Stoopid Nuse!

ABC news recently reported about a man named Kim O'Grady, who after spending four months applying for work without so much as an interview, added Mr. to his resume and was hired within two weeks. Clearly sexism is alive and well in Australia in the late 1990’s. Even though the whole event occurred at least 14 years ago, it was still viewed as a relevant story by the people at ABC news, and the Huffington Post, and Slate, and the Daily Mail, who are all of course not pushing any sort of angle. All of which would be slightly more bearable if they didn’t treat the incident like it happened yesterday. It’s not that sexism can’t still be an issue, but the evidence used to show sexism probably shouldn’t be old enough to get its driver’s license. Maybe I’m just overly optimistic, but I like to think that society is capable of making some form of progress over extended periods of time.

John Henry Spooner was sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Spooner’s case had been noted as having “some striking similarities” with the George Zimmerman case in the New York Times article: Echoes of Florida Case in a Milwaukee Trial. The article noted that in both cases a white man shot an unarmed black teenager, and that’s it. Except that George Zimmerman isn’t white, he is Hispanic, so really the only similarity is that an unarmed black teenager was shot. Also, Trayvon Martin had engaged in a physical confrontation with George Zimmerman, while John Henry Spooner merely walked up to his neighbor and shot him: so really the one case involved a black teen being shot and the other involved a black teen being murdered while taking out the recycling. Other than those two little details, the similarities really are striking; in the same way Barack Obama and Idi Amin have strikingly similar approaches towards public policy.