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by Adele M. Stan This piece originally ran on the New York Times Op-Ed Page on December 17, 1993. WEEHAWKEN, N.J.--Were it not for an event in my own life, I might view the current debate over date rape and the rape crisis movement with detached amusement, the way one does whenever opposing pockets of the intellectual elite have a go at each other. But for me, the issue runs far deeper than that, and it seems to me that neither side has really got it right. In 1978, I was raped by an acquaintance in my college form room. This was no murky instance of date rape; I was asleep when the perpetrator, a guest at a party my roommate was giving in our campus apartment, let himself in, gripped my arms over my head and bored his way into me. Of course I protested, but I was afraid to do so too loudly, for just outside the door lurked the beer-soaked players of an entire hockey team, and I had heard too many boasts from athletes about girls who had “pulled the train” for a team, who had servi...

Orange ya glad for the president's leadership? It's one thing to use past tragedy for political gain, but quite another to use the president's homeland security director to laud "the president's leadership in the war against terror" when turning up the terrorism alert in the midst of a presidential campaign. (See full quote, below.) It's been a while since the alert was kicked up to orange, so we surely were due. I don't doubt that the New York Stock Exchange or the World Bank are in the terrorists' sights. And if, indeed, an imminent attack is averted by the vigilence of citizen, official and law enforcement officer, that's a laudable accomplishment. But to have Ridge, the man entrusted with the nation's safety, using a threat against American lives to tweak the president's poll numbers, well, that's just despicable. Ridge has been reportedly telling colleagues that he's ready to step down , weary of the work of com...

by Adele-Marie Stan THIS IS THE PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION This piece originally appeared in the December 1985 issue of Ms. magazine. Their Christian values compel them to challenge the church, say Catholic feminists. It is a church rife with powerful and mysterious symbols, symbols that have, throughout the ages, captured the imaginations of even those from other religious traditions. Artists and writers have long been intrigued by the Roman Catholic Church with its taboos and secrets, and the church has always provided the world with entertaining theater; its secret sensuality--the smell of the incense, the taste of the wafer, the sound of its glorious music, the elaborate settings of its altars, the silk and velvet vestments--provides the means through which the congregants are seduced from childhood. Yet despite the ceremonial indulgence, it remains an institution that makes grave distinctions between the needs of the spirit and the flesh. The church is an immensely wealthy institu...

Print-friendly This piece originally appeared on Salon.com during the platform hearings for the 2000 Republican National Convention. Inside the Republican pro-choice coalition Meet the women who are vowing a floor fight in Philadelphia over abortion. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Adele M. Stan July 29, 2000 | PHILADELPHIA, PA--As the delegates to the Republican Platform Committee strode into the Pennsylvania Convention Center yesterday for the party's quadrennial assessment of its mission, they found themselves greeted at the door by the welcoming committee of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition (RPCC). Politely applauding the approach of each delegate, the ladies cried out, "Yay, delegates! Help us out!" With one of the group's signature yellow T-shirts pulled over her smart black outfit, Carole Harper, president of the Morris County (N.J.) Republican Women's Club, held open the door for Chuck Cunningham, former field director of the Christian Coalition and current ...

Comrades in Blogs WASHINGTON, D.C.--Having spent the last five days angling for ways to get into the Fleet Center in Boston while getting lost in the amusement park inside her brain, your blogstress is only now catching up with the brilliant work done by her fellow bloggers during the Democratic National Convention. For unabashed fun, you'll need to visit Tom Burka's Opinions You Should Have , where a raft of laugh-out-loud satirical news items reside. My favorite? "Hope Delayed At Security Kiosk Outside Fleet Center" (July 28). Our favorite librarian , Jessamyn Charity West, informs us that, yes, Virgina, there are real roots on that grass. Check out her item, "Who Says There's No Grass Roots?" (July 29), and note the listing for the Democratic Swingers. (Smoking jackets, anyone?) Nathan Paxon is a brainy, and for the most part, sober fellow, but he had the good sense to post on his blog, NateKnowsNada , this delightful item from a ...

Lockdown BOSTON--Your blogstress should have known better. She had, after all, just gotten a call from her colleague, Lou Chibbaro, Jr. , staff reporter for the Washington Blade , from the convention floor, who said, "We're in some kind of lockdown here. They won't let me off the floor." She figured he just meant the convention floor, closed for the customary sweep. But no. Being bad girls, blogstresses occassionally need a smoke, and yours made the fatal error of stepping outside the building to inhale. Delegates were being held back by barriers at the foot of the stairways and escalators, but no cue was taken. It's just crowd control, n'est-ce pas ? It was still early, and the candidate wasn't scheduled to begin droning until 10:00. Upon returning to the building, your intrepid muse was met by phalanxes of police officers or some sort of law enforcement in black hats, as well as regular Boston cops, everywhere, and nobody, not even your blogstr...

Post-toastie BOSTON--This could well be the last AddieStan post of the evening. Though your blogstress did manage to get herself into the Fleet Center tonight in an extralegal manner (which involved, literally, a credential being passed through a fence), it seems that a good chunk of the press filing center is being turned over to the press corps that travels with Kerry. This is my fourth national political convention, and I've never seen this done. The candidate's traveling press corps is composed of reporters who work for the well-heeled outfits that have their own workrooms here. But considering the fact that, at least according to the DNC, your blogstress has no business being here at all, one supposes she should be grateful for the printed texts of speeches, the internet access enjoyed thus far, and the company of journalists.

Kerry's speech BOSTON--Well, they've just passed out excerpts from the text of Kerry's acceptance speech. I wish I could say that it looks like a knock-out, but if these are any indication, we can expect the same sort of buzz-word loaded stuff we hear on the campaign trail. Here's the acceptance part: So tonight, in the city where America's freedom began, only a few blocks from where the sons and daughters of liberty gave birth to our nation--here tonight, on behalf of a new birth of freedom--on behalf of the middle class who deserve a champion, and those struggling to join it who deserve a fair shot --for the brave mmen and women in uniform who risk their lives every day and the families who pray for their return--for all those who believe that our best days are ahead of us--for all of you--with great faith in the American people, I accept your nomination for President of the United States.

More than out BOSTON--After a week of nary a queer word from the convention podium, tonight is sounding like gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered night, at least until the networks tune in during primetime. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank just gave a real rip-roaring speech, in which he took to task his colleagues in the House who set aside the nation's business--funding homeland security and countless other vital national programs--to take up the unconscionable federal marriage amendment to the Constitution. The GOP amendemtn effort becomes especially cynical when you add in the fact that the Republicans knew they couldn't win the three-quarters victory they needed in the Senate, but they wasted the people's time on it anyway in order to have a flag to wave before their charming base. Buzz is that Barney Frank may go for Kerry's vacated Senate seat should the latter Massachusettan (dig that word!) wind up in the White House. Said Frank to a gathering of gay Dem...

The tyranny of the post BOSTON--The swell thing about blogging is that you can do whatever you want, with no pesky editor telling you that your ideas are cockamamie. The frustrating thing about blogging is that all the decisions are up to you, and there's no pesky editor there to tell you when your ideas really are cockamamie, or when your prose has run off the rails. In an environment such as this convention, the pressure to post is extremely high. Blogs are, after all, said to be the running commentary on this event. Combine the tyranny of the post with the tedium of relentless self-promotion (tune up those violins) and what was always a narcissistic medium becomes a cult of one--one's own personality that is, or at the very least, of the persona in which one blogs. Exhausted from e-mailing each little gem from her blog to tout le monde , sick of her self-consciously arch blogstress persona, unsure that there was really anything left to say about this confab, Addie actually...

Love fest BOSTON--After last night's levitational address by Barack Obama, John Edwards' performance tonight seemed merely able. That said, Edwards' "able" is better than what most politicians deliver in the guise of their strongest speeches. The most effective part of his speech was when he had us conjuring the image of a loney wife, scraping together the money to support her family while her husband, in the National Guard, serves in Iraq. Edwards seemed to go out of his way to cast most of his imaginary Americans as women; it's nice to see he's paying attention to demographics. The "hope is on the way" line was a fun bit of political jabbing, co-opting Cheney's 2000 line, "help is on the way." It's an insider punch; it's doubtful that viewers at home have much memory of Cheney's speech at the last Republican National Convention. The Edwards family is certainly impressive: A handsome wife, fellow attorney Elizabeth, w...

One more thing about Dukakis & Kerry BOSTON--Speaking of lessons from '88, I hope the Kerry campaign remembers not how great Dukakis did in the polls after the convention, but how absolutely wonderful he looked in the final days of the campaign, when he started rolling up his shirtsleeves and really mixing with people--unfortunately, after all was lost. He looked so good, in fact, that even as every poll spelled doom for the Democrats, I was half believing that another feat of metaphysics from Miracle Mike would make itself apparent.

src='http://photos1.blogger.com/img/188/1361/640/Dukakis.7.28.jpg'> Mike & Kitty at Friends of Dukakis gathering. photo © 2004 Adele M. Stan Snoopy-in-a-Tank on the Big, Blue Teletubbie BOSTON--So I’m walking by this Greek restaurant near the dock where the water taxi dumps you off, and I hear, amplified, a familiar voice, but one I can’t immediately place. Then it all comes into focus. “I’m happy to see that the Democrats have learned some lessons from 1988,” he says. It’s a good voice, with a bit of a sardonic edge, and that swell Massachusetts accent. “I know you’ve all seen that boy-in-the-bubble picture ,” he goes on, referring to Kerry’s fabulous photo flub. Why, it’s former Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis, whose failed presidential bid in 1988 is often summed up visually in a goofy-looking picture of him sitting in a tank wearing a too-big helmet with built-in-ear muffs. Given the candidate’s small build and not-so-small nose, the effect was said to resemble...

White, black or whatever?? A reader e-mails: Obama was amazing. It's interesting that he's seen by all as a black man who has a shot at being the first black pres., but his mother was white and his father black. Why is he not a white man? or ???  Anyway, he's the most refreshing person I've heard in years. I have my own thoughts on the question the writer asks (legacy of racial categories from the old days; America's unspoken obsession with skin color), but would rather hear from you, dear reader. E-mail me , and I'll post your comments.

A good night BOSTON--There’s no getting around the fact that last night was a very good one for the Dems at their convention. With Howard Dean and Barack Obama, they got a good tap into the mojo. Dean delivers The reception that Dean continues to get from Democrats calls a question: why was this guy deemed “not electable”? I saw the same thing happen at the aforementioned fundraising dinner in Washington--on a night that was to be Kerry’s, the very mention of Dean’s name from the main stage evoked a prolonged ovation. (At that event, Dean was relegated to the small stage from the side of the room, speaking during the cocktail hour with the other also-rans.) Conventional wisdom conspires to tell us that a firebrand is a danger in an election year where the future of the nation is at stake. I say that a tepid candidate is every bit as much of a danger. Obama lives up to hype And it was quite a lot of hype to live up to. The youngster from Illinois--and the Land of Lincoln's next new ...

Important newspaper discovers AddieStan.com ...in which your blogstress finds herself quoted in The Wall Street Journal .

This blog s#cks!* (Just ask the DNC) NOTE: Brackets [such as these] denote words that were not actually spoken, but perhaps should have been. BOSTON--As promised, your intrepid blogger paid a little visit on the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) Press Gallery on the matter of her revoked blogger credentials. You’ll recall that a very small handful of bloggers who received letters granting them credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention experienced the misfortune of having those credentials mysteriously revoked for reasons that seem dubious, at best. ( E.g. , the convention folks suddenly realized that they didn’t have enough space for us.) The others I know of who were so disrespected are righties; what liberal, feminist moi did to be similarly decommissioned was a mystery to me. So I went to find out. The party giveth, and the party taketh away At the press gallery, I presented the letter I had initially received, the one I was to bring to the gallery...

Dramaturgy (Enhancing the script) Ron Reagan (r) on the MSNBC set outside Fanueil Hall for a live airing of "Hardball". photo © 2004 Adele M. Stan BOSTON--As predictable as flung mud, every four years the grousing about the scriptedness of the conventions rains down upon us--so much so that it's become part of the metascript itself. One recalls that in 1996, Ted Koppel packed up early at the Republican National Convention, leaving San Diego in a huff over the banal non-newsiness of it. (Yesterday, however, saw Mr. Koppel briskly walking the halls of the Fleet Center during the prime-time hours.) But there's scripted, and there's scripted. On Sunday night, while foraging for food in the area of Quincy Market, I stumbled upon the outdoor set for Chris Matthews's MSNBC show "Hardball." Standing around the open-sided, tented set were a few hundred people, mostly young men, holding "Kerry/Edwards" signs. As I approached the gat...

Hope? BOSTON--Since he left office, when Bill Clinton speaks, I feel myself start to smile at the same time that I experience a profound sense of sadness. For after all that was the Clinton presidency, how did it come to this? (This being complete marginalization of the Democratic Party after yielding eight pretty prosperous during its last turn in the White House.) Clinton remains a maddening figure to me; much like a family member with a major character defect whom you just can't help loving too much. (Yeah, I'm already feeling the results of missing this week's therapy appointment.) Bill gave a good speech last night; he always does. (I had already seen the preview of the "Send me" riff in his post-primary address to a Democratic fundraising dinner in Washington last March.) His best line: "Strength and wisdom are not conflicting values..." He also did a great job explaining the US economic relationship with China and Japan, asking how can the ...