“Liar,” I wanted to say back.

It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with the tenor of her remark. We were discussing the ongoing breast implant scandal in the United Kingdom, which has the government and private medical clinics here squabbling over who should pay to replace faulty silicone breast implants: the companies that put them in, or the government that certified their safety.

My dinner partner correctly observed that the real culprit in the scandal was body image: the idea sold to all of us that we’re meant to look a certain way. And the horrific lengths to which we go — vomiting, starving ourselves, paying inordinate amounts of money to plastic surgeons to add or subtract a curve — to comply with that ideal.

But I don’t really think there’s a single one of us — certainly not female — who hasn’t fallen prey to the lures of an Atkins Diet, a Slim Fast regime or a Weight Watchers program at some point. I have one friend who couldn’t contain her delight when she discovered that her anti-depressant doubled as a dieting pill. “A twofer!” she exclaimed to me giddily over the phone.

Read the rest of this article at The Washington Post’s She The People Blog…

Image: scale by vividBreeze via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

In case you haven’t heard, silicone breast implants made with P.I.P. – an industrial grade silicone – by a French company have now been declared faulty, exposing women to ruptures, leaks and possible risks of cancer. Over the past 12 years, some 300,000 of these implants were sold to women around the globe in more than 65 countries, predominantly in Europe and South America. (The United States banned this product and declared it unsafe.)

The French government has recently recalled all P.I.P. implants and agreed to pay for their removal, but only for women who’d had the original surgery done in France. The British government maintains that the link between P.I.P. implants and cancer is far lower than suggested by French data. It has agreed to pay for any removal on implants performed by the National Health Service (NHS) over the past decade (primarily those linked to breast cancer reconstructive surgery). But this accounts for only about 5% of the 40,000 women who’ve had implants in this country during that time.

As for the remaining 38,000 or so cases, the government is urging private clinics to perform the recalls for free on moral grounds. (As a last resort, the government will step in to pay for removal of implants put in in a private clinic that has closed or is unwilling to provide the service.

And this is where things get interesting.

Read the rest of this story at The Washington Post’s She The People Blog…

Image: breast implant 5 by matthewlucas via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

I’m thinking in this case of the immensely popular Cristina Kirchner, who was re-elected President of Argentina in October of last year in a landslide victory, capturing 54% of the popular vote.

Kirchner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last week and underwent surgery on Wednesday. And while the initial prognosis is excellent, “Cristina” – as she is popularly known here – will need to be on leave from her duties for three weeks, during which time her vice-president will be in charge.

What’s interesting about this situation is not the popular outpouring of sympathy for Cristina it has inspired. She is a deeply appealing political figure. She’s dynamic. She’s compelling. When Kirchner’s cancer was first announced, #fuerzacristina emerged as a trending hashtag on Twitter. At 1 a.m. on the morning of her operation, supporters assembled in various plazas and squares around the country, and remained there until it was finished.

Read the rest of this article on The Washington Post’s She The People blog…

Image: CFK Bunker, Presidential Primary by CateIncPA via Flickr under a Creative Commons License

With Meryl Streep’s face plastered all over bus and tube stations advertising the new film “The Iron Lady,” it almost feels like Baroness
Thatcher herself has returned to save the day.

Many of us remember Mrs. Thatcher for her lengthy and dramatic stint on Downing Street in the 1980s, during which time she privatized state-owned industries, crushed trade unions and went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

But there’s another way in which Mrs. Thatcher made herself a household name the world over: she exemplified an unapologetic model for how to be a prominent woman in public life.

Read the rest of this article on The Washington Post’s She The People Blog…

Image: Baroness Thatcher portrait by Downing Street via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

And so you kind of quietly take note of them in the back of your head – thinking “hmmm…I really should find out what all the fuss is about” – until one day, the news just explodes into your RSS feed and you realize that you can remain ignorant no longer.

So it was for me with the recent Penn State scandal – which, for non-American readers – concerns one Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach who has been charged with more than 40 criminal accounts of sexual abuse of minors, which involved eight boys over a period of 15 years. Sandusky has plead not guilty to the charges.

Sandusky’s alleged crimes have become non-stop headlines for the past week or so in the U.S. This is not only because of the magnitude of the charges at hand, but also because they brought about the precipitous resignation of America’s most famous college football coach – Joe Paterno – who stepped down from his post one day before what would have been his last home game of his 46-year career. Paterno was edged out for having looked the other way while Sandusky allegedly molested the boys.

Yesterday, Sandusky gave his first interview – via phone – with NBC’s premier sports journalist, Bob Costas. It’s hard to imagine what Sandusky – or his lawyer – were thinking in granting such an interview. Were they hoping to repair his public image? As Costas says near the end of their nine-minute long conversation: “You realize that for many people, you aren’t just a criminal…you’re a monster.”

Still, if you can bear it – and it isn’t pleasant – do have a listen. Most interesting to me was the way Sandusky answers the question put to him around the eight-minute mark, when Costas asks “Are you sexually attracted to boys?” You can almost hear the verbal somersaults in Sandusky’s reply.

For the purposes of this blog, however, the question that most intrigued me was when Costas asks Sandusky what he most regrets about the entire affair, to which he responds: “I shouldn’t have showered with those kids.”

He’s right. He shouldn’t have.

I don’t mean that sarcastically; I mean it sincerely. We can debate whether or not pedophilia is a crime, a disease or some mixture of the two. To my mind, Sandusky’s crime wasn’t being sexually attracted to young boys. I’m willing to believe that he couldn’t change that about himself.

His crime was allowing himself to be in a physical space that allowed him to act upon those urges. It’s no different that an alcoholic going to a bar. Or someone who’s tempted to cheat on their spouse hanging out on match.com.

Except that the consequences of Sandusky’s actions were, of course, vastly more damaging.

Adulthood is about making choices. And accepting the consequences of those choices.

We all make bad decisions from time to time. But if you’re lucky, most of the hurt and pain that flows from the bad choices you make redounds to you. That’s how you learn.

So, sorry, Mr. Sandusky. You failed the basic grown-up test. And sadly, it looks like there weren’t too many grown ups around you either.

2010 Penn State vs. Youngstown State-16 by Mike Pettigano via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Well, I was going to write about something terribly middle-aged today (like back pain). But then reality intervened and I decided to back-burner that post in favor of current events.

As you undoubtedly know, the U.K. has been battered by a series of riots over the past few days which have left the nation stunned, angry and scared.

As of last night, most of the activity appeared to have left London (where I live). But it is still going strong in other parts of England.

As we all struggle to make sense of this sudden wave of violence, here are five must-read posts on the UK riots:

1. The psychology of the looters. Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the riots I’ve seen so far is Zoe Williams’ piece in the Guardian. Williams notes the curious – and disturbing – fact that many of the youth caught up in the violence are not even bothering to cover their faces. It’s as if they are already, in some sense, incarcerated and thus genuinely feel that they have nothing to lose by going on a lawless rampage. She also correctly identifies the outrage law-abiding citizens feel when it’s not only large chains that get attacked, but local mom and pop shops where we know the owners. I was in my local shoe store yesterday around 4 p.m. watching the women who work there get progressively more anxious about finishing out their work day. They glanced constantly at their watches, huddled with neighboring shop owners to share news updates, and fretted about the tenants who lived upstairs, should anything come to pass. The fear – and sense of injustice – was palpable.

2. We’re all implicated. At one point in her article, Williams notes how removed personally she felt from the riots, watching them on television with a kind of studied distance even as they unfolded not far from her doorstep. . That’s a point that my friend and neighbor Maria Margaronis also picks up on in her blog post for The Nation. Margaronis – like many others – attributes the violence to years of neglect, disenfranchisement, income inequality and boredom experienced by the so-called Hoodies in lower income neighborhoods around the U.K.. But we shouldn’t be so surprised. As she writes: “While we in the middle classes got on with our oh-so-busy lives, averting our eyes from the poverty just a few blocks away, sending our kids to schools where there are other “motivated parents,” talking politics, we allowed the rifts in our own neighbourhoods to deepen until they became almost unbridgeable.” Amen.

3. But community perseveres. And yet, some good has already come from these riots. The local journalists in my borough have done a fabulous job of covering the violence, staying up all night with eyewitness accounts they have been posting on Twitter. And it’s good to know that their efforts have been recognized. As Camden New Journal Deputy Editor Richard Osley writes on his blog, he and his colleagues have received tons of messages on Twitter – most from complete strangers – thanking them for their hard work and encouraging them to stay safe. I’ve seen some people on Twitter poking fun of the quintessentially English effort to clean up the mess in many damaged neighborhoods. But as Osley writes, it is precisely these clean ups that underscore how much of a sense of community remains in this battered nation right now.

4. People need to speak out. One of the most widely-circulated riot videos right now is of a West Indian woman in the middle of the riots that broke out in Hackney excoriating the youth around her for their random violence: “Get real, black people, get real. If we’re fighting for a cause let’s fight for a f-ing cause.”

5. And people need to be heard. Another video that’s getting a lot of play is a BBC television interview with an elderly West Indian writer, Darcus Howe. What’s astonishing about this video are not Howe’s views – i.e. that we all should have seen this coming – but the attitude of the journalist, who can barely conceal her utter disregard for his position.

Image: Broken windows on Lavendar Hill by irish4adventure via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Well I don’t know about you but at least over here in the U.K., it’s been pretty much Rupert Murdoch 24/7 for the past few weeks.

The phone-hacking scandal that has been brewing quietly in the background for the past several years has now broken out into broad daylight, dragging seemingly everybody – Murdoch, his son, his trusted former Editor-in-Chief and perhaps even Prime Minister David Cameron himself – into the mud.

So far there’s been criminal activity, cover-up, bribing, police corruption, political intrigue and death. What’s not to love? As a friend of mine observed in his Facebook feed, all that’s missing from this thing is to somehow implicate the Church of England and we can all call it a day.

So for those of you who’ve been on vacation or in hiding for the past two weeks and need to come up to speed or – like me – can’t get enough of this story, here are five must-read posts on the phone hacking scandal:

1. Murdoch’s Freudian Motivations – I’m not always a  fan of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. At times I find her sardonic tone just a tad too biting and dismissive. But boy does she nail it in a column in which she explores Murdoch (Sr.’s) filial issues with his father as a primary driver in the sweep – and ruthlessness – of his media empire. Her portraits of James and Rebekah are no less spot-on.

2. Murdoch as Authoritarian – Equally compelling is cultural historian Neal Gabler’s piece in Politico entitled “Rupert Murdoch: Journalism’s Mubarak.” Gabler likens the sudden fall from grace of the Murdoch media triumvirate to the Arab Spring sweeping the Middle East. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, to learn – courtesy of Maureen Dowd – of Murdoch’s unabashed admiration for – wait for it – Singapore’s authoritarian state. Hmmmm….

3. Wendi Deng Murdoch’s Left Hook – Of course, no analysis of this grand spectacle would be complete without an in-depth look at Wendi Deng Murdoch’s Charlie’s Angel moment, when she leapt in to defend her husband from that upstart pie-thrower. This Guardian profile provides you with all you need to know about Wendi’s ascent from high school basketball champion to Muhammad Ali. As Jon Stewart wryly notes in his own take-down piece (see below), there are advantages to the 40-year spousal gap. (I don’t know about you, but I’m bringing Wendi to my next rumble.)

4. Fox News Non-Treatment – Jon Stewart’s treatment of the scandal is a riot. Not surprisingly, he has some harsh words for the scant coverage by (Murdoch-owned) Fox News. Check it out.

5. Phone-Hacking: The Movie. And then there’s this gem – a quick preview of what Hackgate: The Movie will look like when it inevitably comes out. Thank you, You Tube.

Image: Rupert Murdoch by Ben Terrett via Flickr under a Creative Commons License

4.

I refer here, of course, to one (unfortunately named) Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who is currently embroiled  in a sex scandal over naked pictures he sent via his twitter and email accounts to various young ladies to whom he was not married.

(If, for some reason, you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 days – or simply in a foreign country where no one cares about the sex lives of American politicians – click here for a quick primer on “Weinergate.”)

Needless to say, the media are having a field day with this story. It has spawned all sorts of clever titles, including The Incredible Shrinking Weiner and Anthony Weiner is Actually A Huge Dick, etc. etc., as well as some trenchant commentary on why politicians stray in such spectacularly self-destructive fashions.

But the article that most caught my eye was by Slate’s Amanda Marcotte, who argued that it was time for America to “grow up” and stop holding politicians to a single standard of monogamy.

Marcotte notes that as recently as a year ago, the grounds with which a politician’s sex life became a matter of public interest depended on said politician’s own stance on sexual privacy. So if they weren’t trying to regulate [contraception/gay marriage/abortion] and/or breaking any laws (ahem, John Edwards), then we should treat their private lives as private.

If, on the other hand, said politicians campaigned and legislated as “family values” candidates, then their sex lives were fair game on the grounds of hypocrisy (Ahem, Newt Gingrich).

In the case of Weiner, his wife apparently knew before they married that he had engaged in on-line flirtation which included sexually explicit photos. So why- as Marcotte puts it – is the media treating this as though “Weiner somehow owes sexual fidelity not to his wife so much as to the rest of us?”

Time will tell whether Weinergate is really about the sexting or the lying or the misuse of government resources to pursue this private activity. (Nancy Pelosi has launched a congressional inquiry to look into the latter.)

But the question of fidelity in public figures  – and to whom they need to be faithful – is a good one. It’s a question that’s also arisen in the context of former IMF President Dominique Strauss Kahn, who’s been accused of trying to rape a chamber maid in a New York hotel.

Apparently, Strauss Kahn’s wife, the French journalist Anne Sinclair, has known for years that her husband is a Lothario and has even condoned his role of “seducer” as part and parcel of his political career. (Whether she will condone his role as rapist should the charges in New York prove true remains to be seen.)

So what do you think? Is it grown up to look the other way when judging a politician’s private life (so long as they aren’t trying to judge ours)?

Or do we, the public, have a legitimate interest in this stuff?

Use the comments section to weigh in.

Image: hot dog innards by roboppy via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

I got to thinking about this idea a couple of weeks ago, when I read an article in the New York Times by David Bornstein about text4baby, a service that sends free text messages to women who are pregnant or whose babies are less than a year old, providing them with information and week-by-week reminders to improve their health and the health of their babies. The program has been extraordinarily popular, boasting about 135,000 users to date with a goal of reaching one million women by the end of 2012.

What makes text4baby particularly appealing is that it targets precisely those women who are most in need of advice on healthy behaviors during pregnancy and post-childbirth, but least likely to obtain it. Low-income, minority women are far more likely than other women to delay prenatal care until the third trimester of their pregnancies, or go without it altogether. And that’s because while this information is widely available, these women typically lack internet access, a formal education and/or health insurance.

But they do have cell phones. According to the Times article, 80 percent of Medicaid patients send and receive text messages regularly and 61% of text4baby users live in zip codes where the median income is less than $50,000. For these women, getting a quick, friendly 160-character text message providing them with 1-800 numbers on topics ranging from how to quit smoking to the benefits of breastfeeding to how and when to obtain immunizations for new-borns has the potential to be extraordinarily effective in reducing infant mortality (which is suprisingly high in the U.S.).

Read the rest of this article at www.PoliticsDaily.com…

*****

And speaking of social media, here’s a post I did on Friday about Facebook’s new, more inclusive gay-friendly status updates.

Image: Texting by Ron Wiecki via flickr under a Creative Commons license

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

On her inspiring e-zine, The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz has a great post this week about the need for writers to be enterprising. Christina defines enterprising as “ready to undertake projects of importance or difficulty or characterized by great imagination or initiative.”

For her, it’s about undertaking projects that will change you and cause you to grow. It’s about getting inspired. And it’s definitely not about being passive, timid or cautious.

Christina’s exhortation is well-timed. If you’ve been following the news this week, you probably know that shortly after midnight on February 7th, AOL announced that it had purchased The Huffington Post and the two companies will now merge into one media behemoth.

AOL is the parent company of Politics Daily, where I’ve been freelancing for the past two years along with a slew of other journalists. At the moment, the future of our publication is somewhat uncertain.

As that process sorts itself out, both practical and emotional factors come into play. I’ll have more to say about the emotional side of things some other time. On the practical end, however, the sudden, overnight upheaval at Politics Daily is a fresh reminder that freelancing is an inherently unstable endeavor, especially in the current economy.

Which means that in order to survive, you really need to be…well, enterprising. Here are five ways freelancers can be enterprising in their careers:

1. Diversify Your Projects. There are lots of reasons to take on different kinds of projects as a freelancer. It keeps you fresh. You learn new skills. You increase your chances of getting more work. But in today’s economy, it’s also a necessity. Relying on a steady gig is great…until it’s no longer there. So by all means get out there and expand your portfolio. It hedges against risk…and you might just discover something new that you love.

2. Exploit Your Network. One way to diversify your skill set is to draw on contacts you have in other parts of your life to drum up new business ideas. Through a casual acquaintance at my daughter’s school, I landed a gig last week writing about home improvement for a magazine targeted at retired people. What did I know about the Small Office Home Office (that’s SOHO to me and you) before I started? Zip. But I learned. And now they’ll likely ask me to do more. In a similar vein, the other day I was working in the cafe attached to my yoga studio when I struck up a conversation with the owner. Afterwards, it occurred to me that he might be interested in advertising on my new blog once it’s up and running. And so on…

3. Experiment. And while you’re at it, try something completely new. Career guru Marci Alboher recommends taking an inventory of your skills and talents to devise a list of potential paths you might pursue. If you teach, write or consult. If you write, teach. Etc., etc. I’ve recently signed on to teach a series of journalism workshops to secondary school (high school) students around London. That in turn led to an offer to teach adults in a continuing education program. A freelance consultant friend of mine who normally analyzes political risk for a living is working with a programmer to launch a new company. Experimentation is crucial to growth. And it will also sharpen your core skills.

4. Protect Your Assets. In what would now appear to be a particularly prescient post I wrote a few weeks back, I talked about the importance of backing up your files, especially if most of your work is Online. And that’s because while it’s generally true that things live forever on the internet, plenty of publications will  – without warning – decide to yank your URLs and not link to them anymore. So yesterday – while monitoring the fate of Julian Assange – I went back and made PDFs of all of my Politics Daily articles…just in case.

5. Carry on. Change is distracting…and can be debilitating. So unless and until you know what’s coming next, the best thing you can do is to carry on with your work. In my case that means that all week long, I’ve kept pitching and I’ve kept writing. Because, to paraphrase a colleague, “We ain’t dead yet.” To wit?

Here’s my latest on the Berlusconi sex scandal.

Enjoy.

Image: My Online Business Card by Michael Kwan via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.