Cosmopolitan Magazine's Litmus Test

Spin Sisters hit the bookshelves less than a decade ago. It was a juicy insider's look at the $7-billion-a-year women's magazine industry—and the female media elite running it—that peddles an overt message of victimization and unhappiness to women while covertly delivering the liberal tripe that more government will alleviate all women's problems.  Its author, Myrna Blyth, editor-in-chief of Ladies Home Journal for over 20 years, pulled no punches on the divas in the industry and their quest to manipulate their women readers' thinking.

This fall Cosmopolitan Magazine will become less subtle in its liberal advocacy, according to Amy Otto.

When asked about Cosmo’s plans to cover November races, Editor in Chief Joanna Coles answered:

Yes! We’re going to be covering issues that directly impact our readers’ lives—like, equal pay for equal work. Sixty-two percent of college intake is now women, and no woman currently graduates from college and thinks it’s OK to be paid less than a man for doing the same job. We’re also very keen on access to contraception. Those are the two things that we feel really strongly about. [snip]

And I think young women voters are going to be the voters that actually turn the election. We want them to know what’s at stake. ...

Cosmo may feel strongly, but it thinks weakly.

When I asked Jill Filipovic, Cosmo’s senior political writer, about how the magazine would evaluate candidates, her criteria was nothing more than Democrat talking points.

Cosmopolitan simply wants to tell women whom to vote for without evaluating whether their favored policies help women. This is more elite, left-wing, New York City 1 percenters telling women what they should think.

So the Sisters are spinning faster, with the intent to capture the next generation of young women readers in their deceitful web.

Read Otto's response: Five Mind-Blowing Ways Cosmopolitan Will Push Policies That Harm Women.

How Contraception Became Proxy for Women's Freedom

"Contra Justice Ginsburg, the Hobby Lobby decision is no cause for alarm," writes Helen Alvaré. She argues that even though Ginsburg's voice doesn't represent many women, "her arguments still have power" (particularly in the marketplace of male-female relationships), and they can't go unchallenged.

For significant and entrenched reasons, birth control has become a proxy for “women’s freedom” in the minds of many women, even if they’re not actually touched by the Hobby Lobby decision.

A significant number of women have good reasons to be anxious about the possibility of becoming pregnant when they are not fully willing and prepared. This is largely due to the situation in the “marketplace” of male-female relationships and the lack of policies helping mothers manage work outside the home.

First, regarding this marketplace, today it fosters non-marital sex, cohabitation, later marriage, abortion, and single parenthood (and thus female poverty). These phenomena are disadvantageous to women, and in the minds of many, can be mitigated or avoided by contraception. The mechanisms by which these results are produced are brilliantly summarized by leading economists.

Catron: 43 Catholic Organizations Launch Legal Challenge

If the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services "thought the outrage voiced by various cardinals, bishops, and countless lay Catholics over the anti-conscience mandate was mere bluster, they got a wake-up call yesterday," writes David Catron at the American Spectator.

On Monday, 43 high-profile Catholic organizations, including the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and the University of Notre Dame, filed suit against the Obama administration. In an open letter, the Archbishop of Washington summed up the collective position of the plaintiffs by explaining that the mandate "fundamentally redefines the nation's long-standing definition of religious ministry… HHS's conception of what constitutes the practice of religion is so narrow that even Mother Teresa would not have qualified."

Saddle-broken and Snake Bitten

The contraception mandate must have come as a shock to the many Catholics who chose to view the Obamacare promises through the church's rosy-colored 'social justice' lens. As conservative columnist George Will succinctly explains in a 54-second clip of ABC's This Week (video here), the Catholic Bishops should have known better:

Three points. As Paul Ryan said to you, this is an accounting gimmick that they've done that in no way ends the complicity of Catholic institutions and individuals in delivering services they consider morally abhorrent.

Second. You asked the question, 'How did this come about?' George, this is what liberalism looks like. This is what the progressive state does. It tries to break all the institutions of civil society, all the institutions that mediate between the individual and the state. They have to break them to the saddle of the state.

Third. The Catholic Bishops, it serves them right. They're the ones who were really hot for Obamacare, with a few exceptions. But they were all in favor of this. And this is what it looks like when the government decides it's going to make your healthcare choices for you.

Cue Al Wilson's "The Snake."