"Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something" – G. Gordon Liddy on Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotmayor

You spend your entire life scraping and scratching for every opportunity, a difficult task after your father suddenly dies when you are just nine years old and your mother is tasked with being the sole bread winner. You’re raised around junkies and gangs, but you focus on making yourself better, education is your key to getting out from under the poverty and challenges your family has endured, stay the course and focus on being your best. You earn a spot and scholarship to a college prep school, but the hard work is just beginning. In order to attend college, you can’t just be good, you have to be exceptional, because, in order to attend, you need a scholarship.

Your hard work is rewarded when you are designated valedictorian of your class and you enter Princeton on a full scholarship, followed by Yale Law School. Then many years later, you are nominated as a U.S. Supreme Court Judge, the highest court in the land. Your father would have been so proud. Your hard work has paid off. The nation is watching you, they are talking about your accomplishments. Lots of people are talking. All the sacrifices and the heartaches have brought you to this very point and then you hear:

“Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something.”

Sotomayor is not the only accomplished woman that has been the subject of a sexist sound bite. On August 31st, the Women’s Campaign Forum, the Women’s Media Center and Political Parity launched “Name It, Change It,” a media campaign focused on putting the spotlight on sexism in the media. For years, women have politely ignored the host of comments about PMS, driving, blondes, butts and breasts and the GIRLFRIENDS are getting together and Naming Names!  We are getting down in the dirt; we’re going to spar on the mat of ignorance and come out the victor.  WE ARE NAMING NAMES and focusing the BIG BOLD LASER OF SHAME on the culprits.

The best part is, WE now have a Website.  That means we are organized!  And, we are organized on Facebook and Twitter AND we have a place to REPORT IT.

So get out there, become a fan of “Name It. Change It,” and join the cause.  Once we NAME IT, Change is inevitable.

I’ll get you started.  Here’s my list of sexist comments in the media:

“The reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it.  She didn’t win there on her merit.” – Chris Matthews on Hillary Clinton during the Presidential primaries in 2008.

“There’s also this issue that, on April 18, she gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome… The baby is just slightly more than 4 months old now. Children with Down syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of vice president, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?” – John Roberts on Sarah Palin’s VP nomination (on national television).

“If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get PMS. They will stop bitching and whining.” – GOVERNOR Arnold Schwarzenegger to Howard Stern during his radio show.

“Without ‘Fascistic Hatred, Malkin Is Just a ‘Mashed-Up Bag of Meat with Lipstick.” Keith Olbermann on Michele Malkin.

“Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something” – G. Gordon Liddy on Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotmayor

You spend your entire life scraping and scratching for every opportunity, a difficult task after your father suddenly dies when you are just nine years old and your mother is tasked with being the sole bread winner. You’re raised around junkies and gangs, but you focus on making yourself better, education is your key to getting out from under the poverty and challenges your family has endured, stay the course and focus on being your best. You earn a spot and scholarship to a college prep school, but the hard work is just beginning. In order to attend college, you can’t just be good, you have to be exceptional, because, in order to attend, you need a scholarship.

Your hard work is rewarded when you are designated valedictorian of your class and you enter Princeton on a full scholarship, followed by Yale Law School. Then many years later, you are nominated as a U.S. Supreme Court Judge, the highest court in the land. Your father would have been so proud. Your hard work has paid off. The nation is watching you, they are talking about your accomplishments. Lots of people are talking. All the sacrifices and the heartaches have brought you to this very point and then you hear:

“Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something.”

Sotomayor is not the only accomplished woman that has been the subject of a sexist sound bite. On August 31st, the Women’s Campaign Forum, the Women’s Media Center and Political Parity launched “Name It, Change It,” a media campaign focused on putting the spotlight on sexism in the media. For years, women have politely ignored the host of comments about PMS, driving, blondes, butts and breasts and the GIRLFRIENDS are getting together and Naming Names!  We are getting down in the dirt; we’re going to spar on the mat of ignorance and come out the victor.  WE ARE NAMING NAMES and focusing the BIG BOLD LASER OF SHAME on the culprits.

The best part is, WE now have a Website.  That means we are organized!  And, we are organized on Facebook and Twitter AND we have a place to REPORT IT.

So get out there, become a fan of “Name It. Change It,” and join the cause.  Once we NAME IT, Change is inevitable.

I’ll get you started.  Here’s my list of sexist comments in the media:

“The reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it.  She didn’t win there on her merit.” – Chris Matthews on Hillary Clinton during the Presidential primaries in 2008.

“There’s also this issue that, on April 18, she gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome… The baby is just slightly more than 4 months old now. Children with Down syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of vice president, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?” – John Roberts on Sarah Palin’s VP nomination (on national television).

“If we get rid of the moon, women, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get PMS. They will stop bitching and whining.” – GOVERNOR Arnold Schwarzenegger to Howard Stern during his radio show.

“Without ‘Fascistic Hatred, Malkin Is Just a ‘Mashed-Up Bag of Meat with Lipstick.” Keith Olbermann on Michele Malkin.

FROM THE VAULT: April 19, 1967 Woman Uses Chicanery to Register in All Male Boston Marathon

“Get the hell out of my race and give me that number.”- Jock Semple, Boston Marathon race director as he tried to run down Kathrine Switzer in 1967 to rip off her official number. Switzer became the first women to enter the Boston Marathon. For several years, another woman, Roberta Gibb, ran in the race, but did not dare register. For Kathrine’s part, she registered only as K. Switzer and had a male friend pick up her number.

Photo credit: Harry Trask for AP Images

When Semple was notified of the woman in the race, he jumped from the truck he was riding in and ran after her to get the number off her back. Switzer’s boyfriend knocked him down and the two finished the race.

“I’m not o’poozed t’ women’s athletics,” says Jock, whose burr remains almost as thick as it was the day in 1923 when he left Clydebank for America. Indeed, he has donated trophies to women’s races. “But we’re taught t’ respect laws—t’ respect rules. The amateur rules here say a woman can’t run more th’n a mile and a half. I’m in favor of makin’ their races longer, but they doon’t belong with men. They doon’t belong runnin’ with Jim Ryun. You wouldn’t like to see a woman runnin’ with Jim Ryun, wouldya?” source: Sports Illustrated April 22, 1968

The Associated Press photo was seen around the world. And yet, it would take another FIVE years to officially allow women to participate. Today, more than 40 percent of the runners are women.

Shirley Sherrod says Kiss My Non-Racist BeeHind

“The secretary did push really hard for me to stay and work from inside, but I look at what happened to me,” she said at a news conference with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “I know he’s apologized, and I accept it. A new process is in place, but I don’t want to test it.” – Shirley Sherrod, former USDA employee fired for alleged racism, thrown to the wolves and then unfired.  Perhaps the biggest heartbreak of all was that Obama let it happen (and don’t say he didn’t know).

Then the NAACP says the were “snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias.” [Do you know how many people look at a press release before it goes out?  Dozens, especially this kind of release, and “snookered” was the word they went with?]

“Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story,” – [they needed all of that to know she was not guilty and Breitbart just needed a clip to be believed?] “we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans.”

Where did the tape originate?  It was shot by a NAACP employee during the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet on March 27, 2010, in Douglas, Georgia.  Sooooo, tell me that again.  What is even more upsetting is the NAACP quickly released a statement right after Secretary Vilsack backing the Ag Secretary’s firing of her.

So on the day she was “fired” (asked to resign by USDA Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook after a series of phone calls telling her to pull over and write her resignation on her Blackberry), Shirley was called repeatedly and then told she would be on Glenn Beck that night.  Beck sends shivers through the administration?  Wow. [I don’t know what else to say, maybe I can use snookered here].

Good for you GIRLFRIEND Shirley Sherrod!!  I hope you don’t let the betrayal haunt you.  You are an inspiration.