brennan to change his mind. Bennett argued that not only was Brennan surely headed toward a sex discrimination lawsuit, but that his bias was also inconsistent with his own opinions.

Bennett wrote: “your blanket refusal to accept a woman clerk is not just ‘sexist,’ and not just contrary to government policy; it seems to me that it is literally unconstitutional, under the decisions” Brennan had written or joined in. Brennan than hired his first female clerk, Marsha Berzon, who was appointed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals under former President Bill Clinton.

Likewise, though Brennan's opinions were key in desegregating schools (he preferred the word "desegregation" to "integration" which a friend who had recently traveled in the South made Southerners think of interracial marriage), his own life was quite segregated. He'd moved out of Newark before a large African American population had arrived, and when he moved to Washington to take his job on he Court, he lived in the very white neighborhood of Georgetown. Though he briefly attended a Catholic church started by African Americans who had been banned from another Catholic church, he stopped attending after a while. Brennan hired his first (and only) African American law clerk during his last term on the Court.

Brennan is probably like many liberals even today, who might advocate for progressive policies but find their own lives quite racially or even gender segregated. Sometimes it helps when someone else holds up a mirror for you.

Lanny Davis and the Left

(AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Many people may have taken the holiday off, but Lanny Davis, lobbyist for many special interests in Washington, including for-profit colleges in their quest to avoid accountability, did not. It turns out he was very busy at the end of 2010. Here’s a roundup of all things Lanny Davis from the last couple weeks:

1. In addition to having represented Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been accused of egregious human rights violations in his 30-year tenure, Davis told Salon on Dec. 21 that he would be representing Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, who has also been accused of horrendous human rights violations in his tenure as the country’s leader.
2. Davis quit his gig with Gbagbo just a few days later, as Salon’s Justin Elliot reported on Dec. 30. Davis reportedly had entered into an agreement to represent Gbagbo for $100,000 a month.
3. The New York Times published a front-page story on Dec. 30, concluding that Davis, who has long trumpeted his credentials as a “liberal Democrat,” is now “scrambling to defend himself” and has “come under unusually vociferous attacks in recent months, from a diverse array of advocates representing everyone from college students and mothers of poor children, to diplomats and international human rights advocates.” Campus Progress, it should be noted, is one of those organizations, since Davis lobbies to oppose common-sense requirements on for-profit schools.
4. In The Hill on Dec. 29, Davis reflected on 2010, saying that he was a “liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Obama and all his policies.” Davis is either unaware of the fact that the Obama administration runs the Department of Education, which proposed tightened regulations on the for-profit industry, or he is not actually a defender of all of Obama’s policies.

Cross posted.

On Gender Parity in the New Yorker

Edith Zimmerman does the blogger equivalent of rolling her eyes at this open letter to the editors of the New Yorker that complained the last two issues didn't contain enough content from women.

Does this bother you? This doesn't bother me. If you like a magazine, read it; if you don't, don't. Also, if you're mad at a magazine, sounding like a total drag can't be the best way to get what you want (which is, apparently, a refund for that specific issue or a back issue with more women writers). Pick your battles, etc.

Now, I mostly love Zimmerman so I hate to call her out, but I couldn't disagree more with this approach. You know what I bet would happen if enraged feminists just stopped buying magazines that didn't have gender parity in its bylines? Nothing! I'm almost 100% certain the New Yorker will continue publishing! And probably also continue to publish not a whole lot of stuff from women!

I completely understand the frustration with women constantly complaining about byline parity. It's totally annoying. But you know what's also annoying? The fact that men disproportionately get bylines in an ever-shrinking number of magazine pages.

There are definitely alternatives to the letter to the editor approach. You could be positive and praise magazines that do a good job of gender parity in their bylines. You could write in praising the work of the women that are published in that magazine. You could even -- pitch the magazine if you happen to be a journalist (since the disproportionate number of pitches to magazines come from men, says just about every editor in the universe). There are tons of ways to approach this problem that don't include just complaining about it in an obnoxious letter -- especially if you are from Massachusetts.

But I think Edith's approach of just not buying the magazine is a bit too much like the "just don't vote if politics pisses you off" line of thinking. Which is the kind of thing that makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

What is often effective is calling attention to the problem in some way, even if you have to be really nice in your tone. Then editors of the New Yorker, liberal media elites that they are, will get really embarrassed. And then they might possibly do something about the problem. Or maybe not. But at least they had to think about it for five minutes while they read your letter.

Update: Jenna Sauers at Jezebel has a good breakdown the dismal gender ratio at other major magazines.

Before Roe v. Wade -- And After

Over the very long break (sorry about the sudden dropoff in blog posts), I got a chance to finally finish a very good book that provides some key context to the abortion debate, Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling by Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel. Because I am one of those young feminists who has lived my entire life after the Roe v. Wade ruling, I have been interested in how the debate was framed before the historic case.

The book is largely a collection of reprints of speeches, pamphlets, laws, testimonies, and other information that was produced in the early 1960s and '70s. The nature of the book doesn't allow for much of a comprehensive narrative like many other modern nonfiction books, but the information contained in this collection is fascinating, no matter the side of the abortion debate on which you sit.

There were many things that surprised me in this book, including that the phrase "abortion on demand," something that has largely been used by the anti-choice movement to talk about how women are using abortion for selfish reasons, was originally used by activists pushing for the repeal of abortion bans. This was largely because some states had passed laws that allowed abortion to be legal for medical reasons and medical reasons only. This meant that a woman had to convince a doctor that a pregnancy was a threat to her mental or physical health. Such laws were obviously objectionable because the power to decide to perform an abortion fell on the doctor or other medical professionals and not on the women themselves.

The book also includes several of the amici curiae briefs filed for both sides arguing before the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade. One brief was filed by three groups jointly: New Women Lawyers, Women's Health an d Abortion Project, Inc., and the National Abortion Action Coalition. This brief argued not just that abortion laws violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which puts the modern day protests against the Fourteenth Amendment in a new context in terms of abortion laws), but also argued that abortion laws violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Forcing a woman to bear a child against her will is indeed a form of punishment, a result of society's ambivalent attitude towards female sexuality. The existence of the sexual "double standard" has created the social response that when a woman becomes pregnant accidentally, she must be "punished" for her transgression, particularly if she is single. This punishment falls solely on women: she must face the physical burdens of and emotional strains of an unwanted pregnancy, the degrading experience of having an illegal abortion "often in filthy motel rooms at the mercy of quacks who are charging exorbitant fees," and if unable to get an abortion, the responsibilities and trauma involved in raising an unwanted child. The man equally responsible for the pregnancy faces no such punishment ...

The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects all persons against the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishment." Amici contend that the expanding constitutional concern, as expressed by this Court, with practices which "offend the dignity of man," are contrary to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" and punishment "disproportionate to the offense committed" as violate of the Eighth Amendment necessitates a finding that laws restricting abortion are unconstitutional ....

Now, of course, we know that much of the argument in the Supreme Court's majority opinion that overturned abortion bans based on privacy afforded under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (although Ruth Bader Ginsburg generally still argues in favor of equal protection on gender-related cases). But the book is instructive in noting the varying paths the Court might have taken. Unsurprisingly, the briefs on the other side of the issue argue in favor of right to life for the unborn, an argument they still use today.

Perhaps, though, what I found most remarkable about Before Roe v. Wade is something that seems all too familiar today. Back before Roe, there were two major problems: First that states had inconsistent abortion laws. Some banned it all together; others had far more liberal policies. The patchwork of access to abortion in the states is one that's strongly replicated today. Some states, like Oklahoma and Nebraska, are passing laws regularly to infringe on abortion access, eventually hoping to challenge Roe eventually in the Supreme Court.

The second idea that activists fought for was the notion that poor women had unequal access to abortion. Rich women, the activists argued, could afford to travel to other states or countries where abortion laws were more liberal. Indeed, the book includes a detailed pamphlet from the Society for Humane Abortion that detailed exactly how to fly to Japan to obtain an abortion -- from how much cab fare you might need to which flights were non-stop to and from Hawaii daily -- something that few poor women could afford. But thanks to the Hyde Amendment, a restriction on using federal money for abortion, poor women still have unequal access to abortion since it isn't covered by Medicaid. This notion of unequal access is something that my colleague Jessica Arons and her co-author Madina Agénor detailed in their recent piece for the Center for American Progress.

The arguments from the pre-Roe world still have echoes today. In some ways, passages of Before Roe v. Wade sound uncomfortably familiar.