Category: Writing and publishing

Week 5 of the WGW watch has just finished. It was a “banner” week. 5.5 of the 34 op-ed articles published in the WaPo since last Tuesday were by women, for a one-week score of 16.5%.
How pathetic is that, if when 16.5% of the discourse in a certain place is contributed by women, we say that that constitutes a “banner” achievement?
At the end of Week 4 of the WGW watch, the cumulative score was 12 pieces out of 129, equals 9.3%. After this week’s “banner” record, the cumulative score is 17.5 out of 163, equals 10.7%.
Woo-hoo! So on a cumulative basis, women now get to contribute a shade over ten percent!
I should note that where I’ve encountered uncertainty– this week a “Robin” someone and a “Pat” someone, neither of whom yielded easily to a Google search that might reveal their gender– I have erred on the side of “giving the benefit of the doubt”, i.e. I counted those two as female.
(The fractional numbers, remember, come from co-authored pieces.)
This past week, in addition, two particularly significant things happned…

Continue reading “Women getting WaPo-ed, update”

I’ve been struggling with the Comments boards here on JWN for some time now. Yesterday, I felt I learned something new about what’s been going on.
As someone who works hard to put my own thoughts into words on the main post, I have tended to feel a rather strong sense of attachment to the result and so to act excessively defensively when people jump in with comments that criticize it. And thus, by firing off my own defensively-motivated ripostes, I have actually been contributing to the “problem” I’ve been sensing, and struggling to define, on the Comments boards for some time now: namely, that some of the discussion there has developed a snarky, combative tone…
Which is not how I want the discussions on the Comments boards here to be, at all.
Acting defensively is never a good place to act from. Over the years I’ve come to see the great value of the Buddhist practice of “non-attachment to the fruits of one’s labors.” Basically what this teaches is that you do the very best you can on any particular particular project; and once it’s done you let go of it.
(This teaching is particularly useful in parenting, I can tell you.)
So I started to think that the best way for me, and us all, not to get trapped in the problem of comment-board snarkiness is for me to do two things:

(1) Actively cultivate an attitude of “non-attachment” to the texts of my posts on the blog. It’s an incredible blessing and privilege for me that I can have them out there! I must let them stand on their own. (Just like my kids.)
(2) Invest a bit of time in producing a “Mission statement” for the Comments boards here that will define “rules of the game” with which I and all other commenters here are all expected equally to comply.

I thank commenters Dutchmarbel and Dave for replying to the request I voiced earlier for links to similar sets of guidelines produced by other bloggers. It really is awesome to be able to network the energy and creativity of others in cyberspace so that each of us here doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel each time!
As it turned out, it was the guidelines that Dave pointed me to that spoke most strongly to me as providing a good starting point for what I wanted to do. Dave’s suggestion sent me to a blog called– I kid you not– “Real Live Preacher”; and I ended up really enjoying not just the post where the RLP laid out his hopes for his Comments boards and then set some gentle ground-rules for them, but also kicking around other areas of his blog as well.
It also got me to thinking that clearly, what I need to do on this blog is try to be a “Real Live Quaker”. Well, I’m not entirely sure what-all that might entail. But I can tell you one thing it would rule out, and that would be me making snarky, combative comments on my own Comments boards here.
So firstly, I’d like to apologize to everyone to whom I made snarky or combative comments yesterday, or on previous posts. I take responsibility for, and am very sorry about, any hurt that I caused.
Secondly, I’d like to announce my intention that today we all of us start a new day on JWN. From here on forward, I get to post my posts (or perhaps, as I’ve done here before, texts from specially invited “guest posters”); and then afterwards we all try to abide by a single set of ground-rules that, I hope, will lead to a more courteous, friendly, and productive atmosphere there on the Comments boards.
And thirdly, I want to be quite clear that I strongly do not want the promulgation of these ground-rules to discourage anyone at all from posting their comments, including comments that express views very different from or critical of my own. On the contrary, I hope that general observance of these rules will lead to discussions on the boards that are less prickly and inhospitable, more generative of fresh and productive insights, and thus altogether more welcoming to potential participants than what we have sometimes seen previously.
I invite you all to join me in ushering in this new day here on JWN.
I invite you all– and especially anyone who’s planning to post a comment on any of the Comments boards here– to take a couple of minutes to read the new guidelines. And then, when you’ve done so, to join me in trying in trying to honor them.
I’ve thought pretty hard about these points over the past week or so. But I’m sure that many of you readers also have thoughts on this issue that could make what I’m trying to do here more effective.
If you do, or if you have thoughts on “discourse guidelines” in general, please post those comments here!

Okay, readers, so what proportion of the wisdom of the human race do you think resides in the minds of the world’s women?
Fifty percent, perhaps? That might be a pretty good first guess.
How about this: 9.2 percent? That, sadly, is the proportion of women’s contributions to the Washington Post‘s Op-Ed pages over the past 14 days.
I started my “Women getting WaPo-ed” watch on December 21. In the two weeks since then, the once venerable “main” newspaper in the capital of the new global empire has published 65 signed Op-Ed pieces. Just five of those pieces had female authors. A further two pieces, each of them co-authored, were co-signed by a man and a woman: for those I assigned “0.5” as the proportion authored by a woman.
So, we have a total of 6 female authorial units out of 65: that is, 9.2 percent. Had we merely counted the names of all the authors, we’d have had 7 women’s names there out of a total of 67: 10.5 percent.
So there we have the range. Presumably the editor of the WaPo’s Op-Ed page, Fred Hiatt, thinks that somewhere between 9.2 percent and 10.5 percent of the world’s wisdom resides in the minds of women?
Shame!!!
I have to tell you a couple more things, too…

Continue reading “Women getting WaPo-ed”

Okay. Commenter Dominic, who appealed my decision to close the Comments board on the recent Lebanon’s Hizbullah post, wins. (At least, I think “appealing” was what you were doing, Dominic?)
I’ve now reopened that post to Comments. So feel free to go there and do that, anyone.
I really do value (nearly all of) the discussions people have on the Comments boards here, and think that most of them add a lot to the blog’s value. But with that particular discussion, I just had a strong sense it was getting repetitive. I have an incipient short-term memory problem, so when I see there are new Comments on a post I generally have to scroll quickly all thru the preceding Comments to catch up with what has been going on. That discussion started to feel like a burden to me, what with the repetitiveness and then a slightly snarky reference to myself at the end.
One thing I promised to myself– to help control my ever-threatening blog addiction– is that “The moment doing the blog isn’t fun, just stop.” It felt like not fun there for a while.
Meanwhile, I’m sure you’re all wondering how my mammoth task of writing a long article about Hizbullah has been going…

Continue reading “Hizbullah: the discussion resumes”

Item 1: The lede paragraph of a review in last Friday’s WaPo of a new Chinese-made movie:

The experience of “House of Flying Daggers” isn’t like going to a movie so much as going to a truly superb brothel. That is, pleasure is available in every room, in every configuration, in all possibilities, in polymorphic abandon. It doesn’t treat you gently, it ravishes you.

Item 2: Letter I sent to the WaPo later that day:

Dear friends:
I was truly disgusted when I read this lead to a movie review on the front page of today’s “Style” section: “The experience of ‘House of Flying Daggers’ isn’t like going to a movie so much as going to a truly superb brothel. That is, pleasure is available in every room, in every configuration, in all possibilities, in polymorphic abandon.”
It didn’t take a genius to guess that the writer, Stephen Hunter, was a man; and I’m assuming that all the editors who signed off on such a simile must have been men, too?
What on earth were they thinking? That the pages of the WP are a kind of snickery boys’ club where the writers and readers– all of them “guys”– can sit around together and fantasize about the debasement through prostitution of women, girls (and yes, perhaps, young boys as well)?
How do they imagine the “experience” of “going to” a brothel is for the (overwhelmingly female) people who perforce have to end up working there, providing all that “pleasure” to their male clientele?
Did they stop for a minute to imagine that the paper’s women readers might read that simile very differently from a large number of– but not all– your male readers? Did they even remember that it’s possible that (gasp!) the paper does indeed have quite a few female readers? What on earth kind of a communication where they trying to send to us with this jejune snickering?
Please, “guys”, get your act together. Fast. It’s bad enough that the WP’s op-ed pages are almopst totally dominated by contributions from male writers– as though the “wisdom” in the human race is concentrated nearly wholly in male heads… But to make the content of the paper actively hostile to female readers, as well? That’s going ways too far.
Sincerely,
Helena Cobban

Item 3: Email I got yesterday from Leslie Yazel, Assignment Editor at the WaPo “Style” section:

Continue reading “Women and the WaPo”

The CSM ran my column on Iran in today’s edition. I think it came out pretty well despite some hasty last-minute edits.
In addition, today was the day they finally ran a letter from someone affiliated with ‘CAMERA’, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. It criticized me for writing in my column on Shatila last month that the ugly 1982 massacre there had been “Israeli-orchestrated”. You can see the text of the letter here.
I quite agree– based on my own extensive study of the evidence– with letter author Gilead Ini that the massacre in question “was carried out by Lebanese Christian militiamen of the Phalangist party.” (Though I’d tend to put quotes around that adjective “Christian”.)
I also think Mr. Ini is quite entitled to express his judgment–which he bases on his reading of the Israeli government’s own Kahan Commission enquiry into the events– that,

Far from having orchestrated the massacre, Israel was found by the commission only to be indirectly responsible, since it failed to consider the danger in allowing the Phalangists to enter the camp. Israeli officials were similarly faulted only for indirect responsibility.

So, as he admits, Israel’s own commission had concluded that the Israeli government and its officials did bear a degree of responsibility, even if only “indirect”, for what occurred… Fair enough…

Continue reading “CSM column on Iran (and CAMERA letter)”

Today’s CSM has the column I wrote for them about (and from) Syria.
Again, I’m not really happy with the title they chose. Plus, in the CSM’s own version of the piece, they annoyingly misspelled my name.
I’m generally, though not completely, happy with the way the text came out. I wrote it really fast, on Tuesday, while battling jetlag and continuing to pester Air France for news of our four lost bags.
(Three of the bags got delivered yesterday evening, completely gone-through by Customs and repacked in a shockingly shoddy way. The fourth one was “impounded” by Customs for a while, but an officer in the Customs office at Philadelphia Int’l Airport assured Bill yesterday that it was being released back to Air France for onward delivery to us. Right, so now I’m expecting another three-day wait from AF’s less-than-efficient baggage-forwarding service… Why d’you think it got impounded? Maybe something to do with the nice sticky candy from Qom, Iran that was in there? Or the book in Arabic on the history of Hizbullah? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what contents it still has when it gets here…)
On a broader note, what with having now published a bunch these past few weeks about Palestinians, Syria, and– still to come!– Iran, and then Lebanon’s Hizbullah, do you think I’ll make it onto CAMERA’s watchlist of individual journos??

Continue reading “CSM column on Syria”

It’s Monday morning in Philadelphia. We flew (back) here yesterday from Beirut, transiting through Paris-Charles de Gaulle. None of the four bags we checked made the connection. Grrr.
We met the college student daughter who’s been so kindly looking after my car, had a nice dinner with her, then checked into an overpriced hotel before the drive home. Toilet blocked. Grrr.
Oh well, it’s still pretty amazing that a person could travel so broadly and have such great experiences and interactions as I have over the past couple months. I am hugely aware and appreciative of that fact. My Auntie Katie, who raised me, was a very accomplished woman, a pioneer in elementary education. And she never in her life traveled outside England– not even to Scotland or Wales…

The Comments boards here on JWN have hosted some really great discussions. They also, sadly, host some really nasty, commercially generated spam, much of it pornographic, that I’m constantly trying to control, ban, push back, fight, and reduce. Sorry to all readers about my shortcomings in that rergard.
… And then, there’s “Michael Patton”, a person who comes onto my Comments boards here, accuses me of being an “Islamo-fascist slut” and in addition lets fly with strings of deeply ignorant, xenophobic accusations and innuendoes that make the Comments boards feel very hostile indeed…

Continue reading ““Islamo-fascist slut” fights back (peacefully)”

In about an hour I’ll be leaving Beirut to go to Damascus for a few days. Returning here Wednesday. Then next weekend (God, or mainly the Iranian visa authorities, willing) we’ll be going to Iran, to a conference on Islam and Democracy in Mashhad.
I’m unclear what the possibilities for posting from Damascus will be. But even if I can’t post, I’ll try to write some things that I can put up once I get back here Wednesday.
Hey, who knows what transformational lightning might strike on the road to Damascus this time? One of the biggest things that happened to me on it in the past is that, stuck at the border awaiting permission to enter one time in the late 1970s, I read a book that ended up changing my life.
No, it wasn’t the Bible. Some day I might tell you that whole story….