The Post's story leads off in the following way:

Her hair has grown back, longer and thicker. She needs a hand climbing into the director's chair positioned at the front of the George Washington University auditorium. Look closely: The wedding band is missing.

Isn't it just great that Elizabeth Edwards could expound in insane detail about the problems with our current health care system, the intricacies of each candidate's reform plans and what she would do instead or in addition to those plans for an hour and that's the lead of the story?

Maybe they could've talked a bit more about her many criticism's of John McCain's health care plan, in which she explains, in depth, that John McCain's tax credit — which would drive many people into the individual market and cause an end to the long-standing practice of employer-sponsored health insurance — won't be budget neutral and the McCainiacs are proposing major cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to pay for it. Or they might have talked about how it would mean most people would pay more taxes by 2013, since while the currently-proposed credit would be enough for most people (unless you have a pre-existing condition like Edwards), with cost-of-living (i.e., inflationary) adjustments to the credit coupled with much higher than cost-of-living adjustments to health insurance premiums (mine went up 15% this year), hardly anyone would be fully covered by McCain's credit in 2013. Or they might have talked more about how it's interesting that she's concerned about Obama's lack of a mandate for small businesses — the mandate McCain insists that Obama has — and why it is that she finds a full mandate so important. If they really wanted something splashy, they could even have talked about her pointed criticism of Palin's obvious lack of familiarity with the issue and how what she suggested in the debates about McCain's health care plan was both demonstrably false and even worse than what McCain was actually proposing. Goodness knows, there was plenty to talk about in terms of what Edwards said about preventative care or the better utilization of information technology within the health care system to fill an article, that's for sure.

But for that stuff, the wonks among you will have to watch Pushback's video of the discussion — which is an hour-long palate cleanser for those who miss seeing a woman speak who is both passionate and well-informed. Apparently, the Post thinks it's more important that you admire her for being cuckolded and later appearing in public. Because that was the cool part, obviously.

Elizabeth Edwards on Health Care [Pushback]
Edwards Emerges From Her Husband's Shadow [Washington Post]

Earlier: Elizabeth Edwards: "I Think We Have The Capacity With Great Leadership To Change Things"

Generally speaking, if I commit (or try to commit) suicide in this country (generally done for personal reasons), that's considered a criminal act so that they can lock me up and get my the psychiatric help I need. When a person of either gender straps explosives to their body and kills him or herself and as many other people as possible — is that a rational act? Can it be a rational act? Is it any less of a sign — regardless of gender — that the person in question is in need of a mental health intervention?

By now, male suicide bombers are de rigueur in the Middle East (if not in other countries where suicide bombings are common). The stories are played out, the irrationality of the situation accepted, the coercion and indoctrination involved go without saying. And so the question for the Western media, tired of "yet another" suicide bomber story is — why women now and why not all along?

Obviously, the recruiting and coercion is different, given that much recruiting of men is reportedly done in sex-segregated religious settings. The personal reasonings are probably also different — given that men and women have significantly different and entrenched roles in those societies, and what they lose by making an early exit from them is going to be different. The rationale of the clothing provides a stepping-off point to understand why a male-dominated terrorist organization would think of recruiting women (or more women than ever before) when they come from a supposed religious ideology and secular background in which women are not normally allowed in combat situations.

On Sunday, Lindsey O'Rourke argued in her New York Times OpEd that the media is sexist in the way it reports female suicide bombings because the political context in which men and women choose to become suicide bombers is the same, while admitting that recruiting tactics for men and women remain significantly different. If men and women are recruited differently, then doesn't it stand to reason that the differing recruitment works because men and women have different person motivations that they are more likely to share with others in their gender? The external motivating factors — or, if one accepts the premise that suicidal impulses are inherently irrational, the rationale given for an inherently irrational act — might be similar but, at the end of the day, the personal reasons for getting involved in a situation are going to be different and in a society in which gender plays a huge role on your place in that society, it's probably going to be gendered, at least in part.

While there is no shortage of other string of female suicide bombers — particularly in a secular context — through which we can contextualize the recent spate of Iraqi suicide bombings committed by women, the fact remains that such bombings are an anomaly in that country at this time. There is obviously something driving the increase, and understanding why Chechnyan women or Tamil women agreed to participate in suicide bombings in their respective countries doesn't really get us that much closer to understanding why Iraqi women are doing it now — or how to stop it. And that, really, is what the media and our governments are trying to understand — why women, why now, why there, and how do we stop it.

If, as Faith suggests, the sexism comes from the world is wondering what is making women irrational enough to start becoming suicide bombers, what they're actually proposing is that women have been more rational all along. And that might be sexist, but it might also be aimed at men.

Three Women Held In Iraq Suicide Bomb Plots [CNN]
The Vulnerable Robed Women: Coverage Of Women Suicide Bombers [Muslimah Media Watch]
When The Suicide Bomber Is A Woman [Marie cCaire]
Behind The Woman Behind The Bomb [NY Times]

Look, on the scale of apt criticisms, it's probably true that, Susan Estrich aside, not as many women as men are out their pitching their work. Believe me, it's hard! It involves a great deal of rejection but, unlike in dating, you have to turn around and ask the person out again and again. Plus, frankly, a lot of Op-Ed submissions are written by committee, done at an organization and then bylined as its head because the head dude (and, let's face it, most organizations' leaders are men) is more likely to get attention than a VP of either gender — unless, of course, the female VP is writing about girl issues.

The Rutgers Study cited by the Times points out that most editorial pages accept submissions that more or less agree with their editorial viewpoint. If you want to publish a conservative OpEd on economic issues, you don't go to the Washington Post, you go to the Wall Street Journal — any PR guy will tell you that — and it's not because of the readers you want but your likelihood of acceptance. Who runs most editorial pages? Men. It makes it worse that OpEd pages are, like most things in journalism, pretty incestuous. If they know you (or recognize you), your piece is more likely to get published and you're more likely to be published again in that venue.

The final thing, that I have to admit a dude pointed out to me, is that women who write about politics are rarely considered just "political writers" but female political writers, or writers about women's issues. Do I feel like I come at politics from a particular female perspective? I'd have to say no, especially when I'm geeking out in Crappy Hour about economics or something. On the other hand, where is my work featured 90% of the time? Here and on Glamocracy mostly, which says a lot about who likes to read it, or at least who my brilliant editors know likes to read my work. So while I appreciate the efforts by the Washington Post or the LA Times to feature more women writers, I am forced to wonder nonetheless why it's so hard to find women writers in the first place, and what about our voices supposedly appeal more to women or men.

(By the way, I submitted this article to the Gender Genie and it determined that I write like a man. Maybe I should start submitting OpEds with just my initials?)

Study Finds Imbalance on 3 Newspapers’ Op-Ed Pages [NY Times]
An Op-Ed Need for Diverse Voices [Washington Post]
Why Are All The Big Political Bloggers Men [Glamocracy]
A Very Public Opinion Exchange [LA Times]