Charlie Rose

slnred  05/23/2009 06:09 PM Report

Cheryl lacks the ability to articulate the primary thesis of her book. I don't know if she's nervous, or just not really that smart, but her interviews on the book tour have been extremely ineffective, even though I think the message she tries to articulate is probably a good one.

I think what she has been trying to say is that women need to stop being people pleasers --- to men, to society, to their families, to roles that have been imposed on them (or that they've accepted), and to each other, and find out who they truly are. What that simply means is that women should figure out what truly matters to them, what they are good at, and use these things to effect some sort of change to the world around them, on whatever scale they choose.

Isn't that the simple premise? I've seen Charlie (and a host of other interviewers) try to get this simple thing out of her and she can't give it. Don't think she's right for the table, even if the message is a sound one.

mjzaborek  05/23/2009 01:43 AM Report

To add something to JMM's description of women's life in the 1960's, I lived downtown Chicago then and girlfriend and I went to see the new sensation, Bette Midler, at Mr. Kelly's Supper Club on Rush Street. We sat at the bar to watch the show because we couldn't afford to buy dinner. We were asked to leave because we had no escorts. Apparently we were presumed to be hookers.

JMM  05/22/2009 07:15 PM Report

The last two reviews are perfect examples of why women need more self-value and support in the world.

Cheryl, if you read this, please consider this suggestion: support the financing of a movie on what it took for women to gain rights ... as it’s really astonishing. Pick up a “Chronicle of the 20th Century: the ultimate record of our times” (Dorling Kindersley) and start in 1903, when Emmeline Pankhurst started a militant suffrage group in the UK. Go through the protests, the arson, the shop window smashing campaign, trying to destroy the telephone line, bombs in churches, the bombing of ministers’ home, the burning of mansions and churches, taking cleavers to public paintings, suffragettes throwing themselves in front of cars, going to prison, being force-fed in prison ... all to convince the men in power that they really do want the right to vote. Be sure to look at October 1913, at the Derby Martyr, the suffragette who tried to stop the king’s derby horse but was killed. Her funeral brought worldwide attention somewhat akin to Princess Diana’s. The male politicians responded to the suffragettes with “taunts” for “not expressing themselves forcibly enough” and sold games about them being sent to prison.

You can link Emmeline Pankhurst to the US as she was in NY in December 1913.

By 1914, there were 2000 petitions with over a million

names in the UK ... but none of the above produced women’s rights. It took women working in The Great War – they were guaranteed same wages, but did not get them –before women got the right to vote in the UK in 1918. The women in Canada were turned down by the Canadian government, so went to the UK and got rights for the Canadian women there.

For a look at the US, in 1902, NY introduced a bill to stop public flirting. Many of the US news is about the fines women got for public dress or behaviour. But US women did get the right to vote in 1920. Wyoming was the best of the US States when it came to women’s rights.

Finland was the first and best in the world for women’s

rights. Women in France, Italy, and Japan didn’t get the right to vote until after World War II.

And if brought up to date ... don’t forget that in the 1960s, women were not able to go to a bar unless they had a male escort and then they entered through a separate door to a separated area.

Younger women should know what it took for their ancestors to obtain rights that are now taken for granted. And maybe the education and a new attitude will spread even to places like the Congo where there is a war on women, and to media reports on mass murders (victims are mostly women too). And, who knows, maybe even MSNBC will change its attitude.

mjzaborek  05/22/2009 04:51 PM Report

Thanks to REMant for expressing my views. After watching Cheryl Sabant on my Houston TX TV channel last night, I thought "what a pretty pink blouse", let's see what she has to say, and it was nothing substantial at all. Like REMant said, this is old feminist stuff. So she was raped at 18. Most women were back in the '60's! It's now considered date rape and you just did it because there was no way to get the guy out of your apartment after you stupidly invited him in. Perhaps in her book she suffered a more brutal rape, but she didn't explain it on TV.

Now that I see her bio on Google, and her marriage to someone who can support her, she lacks sympathy, in my view.

I was quite surprised that you would have her as a guest on your program. I stay up late to watch unbiased interviews with Heads of States, Sheila Baird, Nouriel Roubini, famous authors, but was disappointed with this bit of fluff with Cheryl Saban.

REMant  05/22/2009 03:45 PM Report

This is old feminist stuff, which one should, I suppose, expect in someone of her age and reputation as a former Playboy model. I don't mind it, but she is fighting the last war. This has been a female-dominated society for nearly 200 yrs and in Britain a century before that. Women have worked their way thru their men, particularly thru their children. But she is trying to compete with men in a world they have long lost. Helping abused women is I suppose laudatory, but I don't know how many of them there are these days, and it seems to me that the boys are in need of far more help.

She says she wants the family to be run like a corporation, when the corporation arose out of this female-dominated domesticity. One wonders what kind of corporation or family she has in mind. Shows of the type her husband produced seemed devoid of adults in any capacity. I should probably read the scripts she used to write for Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers for clues. I think she must have escaped being conditioned to the "proper" attitude as a child, and like a 3d world peasant she is only now discovering the "true" religion. In her quest for self-awareness, IMHO tho, she would have been better off without the schooling in psychology, but it seems she learned something about advertising there, or perhaps from husband or the Huffingtonians. This is all, in fact, too reminiscent of Welch's wife. Perhaps there is a new Vanity Fair competition going on. I see also that the Saban's play both sides of the political street and that most of their interest seems to be on the side of Zionism.

Some web material says she is a former Playmate, but I can find no detailed resume online, and after some examination I doubt this is true, unless she is lying about her age. I have to say after some consideration that her past does not entirely add up, nor do I find many such women, - and I have known some - who go around in later life, if they have left the fold, trumpeting their paticipation in Hefner's menagerie, esp when their husbands are billionaires, much less loudly proclaiming being raped. But she does, nevertheless, seem to have the Playboy attitude. It will surprise some men that most of the women who appear in its pages are only rarely what they think, and do so for the money or career advancement in the time-honored manner of Hollywood prostitution. Many end up resentful and feeling humiliated, and that is I suppose why she sounds a lot like a Boston choirboy, despite being dressed up like a "legal blonde." An awful lot of people seem to be emerging from the rape closet these days like a Forster novel. Beauty, however, has been out of fashion in the entertainment field, adult or otherwise for 10-15 yrs. I sort of resent seeing this show used in this way, but then I also disliked seeing the Tonight Show as an old-stand-up-comedians home.