SIVACRACY.NET

Susan Estrich has done valuable, important work in pointing out the gender discrimination engaged in by the L.A. Times. What I deeply regret, however, is that she has undermined the legitimacy and righteousness of her message by attacking Michael Kinsley as follows (via dcexaminer.com):

"I was told that in order to have a letter published Sunday, it had to be submitted by today. My suggestion that your publishing it would be better (for you too) than my having to go outside somehow constitutes me blackmailing you is so outlandish that it underscores the question I've been asked repeatedly in recent days, and that does worry me, and should worry you: people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job. The fact that you were not in Los Angeles all week hardly helps matters, nor does the fact that you don't return phone calls. You are making things worse for yourself."

As was pointed out by The Rittenhouse Review, Kinsley has Parkinson's disease. To attack him in this way makes Estrich look mean and maybe even unhinged, detracting from an important message (below excerpt taken from here):

"In the two years that students at USC Law School have been collecting numbers, the very best the Los Angeles Times has ever done in terms of representation has been 20 to 25 percent women; most of the time, its record has been far worse. Consider what happened a few weeks ago, when the opinion section went out looking for opinions on the war in Iraq - and asked thirteen men, and not a single woman, what they thought. Two weeks ago, in the three-day period ending Febr. 1, the Times ran 24 men's opinions and 1 woman's (also not from Southern California). We mention these two examples because on both occasions we quietly brought the numbers to the attention of the editors, and urged them to take action, such as asking Patt Morrison to write two days a week, or publishing Arianna Huffington on a regular basis. In both cases, we were completely ignored."

"We doubt that any of the three men who run the section have sat down and consciously decided to exclude women from Southern California from expressing their opinions. But unconscious discrimination can be a far greater obstacle to equality than the more conscious form, precisely because the men don't think they've done anything wrong by relying on the old boy, New York-D.C. network."

Read this too, if you are interested.

How I wish this debate could be conducted without ad hominem (or ad womenem!) attacks.