Big Girls Don't Cry — if They Want to Be President

Ellen DeGeneres’ crying jag on national television over a dog named Iggy has prompted a great deal of reflection by pundits and misfits.
The terrier wasn’t dead, maimed or missing. The previous owner, a pet rescue agency, had taken it away from DeGeneres’ hair stylist who got it from DeGeneres when she found it didn’t get along with her cats.
That’s more than you need to know.
But with so many people who have nothing better to do than post to and peruse of the Internet (the 20 seconds of loud wailing have been viewed by millions), the issue has been expanded by some to question whether a male President can shed tears, but a female president —now who are we talking about? — wouldn’t dare.
Former President Bill Clinton has shed tears more than a number of times. Imagine his sadness when he learned Monica Lewinski hadn’t had her infamous blue dress dry-cleaned. But in general, Clinton’s salty tears have indicated compassion while some suggest a female politician’s would reflect weakness.
There are exceptions. Women are allowed to tear up when a man asks them to marry. Men are allowed to weep if there’s no beer in the refrig just before the big game.
The acceptance of a powerful man (Lincoln) with tears in his eyes was once okay, then went out of favor. As AP writer Jocelyn Noveck has pointed out, Sen. Ed Muskie’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 was wounded by his alleged tears in response to attacks in a New Hampshire newspaper on his wife. (Muskie argued his eyes watered in the extreme cold and wind.)
The AP article alludes to a study by Yale social psychologist Victoria Brescoll due to be published in Psychological Science. She found that many might admire an angry male president for looking tough, but an angry female president would scare hell out of some.
It’s sexism, of course. But it’s there, isn’t it?

Giving the Pill to 11-Year-Old Girls

When I was a teen-ager, some of the boys carried a condom in their wallets. Just one.
It made a round imprint in the leather, a symbol of maturity or masculinity or something.
Once in a while, somebody actually used one. Mostly they got yellow and dried out and forgotten, but not so forgotten you’d let you parents see your wallet.
That was birth control.
We’ve come a long way.
King Middle School Board of Education in Portland, Maine, has decided by a 7-2 vote to allow the school health center to give birth-control prescriptions (pill, patch) to girls. The Middle School, with an enrollment of about 600, is for grades 6-8. Ages generally run 11 to 13.
We have vacationed in Portland and area several times. A one-hour flight (great airport) or a 12-hour drive. An attractive, diverse small city on the waterfront with great restaurants, different shopping, a wonderful art museum, a couple colleges including the Maine College of Art. And lobster.
The health centers are operated by the Portland Division of Public Health which recommended the birth control measures. They have been doing this at the high schools since 2003.
The King Health Center has been providing condoms as part of its reproductive health program since 2000. Abstinence counseling is part of its program.
Five of 134 students who visited King’s health center in the last school year reported being sexually active.
Students must have signed parental permission to use the health centers. But state law does not allow the center to inform parents about services the students receive. The centers do encourage the students to stop having intercourse and also to inform their parents.
According to the Maine Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the percentage of middle school students in Maine who reported having sexual intercourse dropped from 23 percent in 1997 to 13 percent in 2005.
That and some of the statistics in this piece were taken from an article by Kelley Bouchard in the Portland Press Herald.
According to its Web site, King Middle School’s motto is, “Knowledge, Motivation, Spirit + Teaching, Learning, Caring Equals Success.” It’s ungrammatical.

Way to Go, Joe

Penn State (5-2) football coach Joe Paterno is under a lot of pressure. He’s also 80, which is a time in life when some people get sweet and others can get a little crotchety.
Regardless, many probably applaud him for chastising a woman driver who went through a stop sign on the Penn State campus. He pulled along side and pointed his finger at her. It was not his middle finger, he insists
I caution my wife not to do this because sure as heck the driver will have an AK-47 on the seat beside him or her.
But Joe did it, going on to tell her he had her license plate number.
Enter, stage left, the woman’s husband to whom Paterno said, “That’s your problem.” He later said he regretted that comment.
Of course it got blown out of proportion. The woman, a Penn State employee, filed a complaint. University police investigated and, surprise, decided there was no reason to file any charges against the Nittany Lions coach. Incident closed.

Having absolutely nothing to do with the above, the Wall Street Journal editorial page Oct. 13 had a somewhat crotchety response to Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The Journal, which probably never met a Gore position it liked and most certainly is cool on his global warming views, ran a lead editorial that did not mention Gore, but listed people who did NOT get the prize and it felt should be considered next year.
Among those the Journal considers more deserving than Gore: “Thousands of Chinese bloggers who run the risk of arrest by trying to bring uncensored information to their countrymen.”
Little Nobel Peace Prizes to thousands of gutsy bloggers? That’s a bush league response, if you get what I mean.

A Special Education Question

When should taxpayers pay for private schooling for special education students?
That’s one of several tough questions before the current term of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The “when” is the point. A “free, appropriate” public education is guaranteed by the Individuals with Learning Disabilities Education Act.
This case, started by parent Tom Freston of New York City, hinges on whether parents must first give public schooling a chance before getting reimbursed for sending their children with learning disabilities to private schools.
Parents charge a six-month “waste of time” in public schools without adequate special ed programs damages their children.
The question of mainstreaming — having the children in the same classrooms as their nondisabled peers — hovers in the background.
Cape May County has an excellent Special Services School District for those who cannot be mainstreamed. But that district is being buffeted by inadequate state funding, by the increasing trend to mainstreaming, and by the growth in autism.
Autism Speaks, a federal project, filed a brief supporting Freston. The National School Boards Association has backed the school district, citing the cost of private education.

An update to a recent column and blog on the case of Stephen French of Ocean City who, after allegedly drinking 10 glasses of wine in a Somers Point restaurant, struck three young bicyclists on Ocean Drive in Egg Harbor Township, killing Richard H. Branca, 17.
French has been sentenced to 16 years in prison. And Branca’s family has filed a civil suit against Romanelli’s Restaurant, where French allegedly drank for four hours before getting behind the wheel of his car. No word on whether authorities also are taking action against Romanelli’s.