They shall from time to time…

Every few months, it seems, the big news outlets write a story about ‘the mommy bloggers’ – and these articles are always bad. They serve as a reminder to these women and the rest of the world that mommy bloggers are silly, worthless and not to be taken seriously.

Case in point, last week’s bitch slap landed in the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times. Heaven forbid you put the bloggers in the Tech section. Because, the article reminds us, these aren’t really bloggers, they’re moms who fool around on their pink computers, talk about diapers, bitch about companies and do sippy cup giveaways. There was even a Tupperware party analogy. If the article had been anymore patronizing and condescending it would have had to have been posted in the classifieds next to the free puppies and SWF’s seeking SWM’s with BHCs.

What’s wrong here?

What’s missing? Why is it that women are moving and shaking things, and seeming to have freedom and independence and gumption in this country…but then crap like this happens over and over and over again?

Bonnie Marcus may be on to something. It might be a problem with leadership. Of the female kind. She has a new eBook out called Advancing Women’s Leadership that features 3 fantastic interviews from her (huge sensation of a) radio show, Head over Heels.

One of the interviewees featured is Marie Wilson, founder and President of The White House Project. (FYI copy buffs, the WHP’s stellar text: “Add women, change culture. Add women, change business. Add women, change politics. ADD WOMEN, CHANGE EVERYTHING“) Wilson notes something profound about our culture:

“We’ve measured the comfort level of the public, and that comfort level is up to 90 percent on most issues. The comfort level of women leading across these sectors is just great.

What hasn’t risen with the comfort level is the number of women who actually lead. What’s good is that you now have a public that trusts women to lead a technology firm, a journalistic organization, to lead in politics. Across these different areas, even in military, sports and religion the three I call guns, games and God, which are the hardest, it doesn’t drop below 70 percent.

So, the trust is there, and so I think it’s the right direction. It’s just that the political country needs to move along with it and know it’s right. Let’s put people in. We need to fill the pipeline. And the pipeline’s there. We need to just push the women in the pipeline.”

Attitudes are changing, but the action isn’t there.

I do know that mommy bloggers are only once slice of ‘women’ – but they’re a very vocal and impactful one – and they represent. So, it’s important to note that in the case of the media campaign that insists on putting mommy bloggers in their place, we have a bigger problem: A woman wrote the article. She’s a mommy blogger. She threw her peers under the bus. Her name is Jennifer Mendelsohn.

Is the problem leadership? Are mommy bloggers lacking leaders that show by example that this is a sisterhood? I’m not sure it’s that cut and dry. As far as I can see, there exist the following factions in the mommy blogger world:

1. The power moms that are untouchable, revered, reviled, envied and ‘above it all’, making their millions and patting the rest of the herd on the head (if you’re lucky enough to be at arm’s length) (ie. Dooce)
2. The upper-mid level moms that put on conferences, support people, interact, come up with ideas that are inclusive and helpful (ie. TypeAMom)
3. The upper-mid level moms that are mean, nasty, selfish and cut from the every mom for herself cloth (ie…..I will not stoop to their level and mention names)
4. The mom minions – thousands at this point of moms doing their thing, hoping one day to be a 2, praying to be a 1. (ie. there are too many to name)

Who’s supposed to lead?

The crowd is, well, crowded. And the competition is fierce. #2 above is the closest we get to leaders, but they’re also struggling to survive and constantly reaching for #1. They do lead, sometimes, but I’m not sure enough. And sadly, I’m not sure the mob would even let one or two people be ‘The Leaders’ because of the fierce jealousy and competition that pervades. Which just underlines and italicizes the basic problem even more.

And what about the rest of us, what about the women bloggers in general, the women business owners, the women every things? Where do we draw the line between independence and reliance? Following and leading? Mentoring and learning? Several strong women and the sisterhood?

I only voraciously read 1/3 of Bonnie’s (free) ebook before this all hit me and I had to come write about it…so I’m headed back into it now to learn more about women and leadership and how I can be part of using it to enact change. (I think I’ll start by sending a copy to Jennifer Mendelsohn).

Check it out…let me know what you think…

Image credit: whyamikeenan

(and yes, I ripped my title straight from the West Wing…)

Who needs statistics when we’ve got reality.

While many of my friends spent our junior year abroad in exotic places like Florence, Tanzania, Nepal, Paris and Argentina, I opted for the wilds of St. Louis, MO.

My main gig was volunteering at a domestic violence agency where I researched and wrote the organization’s history, taught dating violence prevention in local schools and worked on the 24-hour crisis hotline. And in order to do this terrifying and terribly important hotline work, I went through an intense and long training program.

• I learned why women stay in abusive relationships when it seems so obvious to the rest of us that they should leave.
• I learned that violence is a vicious cycle.
• And, I learned a number of statistics.

Most of theses numbers have stuck in my brain like gnarly, nasty pieces of chewed gum stuck under the lunch table – ugly to look at, hard to touch, easy to pretend they aren’t there. One of the stats goes like this: The day with the highest rate of domestic violence in the U.S. is Super Bowl Sunday.

Colts vs. Saints

Two days ago, as I sat at my computer working and occasionally watching the Facebook and Twitter streams of Super Bowl brouhaha pass me by, I found it hard to ignore this stuck-in-my-head statistic. I felt rising panic at what was likely going on as the Colts looked good…and then really bad, as the alcohol was consumed, as the chips ran out, as the bets were lost.

So, I put up a tweet and a FB status update telling people about the stat and offering up the number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)

What happened next utterly, totally and completely floored me.

Some women, women, came after me. They said the stat was bogus. One said, and I quote: “That is an unfounded myth propogated by the media and womens activist groups. Set the record straight.” (spelling/grammar errors are listed verbatim)

Can you imagine? Women-centric activist groups having the nerve to tell the world that on a day when alcohol, tension and the chance for losing large sums of money are high, there is a greater incidence of domestic violence? The horror. Don’t get me started on the idea that these groups have been lumped in with ‘the media’.

I’ve since learned there are many sides to the validity of the actual stat.

This comment also included the following quote, “On January 31, 1993, when Ken Ringle of The Washington Post questioned the information mentioned in the press release, other news media quickly retracted their articles covering the domestic violence story. The damage was done. The myth continues and Super Bowl Sunday is still sometimes referred to as Bloody Sunday, Abuse Bowl, a Day of Dread, and the Most Dangerous Day in America.”

The damage was done. Yes. Citizens of this country were once again made to look at the fact that women and children are beaten in their own homes every single day by the people who are supposed to love and cherish them. And how dare we disrupt Super Bowl Sunday with this blasphemy! Oh holy, holy day!

My question is, who cares about the validity of this stat? IS THIS WHAT WE SHOULD BE WASTING OUR BREATH ARGUING ABOUT? Domestic Violence is true, real, happening  - right now. And what made these women flare up against me and my status update about this? It confounds me!!! For heaven’s sake, use your breath to help someone, not squabble over what Snopes says!

And how can we believe that information from Ken Ringle up above. Hello? How many lies are we fed every day by industries with ulterior motives!?! I mean, do you really think Cheerios will save you from getting heart disease? PLEASE!!! The fight against the Super Bowl stat is based in the fact that it is a huge day for advertisers and TV: ‘Don’t fuck it up for us with your downer information, thank you’ is, I believe, their message.

My mom

My mother, bless her, has spent roughly 20 years of her life tirelessly working to bring awareness to and raise money for the ugly reality of domestic violence – and she isn’t done yet. Having retired from her role as Development Director, she’s now taking the training again so that she’s up to date and ready to again volunteer on the crisis hotline at Safe Connections in St. Louis.

In her training session this past Saturday (the day before the Big Game), someone (coincidentally) asked about the Super Bowl statistic. And the Director of the hotline said there’s a lot of discrepancy about the statistic. But that the organization personally tracks all of their calls, and every year, every year calls and DV reports spike on Super Bowl Sunday and the entire week that follows.

Statistic are hard to get. Especially when they surround an issue that people keep quiet, viciously undercover – so they don’t get arrested (the abuser) or so that they don’t get killed by their abuser (the abusee). Another stat: the chance an abused woman will be killed by her abuser if she tries to leave the situation increases roughly 75%.

What we do know is that an agency in downtown St. Louis, Missouri (middle America, right in the heartland) has their own stats. And they aren’t good.

If you or someone you know is being hurt, please reach out. Everyone deserves to be safe.

1-800-799-SAFE (7233), or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY)

Image credit: sinosplice

Changing the Climate

Today is Blog Action Day when about a gazillion bloggers take to their blogs to bring awareness to a certain topic that needs attention. This year, that topic is climate change. I could write a long list of things you could do to help the environment and our beautiful planet – but this blog’s about writing, so I’m going to write about climate change and writing, capiche? Okay, here we go…

Imagine me in a bad mood. Like the one I was in yesterday afternoon, for instance. I was so irritated, in fact, that I was thinking about getting a punching bag for my office – just so I’d have something to kick on such occasions.

I had things to write that I just didn’t feel like writing, and no matter how stern a talking to I gave myself, I just couldn’t get on it. So, I started reading blogs, articles, twitter, whatever my eyes connected to.

And then, I didn’t want to kick anything anymore. And then, I was getting my work done. And then, I realized that I was in a great mood.

Writers are climate changers…in a good way. We have the power to change people – by providing insight, information, new perspectives, joy, views into unknown feelings, thoughts, places – with our words. The ways we influence and transform are endless, but tangible.

Because happy, enlightened and/or educated people tend to make better choices. Because they treat those around them well – spouses, friends, children, dogs, trees, bees. You get my point.

So, on this Blog Action Day, I’m wondering how your writing affects the climate? Yours, your reader’s, your world’s.

Image Credit: Rob

My Feminist Icon is…

Dear Naomi Wolf,

I’m really a fan of your work. So I’m quite confused by the article you wrote about Angelina Jolie in Harper’s Bazaar where you declared her the new feminist icon.

One of your reasons? Because she had escaped the Madonna/Whore debacle. Interesting? Did she really? Was she ever a shoe-in for the Madonna? There isn’t enough ‘orphan’ in China to cover those tattoos. Sorry. (I have three tattoos myself, I love tattoos, but the Madonna – last time I checked – had none.)

Escape the image of the Whore? Um. Last time I checked she had an affair with a married man and then told everyone about it in a magazine. You wrote, ‘she managed the almost unheard-of task of turning the home-wrecker label into a wholesome, family-friendly triumph.’ …………….. Sorry for the pause. I was busy. Throwing up.

Is this a joke? Who decided that she triumphed and who the hell called it wholesome? I think what she did was horrid and unforgivable. I’ve never caught her face on the front of the tabloids and thought anything but, ‘Ew.’ She did something wrong. She hurt at least one person, badly. And because the media decided to spin it one particular way, she triumphed? Naomi, you say it yourself: Maddox was photographed playing squeaky clean football with Brad Pitt, the father figure, and by Annie Liebovitz loving his mother. This was not a triumph – but a well-played, well-moneyed PR stunt.

I don’t care how much good she does in the world, you can’t really erase that, can you??? Maybe you can note her change or congratulate her for doing good things – but call a spade a spade. I beg you.

Then, you claim that because Santa Angelina (as Perez likes to call her) got her pilot’s license, she’s chosen “the classic metaphor for choosing your own direction.” Oh? What about a race car driver like Danica Patrick? What about Secretary of State like Hilary Clinton (I mean, she travels all over the world!)? What about an artist? What about a writer? I can think of dozens of professions that involve choosing your own direction. Boldly, even.

You also declare that ‘she took for her own pleasure the male seen as the most desired of the tribe, Brad Pitt.’ Not to me. I’m a George Clooney kind of a girl. And there’s something so barbaric in your word choice…but I get that you meant to do that. You want us to see her as the cavewoman clubbing the man and dragging him back to her cave. You succeeded, I just don’t find that alluring, praise-worthy or as a desirable behavior.

Maybe this is my favorite part of your article:

“Yes, she is conventionally beautiful: Bosomy and wasp-waisted, with that curtain of hair and those crazy pillowy lips, she is an obvious male sex fantasy.”

Hello? Naomi? Are you even in there??? You, yes YOU, the one that wrote The Beauty Myth. On what planet is Angelina Jolie ‘conventionally beautiful’??? Her boobs are huge. She looks anorexic – whether she is or isn’t, her bones poke out and there is no meat on her. She’s 34 years old, has carried three children in her womb and her stomach is non-existent and those boobs stand up without stretch marks so far as we can see. Her lips are, as you say, pillows – meaning overstuffed (and I’m sure they’re natural, they do seem to exist in her childhood photos). BUT MOST WOMEN DON’T LOOK LIKE THAT.

If I remember correctly, you wanted to liberate us from thinking we needed to idolize that male, sexualized, impossible to attain ideal! Just because some women, or the majority according to your poll, think she’s hot doesn’t make it okay. Why do you think they find her attractive? Doesn’t this beauty myth play a role. Wasn’t your theory that women are pressured into taking on this idealized concept of the female body? By men?

I read your book a long time ago, when it came out in 1991. And it meant so much to me. So much – as a woman who was struggling with an eating disorder, who had just found herself plopped in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog masquerading as a private, New England college, who went on to struggle and survive, who was proudly among the first small group of women to graduate with a Women’s Studies major.

So, my feminst icon? Well, she used to look a little bit like Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, Billie Jean King, Sylvia Boorstein and my fourth grade teacher, Holly Tetlow, all rolled into one. But the more I read your article, the more I realized that my icon is so much more. She’s new women I meet doing amazing things, female authors that are writing their hearts out, mothers that survive the loss of a child, girls finding their voices, she’s my friends, she’s my family. And she’s me – on my good days and on my bad ones.

We are more universal. We’re a grab bag, really. As diverse as our needs and wants on any given day. But, bottomline, my icon is real. She’s here.

Live and let live. I don’t know Angelina Jolie and I don’t pretend to just becuase I can read about her life in People magazine. But, I do know my icons, idols, role models and fantasies…and they look, act and exist nothing like Angelina Jolie.

Adam Lambert and the deception of search trends

Matt Dickman of Techno/Marketer wrote a great post about the fact that’s confusing many people about the 2009 American Idol finale. It seems that even though Adam Lambert ruled the numbers for search, since January, he lost the contest. Interestingly, these search stats had made clear and correct predictions in the past.

Sadly, in this case, I think a prominent reason that Adam had the search lead but not the final votes was hatred and intolerance.

Despite the fact that many of the musical greats of our time (and actors, artists, etc. – Elton John, anyone?) are gay – during this time when the right wing conservatives are fighting so hardily against the gay community – I think what we’re seeing are people searching to find out about his gayness and to talk about it and rail against it. There’s curiosity…and there’s power in numbers when it comes to both love and hate.

While Adam may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, there is no denying that his voice, musical mastery, stage presence, moves and ability to transform songs in ways we never could have imagined surpassed every other contestant. Kris Allen, himself, was even shocked and responded on live TV, “But Adam deserves this…” after he heard the news.

I know that certain groups sent out mass emails with pictures of Adam in make-up and drag, as well as images of him kissing another man asking, “Do we want this to be our American Idol?.” My 13 year-old neighbor told me that the middle school was abuzz with comments like, “I don’t want to listen to someone gay on the radio.”

Interesting that we, as a country, were able to elect a black President, but not a sexually ambiguous entertainer. Or maybe it isn’t interesting – cue Prop 8.

Even if the skewed search results weren’t completely due to the gay factor, we can’t forget the voyeur factor. He is wild, new, controversial and fascinating. The green pointy thing in a sea of cuddly pink. Whether you like him or not (and I really, really do), it’s hard not to watch, listen – and search Adam Lambert.

Image from WENN – Heart from Perez Hilton

Update: Fantastic and like-minded post on the HuffPo: American Idol controversy: Adam Lambert Loses, Homophobia Wins

Irony. It’s so twisted.

As my good friend, Sarah, likes to say, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Irony, according to my favorite dictionary (courtesy of Apple) is ‘a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.’

Miss California, by way of irony, has recently given us quite a bang for our buck. While preaching against gay marriage in the name of the holy church and bible, it’s been uncovered that:

• Her bible and religion don’t scoff at young women taking off their clothes and posing for nude photographs, but do oppose loving people making a lifelong, serious commitment to one another and raising families.
• She lied when she said the first set of nude photos that were released on the internet were the only ones.
• The breasts God gave her simply weren’t good enough and she had to get new ones.
• She violated her Miss California contract by not revealing her nude pictures to the pageant committee.
• Her declaration against gay marriage (the rights for which somewhere around half the population of her state support) does not toe the line of representing fully the state she has been honored to represent.

And then…Donald Trump lets Carrie Prejean keep her crown. My head is spinning.

Personally, I’m not into this plot at all. It has politics and loud ick factor…but no substance. You’re right, Sarah, we would never make this up – it’s just too…banal.

Writers, we can do so much better than this…can’t we?

UPDATE: Like Manna from Heaven – me and Keith Olbermann are one. I just found this and nearly fell off my chair. Thank you, Mr. Olbermann, for speaking up so eloquently:

Image courtesy of Wasabicube

The Separation of Church and Twitter

This is post is not intended to bash anyone or any religion.

When I click on someone’s Twitter profile and it tells me they are a Christian or follower of Jesus, I take pause. I wonder how long it’ll take for them to hate me, unfollow me, pray for me. Because, believe me, I’m not their cup of tea.

But, I also cringe at the too much information factor. Maybe this is because, for me, Twitter is simply an incredible business marketing tool (that happens to have a delightfully fun social component.) And, let’s be fair, sometimes I tweet things about my personal life that others might not care to know, I don’t deny that.

But, why is it only the Jesus followers and the Christians that find stating these religious preferences so compelling? I’ve never seen someone write ‘Jewish’ or ‘Moses follower’ in their profile. I haven’t seen Muslims or Catholics stake their claim. Nor the agnostics. Though I haven’t viewed all 6 million+ profiles, so I might just be missing those.

Statistically speaking, however, I have viewed roughly 6-7,000 profiles and based on today’s tallies alone, about 10% of those contain Christian information. Haven’t seen any other religion.

Again, this post is not meant to Christian-bash. I simply do not find it necessary to discuss my religion on Twitter. It doesn’t define me. (And I’m guessing some people might see that as a flaw.) And I wonder why other people do think it’s so important. Is it the same as me putting down ‘writer’ and forming a community of fellow writers? I can see how it is.

In the end, social media invites us each to showcase who we are – and I love that. So why does this freak me out (a little)? Is it because of people like Michele Bachmann? Carrie Prejean? The entire Christian Conservative movement?

Yes, yes it is. It’s a travesty because I’m sure many of these people on Twitter are just lovely, but the hate in our country has made me, well, a little follow shy.

What do you think? What makes people decide to list or not to list their religion in their Twitter bio?

Images courtesy of Josh Semans and fab4chiky

Remarks By the President

These words arrived in my inbox overnight, and I was moved immediately to share them here. As a writer talking to other writers, I’m posting them because the words are exquisite. As a human, I’m posting them because this isn’t about the Holocaust or Jews or this group or that group. Every act of violence is unspeakable. Violence is violence. Hate is Hate. And only we can do something about it.

This isn’t political, this is about how we all choose to spend our days when hate is still all around.

It’s a bit long…but you’ve got all weekend. I hope you’ll read it, I hope you’ll share it. I hope it will inspire you. I know you will be kind.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                              April 23, 2009

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT THE HOLOCAUST DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY

United States Capitol
Washington, D.C.

12:04 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.  Please be seated.  Thank you very much.  To Sara Bloomfield, for the wonderful introduction and the outstanding work she’s doing; to Fred Zeidman; Joel Geiderman; Mr. Wiesel — thank you for your wisdom and your witness; Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Dick Durbin; members of Congress; our good friend the Ambassador of Israel; members of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council; and most importantly, the survivors and rescuers and their families who are here today.  It is a great honor for me to be here, and I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to address you briefly.

We gather today to mourn the loss of so many lives, and celebrate those who saved them; honor those who survived, and contemplate the obligations of the living.

It is the grimmest of ironies that one of the most savage, barbaric acts of evil in history began in one of the most modernized societies of its time, where so many markers of human progress became tools of human depravity:  science that can heal used to kill; education that can enlighten used to rationalize away basic moral impulses; the bureaucracy that sustains modern life used as the machinery of mass death — a ruthless, chillingly efficient system where many were responsible for the killing, but few got actual blood on their hands.

While the uniqueness of the Holocaust in scope and in method is truly astounding, the Holocaust was driven by many of the same forces that have fueled atrocities throughout history:  the scapegoating that leads to hatred and blinds us to our common humanity; the justifications that replace conscience and allow cruelty to spread; the willingness of those who are neither perpetrators nor victims to accept the assigned role of bystander, believing the lie that good people are ever powerless or alone, the fiction that we do not have a choice.

But while we are here today to bear witness to the human capacity to destroy, we are also here to pay tribute to the human impulse to save.  In the moral accounting of the Holocaust, as we reckon with numbers like 6 million, as we recall the horror of numbers etched into arms, we also factor in numbers like these: 7,200 — the number of Danish Jews ferried to safety, many of whom later returned home to find the neighbors who rescued them had also faithfully tended their homes and businesses and belongings while they were gone.

We remember the number five — the five righteous men and women who join us today from Poland.  We are awed by your acts of courage and conscience.  And your presence today compels each of us to ask ourselves whether we would have done what you did.  We can only hope that the answer is yes.

We also remember the number 5,000 — the number of Jews rescued by the villagers of Le Chambon, France — one life saved for each of its 5,000 residents.  Not a single Jew who came there was turned away, or turned in.  But it was not until decades later that the villagers spoke of what they had done — and even then, only reluctantly.  The author of a book on the rescue found that those he interviewed were baffled by his interest.  “How could you call us ‘good’?” they said.  “We were doing what had to be done.”

That is the question of the righteous — those who would do extraordinary good at extraordinary risk not for affirmation or acclaim or to advance their own interests, but because it is what must be done.  They remind us that no one is born a savior or a murderer — these are choices we each have the power to make.  They teach us that no one can make us into bystanders without our consent, and that we are never truly alone — that if we have the courage to heed that “still, small voice” within us, we can form a minyan for righteousness that can span a village, even a nation.

Their legacy is our inheritance.  And the question is, how do we honor and preserve it?  How do we ensure that “never again” isn’t an empty slogan, or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?

I believe we start by doing what we are doing today — by bearing witness, by fighting the silence that is evil’s greatest co-conspirator.

In the face of horrors that defy comprehension, the impulse to silence is understandable.  My own great uncle returned from his service in World War II in a state of shock, saying little, alone with painful memories that would not leave his head.  He went up into the attic, according to the stories that I’ve heard, and wouldn’t come down for six months.  He was one of the liberators — someone who at a very tender age had seen the unimaginable.  And so some of the liberators who are here today honor us with their presence — all of whom we honor for their extraordinary service.  My great uncle was part of the 89th Infantry Division — the first Americans to reach a Nazi concentration camp.  And they liberated Ohrdruf, part of Buchenwald, where tens of thousands had perished.

The story goes that when the Americans marched in, they discovered the starving survivors and the piles of dead bodies.  And General Eisenhower made a decision.  He ordered Germans from the nearby town to tour the camp, so they could see what had been done in their name.  And he ordered American troops to tour the camp, so they could see the evil they were fighting against.  Then he invited congressmen and journalists to bear witness.  And he ordered that photographs and films be made.  Some of us have seen those same images, whether in the Holocaust Museum or when I visited Yad Vashem, and they never leave you.  Eisenhower said that he wanted “to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things, if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.”

Eisenhower understood the danger of silence.  He understood that if no one knew what had happened, that would be yet another atrocity — and it would be the perpetrators’ ultimate triumph.

What Eisenhower did to record these crimes for history is what we are doing here today.  That’s what Elie Wiesel and the survivors we honor here do by fighting to make their memories part of our collective memory.  That’s what the Holocaust Museum does every day on our National Mall, the place where we display for the world our triumphs and failures and the lessons we’ve learned from our history.  It’s the very opposite of silence.

But we must also remember that bearing witness is not the end of our obligation — it’s just the beginning.  We know that evil has yet to run its course on Earth.  We’ve seen it in this century in the mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground, and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war.  To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened; who perpetrate every form of intolerance — racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, and more — hatred that degrades its victim and diminishes us all.

Today, and every day, we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, to confront these scourges — to fight the impulse to turn the channel when we see images that disturb us, or wrap ourselves in the false comfort that others’ sufferings are not our own.  Instead we have the opportunity to make a habit of empathy; to recognize ourselves in each other; to commit ourselves to resisting injustice and intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take — whether confronting those who tell lies about history, or doing everything we can to prevent and end atrocities like those that took place in Rwanda, those taking place in Darfur.  That is my commitment as President.  I hope that is yours, as well.

It will not be easy.  At times, fulfilling these obligations require self-reflection.  But in the final analysis, I believe history gives us cause for hope rather than despair — the hope of a chosen people who have overcome oppression since the days of Exodus; of the nation of Israel rising from the destruction of the Holocaust; of the strong and enduring bonds between our nations.

It is the hope, too, of those who not only survived, but chose to live, teaching us the meaning of courage and resilience and dignity.  I’m thinking today of a study conducted after the war that found that Holocaust survivors living in America actually had a higher birthrate than American Jews.  What a stunning act of faith — to bring a child in a world that has shown you so much cruelty; to believe that no matter what you have endured, or how much you have lost, in the end, you have a duty to life.

We find cause for hope as well in Protestant and Catholic children attending school together in Northern Ireland; in Hutus and Tutsis living side by side, forgiving neighbors who have done the unforgivable; in a movement to save Darfur that has thousands of high school and college chapters in 25 countries, and brought 70,000 people to the Washington Mall — people of every age and faith and background and race united in common cause with suffering brothers and sisters halfway around the world.

Those numbers can be our future — our fellow citizens of the world showing us how to make the journey from oppression to survival, from witness to resistance, and ultimately to reconciliation.  That is what we mean when we say “never again.”

So today, during this season when we celebrate liberation, resurrection, and the possibility of redemption, may each of us renew our resolve to do what must be done.  And may we strive each day, both individually and as a nation, to be among the righteous.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END                12:18 P.M. EDT

When mistakes don’t matter

Mistakes? I make them all the time. I’m constantly learning, tweaking, adjusting, back pedaling. I think it’s part of being alive – it’s definitely part of owning your own business.

But the actual mistake, I’m finding, is no where near as consequential as the aftermath.

Someone asked me today what my favorite part of the inauguration was, and I responded, ‘When Obama’s oath got flubbed.’ I was so inspired by his reaction, and by Michelle’s.

If that had been me…I’m going to guess that I might have blushed, let loose a nervous laugh, rolled my eyes. (Who am I kidding, I might also have called Roberts an #%&*@!)

But, not these two. They smiled, stayed steady, remained calm. With millions, billions of eyes watching, they persevered.

Mistakes are only as big as the way we handle them.

But, this can be a hard lesson – can’t it? The event of the mistake happened – it’s over. Now where do you go from here? The decision, and the resulting action, is all yours.

Can you erase your mistake? Can you even turn it into a success? How do you handle mistakes?

Post Whatever Depression

Everyone’s thinking about beginnings today – but I can’t help think about endings.

You see, I suffer seriously from Post Whatever Depression.

It started in my childhood camp in Northern Minnesota – the single most amazing and influential event (ongoing as it was for 9 years) in my life. And every summer, the ending was so hard. Being home, without my friends, after that camp experience was unreal, surreal, heartbreaking.

It happens to me at the end of wedding weekends, vacations, TV series (you should have seen me post West Wing and Sex and the City).

And it’s made me understand so completely how actors fall in love on the set, and then how it falls apart when the movie’s complete. There is a magic in that intensive time…and it doesn’t translate. I always feel sad for actors (in love or not) when they wrap – because I realize it must be torturous to leave that experience – forever. Makes you understand sequels…and band reunions. And why some can make it happen again (how amazing) and some can not (how tragic).

So today, I’m thinking about George W. and Laura Bush. I’m glad they are no longer leading our country…but when I watched them whisked off in Marine One…

I know it’s what the pomp and circumstance dictate. I know they knew the end was coming. I hope they’re relieved and excited. But, that’s really something that they’re leaving. An intense period of time, being waited on hand and foot, people all around you that love and support you.

Will it just be them in the new house in Dallas? or on the Ranch? Will there only be one servant and two maids? I have no idea…but it’s going to be different. And, I can’t help but think that it might be a little sad, hard, traumatic.

So, I’m thanking them for their service (even though I literally abhored it)…and I’m feeling their pain (even if it only exists in my hyperactive imagination.)