"American society has 'not yet raised a generation of girls growing up and thinking, "I can be president of the United States someday,"'"

It already has. The problem is that it raised a generation of women who were told "you could be president someday!!!" All the steps in between, the ladder climbing, are devalued for women. The people who told her she could be president!!! someday are also the ones who say to her, "you're only a _____, you should spend more time with your children while they're young" or "you only make $x, don't you lose most of that to taxes* and childcare** anyway?" Women who are on the lower and middle rungs in politics see their work and status devalued, because they're not president!!!, they wonder why they should bother if they haven't achieved a job worthy of a Barbie doll costume (ever seen State Representative Barbie? Nope, Barbie is always president!!!). It's the same as the women who feel like failures because they're only in middle management. Men slog through even if they haven't achieved what they dreamed of, and those men form the pool from which candidates for higher positions are chosen.

"And Kornblut questions why Hollywood has yet to love Hillary the way they loved Bill. "

Nobody loved Gore either, and for the same reason. Both seem condescending, Hillary Clinton about ten times as much as Gore. Bill Clinton seemed humble and grateful to have been elected. Hillary Clinton acts as though the world owes her a presidency.

*because they consider his income as the couple's base income and her's at the highest marginal rate.

**SAHM's spend money on food, museum/park admission, various lessons and activities, gas, toys and play equipment, etc., but childcare costs are usually compared against $0 as the cost of staying home.

JustAGuy, you are saying that the FBI's "70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related" is about as accurate as a horoscope? Amazing, all that money and man-hours could be replaced with a 50-cent paper.

I take the view that the Presidential memos are closer to the results of medical tests. If a doctor said "this test indicates you may have cancer," would you say "All right, doc. You've covered your ass, now" and do nothing about it? You'd ask for followup tests, I hope.

Mattel did change the design (smaller breasts and hips, larger waist), but only for the regular dolls (the ones it expects to sell to children). It kept the old design for collector's edition dolls, because those are usually sold to adults who want the same shape they remember from their childhood.

I don't mind Barbie's shape. First of all, the original doll wasn't designed that way to make women feel bad. It was because of the limitations of the cloth-making technology of the day. Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, planned that the doll would wear underwear, a dress, and, often, a coat. With the old fabrics and a doll shaped like a normal woman, a doll wearing all those clothes would have looked as though she had an innertube around her waist.

Second, some of us used Barbie as a sort of "scapegoat" when we were younger. I fussed over my Barbies' clothes so I could wear whatever I wanted. My Barbies' had perfect hair, mine was wash-n-wear. They wore heels, my feet were comfy in flats and sneakers. Their faces were covered in permanent makeup, mine blissfully clean. Barbies filled the gap between when I hit puberty and when I was ready to look the way I wanted without needing my Barbies at home all dolled up. Barbie is the reason it takes me only five minutes to get dressed in the morning (7 if I'm going to court and need to hunt down a jacket).

Nicole, the article is in Broadsheet because that's where Salon hides articles that straight white men don't care about and don't want to have to bother even skimming past on the main page. Chick stuff, queer stuff, and sprog stuff are all put in the pink ghetto of Broadsheet.

Krd, gay marriage is not a women's issue. Labor unions have many women members, that doesn't make labor union issues women's issues. Women make the majority of the purchasing decisions in this country, that doesn't make consumer protection a women's issue. Half of all people of color are women, that doesn't make racial issues women's issues. Issues that affect gay men just as much as they do gay women are not women's issues.

Although, if we whittled Broadsheet down to just issues that affect only or mostly women, Salon would need a new section. Can anyone think of a clever pun that involves gays and newspapers? Oh, and we'll need a fetching shade of lavender with which to decorate the new ghetto.