It’s been over three months since f/k/a started its punditry hiatus. Some weblogging colleagues have speculated that we’ve actually been busy all summer working on the new shlep website. The reality, however, is that the f/k/a Gang really needed the rest, and avoided all serious weblog activity for over ten weeks.
Nonetheless, two recent posts by Bob Ambrogi for LegalBlogWatch almost got us to peek our noses out from under our downtime blankies. We were tempted to opine, but decided to stay the course and stay (relatively) silent and supine.
Bob’s first post explained that “A New Zealand law firm that encourages its professionals to take naps if they are sleepy has won the country’s top work-life balance award.” If we were into that their kind of law, Meredith Connell sounds like our kind of firm: “offering workers flexible work hours to take account of personal commitments.” But, a nap can be as contagious as a yawn, and we’ve decided to continue to specialize in bedrest.
The second Ambrogi post at LegalBlogWatch, Feminism v. Blogging in Drag, got our dander up, but our better angels have (mostly) convinced our pudit devils to shush up. Bob gives an excellent summary of the brou-hah-hah started by the self-proclaimed “feminists” at the Feminist Law Professors weblog. Led by Ann Bartow, they launched an attack on Daniel Lat for holding an ERISA (pension) lawyer “hottie contest” at AboveTheLaw. That complaint broadened into an attack on males who did their weblogging in drag, by taking on female persona (as Lat had done at his first weblog, Article III Groupie). As usual, Prof. Ann Althouse seems to take a more balanced perspective.
Hepburn & Tracy in Adam’s Rib 
We are tempted to point out, yet again, our belief, that the neo-feminist penchant for humorless, picky, puritanical censorship does far more harm to their cause than the materials and (atavistic, often purposely and obviously puerile) attitudes they are deriding. We’re even tempted to link once again to our favorite Callahan feminist cartoon. But, the Gang has built up a considerable amount of self control around this summer, and will merely suggest a paraphrase to FemLawProf‘s tagline, which is “No person is your friend who demands your silence.” Perhaps Bartow et al. should at least consider that, for both genders, “No person is your equal who demands your silence.”
p.s. Hiatus or not, we’re almost looking forward to being called a stuffy, WASPy, male Harvard-type who just doesn’t “get it.”
p.p.s. Prof Bartow says “Possibly Lat doesn’t understand that being celebrated for her looks is not known for being a ticket to career success in the legal world for a female attorney.” This statement is contrary to my personal observation, both in government and private practice. At the very least, good looks does not appear to be a negative career characteristic.
Speaking of attractive, successful lawyers, Roberta Beary just won 1st Place in the prestigious Harold Brady Memorial Senryu Contest for 2006, from the Haiku Society of America, with this senryu:
first date–the small pileof anchovies
Oh, did you come here for some haiku, too? Well, while our sister weblog shlep is looking for a librarian or two to be co-editors, we have already found our kind of librarian here at f/k/a — it’s Tom Clausen, of Cornell University’s Mann Library (public/access services section). Let’s let him quietly show us his stuff:
daybreak
the spider centered
in its web(Winner, The Haiku Calendar Contest 2006, Snapshot Press;frogpond, XXIX:1 Winter 2006)
long wait alone
in the parking lot. . .
a dog in the next car
morning fog. . .
a mash of wild apples
on the road
turning off the music
a few miles before
getting there
cabin window–
the plant has gone
everywhere it can
log bridge–
going to the end
then returning
letting her
walk all over me
ladybug
. . . by Tom Clausen,
from being there (Swamp Press, 2005)
Katherine Hepburn as lawyer Amanda Bonner, in Adam’s Rib (1949).