It may not have been the first time, but it was the first time I noticed that all three contestants in the finals of the JEOPARDY teen tournament this past week were female. We already know there are more females graduating from college and getting advance degrees in many areas, including medicine and law, etc.
We also know that the more freedom women have to advance in a society the more democratic it is and the more economically successful it it. There are obviously still glass ceilings, and they need to be broken through, but ultimately we are on the best track for women.
Unfortunately, males aren't doing as well in many areas here, and when males don't do well they often act out or quit or both. So there's a lot more dropping out of the education system going on with boys and young men and a lot more giving up on any kind of "career" etc. leaving women often as the breadwinners and/or sole parent.
And the kinds of jobs the drop outs in my day were able to get, well paying union jobs in factories or construction or even government jobs are either disappearing or gone entirely so that a high school drop out or someone with only a high school diploma is left with few choices in the way of work often ending up in fast food chains etc.
While the hope of much of the "developing world"—especially in the Mideast (I just wrote "Midwest" again and had to correct it, not a typo but my post-op brain ordering one word and my fingers—or another part of my brain I wasn't aware of at the time—insisting what I meant was another similar one)—depending on women getting more social and economic freedom and individual rights, and with the attacks from the right on women's rights in this country, there can be no let up in the womens rights movement anywhere...
...but, we're going to have to address the growing crisis, recognized or not, in boys and young men in this country losing faith and hope in their own futures outside of reality TV and fast food etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Lal: Good post. You left out the biggest and unfortunately most attractive legitimate path young men can take: the military.
~ Willy
Good point, especially considering that was my way into adult life as a man.
There is no attack on women from the right. If you are going to make a baseless charge, at least be specific.
Women's reproductive rights. And please don't regurgitate the "life begins at lust" baloney when you'd have a man in a coma die because he can't pay his insurance bill and when you let returning Vets who protected your hypoocritical butt live homeless in the street without counseling, job security or full pension that the Teaopocrit exploiters get after two years...specific enough?
Don't confuse "nastiness" with intolerance of the inhumane, ignorant, hurtful, hateful, dangerous ideology of the Teapocracy. And "Freedom of Speech" means that a blog administrator is free to delete toxic comments.
Engaging the rightwing stalker to this blog is futile, as we all know. It is fun sometimes to correct the lies etc. but it only leads, as always, to name calling or changing the subject. I delete him when he gets too out of line for the simple reason that I don't want to be party to this contemporary media practice of giving equal weight, or in fact any weight, to "opinions" which are just simply lies used for propaganda. The right has mastered this technique, and the media has bought in (or been bought out). There is no "controversy" with equal weight on both sides to whether evolution or "creationism" is correct. Nor is there any reason to give equal weight to global warming (and the subsequent climate change) deniers versus the majority of climate scientists who have verified it with facts and fieldwork. Etc. Someone can argue that Romney stands for what they believe in (or has stood for it at one point or another isn his many fulxuations etc.) or that Romney proved himself at gaining personal wealth on top of his inherited wealth. But you can't argue that Romney's tenure as governor of Massachusetts led to a loss in job creation there, and his time at Bain Capital also led to massive job losses in the firms his company took over and stripped for profit and left to die etc. Nor can you argue that it was Obama's gutsy decision that led to Osama Bin Laden's death, that his healthcare reforms have already led to many more people having health insurance than before it was enacted and is in the process of leading to almost universal coverage if allowed to continue by the Supreme Court. etc. Obama has done a lot I don't like, and Romney's done a few things in his career that I do like, but their stated goals for this country, economy, society, etc. are in many matters that matter to me diametrically opposed, with Obama more in line with the facts so far.
How about the latest polls with Romne%y 48% Obama 44%? Gallup has Obama up by only 1%. Fewer and fewer are buying Obamanomics and socialism.
The 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial races by Rasmussen Reports and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, missed the final margin between the candidates by 5.8 points, a considerably higher figure than that achieved by most other pollsters. Some 13 of its polls missed by 10 or more points, including one in the Hawaii Senate race that missed the final margin between the candidates by 40 points, the largest error ever recorded in a general election in FiveThirtyEight’s database, which includes all polls conducted since 1998.
Moreover, Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average. In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases — that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.
If one focused solely on the final poll issued by Rasmussen Reports or Pulse Opinion Research in each state — rather than including all polls within the three-week interval — it would not have made much difference. Their average error would be 5.7 points rather than 5.8, and their average bias 3.8 points rather than 3.9.
Nor did it make much difference whether the polls were branded as Rasmussen Reports surveys, or instead, were commissioned for Fox News by its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research. (Both sets of surveys used an essentially identical methodology.) Polls branded as Rasmussen Reports missed by an average of 5.9 points and had a 3.9 point bias. The polls it commissioned on behalf of Fox News had a 5.1 point error, and a 3.6 point bias.
Rasmussen’s polls have come under heavy criticism throughout this election cycle, including from FiveThirtyEight. We have critiqued the firm for its cavalier attitude toward polling convention. Rasmussen, for instance, generally conducts all of its interviews during a single, 4-hour window; speaks with the first person it reaches on the phone rather than using a random selection process; does not call cellphones; does not call back respondents whom it misses initially; and uses a computer script rather than live interviewers to conduct its surveys. These are cost-saving measures which contribute to very low response rates and may lead to biased samples.
Rasmussen also weights their surveys based on preordained assumptions about the party identification of voters in each state, a relatively unusual practice that many polling firms consider dubious since party identification (unlike characteristics like age and gender) is often quite fluid.
etc etc
Since your response was so perfect Robert, I'll leave the stalker's comment that inspired it. But I will continue to delete him when he brands Obama's pragmatic centrist policies "socialism" because that lie will not stand, at least not in any arena I have any say in. How many of us only wish his policies advocated "socialism"!
"Socialism" - you mean, "of the people, by the people, FOR the people"?
Robert and Lally, How about that CBS/NYT poll with Romney plus 3% over Obama. Do you think they have now become an organ of the Tea Party?
In truth all polls are just a snapshot of the prediction of if an election was held on the day of the poll. The trend is interesting, however.
Socialism is from each according to their means to each according to their wants or needs. I don't find that in the Founding Documents.
Post a Comment