Starting at the 3rd paragraph below, Sentinel columnist Liz Langley talks to Eva about BPW Orlando's Pink Tea which was held on 8/14 in celebration of the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.  Ms. Langley attended our Pink Tea, which was by all accounts a rousing success with over 50 Orlando business women. 

As some may not know, the code words "Pink Tea" were used back at the turn of the century for women to organize and discuss women's suffrage.  Finally in 1920, American's recognized that Women should be granted the same privileges as men and history was made.

OrlandoSentinel.com
LIZ LANGLEY COMMENTARY
A girl's gotta keep her secrets,and I'm keeping Joanne's
Liz Langley
POP CULTURE
August 3, 2007
It took five days and almost a whole box of cookies, but I finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I can say that J.K. Rowling is still worth every penny she's raking in. Since I'm still bitter about all those spoiler-esque predictions tampering with my enjoyment, however, I've decided to continue the cycle of literary violence and reveal the ending: In the last chapter, Harry wakes up back in his apartment in Chicago with Emily and realizes that the inn in Vermont was just a dream.

Come on -- you didn't think I'd really give away the finale, did you? No way -- I love and respect secrets -- having them, keeping them, discovering them. Without something to hide, there would be no mysteries, no thrillers -- no intellectual burlesque. As Agatha Christie often pointed out in her novels, people tend to accept things at face value, to see what they are directed to see and to forget details. That makes it easy for those who want to have a subplot going on right under their noses to succeed.

And thankfully so, or women might never have gotten the right to vote.

I never realized how concrete are the spoils we owe to our gifts of mystery until I heard Eva Krzewinski, past state president of Business and Professional Women of Florida, offer a quick history lesson to attendees of the monthly Women's Power Lunch. (Which I highly recommend as a great business opportunity -- plus, it's at Ruth's Chris Steak House, where the food is so good, it's a wonder anyone stops to network, mingle or talk at all).

The suffragettes disguised their political meetings -- which they weren't supposed to be having -- by calling them "pink teas." Having had their attention misdirected, the men accepted at face value that these pink teas were just a social gathering, a little intrigue that helped the women organize. We won the right to vote only 87 years ago, on Aug. 18, 1920.

It's hard for those of us who benefited from things such as pink teas to get our minds around how much we owe those women, who cared enough to pretend indifference, in order to win a higher quality of life for themselves . . . and all of us. The BPW will have their own Pink Tea on Aug. 14, Women's Equality Day, 6-8 p.m. at the Citrus Club (call 407-672-2601 for details) to celebrate the victories of our forebears and those who continue to work on our behalf. Thanks to them we don't have to waste our talent for mystery on politics these days -- we can do that out in the open and reserve our formidable feminine wiles just for fun.

Pick your poison, Chachi

It's interesting to wonder what those hard-working forebears would say if they could see that some women in the new millennium are using empowerment to go on TV and compete against other scantily clad women for the affections of some man they don't know. Which of course brings us back to reality.

Last week, I wrote about Rock of Love with Bret Michaels and Scott Baio is 45 . . . And Single, shows that attempt to help a rock star and a hot actor -- two guys who should statistically need the least help of anyone -- to find romance, or some hybrid of it. I was hot for Baio's show but said he seemed a little too smart, clean and normal for reality TV. The gaggle of fraggles on the Michaels show, I thought, were the secret toy surprises of the season. Largely looped, loopy and as classy as a car horn that plays "Dixie," they have the vibe that defines the genre.

It didn't occur to me after pronouncing Rock of Love the catchier show that I made myself a perfect metaphor for the whole girls-say-they-want-nice-guys-then-they-go-for-jerks cliche. I still Baio-watch; despite his notorious womanizing, he comes off as the kind of guy anyone, men or women, would want to know. And yet I'm drawn to the Rock of Love crew, in the words of my friend Paige, "like I'm a little magnet and it's a great big refrigerator." I guess no matter how free we are in other ways, some of us will never be liberated from our own deliciously trashy taste.

Hey spaceman, buy u a drank?

In fact, it seems no amount of savvy can prevent us from doing ridiculous things. Think how smart you have to be to be an astronaut, and then of the recent revelation that some astronauts have flown under the influence.

"On at least two occasions, NASA astronauts were permitted to fly after drinking heavily," according to a report released last Friday by an independent panel, said NPR.org. Investigators were clued in when the astronauts returned from a mission at 4 a.m. and ran over the mailbox.

OK, OK, driving drunk isn't a laughing matter. Rocketeering drunk kind of is, though. I'm not advocating it or anything, but seriously, they're in space -- it's not like they're going to jump a curb and hit a storefront. If alcohol is allowed in crew quarters they need another shuttle -- a yellow one with checkered detailing -- to keep on standby.

lizlangley@aol.com

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