R.I.P. Darcy Freeman, age four.
May your brothers and mother somehow find a path to healing. My heart also goes out to the witnesses and healthcare and police staff involved.
Trigger warnings for horrific family violence. Link
Sociology
It’s nearly Carnival time!
The Ninth Edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival is fast approaching! The deadline for submissions is the end of the month, so get your posts in before midnight Saturday.
Obamamedia rant du jour
Holy baby-flavoured doughnuts on a stick, I am so over the mass media.
Everywhere I’ve looked for the past week, there has been some special snowflake shaking his head slowly, tut-tutting, and blathering on about how they’re the only person on the planet to whom it has occurred that Obama isn’t actually the Messiah, Lord and Saviour of us all, come on a glitter-drenched unicorn to spew rainbows from his navel
Wednesday Linkfest
Crazy Meezer has the “Top 100 Australian Women’s Blogs“. You might find some new reading there.
That Ms. Cover
As no doubt the editors hoped, this cover for Ms. Magazine’s Special Inaugural Issue has generated a lot of controversy. Many feminists feel that Obama’s feminist credentials are not nearly as strong as they could be, while the cover has generated an escalation in panic-mongering and shrill we-told-you-so’s from the religious right plus a great deal more snark about Obamessianic visions and rainbow unicorns from the neocon right.
Australian of the Year 2009 finalists
We haven’t talked about the Australian of the Year nominations here yet. What struck me immediately with the 2009 field is that this time around, only two of them are (as far as I know) white men.
Note, however, that none (again, as far as I know; I’m open to correction on this) are women of colour. For this year’s Australian of the Year, you can be an indigenous or immigrant person of colour, or a woman; but not both.
Friday Saturday Hoyden: Caroline Chisholm
This fairly blunt profile of Caroline Chisholm presents her as an impressive but uncomfortable woman due to her uncompromising standards, and came as a bit of an eye-opener to me in terms of sanitised school history: the fact that the young immigrant underclass women that she was training had been lured to the Australian colonies where they were left to fend for themselves and would have no options other than prostitution or crime to earn a living was very heavily glossed over
Invocation and Benediction: Call and Response?
When I first heard Rick Warren had been honoured with the invocation at the inauguration of president Barack Obama, all I felt was a wave of abhorrence and disgust, and I was in good company.
Today’s Special Snowflake
OMG, can someone please hand me my pearls and fainting couch.
Frontless shoes: The worst of all worlds
In the interest of completing our schedule of Ridiculous–Shoes blogging, I just wanted to show you these shoes. I do feel sorry for the model’s poor toes, which look battered and bruised, probably from whatever other ridiculous shoes she’s been in.
Hoyden About Town 