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“Jose Cuervo, you are a friend of mine.” Do those words bring back memories? Linda Ronstadt and jolly times?

Except, of course, that Jose Cuervo is so often a lousy friend….

Statistics show that women are drinking more than ever, are being stopped for drunk driving more often — and a notorious recent car crash has thrown a spotlight on hidden drinking.

When Mommy cocktail hours are necessary to get through the day, when professional women know they’re crossing a line — help is needed.

This hour, On Point: what’s going on with women and booze.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Guests:

Rachael Brownell, mother of three and a recovering alcoholic. She’s author of “Mommy Doesn’t Drink Here Anymore: Getting Through the First Year of Sobriety.” You can read an excerpt here.

Dr. Petros Levounis, director of the Addiction Institute of New York and Chief of Addiction Psychiatry at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York. He’s author of “Sober Siblings: How to Help Your Alcoholic Brother or Sister — and Not Lose Yourself.”

Sarah Allen Benton, a recovering alcoholic and author of “Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic.” She is a mental health counselor at Emmanuel College in Boston.

A memorial of flowers outside the Women's Health Care Clinic in Wichita, Kan., on June 1, 2009. The clinic was owned by Dr. George Tiller, who was gunned down during church services the day before. (AP)

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Ten days ago, abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was shot dead in the foyer of his Wichita, Kansas church.

Yesterday, Tiller’s clinic in Wichita was closed, after years of threats and attacks — and now murder.

Abortion opposition has spoken with gunfire. Today, we’ll hear from a prominent defender. Episcopal priest Katherine Ragsdale has called abortion a “blessing.” She says there’s been too much compromise with opponents, too little straight-up defense.

This hour, On Point: In the face of gunfire, a full-throated defense of a woman’s right to choose abortion.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

The Reverend Katherine Ragsdale joins us in our studio. She is the incoming dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and outgoing executive director of Political Research Associates, which tracks right-wing political movements. She’s a board member of NARAL Pro-Choice America and a former chair of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. She has been Vicar of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Pepperell, Mass., since 1996.

You can read her remarks on abortion as a “blessing,” in a speech in Birmingham, Alabama, in July 2007.

Joining us from Washington is Jim Wallis, founder and editor of Sojourners, a progressive evangelical Christian magazine and faith community. An influential voice on religion and politics in America, he’s the author of several books, including “The Great Awakening: Seven Ways to Change the World” and “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.” (Listen to his previous interview with On Point in January 2005.)

More links:

The Boston Globe profiled Rev. Ragsdale, with a look at her involvement in national political issues, this past March.  Last week The Boston Phoenix ran this longer consideration of her thinking on abortion.

In a lenthy interview with Christianity Today last year, Jim Wallis explained his thinking on abortion, gay marriage, and other issues.

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If you’ve ever wondered who makes America’s popular culture pop and sizzle and shake on cable TV, think Lauren Zalaznick.

She’s a hot-as-a-pistol rising media mogul. President of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks. The boss at cable networks Bravo and Oxygen. The power behind “Top Chef,” “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” “Tori & Dean,” and the charmingly-named reality weight-loss show, “Dance Your Ass Off.”

Who comes up with this stuff? She does.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with pop culture mogul, Lauren Zalaznick.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Lauren Zalaznick is President of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, overseeing the cable networks Bravo, Oxygen and the women’s web site iVillage. She also heads up Women@NBCU, a sales and marketing initiative to target women viewers.

President Obama is expected to nominate a woman to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is currently the sole woman on the Supreme Court. (AP Photo)

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Any day now, Barack Obama will be announcing his choice for nominee to succeed David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. Speculation is high that it will be a woman.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said she’s “lonely” on the court. And at one level, it seems obvious that the court should have another woman. The world is half female.

But does a woman bring a special kind of jurisprudence to the bench? Is it the “quality of empathy” Obama says he wants? And what kind of woman? Hispanic? Straight? Gay? Elected?

This hour, On Point: Women, justice, and the Supreme Court.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Charlottesville, Va., is Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate. She recently co-wrote  a piece with Hanna Rosin called “An Unnatural Woman,” looking at potential female nominees to the Supreme Court and issues of sexuality. She’s also written recently about the controversial idea of a female jurisprudence and the concept of judicial empathy.

From Washington, we’re joined by Hanna Rosin, a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a writer for Slate. She’s also a founding editor of “Double X,” a new women-focused Web magazine launching today.

And from Palo Alto, Calif., we’re joined by Deborah Rhode, professor at Stanford Law School. She’s a pioneering scholar on the field of gender and the law. She’s director of Stanford’s Center on the Legal Profession. Her latest book is “Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies of Change.”

First lady Michelle Obama arrives to take part in the groundbreaking of the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn of the White House with students from Washington's Bancroft Elementary, Friday, March 20, 2009, at the White House in Washington. (AP)

Presidents lead. But First Spouses — First Ladies, in our history — matter, too. The set a tone. Project an image. Personify values. And come with their own ideas.

First Lady Michelle Obama has lived in the White House for 63 days now. She is like — and unlike — every First Lady before her. At her husband’s side. Making the White House a home. Sitting for her portrait – sleeveless, like Jackie Kennedy and Mamie Eisenhower.

And digging in, as an African-American, in the spotlight, to what she calls one of “the best jobs in the world.”

This hour, On Point: We’re reading Michelle Obama in the White House.

You can join the conversation. How’s she doing? What are you watching — her fashion statements? Her policy statements? And how do the new First Lady’s image, character, personality, ideas, attitudes matter to the country? To you?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Washington, we’re joined by Liza Mundy, staff writer for The Washington Post Magazine and author of “Michelle: A Biography.”

Joining us from New York is Margo Jefferson. A longtime cultural critic for The New York Times, she’s a professor of writing at the New School and Columbia University, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1995, and author of “On Michael Jackson.” A few of her thoughts on Michelle Obama appeared in last week’s issue of New York magazine in a collection of essays, “Regarding Michelle Obama.”

Also from New York is David Samuels, contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and a contributor to The Atlantic and The New Yorker.  He also wrote an essay on Michelle Obama for last week’s issue of New York. He’s the author of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue.”

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Whether you’re Michelle Obama or Meghan McCain or Jessica Simpson, laughed out of your Daisy Dukes, body image is a global superpower of an issue these days. With nipped and tucked and Photo-shopped bodies beamed all over the world, no one is safe from impossible expectations and instant judgment.

Psychotherapist Susie Orbach says it’s driving us around the bend, leaving millions — even the svelte — as prisoners of “body hatred.”

Orbach counseled Princess Diana on bulimia. Now she’s taking on the world.

This hour, On Point: Susie Orbach on our bodies and our beleaguered selves.

You can join the conversation. Are you at war with your own body? At peace with it? If there’s “body hatred” out there, who or what’s to blame? Hollywood? Botox? Diet ads? “The Biggest Loser”?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Susie Orbach joins us from London. A psychotherapist and author, she has for years been a leading thinker on eating disorders, gender and body image, and is convener of the website AnyBody. Her books include “On Eating,” “The Impossibility of Sex,” and the bestseller “Fat Is a Feminist Issue.” Her new book is “Bodies.”  You can read the introduction here.

Singers Rihanna and Chris Brown perform at the Z100 Jingle Ball 2008 at Madison Square Garden on Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 in New York. (AP)

Nineteen-year-old pop singer Chris Brown didn’t just give pop singer Rihanna a hard time.

He beat her. In their Lamborghini, the night before the Grammys. Punched, choked and bit her, according to police records. Threatened to kill her. Shoved her head against the window and wailed away until her mouth filled with blood and blood spattered the car.

It’s just one couple in the limelight. But experts say it’s one young couple in a new generation that is seeing not less but more relationship violence.

This hour, On Point: A new generation faces an old cycle of abuse.

You can join the conversation. Why isn’t this problem fading? What would you say to Rihanna — to Chris Brown — if you had the chance? Is their story your story of abuse? Young listeners, what’s going on in your crowd? What keeps this going?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Sandy Banks, columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Readers responded in droves to her column “Chris Brown and Rihanna: a lesson for teens.” She is also the mother of three daughters—18, 20, and 23—with opinions of their own about the case.

Lisa Hartwick, director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery at the Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center.

Candace Hopkins, director of Love is Respect, a national dating abuse helpline.

Barbie, 1959. (Photo: Courtesy Mattel.)

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Love them or hate them, everybody knows Barbie dolls. And this year, Barbie turns 50.

When she first showed up in 1959 — with those mile-long legs and trunks of cloths and, for heaven’s sakes, breasts — Barbie was rejected as way too sexual for American girls. Then she conquered the world. Feminists hated her impossibly svelte figure. Barbies flew off the shelves anyway.

And one woman created the whole phenom. She named Barbie for her daughter, Ken for her son. Modeled the doll on a German sex toy. And never apologized.

This hour, On Point: The woman who made Barbie.

You can join the conversation. What’s your Barbie story? Fifty years on, what’s Barbie’s legacy and impact on generations of girls?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Santa Barbara, Calif., is Robin Gerber, author of “Barbie and Ruth: The  Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.”

Read an excerpt from “Barbie and Ruth.”

And from Newton, Mass., is Sharlene Hesse-Biber, a sociologist at Boston College and the author of “Am I Thin Enough Yet? The Cult of Thinness and the Commercializaton of Identity.”

Sergeant Michelle Brookfield Wilmot on guard duty in Ramadi, Iraq in April 2005. (Photo by Spc. Miranda Mattingly.)

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In the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American women in uniform are everywhere and almost anywhere. In conflicts without clear front-lines, where old distinctions of combat and non-combat troops are hard — impossible — to uphold.

In the air over Tal Afar, in a Kiowa scout helicopter, chasing insurgents down alleyways from the sky with a .50 caliber machine gun and rockets at the ready.

On the ground, gun in hand, guarding convoys, raiding homes, saving soldiers with a medic’s pack, rumbling through the roadside bombs.

And they’re bringing what they see back home, as veterans, with more bloody, in-the-thick-of-it memories than female American vets have ever known.

This hour, On Point: On Veterans Day, American women at war.

You can join the conversation. Female veterans, tell us about your experiences at war. In Iraq. In Afghanistan. Tell us about going, fighting, surviving. Tell us about coming home.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Baghdad, we’re joined by Tina Susman, the Baghdad bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. She’s recently been embedded with U.S. troops.

Joining us from Washington is Ann Scott Tyson, Pentagon and military correspondent for The Washington Post.

From Amherst, Mass., we’re joined by Sergeant Rachel McNeill, Army Reserve. She served in Iraq from December 2004 to December 2005, starting out as a heavy construction equipment operator and shifting to security for convoys out of Ramadi. She’s 24 years old, grew up in Wisconsin, and joined the Army Reserve her senior year of high school, after 9/11, when she was 17.

Also from Amherst, we’re joined by Kirsten Holmstedt, author of “Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq” (2007). She’s at work on a new book about women returning home from war.

And joining us from New York is Meg McLagan, a documentary filmmaker and cultural anthropologist. She’s co-director and co-producer of the new documentary “Lioness,” which documents female soldiers of the Iraq War who took part in the Lioness program, in which women accompanied male teams on raids and house searches. The film will air nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens this Thursday, Nov. 13.

More links:

You can watch the Independent Lens “Lioness” trailer on YouTube, here:

Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton

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Sarah Palin’s debut on the national stage has grabbed America’s attention — and, many would say, stolen the show.

In the process, she’s also sparked new debates over gender and sexism. Here is a strong, conservative woman, a working mother, vowing to take on Washington.

But Ms. Palin wasn’t the first this season to take on the “good ol’ boys.” Before Sarah, there was Hillary, storming the citadel in colorful pantsuits. And let’s not forget Michelle Obama, and Cindy McCain, each navigating symbolic minefields of gender, family, and politics.

This hour, On Point: We hear women’s views on the women of ‘08.

You can join the conversation. Are Sarah, Hillary, and Michelle the role models you’re looking for? What do they tell us about where the women’s movement stands today? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

Joining us from Seattle, Washington, is Sandra Tsing Loh. She’s a writer, performer, and NPR commentator, and her new book is “Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!” She writes regularly for The Atlantic Monthly, where her most recent essay, “I Choose My Choice!,” looked at sisterhood, empowerment, and working moms.

And joining us from Albany, New York, is Debra Dickerson. She’s a contributing writer for Mother Jones and author of “The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to their Rightful Owners” and the memoir “An American Story.”

And with us from New York is Kay Hymowitz, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor for City Journal, and author of “Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age” and “Liberation’s Children: Parents and Kids in a Postmodern Age.”

Joanna Connors was thirty years old and married when she was raped by a stranger on an empty stage in Cleveland in 1984.

She went on to raise a family and build a career as a reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Now, almost a quarter century later, Joanna Connors has written the biggest story of her life — about that rape, and its many years of consequences, in her life and the lives around her.

She tried to bury the memory, she says, but it wouldn’t go away. Not close.

This hour, On Point: One woman speaks out, loud and clear, on the long road back from rape.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joanna Connors, reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in Cleveland, Ohio. She writes about her own rape in 1984 in a series entitled “Beyond Rape: A Survivor’s Journey.”

Veronica Reed Ryback, clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, former director of the Rape Crisis and Intervention Program at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

In overall earning power, American women still lag behind American men. But among the young and urban, in some of the country’s hottest cities — New York, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis — young women are actually outstripping young men in take-home pay; some by a wide margin.

It’s those young women who have the cash, the nice place, the hot prospects. And bravo for them. But what about dating the guys they’re leaving behind? Tricky, they say. Young women are now talking about “dating down.”

This hour, On Point: the meeting of the sexes when the woman makes the bucks.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Alex Williams, style writer for The New York Times.

Dalton Conley, chair of the sociology department at New York University.

Marisa, 29, a single corporate lawyer in Manhattan.

Ifey, 31, partner in a New York law firm.