President Obama: It Gets Better

One of the first things President Obama's done in a while to make me happy that I voted for him:



Also, a compelling feature by Peter Baker in this past week's New York Times Magazine assuaged a wee bit of my presidentially-motivated ire. You can find the online version of it here.

And, obviously, thanks to Dan Savage for starting all of this.

Secretary Hilary Clinton: "Tomorrow Will Be Better"

Secretary Clinton (then candidate Clinton) was one of the reasons I started this blog two years ago. I'm so pleased to see she hasn't changed:

Secretariat: The Horse and The Housewife

I've got a new film review of Disney's Secretariat up over at the Ms. blog. Here's a snippet:

If you love horse movies, then you’ll probably love Disney’s newest, much-hyped Secretariat, which fits firmly in the genre of other recent triumphant equine epics–Seabiscuit (2003), Hildalgo (2004) and Dreamer (2005)–with one notable exception. Despite the film’s plethora of close-ups of the stallion’s deep, soulful eyes and its re-creation of some of Big Red’s most thrilling races, Secretariat isn’t really about the horse; instead, it’s a thinly-veiled ode to equality, courage and how a housewife becomes a savvy businesswoman in the eyes of her family and a nation.

Don’t get me wrong, Secretariat is still the star of his own movie; after all, he is a racing legend, something that the heavy-handed Biblical comparison which opens and closes the film strains to remind us. But the film’s ultimate goal seems to be to tell us the back-in-the-barn story of Big Red’s legacy, which goes something like this, “Behind every great horse, there’s a great woman.”

Click here to read the rest!