This is pretty amusing:
. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women “as fast as I can.”
Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership.
In an interview with WHDH Channel 7’s Andy Hiller that aired last night, Kennedy said, “I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club, which was basically a fraternal organization.”
Asked by Hiller whether he is still a member, Kennedy said, “I’m not a member; I continue to pay about $100.”
He then said of being a member in a club that discriminates against women, “I shouldn’t be and I’m going to get out of it as fast as I can.”
The Harvard Crimson reports that, in 1984, the university severed ties with clubs like the Owl, citing a federal law championed by Kennedy.
Meanwhile, Kennedy admitted to Hiller that he himself probably couldn’t pass Judiciary Committee muster.
“Probably not . . . probably not,” Kennedy said.
I am not for one minute going to pretend that the group that Kennedy belongs to is the same as CAP (described at length by Hilzoy at ObWi in a post I now can not seem to find), but I am going to tell you that this is pretty damned funny.
The Other Steve
So the lesson here, is…
It’s OK if you are a Republican.
MMM
Probably not?
MMM
Will I wake up tomorrow morning and look down and see Jessica Simpson smiling at me?
Probably not.
Steve
I admit it. It’s very funny.
Otto Man
The ObWi post on CAP is found here.
Louise
It is funny — and I have to say I like the way he answered the issue quickly and bluntly.
Paul L.
So the lesson here, is…
People in Glass Houses should not throw stones or in this case lob mortar shells.
Kimmitt
That’s pretty funny. He handled it in a reasonably classy fashion, though.
DougJ
As a Harvard alum, I can tell you that The Owl is nothing like that Princeton group Alito belongs to. That CAP group is totally nuts — I’ve never heard of anything like it before at any university. Don’t get me wrong — I hate groups like The Owl (which is what’s called a “final’s club”), but let’s not get carried way here.
The Other Steve
Agreed. People who defended Alito for belonging to a bigoted organization, shouldn’t be attacking Kennedy for belonging to a bigoted organization.
Either it’s right or not. It can’t just be ok for Republicans and wrong for Democrats.
I wouldn’t be berating you idiots if instead you’d said, “We recognize and respect Kennedy’s right to belong to a group like this.”
Sam Hutcheson
I think if you read the man’s response, you’ll see quite clearly that he’s surprised that the organization continues to ban women, that his affiliation with them is peripheral to say the least, and that he’s quickly sundering even that relationship ASAP.
What’s funny about a Senator doing exactly the right thing when presented with an embarrassing historical fact about his college years?
And it can be repeated for effect: these guys are not the raving wingnuts that are CAP. And Ted Kennedy isn’t up for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. If this is an issue for his constituents, they get a chance to fire him in a few years at most.
rayabacus
Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.
DJ
As another Harvard alum, I can also comment on the Owl. Firstly, at the time Ted Kennedy was at Harvard, Radcliffe was a separate institution, so all “Harvard” affiliated clubs were male-only.
Secondly, The Owl is a social club, not something you would put on your resume unless you knew the person interviewing you was another Owl alum.
Thirdly, it’s not the expressed mission of The Owl to keep women and minorities out of Harvard. The club has minority members and it’s expressed goal is to get women inside their house. Any male who went to Harvard and wasn’t a member of a final’s club knows how they operate. No male students who are non-members are allowed to enter.
BlogReeder
The ObWi post on CAP is CRAP.
Pb
Owl’s Club:CAP::Boy Scouts:Hitler Youth
Zifnab
So then what’s the difference between The Owl Club and, say, a college frat? Other than the fact that Kennedy can probably drink most frat guys under the table. I fail to see how he was so greviously “outed” when he’s done the 50-something equivalent of going Greek.
Otto Man
Thanks for that well-reasoned and well-supported rebuttal.
DJ
There is no real difference between Harvard Finals Clubs and College Frats, except for no connection to a national organization. In fact, most of the Finals Clubs evolved from fraternities, which used to exist on campus. The Delphic Club used to be the Delta Phi fraternity, which previously split from the AD club. The entire entity used to be the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Some Finals clubs have considered allowing women to gain entrance but the idea has generally been rejected by alumni boards. Again, these are not clubs with the sole purpose of preventing women and minorities from gaining entrance to the University and never were.
neil
He’s going to quit but he’s not a member but he pays membership dues?
Paul L.
What about the people who defended Alito who believed that CAP is not a bigoted organization?
The point that you are missing is that Kennedy is a hypocrite.
He (in a Joe McCarthy-like way) accused Alito of belonging to a “bigoted” organization. Now it turns out he to “bigoted” organization.
But that is the definition of a liberal. “Do as I say not as I do.”
BTW, if he want to remain a member of The Owl, I have no problem with that.
Lines
Wow, Paul L, way to take something to the edge of Nutvania and leave it there to hang.
The Owl is a fraternal club that had men-only traditions. So what? There are golf clubs that still do it and are acceptable. The level of “hypocrit” on this issue is bordering on nill, but people like you will ride it like there’s no tomorrow.
CAP, however, had a stated purpose to change the policy of an institution to exclude minorities and women. Somehow in your tiny little mind thats the same as The Owl?
Jesus man, breathe. You’ve found nothing but your own navel.
Paul L.
Do not let Martha Burk and NOW hear you say that.
Lines
Not supporting quotas/maintaining standards is not equal to excluding minorities and women.
Lines
Paul L: Have you read the link to ObWi’s description of CAP? Evidently not. The group actively tried to keep Princeton white and manly. The fact that they tried to remove the quotas portion from the Affirmative Action is not because quotas are bad, but because they wanted to have NO women or minorities in the school and a quota forced them to.
The Other Steve
They were fruitcakes with extra nuts.
Maybe. I’m simply pointing out the nuts attacking Kennedy are [*surprise*] hypocrites.
And how is this different from Republican?
Oh yeah, Kennedy acknowledged it was probably wrong, whereas Alito denied ever belonging, or if he did belong it was because of ROTC. But he can’t quite remember if he belonged or not or if he did was it because of ROTC.
Come on, dude. Stand up and be a man. Stand up for what you believe in. Stop pussy footing around.
That’s a start. Now say it loud and proud…
“If Kennedy wants to belong to a bigoted organization, I respect his right to do that. Anybody in America should be allowed to belong to bigoted organizations, including Supreme Court Justices, and you’re all assholes for saying otherwise!”
But if you pussy foot around Alito belonging to an organization, and then attack Kennedy…
Do you believe in anything?
SoCalJustice
So because Alito was in CAP, put it on his resume for a promotion application, and people pointed that out during his nomination hearing and refused to let him get away with pretending he knew nothing about CAP, and his wife cried, Republicans are now against fraternities?
Darrell
Lines, you are so full of sh*t
Paul L.
Of course, they are fruitcakes with extra nuts. They disagree with you. The lefty blog say so.
Lines read this link.
More on Alito and CAP
The Truth, unlike you who believes that Democrats are holy and incapable of doing anything wrong and that Republicians are evil incarnate.
BTW, Any proof yet that Mrs. Alito’s crying was staged?
Sam hutcheson
People who believe in “the Truth” are usually blind to the regular old run-of-the-mill truths found in reality. Gazing longingly at a wished for pie in the sky blinds you to the facts on the ground.
Paul Wartenberg
You see this is why I’m not in any club or fraternity or social order or anything like that. It’s so when I get to be President I won’t have these embarrassing associations to deal with, and thus lessen my hypocrisy when the time comes to be a pompous ass. :-)
a guy called larry
Thanks for the link. I liked this paragraph best:
As for the Prospect magazine that’s referenced with bated breath in the piece, it was run (at least during 1985, before it was defunct) by Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza, I believe.
Two non-alumni. Heh.
Any links to video of the vicious attacks? I’d think that may be helpful in sorting that out. I’m surprised that some blogger hasn’t put together a ‘Daily Show’ styled clip of the dreadful Dems in action…
The Other Steve
I think we’ve already established long ago that you have no clue who I am or what I believe in. That seems to be your problem, you just reflexively thing than any opposition to your points is all because of a stereotype you’ve built up in your mind.
I still want to know why it was ok for Alito, but wrong for Kennedy?
It’s really all about how you frame the question. By framing it the way it has been done here, you have exhibited the same hypocrisy that you accuse Kennedy of.
Oh, and one point… When people call me a hypocrite, I’m very likely to agree with them. No point muddying the water there.
Oh, and I don’t like Ted Kennedy.
So my only point is to get you to defend your ridiculous fruitcake approach to politics.
The Other Steve
Any proof yet that it wasn’t?
The evidence certainly suggests it was, and it follows the MO of the Schiavo matter.
skip
The OWLs were against having women members in their club. The CAP boys were seeking to exclude women and minorities in the whole university. Quite a difference.
Kimmitt
The difference, really, is that Senator Kennedy realized that the policy of the group to which he belonged had drifted (from being de facto male only to being de jure male only) and is seeking to remedy his involvement post-haste.
Zifnab
To be fair, the term “good ole boy’s club” could probably find its roots in organizations like The Owl Club. I don’t think anyone should be encouraging these types of “Men Only” organizations and that’s firmly on principle. Even if it’s just a “Men’s Only Billards Tournment” it raises the old specters of segregation and seperate but equal.
I’d like to see “Men’s Only” go the way of the dinosaur as much as the next social progressive and frankly, the need to instate it even as an archaic tradition seems rather silly. There’s a college term for a guy dominated party – sausage fest. Girls make everything better.
But this is a classic case of Republican “the Dems did it too” syndrome. Somehow, if you can tag a liberal as pulling any shit remotely similar to what a conservative pulls, the liberal gets labeled a hypocrite and the conservative gets a free pass to keep on trucking.
Paul L.
So far, I have determined the following
You are a “libertarian” who hates republicians and automatically believes the worst that you hear about them regardless of proof. You will give the benefit of the doubt to democrats.
How am I doing?
Ted Kennedy accused Alito of being part of a bigoted organization CAP. And could not prove that Alito had anything to do with them other than the application or prove that they were sexist/racist organization.
Then it turns out that he the paragon of virtue is part of a politically incorrect man-only club.
You believe that CAP is a racist/sexist and I want to see proof of that. So we see CAP differently.
Remembering that not supporting quotas/maintaining standards is not equal to excluding minorities and women.
Lines
Paul, where is your proof that CAP was anything BUT a bigoted organization bent upon removing minorities and women from Princeton? Sorry, your link was basically useless, it proved nothing, provided nothing and after reading it twice, actually makes the accomplishment of saying nothing.
Congratulations on nothing!
Besides, if the ROTC thing is true, the ROTC had already been back in Princeton before Alito subscribed to CAP.
And you don’t brag about CAP to other white supremesists if you don’t know that its going to get you something from said whites.
Paul L.
If someone asks me “Have you stopped beating your wife.” You believe that I would have to prove that I do not.
Reagan was a white supremesist?
Andrew J. Lazarus
Lines is not quite correct. When Princeton went co-ed, the class size was raised from 800 to 1100, and the number of women was restricted to 300. This was far less than would have been accepted under sex-blind admissions (as can be seen by current class breakdown). CAP was opposed to women at all, but they were especially upset at the thought that the 300 quota would be repealed, resulting in a reduction of the number of male students from their putative Golden Age. Let me repeat, CAP was in favor of a quota. It just happened to be a quota tha worked in favor of (white) men.
I was a beneficiary [cough! cough!] of the social atmossphere created by 800 men and 300 women per class. CrAP like that, the world doesn’t need.
The Other Steve
So Kennedy did nothing at all wrong by belonging to Owl?
So really you have no argument here.
Lines
Yes, Paul, the Reagan Administration was staffed by a high amount of puratists, they then went on to work for this administration.
If you want, go ask a black man if Reagan was bigotted, I think you’ll be surprised at the answer
Pb
Zifnab,
Why do you hate the boy scouts?
Seriously though, I see nothing wrong with having boy’s clubs and girl’s clubs and whatever other clubs–there are lots of examples of all of the above and more out there.
Steve
Having a boys-only meeting in your treehouse doesn’t really hurt anything. What matters more is when there is discrimination in a club that gives access to social and business opportunities. For example, if you’re not allowed to join the Elks, or the local country club, those may be private organizations, but it really hurts your ability to network and be competitive in the local business community. By the same token, if major Ivy League universities exclude women and minorities, that harms the ability of women and minorities to land the top-tier jobs that Ivy League graduates typically get.
In a sense, this is true of fraternities as well, to the extent some fellow Phi Kappa Phi alum may give you a job someday after graduation. But I think everyone understands the reasons why we can’t integrate college fraternities, and to some extent, similar considerations prevent us from forcibly integrating any number of private organizations. But we can still draw a distinction between when discrimination is harmful and when it’s a non-issue.
Paul L.
I can also ask a black man if Bush/republicans are bigotted. I will get the same answer.
The NAACP and Jessie Jackson have been calling republicans bigots since Reagan so I am not surprised by the answer.
Pb
Er, yeah, Paul L., because black men are all mindless pawns of the NAACP and Jessie Jackson. I guess that would make sense to a mindless pawn of the GOP and Rush Limbaugh etc., but I find it to be laughably ignorant.
Pb
Steve,
I think one key question to ask in your scenarios is, is there a reasonable/equivalent alternative available? If I can’t join The Boy Scouts, can I join, say, The Girl Scouts? If I can’t join a Fraternity, can I join, say, a Sorority? And male-only golf clubs and female-only health clubs–and while there may not be any female-only golf clubs or male-only health clubs out there, but there are many of both open to all comers. etc. That sort of reasoning (or any sort, really) points out the differences pretty quickly in this scenario.
Lines
But Pb, your argument opens up the possibility that there are other schools, so CAP was ok?
Not trying to troll, but the analogy doesn’t quite fit the case we’re making, and that is that while Owl was and always was male-only, it didn’t seek to change public policies to create a homogenous membership within it’s club.
CAP was actively seeking to overturn a guideline that opened the doors to Princeton to people that the founders and members of CAP found “undesireable” in their previously male-only school.
The only way that OWL could have been the same is if they suddenly opened the doors to women and a segment of their membership decided they wanted it to be male-only again. Even that is a slight stretch.
Pb
Lines,
No, it really doesn’t open up that possibility, not within the scope of what I was discussing–the proper analogy in that context would be that if you can’t join CAP, then look for a female-only equivalent instead (heh). Anyhow, I agree with you (see my earlier analogy), and I was making a different point–that I see nothing wrong with the Owl club’s membership policy, which is of course distinct from CAP’s agenda.
Cheers.
Zifnab
Boy scouts and girl scouts, fraternities and sororities, Playboy and Playgirl, … usually its not a problem so long as there is some degree of balance. But this ‘seperate but equal’ mentality just isn’t something to be promoted. It’s more “legacy” than “acceptable”. The division doesn’t really help our society. It would be nice to see that sort of thing phased out.
I mean, with homosexuality slowly working its way into the realm of cosmopolitian acceptability, even the arguement that “we can just start putting people of the opposite gender together or they’ll start having sex” kinda falls apart.
This is just my opinion though. I prefer to live by the no-harm no-foul rule. In Kennedy’s case, I don’t see The Owl Club doing much harm, so I can’t see much foul.
Steve
The issue is that female-only organizations may not offer the same opportunities as male-only organizations, because of pre-existing sex disparities in the business community, for example. It’s something you have to think about on a case by case basis.
I wasn’t trying to make an analogy to CAP or prove anything at all about CAP, I was just pointing out one of the ways you can think about the larger issue of which exclusionary organizations are bad.
HH
The honorable Senator from Massachusetts remains steadfastly against discrimination against women. As far as leaving women to die when the chips are down, well he’s a little squishy on that issue.
BlogReeder
The ObWi post on CAP is CRAP.
From the free part of the NY times article From Alito’s Past, a Window On Conservatives at Princeton:
The Times should have found something don’t cha think?
Anyway, this was shortly after Princeton was going coed. I’m sure there was a lot of people who where upset at messing with tradition. In 1972. This is 2006. This occurred 34 years ago. It disbanded 21 years ago. Can anyone point to rulings by Alito that kept any school non-coed?
Pb
Steve,
True, and vice versa; people network in clubs, there is the famous shadowy “good ol’ boys” network, and no doubt something similar exists for women in some fields, and other groups, etc.
Incidentally… one classic gender exclusionary club where people meet up and network: prison, go figure. Of course, I’m sure things like that happen all the time, but for some reason I still find it somewhat ironic.
Paul L.
Enlighten me, Most black men just hate Reagan/Bush because they are racists? That is what Lines hints at. Is he a mindless pawn of the Democrats?
Blacks have been since LBJ consistently the most loyal democrat voting block.
I am sure if I look hard enough I could find a black man who likes Reagan/Bush But they are “Uncle Toms” or “Acting White”.
BTW, I am a mindless pawn of the NRA.
HH
Still counting the days til Teddy makes another apology.
So when he said that he wouldn’t pass judicial muster didn’t he just admit that this song and dance by the Dems was a big sham?
Kimmitt
Man, talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. “This guy is better than the one politician we most loathe in America. You must confirm him!”