Inspiration

In the last presidential debate, McCain talked up Palin as a role model for women.
Screw you, McCain. Please. Yes there are very few women in American politics, but even in that limited arena, she would come behind a long line of much more accomplished women who doesn't just wink about Joe-Six-Packs to get by. Madeleine Albright would top my list. And if you're talking about elected women, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and others have been lighting the way for years on the national stage. Oh right. Maybe he meant conversative women, since there are so few Republican women in either Senate (5R and 11D women Senators) or Congress (21R and 49D congresswomen). I suppose if you're a conservative woman looking for conservative political female role models, there aren't that many for you to choose from. Plenty of conservative white men though.

It still blows my mind that there hasn't been a female (other than as wife) in the White House. I mean, Iran had a female vice president. Pakistan had Benazir Bhutto. These are countries the US likes to mock as oppressive to women.

My most admired female politician though, is still Mary Robinson, the former first female President of Ireland, and former High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN, and the founder of Realizing Rights.



But speaking of other females that are inspiring, I have been watching little snipbits of Christiane Amanpour's special report on religious fighters. She is CNN's chief international correspondent and has always been one of those journalists I really admire.

And, this is a nice video of Karen Armstrong, a scholar on comparative religion. I only heard of her recently, when she came to SF to give a lecture and I caught some of it on NPR. She received the Ted Prize this year.