AddieStan

It's been but a month since your blogstress broke the news of Ann Coulter 's desecration of the the pulpit at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (a desecration that brought no protest from the pulpit's owners), and, pouf!, mes amis , the Reclaiming America for Christ Center has announced that it is closing, according to the Associated Press . Your blogstress really didn't intend for such drastic consequences of her clever infiltration and subsequent bean-spilling -- really, she didn't! The other ministries of Coral Ridge are expected to survive, if Executive Vice President Brian Fisher has anything to say about it. A word to the wise: Watch out for this guy. He could be the next Ralph Reed .

Over at TAPPED, J. Goodrich has a post about a right-wing confab that had somehow escaped your blogstress's attention. Check it out.

As she so often is, your blogstress found herself moving against the tide today as she made her way toward the Capitol South subway stop just as hundreds of Hill staffers were ascending from the underground to begin their workdays. Brushing past your cybertrix was a rather rumpled Newt Gingrich , whose very presence among the throng turned a number of heads. Said the lady in the apron who hands out copies of Express , a crib sheet of AP stories produced by the Washington Post : "He looks just like he do on TV." "He sure does," answered a lady in a pants suit, dragging a briefcase on wheels. "You know," said the Express lady, "sometimes they really don't look like theyselves." Now on the escalator, your Web wench gasped as a pertly dressed woman in her 20s said to her male companion, "I wish I had told him that I want him to run for president." Your écrivaine caught her breath. Yes, perhaps it would be a good thing to have Newt ...

Bill Donohue , perhaps your blogstress's favorite bigot, has a piece at Human Events Online in which he rehashes his charge of anti-Catholicism against your écrivaine for having dared to note, in 2005, that George W. Bush 's nomination of the very Catholic John Roberts to the top spot on the high court was a smooth move. Her point was that Roberts' religion would give the right cover when the liberals on the Judiciary Committee, before which he would appear for his confirmation hearing, pushed him for his views on abortion. "Anti-Catholic!" they would cry, of anyone who dared to challenge Roberts views on Roe v. Wade . Grouping your cyberscribe among the likes of the besotted Christopher Hitchens, the probing Nina Totenberg and the saintly E.J. Dionne, he then said that none of them could surpass your blogstress in one critical area: When John Roberts was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, his Catholicism became an issue with pundits like NPR’s Nina Totenb...

There's a great discussion happenning right now on TAPPED about yesterday's Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on the dialtion & extraction abortion procedure passed last year by Congress. Garance Franke-Ruta , Scott Lemeiux and other of my sibling bloggers have pulled the cloth off of a favorite argument of the right: that states should have nearly sovereign rights to govern abortion. Here are a couple of swell posts, one by Garance and the other by Scott .

Your blogstress, mes amis , is all a-gush to find that James Wolcott -- yes, he of the pointed pen so deftly deployed in the service of Vanity Fair , has written of your écrivaine 's adventure in Florida, when she dwelt amidst the holy revivalists in Florida who wish to "reclaim America for Christ." Your blogstress urges to you take moment to leave a comment on Mr. Wolcott's blog .

CBS has fired Imus from his radio program. Click here for AP story.

From guest blogger Catherine comes this point well made: It's a shame that in order for a women's collegiate athletic team to receive national attention they must first be subjected to derrogatory remarks. The NCAA Women's Basketball Championship game, in which the Rutgers women's basketball team played, did not make front page news in the sports section of The Washington Post prior to the game -- or in the days following the game. Perhaps if women athletes received the respect by the media that they deserve -- and that their male counterparts are generously given -- then Imus would not have made such remarks. Ironically, it took the insult of Imus' comments for the outstanding athletes on the Rutgers women's basketball team to have their photograph published on the front page of The Washington Post and to be interviewed on national television. Those who are infuriated by his remarks should be equally ouraged by the lack of respect shown to the women athletes i...

This morning, mes amis , the venerable Diane Rehm devoted her first hour to the Imus affair. Her guests were Clarence Page , syndicated columnist, Chicago Tribune ; Michael Meyers , executive director, New York Civil Rights Coalition; and Frank Ahrens , Washington Post radio reporter. Now, couldn't one of those African-American men been excused in order to make way for a black woman commentator? This is after all, a story, in the the words of Rutgers women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer "about the degradation of women." Enough already with the all-male commentary rosters on this story! You may write Diane Rehm at: drshow@wamu.org.

Steve Capus , president of NBC News, is currently on "Hardball," explaining to guest host David Gregory why MSNBC has decided to drop, for good, its simulcast of "Imus in the Morning." UPDATE Looking truly tortured, MSNBC's president (also president of the entire NBC News division) demonstrated the sort of anguished confusion that is becoming quite la mode these days among the upper ranks of the dominant culture when a light is shined on ideas about blacks and women that apparently continue to enjoy a sort of smirking acceptance in otherwise polite company. It was through conversations with "trusted employees," Capus said, that he came to the conclusion "that I had to make this call." Among those "trusted employees" is Al Roker , the beloved weatherman of the "Today" show, who blogged on MSNBC's own Web site that Imus had to go . Another reason for the change from suspension to firing, Capus explained, was yesterday...

At the Feminist Majority Foundation Web site, you can take action on the Imus situation -- both demand his resignation via e-mails to CBS Radio and MSNBC AND congratulate the women of the Rutgers and Tennessee basketball teams.

As the first African-American president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Organization of Women (NOW) , Maretta J. Short has a thing or two to say about Don Imus and his attack on the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Here's Retta with Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now": AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Al Sharpton, joining us on the phone from New York. He is going to be having Don Imus on his radio program at 1:00 EST. Maretta Short, also with us, president of the National Organization for Women, New Jersey. Maretta Short, what is NOW calling for? MARETTA SHORT: Well, thank you, Amy. Yes, well, right now we're asking for people to go to our website and take action by sending messages to the general manager, Chuck Bortnick, of radio station WFAN, which produces Imus's show, and to Karen Mateo, communications vice president of CBS Radio, which owns WFAN, and to MSNBC television, which airs and promotes the show. Imus's message is racist to the core,...

Considering the fact that Imus, in his famously racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team, used the sexist's favorite tactic of sexual verbal abuse, isn't it interesting that most of the people getting big-news airtime to comment on this thing are men? Hello? Is it any wonder that so many are saying they know Imus to be a good guy, even if, as Imus himself admitted, he "said a bad thing"?

At the risk of being called a humorless feminist (a taunt her readers know to be patently untrue, this blog being a veritable online whoopie-cushion -- right?), your blogstress has used her privileges at TAPPED, the Weblog of The American Prospect Online , to call for the firing of Don Imus , host of the obnoxious radio show, "Imus in the Morning," from the schedule of WFAN and MSNBC. Whether you agree or disagree, your écrivaine invites you to comment by clicking here . Your cybercribe also urges you to peruse the posts of her sibling bloggers, Brother Sam Rosenfeld and Sister J. Goodrich .

In Damascus, the respectful non-Muslim woman wears In Vatican City, the respectful non-Catholic woman wears White House photo by Shealah Craighead, 2006 Now, can we call this thing settled? (And here your blogstress thought the best thing about Vatican II was no longer having to pin a tissue to one's head to enter a confessional after having forgotten one's doilie.)

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Holy Wednesday, Batman! The big, bad inside-the-Beltway media has, at long last, discovered your blogstress, via a far more august organ than that on which your eyes currently rest (namely, TAPPED , the Weblog of The American Prospect Online). Check out Conn Carroll 's post at The Hotline 's Blogometer , and scroll to the sub-head, "Obama: Bigger Than Jesus." Then kindly note that your Webwench never said Obama was bigger than anybody.

Melissa Silverstein of the Women's Media Center has posted a provocative piece about women in sports, just in time for the climax of the NCAA championships: Women's reluctance to embrace sports as fans may reflect one of the most disturbing issues in women’s sports—the hypersexualization of the female athlete. As a culture, we think it’s okay for a woman to be athletic as long as she is still feminine. Marie Harden finds it ironic: "The whole idea of athletic accomplishment is about respect for what the body can do, and the sexualization of the body undermines athletic power and accomplishment." Mary Jo Kane believes that turning women athletes into sex symbols has a powerful homophobic undercurrent. Covering women’s sports in a sexualized way, she says, may be thought to "reassure fans, corporate sponsors, officials, athletic administrators, parents and in many cases the women themselves that they are not too masculine." For similar reasons, when women ...

Fascinating post from John Aravosis at AmericaBlog on Joe Murray, the turncoat lawyer for the American Family Association . While that man's story is, in itself, an intriguing one, it's a bit of Arivosis's own story that caught my eye: As an aside, this is an example of something I learned from Senator Kennedy's staff in the early 1990s. Don't necessarily write someone off just because you disagree -- even if you disagree violently. There's a core of humanity in (most) everyone -- it's only a matter of finding it, or helping them find it in themselves.

photo © 2007 Adele M. Stan for Americans United Now it can be told; it was your blogstress who broke the news last month of Ann Coulter's bad night at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Your cyberscribe's story of threats and soul-searching in sunny South Florida now appears on the Web site of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the venerable organization that sent your écrivaine into the lion's den. With regard to the all-round Christian love and acceptance claimed by propagators of this particular brand of faith were the misrepresentations of Islam by Ann Coulter and Tony Perkins , lo, of the Family Research Council . Herewith, a taste: Both stirred the pot against Muslims, as well, with Coulter repeating her post-9/11 remark that the leaders of Muslim countries should be forcibly converted to Christianity, and Perkins complaining that the Muslim call to prayer is "now broadcast over American cities." (The use of the word "broadcast...

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- On Friday, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman addressed a conference of feminist media types , noting the ability of those who stand against feminism to create faux crises, and to serve them up beautifully packaged for mainstream media reportage. As an example, Goodman told the audience at the WAM! conference a purported crisis in the academic achievement of boys being shunted aside by their schools in favor of girls -- essentially crating conditions that made it easier for girls to achieve than boys. Some scholars, notably Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, charge that misguided feminism is what's been hurting boys. In the 1990s, she says, girls were making strong, steady progress toward parity in schools, but feminist educators portrayed them as disadvantaged and lavished them with support and attention. Boys, meanwhile, whose rates of achievement had begun to falter, were ignored and their problems allowed to fester ...