Backlash

BOSTON -- As Aug. 26 approaches, our awards committee faces its task in a rather ambivalent spirit. The annual Equal Rites Awards ceremony, held in honor of our foremothers who won the right to vote on this day, has always been an occasion for taking stock.What can we say about the past year? The good news is that women finally achieved something close to equal standing on Page 1. The bad news is that the name that's closed the gender gap is Monica Lewinsky. The good news is that we held a national conversation about relationships between men and women.

DEL MAR, Calif. -- Joe Canales threw his burly arms around Gov. George W. Bush in a tight abrazo as the Republican presidential candidate made his way through the crowd at a Southern California county fair here yesterday.Canales, a 43-year-old father of nine, is a registered Democrat. But he will embrace Bush's candidacy if the Texas governor becomes the Republican nominee next year."I know he's going after the Hispanic vote, and I think he's going to get it," says Canales, who owns a security company in Vista, Calif.

In the world of fishing, Roland Martin, who learned the sport hereabouts, is a perfectionist. Every cast is planned, and never a backlash.But in early summer there was backlash of a different kind. In public relations."I learned a hell of a lot about being humble," said the handsome blond, 51-year-old angler, one of 40 who will fish the BASS Masters Classic here starting next Thursday.He wishes he could make that cast again. There wouldn't be any backlashes this time around, Martin promised over the phone yesterday.

For the most part, the college men who attended Susan Faludi's lecture at Loyola College Wednesday night clung to the rear of McGuire Hall, the brims of their caps tilted low, should any feminist shrapnel fly their way.In her highly acclaimed 1991 book "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women," Ms. Faludi assailed male rage and resistance to the women's movement. And this lecture, which attracted 700 students and faculty, was billed: "Whose Backlash Is It Anyway? The Women's Movement and Angry White Men."

It's the other kind of drag. Women in pin stripes, starched shirts and neckties ruled the runways from Paris to New York this season.But like Madonna in "Express Yourself" or Marlene Dietrich in black tie, this is men's wear with an edge, Savile Row with an undercurrent of some new sexual dynamic."

BOSTON -- As August 26th approaches, our one-woman jury gathers again to pick the winners of the 1999 Equal Rites Awards. This is an annual ceremony held in honor of our foremothers who won the right to vote on this day, 79 years ago.In the last year of the millennium, we approach our task with special seriousness. We have, blessedly, had enough signs of progress to astonish our foremothers. In the past year, Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a space shuttle, Carly Fiorina broke the glass cyber-ceiling to become head of Hewlett-Packard, and a soccer team of women kicked their way onto the Wheaties Box.Champions aside, there are (alas)

From the bay shores of Worcester County to the Catoctin foothills of Frederick, a surge in development has sparked a political backlash that threatens to shake up courthouses across much of the state this fall.Fed up with crowded classrooms, jammed roads and vanishing open space, voters in five counties ousted incumbents in last month's primary elections who had been tagged by critics as too pro-development. Growth remains a hot topic in races for county executive, council or commissioner in at least a dozen counties.

DURING THE Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles pointed at each other, there was a powerful deterrent in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. No matter which country launched its missiles first, both would be wiped out. Similar logic has typically worked in the Senate, too, to protect the minority from a bullying majority. Senators never know when they might need such protection themselves. Now some Republicans, emboldened by their years of controlling Congress as well as the White House, seem so confident the pendulum won't swing back they are willing to trigger the parliamentary equivalent of a nuclear war by robbing minority Democrats of their ability to filibuster judicial nominees.

PARIS -- Washington and the European capitals are all preoccupied with China's economic growth and expanding international influence and activities, taken as evidence that in the not-too-distant future China will become a superpower. Washington thinks about China's becoming a military as well as economic superpower. The Europeans think about trade and economic competition. Both underestimate what it takes to become a modern industrial superpower. It requires a very high level of autonomous technological capacity, to begin with, as well as sophisticated and innovative industry to make use of it - both of which China today lacks.

TO ANNABELLA PELICANFROM THOMASHIPPOPOTAMUS.Nancy Patz.Four Winds Press.32 pages. $13.95. Ages 5-8.A story of two friends that will be read and discussed by young children, "To Annabella Pelican from Thomas Hippopotamus" is warm and honest. Children will recognize the security of having a best friend, and the anger and loss of losing that friend. Annabella and Thomas do everything together -- bike, picnic, swim, find and bury treasure, and climb the Giant Slide, until Annabella excitedly reports that her family is moving away -- leaving Thomas alone.