We Got Your Links Right Here!

• Everyone’s linking Eric Idle’s The FCC Song, and with good reason. Give it a listen. It might not be entirely work-safe, however.
• Kevin Drum outlines why it’s not possible for us to force Democracy on Iraq.
• Sara Butler describes sexist treatment of female interns in D.C.
  I was pretty painfully aware of how female interns were taken less seriously than the guys were. I was the only “girl intern” working on my floor, and all the scholars on my floor (this was at a conservative think tank) were men, while the secret- er, administrative assistants were women. The guys got invited over to one of the scholar’s house for poker night; I got teased about dating another intern. But hey, at least at a conservative think tank, they don’t take you seriously because they think you’re just going to get married, start having kids and drop out of the workforce anyway; on the Hill, they don’t take you seriously because they assume you’re only there because you find “power” a huge turn-on.
• The LA TImes describes how immigrant Chinese garment workers, their daughters, academics and government agents combined to bring better ergonomics to garment workers. Very cool – a successful example of worker (and daughter) driven change. Via Confined Space.
• Added two pro-choice blogs to the blogroll: Abortion Clinic Days and Now What? (Hat tip: Blog for Choice).
• Kip has good news for us Wonderfalls fans: there will be a DVD collection, not only of the 3 episodes FOX broadcasted but of the 10 episodes they didn’t.
• I really enjoyed the comics on Secret Identity Comics, especially the work-in-progress home. (Warning: serious comics, by and large, not ha-ha-funny comics.)
• Democrats looking for reasons to be optimistic about the upcoming Presidential vote-off should check out this Open Source Politics post about the state-by-state polls.
• One of my favorite Z Magazine writers, Tim Wise, now has a blog of his own. Huzzah! Tim is an especially valuable writer about race and racism.
• Oh, those horrible goths – who will protect us from them? Via Atrios.
• There’s been some discussion in the comments about the genocide in Sudan. I don’t know enough to blog intelligently about it, but I highly recommend that readers check out a new blog focused on Sudan, The Passion of the Present. Via Crooked Timber.
• Same-sex marriage opponants have a well-established habit of suggesting ridiculous links between marriage equality and some social problem – increased abortion, say, or single parenthood. But this may be the silliest one of all.
  UK Lord links gay marriage, obesity.

• An excellent Summer Wood essay on “Choice,” discussing how the word was politicized – and has been, in some cases, co-opted and depoliticized. (Via Vanessa at Feministing, who has some good comments on the essay). From Wood’s essay:
  Substituting “choice” for “rights” as both a legal framework and a common language indeed proved successful in attracting some libertarians and conservatives to vote for the “pro-choice” position in numerous state-level abortion contests during the ’80s. Because “choice” is, in essence, an empty word, people with vastly divergent political viewpoints can be united under its banner. In retrospect, this is both the word’s greatest strength and its ultimate weakness. As various constituencies brought their own political prerogatives and definitions of “choice” to the negotiating table, parents, physicians, husbands, boyfriends, and religious leaders all came to be included as rightful participants in decision-making process, significantly weakening the idea that women have a right to make this decision on their own.

  Solinger identifies the linguistic shift from abortion rights to “the individualistic, marketplace term ‘choice'” as deeply problematic, on both a philosophical and a practical level. The word’s primacy in the arena of reproductive rights has slowly made the phrase “It’s my choice” synonymous with “It’s a feminist thing to do” ? or, perhaps more precisely, “It is antifeminist to criticize my decision.” The result has been a rapid depoliticizing of the term and an often misguided application of feminist ideology to consumer imperatives, invoked not only for the right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy, but also for the “right” to buy all manner of products marketed to women, from cigarettes to antidepressants to diet frozen pizzas.

• A surefire nominee for “best specialist blog” next year: The Well-Timed Period (it’s not about punctuation). Really wonderful converage of Plan B going on this week. Via Trish Wilson.
• Rivka at Respectful of Otters contemplates yet another post about how women just aren’t as interested in politics.
  It seems that Matthew is taking women’s lesser involvement in a particular kind of political activity – vigorous engagement in political argument – as evidence of lesser interest. Certainly there’s more to political participation than rhetoric, although you wouldn’t know it from reading a lot of blogs. I put more stock in women’s equal involvement in campaign activity, and our greater voting rates.
• The right-wingers want to take over South Carolina! I mean, even more so. All Facts And Opinions has the details.

.