Amid National Feminist Debate, VPT Airs New Kunin Documentary

Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg might be hogging the limelight when it comes to the national debate over women in the workplace, but in little ol' Vermont, it's a veteran stateswoman who has taken up the banner for better access to childcare, paid parental leave and flexible work schedules — all factors that former governor Madeleine Kunin believes would encourage women's leadership and participation in the workforce.

That advocacy is on display in the new documentary Madeleine Kunin: Political Pioneer, which debuts tonight on Vermont Public Television at 9 p.m. and is also available to stream online. The hourlong documentary is charts the private and political life of Vermont's first woman governor. If you've been following the national debate about women in the workplace — or if you're just eager to see some particularly rad, 1970s- and '80s-era Statehouse archival footage — it's worth a watch. (Keep your eyes peeled for former governor Jim Douglas' particularly rad, plaid suit coat: fantastic.) 

Watch Madeleine May Kunin: Political Pioneer on PBS. See more from Vermont Public Television Documentaries.

 

Writer, producer and director Catherine Hughes worked as a journalist for WCAX in the 1980s during Kunin's three terms as governor. "Even I, who had paid some attention to her career, was still amazed when I really sat down and looked at everything she's done," says Hughes.

John McClaughry: Free-Market Conservative and…Champion of Frogs?

John McClaughry has never been shy about offering his opinions on just about anything done by the state or federal government. An ex-state senator, former speechwriter and senior policy advisor to President Reagan, and founder of the free-market think tank, Ethan Allen Institute, McClaughry made a career out of wading hip-deep into the weeds of public policy matters. 

Perhaps all that time spent in bureaucratic swamps explains McClaughry's personal fondness for frogs.

Evidently, though, McClaughry is shy about admitting to his secret, 50-year side gig as champion of croaking amphibians. Beginning in 1961, McClaughry, under the pseudonym Nestle J. Frobish, dubbed himself "Chair-Creature of the Worldwide Fair Play for Frogs Committee." In that role, he launched a campaign to skewer the political aspirations of a then-California state assemblyman, then later U.S. congressman, named Jerome R. Waldie.

Waldie's damnable offense? As a freshman Democratic lawmaker from Antioch, Calif., he introduced a one-line bill in the California State Assembly that read, "Frogs may be taken using slingshot." At the time, McClaughry was a college student at UC Berkeley — another difficult concept to wrap one's head around. McClaughry describes his alter-ego Frobish as "an outraged liberal who thought this invasion of the rights of the frog was wholly unconscionable and embarked on a crusade that eventually came to victory 44 years later."

Quiz: Know Your Vermont State Symbols

Should kale be Vermont's official state vegetable? State Senators Anthony Pollina (P/D-Washington), Bill Doyle (R-Washington) and David Zuckerman (P/D-Chittenden) recently introduced a bill to make it so. The leafy green has gained prominence locally as a result of Bo-Muller Moore's "Eat More Kale" shirts and stickers — and subsequent trademark troubles. (No word on whether Chick-fil-A and Healthy Choice yogurt are planning to lobby against kale's selection.)

That's not the only point of emblem business this session. A group of House Reps are sponsoring a bill that would make Vermont's state reptile the painted turtle — which is odd, as the painted turtle already became the state reptile thanks to the efforts of Cornwall Elementary School students in 1994.

You might not know that Vermont has an official state soil (Tunbridge soil series), state fossil (white whale) and three state rocks (granite, marble and slate). After the jump, we've embedded a quiz to test your knowledge of 12 state symbols.

20 Years After Clinton-Gore, a Burlington Artist Reflects On His Iconic T-Shirt Design

While Republicans from around the country gather in Tampa this week, a Burlington designer is looking back on his small but significant contribution to a different presidential campaign.

In the summer of 1992, Doug Dunbebin was a graphic artist living in Beltsville, Md. when he came up with a design and slogan for the Clinton-Gore ticket that would soon catch fire and become one of the iconic images of the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns.

In June 1992, then-candidate Clinton appeared on the "Arsenio Hall Show" and ripped out a bluesy version of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" on his tenor saxophone. It was a seminal moment in Clinton's political career — as Hall remarked afterward, "It's good to see a Democrat blow something other than an election" — and earned him new found respect and support among young and minority voters.

 

Within weeks, Dunbebin, then 30, created an electric-blue-on-black illustration (above) of Clinton blowing his sax, below the slogan, "The Cure for the Blues."  He printed the design on a few dozen T-shirts and gave them to friends from the National Organization for Women, who were heading to New York City's Madison Square Garden for the Democratic National Convention in mid-July.