http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/us/19schwarzenegger.html

It’s a book that truly blurs the distance from the present to the past. I’ve had several rape survivors as students who had problems getting through the book because the eighteenth century as Block describes it is so sadly familiar to them.

There’s no way for women to win, in this system, and the brief window where crimes against women were taken seriously because *women* were taken seriously? Dying along with feminism.

I guess my only thoughts are 1) tell me about how much things have changed when the men of the world still see working class African women as objects to be raped and discarded, 2) good on Sofitel for immediately reporting the rape to the NYCPD, although I wonder what would have happened had the accused perp been a more recognizable celebrity to most U.S. Americans, and 3) Maria Shriver is yet another lesson in why it’s never a great idea to quit your day job to support a spouse’s political or professional ambitions. She had to quit her news job and by most reports was an exemplary first lady, and this is her “reward!” I think she knew what her husband was all about, and she still picked him, but she didn’t have to be such a complete sucker.

And, although the Shriver side of the extended Kennedy clan seem like they’re the nicest and cleanest of the lot, in that so far none of the male Shrivers have killed their wives (JFK Jr.), killed a girlfriend (Edward Kennedy), killed a classmate (Michael Skakel), raped someone (William Kennedy Smith, and others), or engaged in public, serial adultery (pretty much every man in that family) that we know of, the women in that family are all treated like $hit by their husbands, brothers, cousins, etc. Because of the resources at their command, I have to wonder: why do the women of that family consent to this now unto the third and fourth generations?