More on that arrest of a teacher who objected to a pay raise for an administrator.

Deyshia Hargrave previously spoke out against the Vermilion Parish School Board (VPSB) for voting to give the standing superintendent nearly $30,000 raise, which she claimed was a “slap in the face” to hard-working teachers who haven’t seen a boost in pay in years.

…

Since those in attendance at Monday’s board meeting were allowed to comment on superintendent Jerome Puyau’s pay raise, Hargrave chose to make mention of the “serious issue” she had with such action occurring.

“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person in a position of leadership getting any type of raise,” Hargrave said before the board

Mei Fong asks how much more are men paid.

About 50 percent, in the BBC journalist Carrie Gracie’s case. Over the weekend, Ms. Gracie quit as the broadcaster’s China editor and announced she was returning to London. “Enough is enough,” she wrote, in an astringent open letter, describing how she discovered last year that the BBC paid two of its four international editors — men, of course — 50 percent more than the female editors.

(I think it was closer to twice as much.)

It says something when it’s considered an advancement for women just to get to the bargaining table and ask for equal pay. Many of us never even get that far.

More than a decade ago,

There’s that teacher in Louisiana who was arrested and handcuffed for asking questions at a school board meeting about why an administrator was getting a raise while teachers hadn’t had a raise in years.

Deyshia Hargrave had a question for the Vermillion Parish School Board: Why was the superintendent getting a pay raise when teachers like her and other school employees hadn’t had one in years?

“I feel like it is a slap in the face of all the teachers, cafeteria workers and any other support staff we have,” she told the board in a public meeting Monday. “We work very hard with very little.”

What happened next might have stayed in the tiny Louisiana town of Abbeville, about 150

A little girl in Pakistan was raped, strangled, and thrown into a dumpster. She was seven.

As her relatives tell it, Zainab’s horrifying last few hours unfolded like this: The child had been staying with her aunt while her parents traveled to Saudi Arabia to perform the umrah pilgrimage. On Thursday, relatives say, she left home for a nearby Koran recital. She never returned.

On Tuesday, police found her body in a dumpster about a mile from her home in Kasur, a city in Punjab province. According to early autopsy reports, Zainab had been raped multiple times and strangled four or five days earlier.

She was seven. Seven. Seven.

The condemnable & horrific rape & murder of little Zainab

Another example of how not to amplify support for your cause: Pensacola Women’s March on Facebook:

Trigger Warning and Content Warning for comments:
Transphobia, Cissexism, Racism, mention of Sexual Assault, Genital Mutilation, Misogyny and Trans-Misogyny.

The Pink P*ssy Hats represent a very concentrated and thus, exclusionary sect of feminism that ignores, neglects, and ultimately harms the fight for global women’s liberation. The entire concept is based around the idea of biological essentialism and shared womanhood (Mia McKenzie, Black Girl Dangerous): two incorrect ideas that women are all on the same level despite conflicting classes, races, sexualities, etc. and are also bound by “the power of the vagina”. This is a very popular concept developed and expanded upon during the

Bien sûr, c’est normal. There are Christina Hoff Sommerses and Ella Whelans in France too, and they join their anglophone sisters in saying this has gone too far.

Just one day after Hollywood offered a show of support for the #MeToo movement on the Golden Globes red carpet and stage, a famous actress on the other side of the Atlantic lent her name to a public letter denouncing the movement, as well as its French counterpart, #Balancetonporc, or “Expose Your Pig.”

Catherine Deneuve joined more than 100 other Frenchwomen in entertainment, publishing and academic fields Tuesday in the pages of the newspaper Le Monde and on its website in arguing that the two movements, in which women

Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on Spiked says solidarity is the work of the devil.

That is, equality was won by was won by ordinary women standing up for themselves one at a time and separately and without conferring or joining forces in any way whatsoever. Yeah! No need for solidarity, no need to organize, no need for campaigns, just each woman square her shoulders and be as great as she can be.

This is the story conservative America tells itself over and over again about how equal rights were fought for.

I grew up hearing that Rosa Parks was really tired one day after a hard day’s work, so she refused to give up her seat on … Read the rest

David Brooks being even more willfully wrong and middleminded than usual.

Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:

That is, let him start with congratulating himself for Going Against the Tide, for Thinking For Himself, for Not Following the Herd.

First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by.

Are.you.fucking.kidding.

If they’re going there to have a meeting with … Read the rest

However. A ruling just now:

A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina’s congressional map on Tuesday, declaring it unconstitutionally gerrymandered and demanding that the Republican-controlled General Assembly redraw district lines before this year’s midterm elections.

The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because the judges believed it to be a partisan gerrymander, and it deepened the political chaos that has enveloped North Carolina in recent years.

“We agree with plaintiffs that a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation,” Judge James A. Wynn Jr. wrote in a 191-page opinion that another judge

Again the Times pretends shit is a bowl of rose petals. Joe Arpaio is “fiery” and now Breitbart has a “defiant editorial spirit.” Defiant of what, though? Oh, truth, civility, fairness, proportion, humanity – that kind of bourgeois frippery.

They’re reporting that Breitbart has thrown Bannon out.

Mr. Bannon’s departure, which was forced by a onetime financial patron, Rebekah Mercer, comes as Mr. Bannon remained unable to quell the furor over remarks attributed to him in a new book in which he questions President Trump’s mental fitness and disparages his elder son, Donald Trump Jr.

Mr. Bannon and Breitbart will work together on a smooth transition, a statement from the company’s chief executive, Larry Solov, said.

In the statement,

Spiked has another “contrarian” what’s all this fuss about sexual harassment piece, this one by Ella Whelan. The target this time is Time’s Up, which turns out to be rich women condescending to poor women, I guess by not ignoring them.

No one should have to put up with injustice. But this patronising campaign assumes working-class women are incapable of sticking up for themselves. How did women ever win equality in the workplace in the first place? Was it through Hollywood-run schemes to stop bad male behaviour with lawsuits? Of course not. Equality was won by ordinary women standing up for themselves and demanding their freedom. This is what #MeToo types can’t understand – that women aren’t all helpless

No.

No no no no no.

No.

No.

No.

Oprah Winfrey is thinking about running for president.

What she lacks is political experience.

In an interview with Winfrey on Bloomberg last March, interviewer David Rubenstein broached the possibility, saying “It’s clear you don’t need government experience to be elected president of the United States.”

You don’t need it to be elected, tragically, but you do need it, or a relevant education, to do it well. You can’t just walk into it because you’re famous. Have we not learned that?

It’s true that she would be vastly better than Trump. If the choice were more Trump and Oprah Winfrey I would choose her in a shot. But the choice is … Read the rest