Mr. Summers, Please Pick Up the White Courtesy Phone

You're not helping! The New Republic needs to stop with the snark. Now.

In the magazine's blog "The Plank", Michale Crowley fears that Mark Warner isn't "electable" because he "uses the word 'incent' as a verb". Do you think that if people stopped writing lame non-stories about little quirks and how they "might" piss off red-staters, people would stop worrying about what might or might not piss off red-staters?

Elsewhere, in a lengthy Russ Feingold exploratory article. Crowley (again!) points out the chinks in his candidacy: " Yes, his presidential dreams face obstacles: He's Jewish. He has been divorced twice. He's not about to rouse the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party" with a primal scream." look, I know we're not yet a completely egalitarian country with respect to these traits, but why feed the beast? When can I expect TNR to downplay Barack Obama's chance of winning the Presidency because he's too skinny, has a funny name, and is bi racial?

Oy.

Via Urs, The American Prospect pens a lengthy column on changes in work/family arrangements over the last half century, pointing out that even among the well-to-do, more and more women seem to be "choosing" to stay at home rather than . It seems a little strange

Lost in the hubbub of Larry Summers's statement that he thought there would be unremediable differences in mathematical and scientific aptitude between men and women, Summers claimed that the more important problem was the set of social choices we have made that consciously or unconsciously push more far women than men out of the high-power workforce. Universal child care isn't enough to solve the problem -- it's going to take real culture changes to get fathers to stay home and to get businesses to stop stigmatizing materinity/paternity leave.