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Week of
January 05, 2012 | | CAMPAIGN 2012 It’s over: Michele Bachmann dropped her bid to be the Republican presidential nominee on Wednesday, one day after coming in sixth in the Iowa caucuses. But how to explain her dismal showing in a state she once seemed poised to win? She stumped as much as Santorum, had staff problems no worse than Gingrich’s, and made lesser gaffes than Perry. Her faults are hardly unique in the Republican field, and she was consistently well spoken in the debates—even if the things she said didn’t always correlate with empirical reality. It’s tempting to think that part of what finally defeated Bachmann was sexism. There have been plenty of hints that some on the right were uncomfortable with the notion of a female president, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that the Christian right’s patriarchs, many of whom explicitly preach female submission, felt the same way. Michelle Goldberg looks at how sexism may have affected Bachmann’s failed campaign. The White House Project aims to advance women’s leadership in all communities and sectors, up to the U.S. presidency. SAUDI ARABIA After years of uncomfortable moments for Saudi women being served by male salespeople in lingerie shops, a new law is allowing only women to work in the stores. Both men and women behind the initiative are hopeful it will end decades of awkwardness in the Islamic kingdom, where women have always had to buy their lingerie from male sales assistants. Female campaigners went so far as to boycott lingerie stores and launched a Facebook page pushing for the initiative. One woman told the BBC that she and any woman who could afford it would often shop abroad rather than go through the shameful process of telling a salesman her underwear size. Now more women are hoping to enter the workforce (traditionally, only educated elite women in the Islamic kingdom can pursue a career). The law could potentially create up to 40,000 jobs for less privileged Saudi women who never before had the opportunity to enter the workplace. DREAM ACT A year ago, Atlanta-based college graduate Jessica Colotl, 22, caused a firestorm when she was told she would be deported to Mexico, a country she'd left as a child. She's still here—but possibly not for long. She is just one of some 2 million others—children of undocumented immigrants who arrived in America as minors—who exist in a sort of legal limbo. Their plight is paving the way for immigration to be a hot political issue in this year’s presidential campaigns, particularly with the number of deportations under Obama hitting a record high. Meanwhile, Colotl and others like her are left to bide their time. “There are many days when I really freak out, but other days I'm like, ‘OK, I have to keep moving on,’” she says. “I believe in the American legal system. I want to be given another chance for this country to see my full potential.” POETRY Poet Emma Lazarus transformed the Statue of Liberty from a symbol of aggression to one of welcome, but a new exhibit showcasing her life shows that her poem “The New Colossus” is only a minor reason to appreciate her, writes Edward Rothstein in The New York Times. “In fact, so many illuminating sparks are set off by this show, mounted in celebration of the statue’s 125th anniversary, that its closing section about Lady Liberty comes as an anticlimax,” Rothstein writes. The exhibit, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, unveils the fascinating story of how a fourth-generation American from New York's upper crust came to write so evocatively about “tired, huddled masses,” and how her vision of the country rewrote the statue's meaning. REVOLUTION Nearly a year after the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak from power, his wife, Suzanne, remains the only member of the family who is not in prison. But through interviews with friends and associates, Suzy Hansen reports in this week’s Newsweek that Suzanne may have been as corrupt as the rest of the regime, if not worse. As one U.S. official told Hansen, “The U.S. had had multiple conversations with Mubarak encouraging him to move to a democratic form of government. It was clear that the person most opposed to this was not Mubarak himself, but Suzanne.” | | 
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