The Washington Post recently published this letter to the editor expressing the author’s opinions, not necessarily those of The New Agenda.  We learned about the letter via daughter Amelia’s blog entry at Equal Writes, a gender-issues blog by Princeton students.

On May 26 the [Washington] post relegated to the Style section an important story about a courageous, brilliant woman who was far ahead of her time [Credit Crisis Cassandra].  Manuel Roig-Franzia wrote of Brooksley Born’s fight in 1998 to regulate those disastrous investments known as derivatives when she chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Her efforts were beaten back by, among others, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan.

This principled, insightful woman foresaw one of the financial disasters that would bring down our economy.  She broke through glass ceilings at Stanford University’s law school, in private practice, and in public service.

She spoke her own mind, facing down the political powers that be when she warned presciently of the dangers of unregulated derivatives.

And, yet, The Post consigned this story to the Style section, lumping it with the comics and advice columns.  The story also included passing references to her handbag, thereby reminding us that women are still to be judged by their clothes and accessories.

The Post demeaned Born’s legacy.  Such stories should be placed in the news section, where they belong, whether they are about men or women.

Editor’s Note:  From the original article:

Before taking office, Born had been a high-octane attorney, and American Bar Association power player, a noted advocate of feminist causes and co-founder of the National Women’s Law Center.  But none of that carried much weight when she crossed over into government; for all her legal experience, she was a woman who wasn’t adept at playing the game.  She could be unyielding and coldly analytical, with a litigator’s absolute assertions of right and wrong.  And she was taking on the Beltway pros, masters of nuance and palace politics.  She marched into Congressional hearing after congressional hearing — pin neat, always with a handbag — but no one really wanted to listen.

The Wall Street Journal declared that “the nation’s top financial regulators wish Brooksley Born would just shut up.”  The Bond Buyer newspaper compared her to a salmon “swimming against raging currents.”

That last one cracks her up.  “Maybe not an inappropriate analogy!” she says.

Now that she is retired and far from a position of influence, Born, 68, may be closer than ever to vindication.  No longer an outlier, she attended a small, private dinner at the Treasury Department last week with current and former regulators at the invitation of Secretary Tim Geithner, according to two sources.  And the Obama administration has unveiled a plan to regulate some of the derivatives she warned about, though the proposal must still get through Congress and falls short of regulating the entire over-the-counter market that kept her awake all those years ago.

Still, maybe — just maybe — her old friends say, the people in charge are beginning to realize what they though all along:  “the lady with the handbag was right.”