AddieStan

Oy, my girl really put her foot in it. So bitter are the feelings of some feminists about the way this primary season has played out that they're deaf to the overtones of racial resentment that permeate from their umbrage. Add Geraldine Ferraro to the list. Here's what she told John Farber of the California Daily Breeze : If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept. This one hurts. As a feminist sprung from the Roman Catholic faith, Ferraro's vice presidential candidacy always held special meaning. She was a two-fer. She stood up to the church, which tried to take her down. And now she's taking herself down a path she had best not travel. Your blogstress opines upon this fine mess at TAPPED, as does her blogsister , Dana Goldstein .

Come meet your blogstress, and a whole lotta other cool liberal and progressive folk, at the annual Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C. Always a great time, and lots to learn. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR TAKE BACK AMERICA Tell them your blogstress sent ya.

At the Washington Post Online today, Katha Pollitt has a devastating rebuttal to the absurd Charlotte Allen that ran in the paper's Sunday opinion section, "Outlook." Herewith a taste or two, to whet your appetite, mes amis : But back when the experts were explaining why women couldn't be lawyers or professors or poets (at least not very good poets), nobody said verbal skills and memory were trivial; they only became trivial when women were found to excel at them. Here's the money quote: What bothers Allen about this picture is that these women reject, with every fiber of their latte-loving beings, the abstinence-only, father-knows-best, slut-shaming crabbed misogyny of the Republican right. CLICK HERE TO READ ALL OF POLLITT'S 'DUMB AND DUMBER'

For those of us too, um, like, numerologically challenged to comprehend Tomasky 's piece ( see below ) for all the arithmetic involved, fear not. For a pleasant diversion, you can participate in a discussion with Charlotte Allen , author of the ridiculous essay published Sunday by the Washington Post in its opinion section, in which the author asserts the mental inferiority of herself and all of the female race. At 2:00 today: Knock your stupid selves out . Somebody remember to bring the bon-bons.

With Hillary Clinton now having scored what Guardian America 's Michael Tomasky regards as "decisive" victories in last night's primaries ( Barack Obama won only Vermont), the question becomes, "What now?" As Tomasky astutely concludes, Clinton hasn't much chance of winning the delegate race, and that's that it takes to win the nomination. The path to victory from here will likely be to win by wounding her opponent, because that is what it will take to win the superdelegates she will need to put her over the top. Barack Obama will find himself in a difficult position, unable to go truly negative against Clinton without damaging the rationale for his campaign: "I come in peace." CLICK HERE TO READ TOMASKY'S ESSAY, 'RESULTS ORIENTATION'.

For more than a year, your blogstress has lost landline service every time it rains, because Verizon cannot find a way to protect the line that runs from my apartment to the pole from voracious, ferocious squirrels. Having gone without service for four days last week, and two days the week before, having fielded all sorts of lies from Verizon, having waited all day on Monday for the technician who never came, your cybertrix now resorts to blogging her complaints, which she sends to her Verizon abusers via their Website: ONCE AGAIN, I HAVE NO DIAL TONE. THIS HAPPENS EVERY TIME IT RAINS. IT HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR MORE THAN A YEAR. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SEND A TECHNICIAN ON MONDAY, BUT DID NOT BECAUSE MY SERVICE WAS MAGICALLY RESTORED AFTER FOUR DAYS OF NO DIAL TONE. THEN YOU INSULTED ME BY LEAVING ME AN AUTOMATED MESSAGE TELLING ME THE PROBLEM WAS ON MY END, SINCE THERE IS NOTHING WRONG ON YOURS. YOU KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS, BUT YOU REFUSE TO FIX IT. SQUIRRELS CHEW THROUGH A LINE TH...

At Feministing, Ann Friedman offers a laugh-out-loud visual send-up of the front page of Sunday's now infamous Washington Post Outlook section. CLICK HERE TO GO TO "MEN VS. MEN" ON FEMINISTING . UPDATE: Check out Laura Rozen's incisive questioning (at her fine blog, War and Piece) of what was really going on when Post editors assigned the "Women v. Women" pieces to Allen and Hirshman. CLICK HERE TO GO TO "PULLING UP THE DRAWBRIDGE" ON WAR AND PIECE .

...your blogstress states the feminist case for Obama : The feminist rationale for an Obama vote is really quite simple: My grand-niece. Your daughter, if you have one. All the little girls who are growing up at a rather grim hour in American history. Our nation is sinking deeper into recession. We are mired in a bloody, intractable conflict in Iraq, and may be losing the war in Afghanistan.Our beloved Constitution has been raped and pillaged. Instability and the specter of war threaten every continent. Climate change is hard upon us. In difficult times, inspiration matters. The ability to lead lies less in the details of policy than in the ability to call people to sacrifice and courage, and to get them to comply. I'm not absolutely certain Obama can do that, but I'm pretty sure that it's not Clinton's strong suit. And given the similarities in their policies, I've cast my lot with him. Meanwhile, at Comment is Free, the Guardian America's delicious blog, you ...

Reading today's Washington Post , one would be forgiven for concluding that the editors of its Sunday opinion section, "Outlook," decided that they didn't care if another woman ever bought the paper. In essays run side by side, two women -- one a self-described feminist, the other in the employ of a right-wing, anti-feminist outfit -- both reached similar conclusions: a lot of women are dumb. Coming from the anti-feminist Charlotte Allen of the Independent Women's Forum, the argument was predictable. Women swoon, have more automobile accidents, can't do math and vote for Barack Obama . But Linda Hirshman should know better. Or perhaps better said, she wants you to know that she does know better -- than you or me, dear reader, or any woman who might dare to vote for Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton . Educated white women, claims Hirshman, are sinking Hillary's campaign by voting in increasing numbers for Barack -- and that's because they...

CLICK HERE FOR THE AUDIO TO YOUR BLOGSTRESS'S APPEARANCE ON 'TO THE CONTRARY'

He didn't do us much by way of favors, as the sage Hans Johnson points out: Let it not be lost in his death that Buckley, like most in the right-wing cohort he anchored from mid-century onward, was quite familiar and at times reliant on gay people in his career. He wrestled with homophobia. Mostly he lost. CLICK HERE TO READ JOHNSON'S ESSAY ON BUCKLEY AND GAYS

When your blogstress was a little girl, her father would make her read a newspaper column that ran regularly in the Elizabeth Daily Journal , the afternoon paper then published in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The column was called "On the Right," and it was written by one William F. Buckley, Jr. "Good for your vocabulary," said le père de votre net-tête . The veritable inventor of the the modern conservative movement, Buckley delighted in penning arguments in the code of the erudite; so much so that for a child who crawled out of the primordial ethnic soup that is New Jersey, a dictionary was a mandatory companion to Buckley's weekly reader. The Buckley exercise missed the desired effect: Your Webwench forgot most of the words she learned from the columns and became a liberal. However, she cannot discount the influence of Buckley on your cybertrix's ambition to become a columnist . CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARY

By the traditional rules of debate, Hillary Clinton won this debate on substance. But Barack Obama doesn't play by those rules. He plays by the rules of the Taoists, whereby victory goes to the one who yields. Tonight he proved the point.

He's using the present tense in talking about himself as the nominee. She's using the past tense in talking about it having "been an honor" to have campaigned with Obama . And he did the same in talking about the campaign. But in justifying her candidacy, Clinton said, "I think it's time we had a fighter back in the White House."

"There's a difference between rejecting and denouncing," Clinton said, appearing to try to make it seem as if Obama was trying to split the difference by not strongly enough disassociating himself from Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright .

Tim Russert is questioning Obama 's stance towards Israel and the Jewish community -- because of Louis Farrakhan 's endorsement.

In asking Obama if he will hold to his promise, as Tim Russert cast it, to hold to only accept public campaign financing (in the general election), Russert said, "You seem to be waffling." Russert used the terms set by the Republican nominee apparent, John McCain, effectively making it seem as if Obama's nomination is a fait accompli .

That's Obama 's response to a video showing of Clinton 's critique of Obama's oratory, in which she mocked him, saying, "celestial choirs will sing..." Clinton laughed heartily. A welcome moment of levity in a very tense debate.

Huh? Tim Russert wants to know if Obama "reserve(s) the right" to go back into Iraq "with sizable troops" (as opposed to short people, one presumes) after having pulled out if the situation warrants. Huh?

He's getting centered on national television while being castigated for being inexperienced in matters of foreign policy. Hands pressed together in front of his face, eyes lowered, he seems to be bringing himself to the middle path. Whoops -- now he seems to have remembered that he's supposed to be staring down his opponent.