• Gisele Bundchen garnered an estimated $25 million in the past year, notching up campaigns for everything from Dior to True Religion jeans. Rounding out Forbes' 10 top-earning models list are posers like Heidi Klum, Adriana Lima, Kate Moss and  the sole biracial model represented  Emanuela de Paula. [Forbes]

• A behind-the-scenes shot of Scarlett Johansson and Mario Sorrenti working on the fall Mango ads show the Tom Waits-loving actress is giving her best sexyface. [Style.com]
• Vogue Nippon and Comme des Garçons launched a pop-up store called "Magazine Alive" in Tokyo. The contents will change each month, with every new issue of Vogue NIppon  but right now features t-shirts with manga likenesses of Hedi Slimane and Donatella Versace, as well as dresses from labels like Undercover. Who else but Takashi Murakami decorated the second floor, and Karl Lagerfeld did the window-dressing. Are we brainwashed for saying that, for a pop-up store  the hackiest of all the hacky, hackneyed retail concepts out there  this actually sounds pretty cool? [WWD]
• Barneys creative director Simon Doonan's life is the subject of a new television show, Beautiful People, produced by Absolutely Fabulous' Jon Plowman, on the Logo network. Doonan's impoverished formative years in 1950s England have been shifted in time to the 1990s, a move which he says "distilled the fun-ness of childhood and left the grimness behind." The series opens with Doonan installing a window display at Barneys based on old men who look like lesbians, and even though everyone knows that's a website, we would still totally watch this. Doonan says he is proud that the show tells the story of how a gay teenager was accepted by his family. [NY Times]
• Fashion designer Nicole Farhi was among the victims of two brothers who allegedly strangled and robbed 17 women and one man in wealthy neighborhoods of London. All the people targeted survived. [Telegraph]
• The nominees for Scottish Designer of the Year are a high-fashion pack: superstar designers Christopher Kane, Graeme Black, Jonathan Saunders, and Laura Lees are represented. Annie Lennox, Sharleen Spiteri, Jenni Falconer and Lulu are all in the running for the Scottish Style Icon of 2009 award. Other awards given at the annual event at Stirling castle on June 21 will reward Scottish photographers, makeup artists, models, and one recent fashion school graduate. [Telegraph]
• The jury in the Trovata/Forever 21 copyright case was unable to reach a verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial late yesterday. [WWD]
• U.S. Customs seized a shipment of counterfeit sunglasses from China with a retail value of $1.8 million. [WWD]
• This post manages to work in mention of both the debunked "lipstick" and "hemline" economic indicators, before adding a new one, courtesy of Alan Greenspan. The men's underwear index! Greenspan reasons that since few people see men's underwear, it's the first item men stop buying during a recession, preferring instead to wear out their current pairs. Sales of boxers and briefs should spike, according to this logic, when a recovery is underway, and men suddenly start replacing their threadbare underthings. Problems with this: Alan Greenspan often speaks in the language pure koan. And men, in my experience, always wear their underwear until it falls to shreds. I've known dudes who had four or five stained, holey pairs still in regular rotation among the newer, more hale offerings. It's just another way in which dudes are gross, not an economic indicator. [Economist.com]
• Revlon's share price rose 55 cents, or 10.4%, yesterday, on the back of encouraging earnings results for the first quarter of 2009. But it's not as simple as 'women are buying lipstick': Revlon has replaced its CEO in a management shake-up, and says it profited because it introduced new product lines. [Crain's]
• DSW, after a loss in the fourth quarter of 2008, made a modest profit of $7.1 million in the first quarter of 2009. [WWD]
• Polo Ralph Lauren reported its profits for the quarter ended March 28 declined by 57% on last year's results, because of falling consumer spending and the company's own restructuring and impairment costs. Same-store sales fell by over 15% during the quarter, but the report still exceeded analysts' expectations. [Crain's]
• Shapewear for men is still a thing which people are trying to make happen. (Again? I was reading an early 20th century novel the other day that referred matter-of-factly to a male character's girdle.) [WWD]
• Oh, the old Anna Wintour ambassadorship rumor again. Contract renewal one-upmanship is such a drag. [P6]

Greenspan was a Rand disciple, and his criticism of laissez-faire capitalism had the Objectivists in a tizzy. They were also excited about the increased popularity of Atlas Shrugged, which depicts an economic collapse brought on by socialist regulations. New Yorker writer Lizzie Widdicombe quotes Objectivist Paul Bell, who says:

I learned from Ayn Rand many years ago that contradictions do not exist in reality. Is Alan Greenspan an Objectivist or a statist? Is he controlled by the power in Washington, or did he go there to spread free-market ideals?

We're not sure what these questions have to do with the existence of contradictions, and we're also not sure what the plot of Atlas Shrugged has to do with reality. Asked what Ayn Rand would say about the current financial crisis, fitness consultant Francisco Villalobos said, "I told you so." Which is a little bit like when you tell someone they're going to get hit by a car, and then they get cancer. I told you so!

Another Objectivist's answer to the what-would-Rand-say question is even weirder. "I'm eighty-four and still smoking," this Randian ventriloquized. But Rand was 77 when she died, and would be 104 if she were alive today.

Rand's followers are already planning for their dominion over the streets of post-apocalyptic New York. One suggested that, "when civilization collapses, we'll just have to organize an Objectivist gang." Since Objectivists can't count, though, we're not too worried.

Ayn Crowd [New Yorker]

• Were you  like Glamour editor Cindi Leive wondering how Sarah Palin managed to spend so much money on her wardrobe? By the way, the suit she wore at the debate was Tahari, one of my favorite affordable suit makers. [New York Times]
• Well, it turns out that she might not have really ended up with all $150,000 of it, as some of the purchases included ripped T-shirts and clothing for a 2-year-old. [New York Times]
• She might have to claim the clothes as income for tax purposes, though, and a formal complaint has been filed with the FEC about the clothes. [Andrew Sullivan, Politico]
• Oh, and she got pissy with the SNL costume people because the matching suits they had her and Tina Fey in weren't in keeping with her "new" image. [Huffington Post]

• In actual news, the chairwoman of a New Mexico women's GOP group, Marcia Stirman, wrote an OpEd in which she called Obama a "Muslim Socialist" and declared all Muslims "our enemies." That's what the McCain camp needs right now, definitely. [Salon]
• Someone (or a group of someones) has been vandalizing the Minnesota homes of the entire Congressional delegation. [Pioneer Press]
• Air America's Mark Maron went to a Palin rally in Colorado springs, didn't find hate but did get a shiny copper penny from an old guy. [The Guardian]
• The Washington Post's Dana Milbank went in search of the Real Virginia and found that it's voting for Barack Obama. [Washington Post]
• The FDIC may start to insure your mortgages as well as your bank deposits in the hopes that lenders will stop foreclosing, but they probably won't because they're dicks and they all live in Delaware. [Washington Post]
• Like most Americans, Alan Greenspan is really sorry that he thought The Market was self-regulating. [New York Times]
• The McCains and the Obamas would save money under either candidate's tax plan, but the McCains would save $732,000 under his plan. Yowza. [Think Progress]
• And in awful news, a 20-year-old woman was mugged and then, when the mugger noticed her McCain bumper sticker, maimed. He carved a "B" in her face. Barack Obama's campaign (and everyone else in this country) wants the sick fuck brought to justice. Not in our names, dude. [WTAE, Politico]

MOE: Whoa! I just got an invite to a roundtable with Sarah Palin in Philly tomorrow.

MEGAN: Wait, really? They couldn't find your voter registration during the primaries but they can find you now? Or were you invited as a journalist?

MOE: I was invited as a friend of this hilarious Philadelphia Junior League type thing whose ringleader I knew in college. He was one of those unnerving smart Republican types who is only ever friends with liberals, never tries to win you over to his ideology because to do so would be to undermine his "I am a Republican because there is no truer way for a misanthrope to be" stance on things, the evolution of whose politics you have considered and haven't the faintest notion as to what went wrong… Just turned on CNBC. David Faber looks rather worn out. He is so damn cute when he is looking rather worn out. I want to take everyone on Wall Street back to bed already. Like, even if there's a HUGE RALLY today who cares?

MEGAN: Actually, I sort of agree with that theory of Republicanism as being borne out of misanthropy. And by the time I figured out what station CNBC is, I got the lady in the green talking faster than an auctioneer.

MOE: I know but if the only people you can stand are liberal, WHAT THE FUCK? Everyone on CNBC talksreallyfast. Except Joe Kernen. Oh my god it is Friday and I haven't checked Noonan.

MEGAN: Do misanthropes ever really get along with other misanthropes? Also, for me, the problem with Republicans is that so many of them are caught up in the ideology of Republicanism that they're blind to their own misanthropy, so it gets annoying. I was talking about this with my bartender last night, he was going off about the whole drill, baby, drill thing and how we have 3% of the world's oil supply and use 25% of the current supply and even if we got the rest of our oil out of the ground it would give us like 3 days worth but how Republicans don't give a damn about the facts because the slogan is good. And I was like, um, you just got really attractive, and not because I'm on my second beer. Also, hell to the yes on David Faber, I'm happy to take him and his tired eyes back to bed.

MOE: Right, being a Republican involves all sorts of blind spots. Also, I am really glad you looked up David Faber. He looks weirdly younger when he is all sleepylike. But in this market I am seriously an open invitation, I'll diversify, I'm a brisk thirteen minute walk from the street anyone out there is welcome to come back. Mark Haines even, what the hell. Anyone except Larry Kudlow but duh.

MEGAN: But, on the other hand, I don't really like hanging out with ideological Democrats. Liberals, sure, but Democrats are annoying, like Howard Dean craps rainbows and Nancy Pelosi pisses sunshine, I can't get on board with that any more than I can get on board with not voting in favor of SCHIP funding because you think that taxing tobacco is a nanny state thing and eventually when taxes convince people to stop smoking you might have to pay for the health insurance of small, poor children and OH MY GOD THE MARKET WILL SOLVE THAT ANYWAY as though they all missed the sections of economics involving "market failures" and "social goods."

MOE: Oh god yeah I never understood partisan Democrats.

MEGAN: So maybe that's why he hangs out only with liberals? Because to be a Republican in Philly, one must've drunk the Kool-Aid, I think.

MOE: God Erin Burnett is so much the hotness.

MEGAN: I know, I have to say, I think she's way prettier than Maria Bartiromo, but I also think Rachel Maddow is the hotness is a way that Megyn Kelly can't compete with. So perhaps I'm strange. Ok, so, I'm sure you haven't been paying that much attention to politics, what with the complete collapse of the financial world as we know it and the Bush Administration's announcement that our government has decided free-market capitalism is too dangerous right now in the same way that civil rights are and has begun taking an ownership stake in all the banks, but the one legitimate scandal about Sarah Palin the mainstream media cares about, Troopergate, is about to have its big reveal today. But it's not a big deal, because she's already cleared herself of any wrong doing!

MOE: These people on CNBC, the way I see it, could not have been working anything short of 14 hour days for the past six weeks. And today is the first day you can really tell on Burnett's face. My ex just IMed me to say he'd lost more than a year's rent but that BUD (Anheuser Busch or however you spell that) has hardly fallen at all.

MEGAN: Well, it's fallen by about 20%, but that's nothing in this climate.

MOE: Erin Burnett just asked Mark Haines: "if you've already lost so much, why get out now? I mean from a trading mentality, fine, but long term…" and he just looked at her like "um commercial break!" Wow Peggy:

People speak of the Bradley effect—more people tell pollsters they will vote for a black candidate than vote for the black candidate. But I have been wondering about the possibility of what may someday be called the Obama effect: You know your neighbors think he's sketchy—unknown, a mystery, "Hussein"—so you don't say you're voting for him, but you are.

MEGAN: Ha, well, Peggy need wonder now more! There's actually evidence of that.

“If you call people on the phone today and ask who they will vote for, some will give responses influenced by what may be understood, locally, as the more desirable response. It is easy to suppose that these people are lying to pollsters. I don’t believe that. What I think is they may be undecided and experiencing social pressure which could increase their likelihood of naming the white candidate if their region or state has a history of white dominance. They also might give the name of the Republican if the state is strongly Republican.

MOE: Jesus Christ. Honestly? That is totally fascinating. What that says about the country, what that says about how this is THE end of the Reagan era, is remarkable.

MEGAN: Especially because it's not just your neighbors being wary about Obama, it's about them feeling completely comfortable voicing a level of hatred for him that scares the crap out of normal people. I mean, holy shit, this blog entry:

If Barack Obama wins...Do we need to worry about conservative whites rioting?

MOE: We just broke 8,000. 7,948. God this is amazing.

MEGAN: Yeah, I looked my stock up pre-9:30 and it was already down and I was like, well, fuck. Why does it have to keep half its value? I'm sure 25% of its initial value is fine.

Oh, and by the way, the whole campaign spin about how McCain and Palin aren't hearing when people shout shit out and whatever, someone points out that McCain's hearing used to be really fucking good and he used to call his supporters out on being assholes.

MOE: And all I can say is that, number one, the anger conveyed by that McCain rally is that going to strike readers as overdone, as exaggerated by a contemptuous liberal writer eager for a "take." Not that anyone is listening, but it is not. I know exactly how tired of contempt and weary of exaggeration the media is right now and that story does sadden me. Meanwhile, Peggy is right, Obama has to bring it in that TV address. I was so relieved to hear he was doing it, because as she says, it's striking how small and unworthy of the moment both our candidates seem right now. And to think that just six months ago I was thinking "Wow, an Obama McCain race would be so inspiring, to think after all these years of shitty boring uninspiring uninteresting safe partisan poll-tested politicians to have such interesting men before us…okay and now what. That debate Tuesday was quite possibly the two most fucking deeply boring hours of my life. It's like that trope about how "to turn a good person bad, that takes religion" … there's an equivalent saying about politics I suppose, that was obvious before I was momentarily heartened by the fact that Obama and McCain seemed so not that. Wow, that Slate story, "bloodthirsty."

MEGAN: I don't know, I feel like, were the debates ever exciting? I don't remember them being stirring or getting an appreciation for the candidates' differences on issues during them, it was always more of a way to see how they interact and react to scrutiny and shit. So on that level, it was only boring because Obama won't be an asshole but he also can't afford to embody stereotypes about black men, I think.

MOE: No I don't believe that. There are so many things either one of them could have done to make it unboring. Don't you watch these things with echoes of inspiring addresses you imagine TR or Churchill might have made to the public ringing in your ears? Didn't you hear all that bullshit about Sarah Palin "cutting out the moderate middlemen and addressing the American public right to their faces" and think why can't Obama just do that already? Because he's exhausted, but also, to an extent, it is hard not to conclude, because he is a little bit of a pussy, and that is disappointing.

Both campaigns, in the closing stretch, seem not fully worthy of the moment. We are in crisis—a once-in-a-century event, as we now say. And what we got from the candidates, in this week's presidential debate, was a bunch of gummy meanderings—smooth, rounded sentences so full of focus-grouped inanities that six minutes in viewers entered a kind of trance in which we almost immediately gave up on trying to wrest meaning from what was being said and instead focused on mere impressions. The look of things. The men on the plane, the pseudo-tough political operatives who surround both candidates, sometimes grouse, in private, that it's all symbols now, all mood, all about the visual.

But they have some real responsibility here. They send their candidates out to speak such thin gruel, such spat-out porridge, that we are struck dumb, and left daydreaming about the fact that Mr. Obama's suits are always slate gray and never seem to wrinkle, and Mr. McCain tonight seems like a rabbity forest creature darting amid the hedgerows.

God, when she is right she is SO RIGHT.

MEGAN: No, I mostly watch these things and think of "I met John F. Kennedy, sir, and you are no John F. Kennedy" and the exchange about Cheney's gay daughter and, most laughably, the part in 2000 where George Bush swore up and down that his administration would never, ever go nation building to try to bring democracy to people that don't even want it. None of which was inspiring at all, but it was impressive in the way it stuck in my head as a good attack.

MOE: What about that hilarious moment with Cheney Lieberman where Cheney promised Lieberman he would show him how to go make millions in the private sector? I mean, Cheney Lieberman was great on so many levels, much more than not least of which was that Lieberman was McCain's first choice as a running mate.

MEGAN: What about that was inspirational? What about that was any more than a playground attack with no meaning or substance behind it? Name me a debate that inspired you. These aren't speeched, they're deliberately 90 second easily-digestible soundbites. Also, I'm calling bullshit on Peggy here, actually, because what's she's doing is defending her career as a Reagan staffer, as though he debates inspired America. Pish posh, I say. The rules were the same, the answers were the same and the level of boredom was the same.

MOE: So Alan Greenspan's legacy has pretty much gone the way of Larry Craig's. No that is not true. We're just young. Have you been watching those Reagan documentaries? Dumbass WAS inspiring. It is inspiring how inspiring he managed to be!

MEGAN: Not in the debates. My parents made me watch 'em. He could be inspiring, but not in that format. Also, Greenspan did always manage to get out when the getting was good.

MOE: Inspiring and scary. And I just don't buy it! I just DON'T! No one answers the questions, you might as well go off on tangents like Sarah Palin because no one can keep track. I am the first to blame the confines of the structure or the market or the Way Things Are for the Way People Fuck Up, but Obama should be doing better. He should, but I imagine he is too tired. The thing that is true is that the Democrats, as we were discussing from the beginning, do not understand the moral authority they could seize here, maybe because they didn't go into this for reasons of morality, because, you know, who really does. But Obama did. It's one of the things the GOP jumped on. "Michelle acts like it is such a SACRIFICE that he went into the government to SERVE HIS GREAT COUNTRY" when meanwhile they won't trust anyone with the Treasury they can't give a hundred million or so tax break to.

MEGAN: I don't know what moral authority they can seize here, nor how he could have done it at the debates. I was arguing about this with a friend. Like, great, you want him to be the Great Jesus and savior of our political system and now our economy  but he can't do shit if he's not elected. That's politics. He's not going to get elected by calling McCain a racist piece of shit on stage because to do so is to call too many Americans that. Look at how many people got offended during the primaries when they were being racist. It's not an effective strategy. And who are you going to inspire in 90 seconds with a soundbite? Nobody, except maybe to anger, which is what Palin is doing right now.

MOE: No here is the thing, he cannot do shit when he's elected if he doesn't make the case to the public while 60 million of them are watching.

MEGAN: What case? The case for what? He's supposed to be making a case for why he should be elected in 90 seconds or less. Not a case for America or a case for how to fix the financial system. You can't fix it in 90 seconds, you can't answer it in 90 seconds and if you could, you'd be wrong. The problem with Obama is, the problem why his race speech failed, the problem with why his primary tactics almost fell short is that he doesn't inspire with soundbites. He doesn't give answers in soundbites. He doesn't explain in soundbites. And Americans don't listen in anything but.

MOE: Ugh, whatever. We will not agree on this I'm afraid. But YES I want him to be Jesus. I want him to fucking TAKE BACK JESUS from those horrid sanctimonious rape victim charging fucks already! Don't let the public forget Larry Craig and Ted Haggard and that guy in Oregon with the abortion and Jake Abramoff and George Fucking Bush. And the race speech "failed" according to whom? What the fuck??? It "failed"????

MEGAN: Did he get a bounce? Did he win every primary after that? Blow Hillary out of the water? Change the game? No, he didn't.

MOE: That's precisely the sort of statement I refuse to abide, I straight-up reject. A BOUNCE??? WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT BOUNCES, HELLO, CAPITALISM IS COLLAPSING.

MEGAN: What's the point of the race speech otherwise?

MOE: I can't do this anymore dude.

MEGAN: What's the point of politics if not to win?

MOE: What is the point, of making a serious heartfelt speech if not for a "bounce."

MEGAN: What's the point of making it if McCain ends up President at the end of it?

MOE: The difference, my dear, is that "bounces" mean nothing. And victory means a lot more than winning one election. We all know this. What, praytell did Bill Clinton get done with all his poll-tested plurality of the vote? Guess what? All that "unprecedented economic growth and prosperity" nonsense doesn't hold up anymore!

MEGAN: I disagree. If Obama doesn't win, if the people yelling "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" and "Socialist!" and "Off with his head!" win, then nothing will change and that speech will mean less in a year than it did 6 months ago, and nothing a year after that. To the victors go the spoils, and the spoils are the ability to make change, and history.

My roommate and I dated the same dude. I have three dudes in common with a good friend whose birthday falls the day after mine. There are four known dude nodes uniting Jezebel editors [I have nothing to do with this. -Ed.], and none of us even knew each other before working this blog. These days, you fuck a laissez-faire asshole like Greenspan and come out alive, you meet another broad who's boned him and become BFF. Dudes are our war stories; introducers of the impetus to define and defend our moral codes and mental sovereignty; invaders of our cultural and philosophical border regions; custodians of the context of our memories; critical and often curious specimens in our ongoing quest to understand Why They Hate Us who are sometimes really bad in bed and talking about that can be fun. A woman who harbors feelings of jealousy or suspicion toward the ex girlfriend of her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend is, put simply, a woman who is out of step with the macro trajectory of the American economy and, by extension, our entire Way of Life.

I Had To Ask: Books [The New Yorker]
Why Did Andrea Mitchell Appear With Alan Greenspan On The View Today? [BigHeadDC]
Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell [NYT]

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