Thursday, November 20, 2008 - Posts
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You have got to watch this. So she is going on..."values...convictions...policies...blah blah blah," Starbucks in hand, while that dude in the background is killing the turkey. I kid you not.
I can't decide if the video looks more like a) performance art b) fetish film or c) an Onion video.
Her last words; "I'll be in charge of the turkey."
Yeah, I bet you will.
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It's heartening to hear that Janet Napolitano is most likely Obama's pick as secretary of Homeland Security. I profiled Napolitano for The American Prospect in July and spent some time with her in Phoenix. She's really smart, tough, and funny, dropping Monty Python lines in official meetings. A cabinet with both Napolitano and Hillary Clinton in it would be chock-full of female power.
A former prosecutor, Napolitano is vocally pro-choice, pro-death penalty, and a moderate on immigration, which serves her well in Arizona's libertarian political climate. She was the first governor to dispatch the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border, and the Bush administration followed her lead on the issue.
But what many don't know about Napolitano—or don't remember—is that she first came onto the national stage in 1991 as an attorney representing Anita Hill during the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on Clarence Thomas. (Joe Biden chaired the committee at that time and is remembered for his ham-handedness in dealing with the sensitive topic of sexual harassment.) Napolitano was in charge of preparing the testimonies of Hill's supporting witnesses, and she credits her involvement in the case with deepening her commitment to electoral politics. "It really did bring home how issues of women really didn't have an avenue to be heard at that time," Napolitano told me during our May interview. "I think that from Professor Hill's standpoint, that experience cost her a lot personally. But I think she should have a satisfaction in knowing, but for that experience, the fact that women need to be treated fairly and are entitled to go to work without being harassed—when they're in the workplace trying to earn a living—would never have gained the prominence it did and all the protections we now have."
When Bill Clinton appointed Napolitano U.S. Attorney for Arizona in 1993, Senate Republicans held up her nomination for more than a year, in large part because of lingering resentments over the Thomas-Hill case. So it'll be interesting to see if the issue resurfaces for Napolitano this time around—or if, 17 years later, the infamous episode has lost its power as a political and cultural touchstone.
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