Susan Faludi, author of the feminist book Backlash, has scribed another tome, this time asserting that the macho storylines following the 9/11 attacks were a ploy to maintain traditional values and gender roles. She cited the increase in “men saving women” storylines and decrease in actual women pundits on TV, according to an interview she gave to Time magazine.

(FALUDI:) Overall, including the Pentagon and the planes, the ratio of death was three to one male to female. So when you have a situation where the majority of victims were actually men, how do you make that fit into our cherished storyline of men galloping to the rescue of violated women on the prairie?

(REPORTER:) Why do you believe that the Jessica Lynch story was so important to the country and to the Administration?

(FALUDI:) The Jessica Lynch story, or I should say the manufactured Jessica Lynch story, was the perfect parable of our cultural myth. The story we were told by the government and the military and the media was that Special Ops teams armed with all kinds of fancy weaponry battled their way through a fierce fight into the Iraqi hospital to rescue Lynch from these bloodthirsty Fedayin death squads. Of course, the reality was that there was no battle and there were no death squads and the hospital was mainly peopled by doctors and nurses who were trying to take care of her and were actually trying to return her to the U.S. military. What we turned it into as a culture was the story we wanted to hear of the daring raid and the helpless, rescued girl. It was quite striking to me from the get-go that the military and the media and the government and government officials insinuated over and over again that she had been sexually violated. Even when the evidence was at best sketchy and she herself said, 'hey, I have no memory of this. I don't know what you're talking about.' It was so important to put her in that role; not just her personally, but to have that image of a woman threatened by the ultimate female form of violation and for men to come to the rescue….

You write about the fact that there weren't many women's voices post-9/11, either on the editorial pages or on the talk shows. Why do you think that happened?

Women are acculturated not to jump in there and yell and scream and pontificate and bloviate as much as men in this country. But even factoring that in, there was a dramatic decline from the low point. You had a 40% drop of women guests on the important Sunday morning talk shows. You had dramatic declines on all the Op-Ed pages of all the important newspapers, and even women who would seem like obvious guests for the Sunday morning talk shows, like Diane Feinstein or Barbara Boxer who are both chairpersons of subcommittees on terrorism, there was this feeling that this was the time for men and women should take a back seat. There was one place where there were plenty of women's faces on TV, and that was the 9/11 widows, as long as they played the role of helpless homemaker victims. In the absence of female victims in the planes or rescued from the events of 9/11, the TV shows trotted out 9/11 widows as the substitute victims. Then, the Larry Kings and Bill O'Reillys acted like daddy saviors towards them...There was this need to assert the protective authority role of men, particularly after a trauma in which every aspect of the male protective system failed. Our government ignored warnings that we were about to come under attack. Our 9/11 dispatch system did not warn people properly. Our military did not protect our skies.

Faludi is right that women are underrepresented in the media talk show circuit -- and she has the stats to prove it. Remember how ABC news anchor Elizabeth Vargas was replaced by Charles Gibson? She insists her departure was to spend more time with her family, but the blogs and even National Organization for Women, which got involved, were wondering if she wasn’t pushed out because she could not put in the hours by her male colleagues. That show is now anchored by Gibson and Bob Woodruff, who was injured in Iraq and welcomed to work with open arms. Broadcast journalism is a brutal world for mothers.

But I agree with Faludi's critics that blaming 9/11 for Britney, collagen lips and Hooters is a stretch. Women under 50 already stopped calling themselves feminists even before 9/11, as self-proclaimed feminist and Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum wrote.

This is just SO ODD to me. I got the following e-mail from a company that my office has hired some temps from:

Hi Melissa,

Today is a day to remember not only our troops, but also those who work towards protecting us on a daily basis including our fire and police squads.  Let's be thankful for the beautiful weather, and all of the wonderful things happening around us in this fantastic city.  Here's to Chicago and the amazing talent within.

Check out the latest Talent Update for this week.

Let me know if you'd like to see samples or more information on anyone in particular.  Most everyone is available for freelance or full-time.

Cheers,

I listen to Air America and Bill Press in the morning, and last week he briefly discussed the arrival of September 11th, 2007. Essentially, the question was this- have we mourned enough? Is our current "mourning" as a country productive? Helpful? Beneficial to anyone outside of the Bush Administration?