The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Salina Kosgei: NYC Marathon Runner May Win Top Prize
- Bella DePaulo: Advocacy on Behalf of All Unmarried Americans -- Single or Coupled, Gay or Straight
- Paula Radcliffe: NYC Marathon Runner May Win Top Prize
- Geoffrey Dunn: 'Going Rouge' Skewers Palin
| Salina Kosgei: NYC Marathon Runner May Win Top Prize | Top |
| Salina Kosgei is set to race in Sunday's New York City Marathon. The runner from Kenya competed in the 2008 Olympics and most recently won the 2009 Boston Marathon. Kosgei is married to her trainer Barnabas Kinyor. | |
| Bella DePaulo: Advocacy on Behalf of All Unmarried Americans -- Single or Coupled, Gay or Straight | Top |
| Think for a moment or two, and you can probably come up with the names of GLBT advocacy groups, and even the names of leaders who pursue same-sex marriage rights and broader social justice on behalf of the GLBT community. But if, for example, same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, that would still leave millions of Americans of every sexual orientation left out of the protections that come only from being legally married. Not every gay or straight person is married or wants to be, and that will never change. So who is advocating for the rights of all unmarried Americans - single or coupled, gay or straight? At the forefront of the movement to create a more just society for all single people is Nicky Grist, Executive Director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project (AtMP). AtMP is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to the goals of erasing marital status discrimination from our laws and policies. Its members come from all 50 states as well as Canada. She agreed to discuss her work with me. Here is our interview. Bella : Is there one particular issue or goal that is especially important to you as you try to create social change? Nicky Grist : Generically speaking, I believe public policies should be fair and should respect the reality of people's lives. That means looking at actual behavior, not just profiling people. I believe policies should help people do and be their best, not create obstacles that hold them back. More specifically, AtMP spends a lot of time on various aspects of health policy because so many of our members have experienced discrimination in access to health care, and because so much of the public conversation about right and wrong is focused on health care. Bella : So much of the cultural and political discussion around marital status is about people who are officially married compared to couples who are unmarried - whether same-sex or not. I know that many uncoupled singles feel left out of that conversation, and they find that inappropriate. Is that a tension you've faced? What are your thoughts on creating change on behalf of all legally single people, regardless of whether or not they are socially coupled? Nicky Grist : AtMP has been on the receiving end of that criticism, and it has been a major topic of strategic discussion among our Board of Directors . Our mission statement has long stated that AtMP advocates fairness and equality for all unmarried people. That's an amazingly wide range of people and of reasons for being unmarried and emotions about being unmarried. One of the things I like best about AtMP is that we don't favor one type of single over another, we don't try to tell people how to live, we don't judge relationships by what they're called, and we do think all adults should be free to form the relationships they want. That's why we look forward to the day when same-sex couples can marry if they want. However, our work focuses on making it not matter whether a couple marries, or an individual remains single, or a family includes more than one or two adults. We think relationships are good for people, caring relationships are good for society, and society should treat caring relationships fairly based on what the people in them do for each other, not what they call each other. This year our Board of Directors carefully examined and reaffirmed this basic principle. The board recommitted AtMP to not only challenging policies that use marriage to give people rights and resources, but also proposing policy alternatives that maximize equality, autonomy and protection for singles and non-sexual relationships as well as intimate couples. Bella : Can you describe an especially positive or memorable experience you've had in your role as a single-minded change agent? It doesn't have to be a big thing - it could be something small but especially meaningful or poignant. Nicky Grist : Last weekend I attended a fancy dinner for Charles's 75th birthday. Charles has been close friends with my partner for over 40 years. During those years he has literally become a guru to hundreds of people around the world. (We aren't followers; in fact, we like to needle Charles about learning to accept help.) At the dinner each guest stood up to tell a story, usually about how the guru had helped her or him. The story I told: Charles, my partner and I were in a taxi, and my partner said something foolish about a single mother who was "all alone in the world." I chided my partner, pointing out that the mother in question has an extraordinary network of support. I added it would be just as foolish to say that Charles is alone in the world simply because he never married - just look at the hundreds of people who would do anything for him if he'd let them. Charles was in the front seat; he turned around to reveal tears (continue reading here ). More on Voting | |
| Paula Radcliffe: NYC Marathon Runner May Win Top Prize | Top |
| Paula Radcliffe is set to race in Sunday's New York City Marathon. The British runner won the marathon in 2004, 2007, and 2008. Despite suffering from several injuries in recent years, Radcliffe is the heavy favorite to win. Radcliffe gave birth to a daughter in 2007. | |
| Geoffrey Dunn: 'Going Rouge' Skewers Palin | Top |
| In what is surely a brilliant bit of counter-insurgency marketing, OR Books will be releasing the political antidote to Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue with Going Rouge--Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare , on November 16, the day before Palin's tome explodes on the national book market. Although it's been billed by some right-wing commentators as a "copycat publication" intended to "confuse readers," Going Rouge will not be appearing in bookstores and will be available only on the OR website . Edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed of The Nation , Going Rouge contains a superb collection of more than 50 short articles on Palin by an all-star array of political writers who skewered Palin during her vice-presidential candidacy last fall. Many of the classic pieces written about Palin in the last year are collected in the volume--including "Wrong Woman, Wrong Message," by Gloria Steinem, and "Our Polar Bears, Ourselves," by Mark Hertsgaard. Going Rouge is an engaging read from start to finish. In their introduction, Kim and Reed rightfully acknowledge the "vital place" that Palin currently occupies "in the Republican Party's zeitgeist." In spite of her loss last fall on the Republican ticket and her endless series of car crashes on the campaign trail, Palin remains in the words of New York Times columnist Frank Rich not only the GOP's "biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer." No one was talking this past week about paying Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee $100,000 to come to Iowa. If you've followed Palin's career closely, as I have, most of the essays here will be familiar, though I somehow managed to miss Robert Reich's powerful excoriation of Palin's "death panel" hysteria in response to Obama's proposed health-care reforms. One of the reasons that Palin was selected as John McCain's running mate, of course, was as a calculated attempt by his campaign to wrest women voters (read Hillary Clinton supporters) away from the Democratic Party ticket. In the end it proved to be a strategy as ridiculous as it was misguided. Perhaps the most compelling sections in Going Rouge are those that address feminist considerations magnified (and distorted) by Palin's candidacy. It includes splendid pieces by the likes of Steinem, Katha Pollitt, Jessica Valenti, Amy Alexander, Linda Hirshman, Amanda Fortini, Rebecca Traister, Michelle Goldberg, Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick--all of whom shed considerable light on the varied and complex nuances of gender and feminist constructions raised by the Palin phenomenon. Traister, a contributor to Salon who has a book coming out next fall about women in the 2008 campaign entitled Big Girls Don't Cry , was by far the best--and most consistent--feminist critic of Palin throughout the campaign. In "The Sarah Palin Pity Party," Traister writes, "I guess I'm one cold dame, because while Palin provokes many unpleasant emotions in me, I just can't seem to summon pity, affection or remorse." Going Rouge is not all slash-and-burn. There's plenty of humor contained throughout. In a section entitled "The Poetry of Sarah Palin," Palin's peculiar phrasing and word amalgamations are placed in poetic form: Haiku These corporations. Today it was AIG, Important call, there. Max Blumenthal, author of the fascinating Republican Gomorrah , is also here in all his splendor, with an account of Palin's witch-hunting pastor from Kenya, Thomas Muthee, "who urges his parishioners to crush 'the python spirit' of the unbeliever enemies by stomping on their necks." While two of Alaska's best known bloggers (and HuffPo contributors) Jeanne Devon (AKMuckraker) and Shannyn Moore are included in the collection (Devon thoughtfully explains the brutal ironies of Palin using the term "rogue" in the title of her book), the Last Frontier gets more than a bit short shrifted in Going Rouge , and that's too bad. There's little mention of Palin's role as a council member and mayor of Wasilla, her brutal firing of Police Chief Irl Stambaugh and her betrayal of political allies from the early days of her career. I also would have liked to have seen some excerpts from the Branchflower Report included in the collection along with a run-down of the nearly 20 ethics complaints that are tidily posted on the pages of the Anchorage Daily News . While Palin is now an American icon, she is also very much a product of longstanding Alaskan political traditions of isolation and corruption, and her current political traction remains linked to the interplay between those forces. Then, too, are Palin's strange post-election relationships with the likes of Greta Van Susteren , John Coales and Fred Malek --all of whom go unmentioned in the collection. But these are minor rubs. One thing is certain: You will read far more about the real Sarah Palin in Going Rouge than you ever will in her own memoirs, being published by (who else?) Rupert Murdoch. If there is a single consistency in the Palin canon it is that she is an inveterate liar and motivated by a reckless ambition that has left a trail of collateral damage from Wasilla to Washington, D.C. Going Rouge is full of golden nuggets about Sarah Palin. Judging from her past performances, her own book will most certainly be riddled with deceit. GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin--An American Nightmare Edited by Richard Kim and Betsy Reed; OR Books Publication: November 16th, 2009 $16 paperback; $10 e-book; 336 pp. Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn is at work on a book about Sarah Palin and American politics, to be published by Macmillan/St. Martin's next year. More on Sarah Palin | |
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