Here are my observations on a few items in the news.
MONICA F. COX, the black chair of the Department of Engineering at The Ohio State University, recently said that her relationship with her colleagues is adversely impacted simply because they’re mostly white and male, according to Amanda Tidwell, writing in The College Fix.
Monica Cox (by Brent Russell)
The article was of interest to me as I encouraged my daughter to pursue a degree in engineering. She did, and landed a job with a leading aerospace firm.
Cox came to OSU from another engineering powerhouse at Purdue last December, and surely, she is aware that the engineering profession has historically been very male and very white.
“You have to overcome your implicit biases or even sometimes explicit biases to work with someone who is different,” Cox stated, while declining to define the implicit and explicit biases of those in her department.
For the record, OSU awarded the sixth most engineering bachelor’s degrees to women in 2015 (19.9 percent of the total), and ranks 15th in bachelor’s degrees awarded to blacks. Additionally, women represented a larger percentage of master’s and doctoral students in 2015 that the year before.
Laura Ingraham (mediaconfidential.blogspot.com)
DRUDGE REPORTED AND FOX NEWS CONFIRMED that Laura Ingraham, long a conservative voice on her own radio show and as a frequent guest on Fox News Channel programs, will host the Laura Ingram Angle at 10 p.m. ET beginning October 30. The new Fox evening lineup will begin with Bret Baier and will be followed by Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity (opposite MSNBC flame-thrower Rachel Maddow) and Ingraham. A good move for Fox and by Ingraham.
Betsy McCaughey (Investors.com)
BETSEY MCCAUGHEY, whom I have long admired for her thorough knowledge of ObamaCare and health insurance in general, has written an eye-opening op-ed in the New York Post, “How BernieCare slams working people.” If you are not familiar with her, she was lieutenant governor of New York under George Pataki and a fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank. The content is too detailed for me to cover responsibly here, so I highly recommend that you click here to read it in its entirety if the subject is of interest to you.
Jedidiah Bila (Getty Images)
JEDEDIAH BILA, who joined the cast of characters on ABC’s The View to provide a voice of moderation, has apparently parted ways with the show after failing to feed Hillary Clinton with a softball question during her book tour appearance on the show. She asked Clinton how she felt about Democrats and surrogates who are voicing criticism of the book. It was rumored that The View hoped to bring Clinton back for subsequent appearances and that Bila’s presence was going to be a problem.
MOVING FROM A BLUE STATE TO A RED STATE changed the lives of a couple who moved from San Diego, California to Terre Haute, Indiana, in a story told by freelance writer Leah Singer in The Indianapolis Star. “I used to say I’d never move to a red state. And then I did. And it’s changed my life for the better,” she begins.
Accompanying her husband who received a job opportunity, “at 41 years old – at midlife – I moved from the blue, liberal left coast bubble to a rural, Midwest, Rust Belt red state,” Singer writes. “In many ways, California’s blue state bubble can be a very safe place to live if you subscribe to the popular liberal politics.”
(It reminded me of my years living in Flagstaff, Arizona, and why I left.)
“Over and over, I was questioned about why I would ever leave the Golden State for a ‘flyover’ red state. This phrase alone troubled me, and the implied perception that one flies over the Midwest just to get to their East or West coast home.
“As I settled into life in the Midwest, I head the same assumptive questions: Did everyone you know vote for Donald Trump? Are their African-American, Jewish, Asian LGBTQ people in Indiana? Do people make fun of you for listening to National Public Radio?
“As I got to know my new Midwest home, I realized how living in a bubble and subscribing to the Middle America stereotypes is truly damaging to this country.”
While Singer wrote about the economic differences between life in San Diego and Terre Haute, it was the realization that her vote and actions had a deeper meaning in Indiana.
“During the 2016 presidential election, so many California voters, who didn’t like candidates Hillary Clinton or Trump, chose not to vote at all, stating their vote won’t matter since California will certainly cast its electoral votes for Clinton,” she remarked while pointing out that Trump had won by just 6,002 votes in her Indiana county, showing the impact of a vote there.
While mentioning that many people travel to all points of the globe, she wished they would make the effort to get to know their Midwest neighbors. “I did, and I am a better person because of it,” Singer concluded.
