i'm not -- i don't see myself assessment a forerunner or someone to look up to, but i hope the book would give people a chance to say well gee, look what he did. i can do. -- i can do that. :

>> guest: dad was an optimist. when anything went wrong he said well, we will get them the next time. it will get better. my mom is more of a realist, but a fighter for a cause. she probably did more to push me through high school and into college than anybody. dad died about four years ago, and left a big hole in my life. >> host: why are you in lincoln, nebraska, now if you have lived in a state of missouri for soma years? >> guest: i moved back from missouri to nebraska when my little hometown, called west point, i wanted to spend time with my peers. they were getting aged.

and spent some time with dad before he died. and then this last summer, as we had just finished putting touches on the book, i came down with an intestinal problem that lead to respiratory arrest. so i am in lincoln with an extended stay. >> host: facility? >> guest: extended stay facility. because i have several other holes in my body, and i don't think i can maintain any independents. there's too much need for professional help. so here i am. >> host: how many years did you practice law before you retired? >> guest: about 22 years. not long enough. >> host: you enjoyed it. >> guest: yes, i enjoyed it tremendously. i enjoyed the work. i enjoyed my colleagues. i thought i was an asset to the

office, in some way, which i don't really -- i don't like talking about myself. it's difficult sometimes. but it was a blast. something nobody ever expected me to do. >> host: i want to point out that your book, "chasing normality," it's not just the story of your professional life, or just inspirational, but it is also a lot personal, a personal memoir as well. >> guest: yeah, i wanted to tell a story, the story of myself, you know. the professional life was part of it, but i don't know, it gets boring talking about tax cases. it was an attempt to say who i am and what i did. and it was probably one of the hardest things i've ever done. it's much be sure to write a law brief. >> host: if people are interested in buying this book,

where can they go to find it? >> guest: right now they would have to go -- google my name. i have two websites. www.chasingnormality.com, and the other one is www.richardwieler.com. the other who are not literate would have to write the cover. we formed a little publishing company to do this. >> this was self published, correct? >> guest: i got tired of rejection slips. >> host: what were the reasons given for those rejections? >> guest: one from the university of missouri said he didn't have enough local content. i wrote them a nasty letter on that one. [laughter] >> guest: but the university of iowa said it was just, the book would take too much of their advertising budget because there

wasn't a specific genre. it was a general memoir, and it would have to appeal to a general audience. and others have said no. the first time author, no agent, no business. so after about seven or eight rejections, a friend of mine offered to finance the start, and we just did it ourselves. >> host: richard weitz is the author of "chasing normality: with a little help from family and friends," co-author is maureen o'halloran clark. thank you for joining us for a few minutes on booktv. >> guest: you are very welcome. i enjoyed it. >> in her book "enlightened sexism, susan douglas compares

culture. >> i wanted to begin by just talking summit in from about why i wrote this book, and then i'm going to do a brief reading from the introduction. in 1994, i published a book called "where the girls are" and it did very well. it was about the mixed messages that baby-boom girls and women got from the mass media and our own love-hate relationship with popular culture. as a result, i did get a lot of speaking engagements at colleges and universities. but pop culture, as we all look, has a pretty short shelf life, and especially after the turn-of-the-century. and survey by the middle of the past decade, people were starting to ask me what i thought about buffy, or xena, not to mention the bachelor. all the makeover shows. and then more reason shows like

desperate housewives or madmen, and asked if i was going to write a sequel. and so i thought. also, my data was moving through her teenage years, and i saw the increasingly retrograde images on offer for her, images that, frankly, board zero resemblance to her or to her smart, savvy accomplished friends here but i was also noting at the same time, me being a baby-boom other and having a teenage daughter, how the media, through magazines, tv shows, films and advertising, divided us. baby-boom feminist mothers against our girl power daughters, especially around the issues of obsessive consumerism and sexual display. you know, the girls gone wild phenomenon. so i wanted to explore the roots of this also. the book begins in the early 1990s, and what was very

interesting for me was to be reminded that this was a time of incredible feminist ferment. women's fury at the way unusual was treated during the way that clarence thomas confirmation hearings, making 1992 the quote unquote year of the woman when war with untrained more women ran for congress than ever before. went susan's book backlash was a bestseller. win the right girl movement had taken hold, talking back to male domination in the punk rock movement. when they were take back the night i was at college and university campuses all over the country. so i started at this moment, was reminded how much kind of feminist energy there was in the air. and as i moved farther along and got closer and closer to the present, i was struck by how,

over time, how to effectively feminism, a social movement that has done so much for women and four men, for that matter, has been so vilified in the media that many young women regarded as the ideological equivalent of anthrax. so i wanted to trace how did that happen. i also teach and work with young women, and i've seen that we once again have been referred and famously called a problem with no name. meaning millions of young women, the girl power generation have been told that they can do or be anything, yet they also know the most important task is to be slim, hot, and not threatening two men. that there is a walk of shame on college campuses for girls. but not for boys. and wants to get out in the workforce, they learn that there is still pay discrimination, inflexible workplaces, women more than men slotted into

low-paying dead-end jobs. and a class seating and so many lines of work are the also get the message loud and clear that the absolute last thing they should embrace is feminism. they have been intimidated actually to shun feminism when, i think him in their hearts they know we still need it. and so we have a need and a desire that is being censored. so what i wanted to do was pinpoint what it isn't that remains unspoken, but that is still bothering so many of us. and to give a name to what coursing through our popular culture. this message that you can do or be anything you want as long as you conform to very confining ideals around him in anything, if you don't want to much. so i was gratified when in its recent review newsweek said, and i quote, enlightened sexism is

the perfect description for feeling young women have long struggled to name. it is sure to dominate the vernacular for years to come. end quote. well, here's hoping. [laughter] >> so what is "enlightened sexism"? it is a new, so, sneaky form of sexism that seems to accept and even celebrate female achievements on the surface. but is really about repudiating feminism and keeping women and especially young woman in their places. "enlightened sexism" insist that because women have allegedly achieved full equality with men, and the battle is over and supposedly one, it's now okay, even funny, to resurrect retro- big sexist images of women, and especially young women. looking and most of the media fear is the message that feminist politics is no longer necessary. it's passé, it's so 1970s.

and also even dangerous to women. when, in fact, a host of issues from pay inequity, poverty and violence still affect millions of women. so i wanted to take on this medium is that the work of the women's movement is complete. and i wanted to take on this new sometimes very subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle at all sexism in the media. and especially i wanted to make fun of it. because i do think that humor, especially for women is a very powerful weapon. so that is a brief background for the book, i'm just going to read a brief excerpt from the very introduction of the book so you get a feel for it. spring 1997, it is a 12 a.m. saturday. the feminist mom who looks like she just got shot out of a wind turbine and has a cheap chardonnay hangover is making pancakes for four, eight year

old girls, who have had a sleepover party. let's just say that she is not in the most festive mood. then blasting from the other room she hears what has become the photograph and them of that spring, i'll tell you what i want, what i really, really want, i'll play what i want, what i really, really want. she peeks around the corner to see the four girls singing and dancing with abandon, sucking and girl power with every breath. at that instant, she saw the post feminist that would end up her daughter's generation, and she wondered, should she be happy that they're listening to busty a feminism instead of watching barbie commercial on saturday morning tv? or should she run in, with the cd out of the player and insist they listen to marry carpenter someone else instead. this was the spice girls moment and debate. were these early frosted cupcakes really a vehicle for

feminism? at how much reverted back to the glory days of pre-feminism should girls and women accept, even celebrate, given that we now have allegedly had it all? despite their wonder bras, bare thighs, pouty lips and top of the head ponytails, of the sort, favored by pebbles on the flintstones, the spice girls nonetheless advocated girl power. they demanded in their colossal intercontinental hipped wannabe the boys treat them with respect, or take a high. their boldface liner notes claim that the future is female, and suggested that they and their fans were freedom fighters. they made margaret thatcher an honorary spice girls. we are freshening up feminism for the '90s, they told the guardian. feminism has become a dirty war. girl power is just a '90s way of saying it. they proclaim that new h. feminism made you have a brain, a voice, and an opinion. and hot pants.

all right. fast-forward to 2008. talk about growth are. millions of women and men voted for one woman who ran for president, and another who ran for vice president. the one who ran for vice president has five children, one of them a four month old infant, yet it was verboten to even ask whether she could handle the job, what also ending to a baby. and other issues like whether she ever read in newspaper or really could see russia from her when the ditzy a patent more pressing that at the same time when female secretary of state, and the woman who had run for president became a very high profile successor. there were female ceos, a woman angry the cbs evening news, and female attorneys, surgeons, police chiefs and judges all over dramatic tv. on reality tv shows like

survivor, female contestants battled a fire as an egg one is the size of golf carts right alongside the men. remember when allenby jitters came out in 1997, supposedly scandalizing a nation and then having a sitcom canceled? by 2008, she and rachel madoff, to listen to each host of their own talk show and it was no big deal at all. in fact, millions of us love them. and alan's wedding to her girlfriend was blast all over the cover of people, just like that of any straight celebrity. feminism? who needs feminism anymore? aren't we like so done your? okay, so some women moaned about the sexes coverage of hillary clinton, picky, picky, picky. so wait a minute. the top five jobs for women are not a tourney, surgeon, or the ceo. they are, in order, secretaries in first place, followed by registered nurses, elementary and middle school teachers,

cashiers and retail salesperson, farther down the line mates, childcare workers, office clerks and hairdressers. not a ceo or a hedge fund manager inside. and in the end not a president or the vice president either. but what about all those career driven girls going to college and supposedlsupposedly leaving the guys in the dust? a year out of college young women earned 80% of what men make, and 10 years out 69%. and if girls and women who have come so far, and full equality has been truly achieved, why is it that kmart sells outfits for four year old girls that look like something out of something out of frederick's of hollywood? did the ladies professional golf association of all groups, in 2002, feel compelled to call in hairstylist and makeup artist to enhance the players sex appeal? and why the pundits fell free to comment on hillary clinton's cleavage that not john mccain

-- well, nevermind. how do we square the persistence of female in equality with all of those images of female power we have seen in the media? a hand on her hips don't even think about messing with me, doctor bennett on grey's anatomy can. agents called on the exiles, brandon johnson as the chief on the closer, or even the first female president's in 20 and the short-lived series, and then she. advertisements tell women that they have achieved so much they should celebrate by buying themselves their own diamond ring for the right hand, and urge their poor flaccid husband crippled by epidemic of emasculation and erectile dysfunction to start main buying viagra or cialis. indeed, in films from dumb and dumber, to super bad, guys are

hopeless losers. and sex and a city with its characters who are successful professionals by day, and, sutra master spy not, there was no such thing as a double standard. women had as much sexual freedom and maybe even more kinky sex then the men. cosmo isn't for passive girls waiting for the right guy to find them. it's the magazine for the fun, fearless female who is also proud to be as almost every cover puts it, a sex genius. have a look at oh, the magazine is one giant all-encompassing throbbing zone of self-fulfillment for women were everything from pillows to cover notebooks, but only if purchased and used properly, are empowering and everything is possible. and why not? one of the most influential and successful media moguls, is none other than oprah winfrey herself. now something is out of whack here.

if you emerge yourself in a media fare of the past 10 to 15 years, what you see is a rather large gap between how the vast majority of girls and women live their lives, the choices they are forced to make, and what they see and what they do not see in the media. and this is a great irony for me. this is just the opposite of the gap in the 1950s and '60s, when images of women as what you see dancing then there's on a beach or stay-at-home housewife who need advice from mr. clean about how to watch a trip washington or, joining the peace corps, and becoming involved in politics. back then the media delusion was that girls and women's aspirations were not changing at all when they were. now, the media delusion is that the quality for girls and women is an accomplished fact when it is not. then the media were behind the curve. not ironically they are ahead. now have girls or women made a lot of progress since the

1970s? you bet. women's college basketball, to choose just one example, its existence completely unimaginable when i was in school. is now nationally televised. and vulgar boneheaded remarks about the players can get even a money machine like don imus fired, even if only temporarily. but now we are all district attorneys, medical residents, chiefs of police, or rich blonde socal heiresses. not so much. since the early 1990s, much of the media has come to over represent women as having completed in the professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort and joy primarily by the tiffany's encrusted doyens of laguna beach. at the same time, there has been a resurgence of retrograde

clogging our cultural arteries, the man show, maxim, girls gone wild, right still is. but even this fear which insist that young women should dress like strippers and have the mental capacity was presented as empowering because while they can't leave clad or bare breasted women may have seemed to be objectified. they were really on top, because now they have chosen to be sex objects, and men were supposedly nothing more than their helpless ongoing crotch driven slaves. was the meeting have been giving us than our little more than fantasies of power. they assure girls and women repeatedly that women's liberation is a and we are stronger, more successful, more sexually in control, more fearless, and more held in awe than we actually are. we can believe that any woman can become a ceo or president, that women have achieved economic perfection and

political parity with men. and we can expunge any suggestions that there might be some of us who actually have to live on the national median income for women. which in 2007 was just over $32,000 a year. yet the images we see on television, in the movies and in advertising also insist that purchasing power and sexual power are much more gratifying than political or economic power. buying stuff from the right stuff, a lot of stuff, it emerged as a dominant way to empower ourselves. of course, women in fictional tv shows can be in the highest positions of authority, but in real life, maybe not such a good idea. instead, the seductive message to young women is that being decorative is the highest form of power. went of course if it was, dick cheney would have gone to work everyday in a sequined tutu. so what's the matter with

fantasies of female power? haven't the media always provided escapist fantasies? isn't that like, their job? and our many in the media, however belatedly, simply addressing women's demands for more representations of female achievement and control? well, yes. but there's the odd somewhat unintended consequence. under the guise of escapism and pleasure. we are getting images of imagine the power that mask and even erase how much still remains to be done for girls and women. images that make the sexism seem fine, even fun. and insist that feminism is not utterly pointless, even bad for you. and if we look at what is being said about girls and women in these fantasies, what we can and should do, what we can and can't be, we will see that slithering just below the shining barrage of power is the dark, sneaky serpent of sexism.

there has been a bit of a generational divide and how these fantasies are presented. older women, and i prefer the term that each females, like myself, have been given all of these ironclad women in the 10:00 and 9:00 the strip at night, the lawyers, cops and district attorneys on the entire law and order franchise, the senior partner on boston legal, the steely and busty forensic scientist on the various csi's, the ubiquitous female judges, especially african-american female judges, and brenda johnson, who with their big hair and southern drawl with her male chauvinist colleagues into shape asap on the closer. but many of us, especially mothers, have been less thrilled about the fantasies on offer for girls and young women. for millennials, those young women and girls born in the late 1980s and the 1990s who are the most attractive demographic for advertisers, the fantasies

and appeals have been much more commercial, and, not surprisingly, more retrograde. while they are the girl power generation, the bill of goods they are repeatedly sold is that true power comes from shopping, having the right logos, and it being hot. power also comes from judging, guessing, and competing with other girls, especially over boys because there's over boys that they barely know that i have watched these fantasies. often the opposite of the role model imagery presented to me so around my daughter and, well, i haven't been unused. one moment when this book may have gotten its start is when i wandered into the living room and saw my daughter watching an mtv show, sorority life. here viewers got to track the progress of college girls pledging to a sorority. and to see which trades, beheaded and had just gotten in. nice, pretty, ponytails.

and which ones get them out like so boston, like so phony, and any hairstyle that resembled a mullet. even though the show was allegedly about college life, no books, no newspapers, novels, debates about the existence of god, or discussion of any reason classroom lectures cluttered the scene or trouble the dialogue. these college girls were way too shallow for any of that. my sympathetic response to my den teenage daughter on the sofa, wrapped in a quilt, just trying to escape for a bit into this drivel filled world, a simple bellow, shot that crap off. now i ask you, what teenager wouldn't love to have a feminist mother standing over her shoulder while she watches television, pointing out how to show perpetrate stereotypes about girls being narcissistic

twits obsessed only with personal relationships? then warming to my task, as i passed in my daughter's obvious gratitude, i moved on to what i regard as a quite entertaining critique of the ads for cover go, victoria's secret, into these upcoming ultimate spring break orgy blow out. my daughter, eager to convey her appreciation, gave me a look that could melt a meteor. things are not much better between us when i was periodically dragged into that electronic something from hell, abercrombie and fitch. talk about paralyzed in your pleasure in retail. the firm that once sold been fishing rod and help out the attentive roosevelt for the bar and how a 12 story shop in manhattan with a log cabin on the road after come in fits and early 1990s change its focus to sell overpriced beaters and

half naked aryan men to the youth of america. the blown up in black and shots of muscular self-satisfied bond pretty boys in low-slung boxer shorts may have been attracted to my daughter, but all i kept thinking was, hitler youth. and statutory rape. the deafening boom boom dance floor music was supposed to convey, like, like dude, we were in a totally cool zone. but i always felt like i was trapped in godzilla's left ventricle. when the homeric excursion was mercifully over, my daughter would be in possession of various items that would turn her into a walking billboard for abercrombie and fitch. and carrying shopping bags with bare naked sushi grade torso's that proclaimed that nothing, nothing, nothing, was more important than turning yourself