Chicks With Opinions

Just a bit more comment on Russert's morning sausage-fest. It is of course true that on many issues women are frequently excluded from such discussions. It's also true that had the topic been "economic policy" or "foreign policy" or something I probably wouldn't have even noticed (to my discredit). The lack of female participation in the public discourse on those issues is mostly just part of a larger pattern of female exclusion from the public discourse (not a good thing, of course, but standard operating procedure). But it's even more horrendous to me that on an issue which is regularly discussed as being important to women -- if not precisely portrayed as a women's issue, it's frequently lumped in with "family" issues which is just code for "stuff adult chicks care about" -- that neither Russert nor his booker noticed that there was something amiss in their choices of guests.