MEGAN: So, Spencer, I have a favorite new Internet game this morning. "McCain's Lobbyists" allows you to check out where he's getting his cash from BUT even better... every time you click a face or an issue area, the page goes "cha-ching" and moneybags pile up at his feet and that's the sort of thing that amuses me before 9 am.
SPENCER: i clicked on Juleanna Glover Weiss!
MEGAN: Me too! But mostly because she's Liz Glover's sister, and she was actually super nice to me when Liz and I worked together.
SPENCER: who, in all due credit, I recently saw ask a genuinely-intellectually-curious question of a couple Iraqi parliamentarians
oh no shit? i didn't know that
MEGAN: Also, I clicked Kirsten Chadwick because I worked with her and she hated me and vice versa.
SPENCER: anyway, the game says Juleanna profitted $9 million off a measely $1.3 million McCain donation by her clients
what a titan
MEGAN: And I'm just going to put this out there, she only ever got hired based on the strength of her connection (whatever it was) with Roy Blunt and couldn't actually run an issue up the flagpole herself or lift anything heavy legislatively without him (or his staff) doing all the work.
(Kirsten, not Juleanna)
SPENCER: except look at Rick Davis, who's McCain's campagin chairman: $2 million off a $625,000 client donation
I'm going to be playing this when I should be working on Afghanistan stuff
MEGAN: Kirsten's clients gave $1.5 mil and she (or her company) made almost $38
SPENCER: OK, Kristen clearly wins
holy shit that's so much money
MEGAN: I know!
SPENCER: And McCain got a huge financial boost after he started calling for offshore drilling
hang on while i google the stuff that my leftwing interlocutors email me...
MEGAN: Which he would totally come back to vote for, even though he missed votes for FISA, the GI bill, the Ledbetter/equal pay bill, the Medicare reimbursement bill, the stimulus package (despite actually being in DC) and 15 energy/environment bills.
SPENCER: Here's one of my favorite right-wing bloggers, James Joyner, on this shit:

The latest campaign kerfuffle is the shocking fact that John McCain is receiving significant donations from the oil industry. A new Obama ad says the amount is $2.1 million; FactCheck.org says it’s a mere $1.33 million. Either way, it’s about triple what the industry is giving to Obama.
More damning, critics say, is that there has been an uptick in oil money flowing to McCain’s coffers since he started pushing for offshore drilling, a position he previously opposed. Aha! Many on the Left seem to think this is a big winner.

well, yeah we do!
McCain mortgaged America's coastline to boost his quarterly fundraising — that's kind of a big deal!
MEGAN: Don't we all sort of love how the Maverick Campaign Finance Reformer is fundraising so prodigiously from the same money sources he was so keen to stamp out 6 years ago?
SPENCER: This is the stuff that kills me, Megan — if McCain was a Democrat who'd gone through as many reinventions in order to run for president for the last 10 years, he'd be mercilessly mocked as the basest kind of opportunist
but oh well, gotta get (get) that (that) dirt off your shoulder
and speaking of, check out the ever-charming toby keith:

During Keith's appearance on the July 30 broadcast of Beck's show, he remarked, "I think the black people would say he [Obama] don't talk, act or carry himself as a black person."

MEGAN: That shit is fucked the fuck up.
SPENCER: That's courtesy of my friend Max Blumenthal, he of the LOLtastic campaign videos
even Glenn Motherfucking Beck was astounded:

"What does that even mean?" the audibly shocked Beck replied.

"Well, I don't know what that means," Keith drawled, "but I think that that's what they would say. Even though the black society would pull for him I still think that they think in the back of their mind that the only reason he is in [the general election] is because he talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian."

MEGAN: I love how the fucker immediately backtracks on that shit. "Well, I don't know what that means..." Bullshit!
SPENCER: i know, what a PUSSY
when I want to take the temperature of black America, Toby Keith is my trusty thermometer
who's blacker than Toby Keith?
MEGAN: Toby Keith has probably met a black person or two in his time, and he totes has black friends so he knows what he's talking about.
SPENCER: one of his bodyguards is totally black
MEGAN: Can we make up some stereotypes about Toby Keith?
SPENCER: Toby Keith still uses VHS like a real man
Toby Keith attacks Keith Gessen on his Tumblr
MEGAN: Toby Keith doesn't talk, act or carry himself like a homosexual
Toby Keith knows how to plug in a computer but lets someone else press the keys because he doesn't want to get his hands dirty.
SPENCER: Toby Keith's favorite Dallas Cowboy is Charles Haley
MEGAN: Toby Keith doesn't like the Cowboys, anyway, he's a Pats fan.
SPENCER: Toby Keith plays his guitar with finger guards because he can't develop calluses no matter how hard he tries
MEGAN: Toby Keith used to root for the Yankees, but now he's part of the Red Sox Nation.
SPENCER: Toby Keith wouldn't have actually put a boot in the Taliban's ass because his boots are Jimmy Choo
MEGAN: But Toby Keith is intimately familiar with how to have things inserted in your butt with a minimum of pain.
Speaking of having things up your ass...
SPENCER: Toby Keith is upset that Jason Giambi shaved his mustache because he wanted to shave it
oh yeah this shit
i'd like your perspective, as a woman, on what the fuck Samantha Sault is upset with Pelosi for
what's really at work here, Megan?
MEGAN: The first thing I thought when reading it was that it was written by a petulant child.
SPENCER: the Weekly Standard is an outpost of maturity, so that can't be right
MEGAN: So, let's recap: 1. Bipartisanship means allowing John Boehner to get his way on everything and especially drilling off the coast of California where John Boehner doesn't live and Nancy Pelosi does, but that's her being mean.
2. Nancy Pelosi is on a book tour when she should be working even though it's August recess and, um, NO ONE is working because that's what happens during August recess.
SPENCER: isn't the implication that, uh, Pelosi should lie back and take it from Boehner?
MEGAN: Probably bend over, but maybe that's just a personal preference.
SPENCER: she does always wear that pearl necklace
MEGAN: 3. Also, Nancy Pelosi's book is short and uses big print because Nancy Pelosi is a 19 year old college student that thinks her professors don't notice font sizes.
(not that Little Miss Sault knows anything about that)
SPENCER: ok so Samantha Sault from the Standard doesn't like this about Pelosi:

Pelosi complains that when San Francisco mayor Joe Alioto phoned to ask her to join the city Library Commission, he asked if she was "making a great big pot of pasta e fagioli." He "assumed that the only thing I could be doing at five in the afternoon was cooking," she says—never mind that she happily stayed home "cooking meals for five children for 20 years."

i know! Who could possibly find that objectionable????
MEGAN: Also, Samantha doesn't like calling women "women," she calls them "girls." Oh, Spencer, there's nothing sexist about expecting a woman to cook all the time. I mean, not women, "girls." "Modern girls."
SPENCER: she took her money/ and bought a do-nut/ the hole's the size of this whole world
MEGAN: But Samantha does give her props for knowing her place and staying home with her kids until they were out of school, which is one of the big reasons that there aren't more women in politics. For every Adam Putnam who gets to play off the power of incumbency before his 30th birthday, there are, oh, wait, pretty much all the women in Congress who waited until they were more established.
But what Samantha giveth, Samantha taketh away: Nancy Pelosi is a harpy for not picking up her husband's dry-cleaning or ever ironing his shirts.
MEGAN: I offered, once, to pick up my ex-boyfriends dry-cleaning because we used the same dry-cleaner and he was horrified at the thought of me doing that.
SPENCER: um, i would take someone up on an offer to pick up my dry cleaning
the fucking place is always closing before i get home from work
MEGAN: But he felt like accepting it was practically sexist.
SPENCER: see, knowing a bit about the opinion-journalism game, i look at a piece like this and think a couple things:
1. Sault is apparently rather young
MEGAN: Oooh, I nailed the petulant child thing!
SPENCER: 2. Sault works at a right-wing magazine, and surely wants to succeed at it
MEGAN: Right, and we all know that you can't possibly call women anything but "girls" there. Man, she even does it in her profile piece. How incredibly annoying.
SPENCER: 3. The Weekly Standard is not exactly known for its surfeit of women writers — there's batshit-insane Noemie Emery, whom a Standardite once told me files her would-be-Peggy-Noonan pieces on yellow legal paper
SPENCER: handwritten
4. so you scrape for a story wherever you can, and a rightwing magazine is going to feel innoculated if say, you have a woman attacking woman politicians for being too feministy
and what better way to do that than to sift through Pelosi's book, find examples of her committing flagrant acts of feminism, and then clucking your teeth at her? That's going into pages for sure
MEGAN: Does she even ever get around to attacking Pelosi's politics for anything other than being not bipartisan enough, which makes me breathless with laughter when Republicans accuse Democrats of that?
SPENCER: her politics are too feministy, and that's Sault's problem with them

he says more women could run for office if they had access to "quality child care." She doesn't explain what this means or who will pay, although we can guess.

that's just fucking lazy, come on
MEGAN: Sault should have a look at the masthead 30 years ago and reconsider what the problem with feminism is.
SPENCER: or her masthead today
MEGAN: Well, but that's obviously a meritocracy. Sexism doesn't exist anymore.
SPENCER: whatever, the fact that she's getting criticized on Jezebel for her Pelosi piece will earn her lots of accolades from the other Standard staffers, who'll then expect a quick break-room handjob

Maybe Levitt's intentions are good. He wants everyone to make money! The money they deserve! But we are not robots. We have personal experiences and idiosyncrasies that may or may not be relevant to our intelligence and/or work ethic. Some of it is beyond our control. For instance: "sounding black." Does Barack Obama sound black? Does Jesse Jackson sound black? Does Oprah? Did Martin Luther King? Even more troubling is this passage:

Investing in the ability to not "sound black" looks to have a huge return — roughly of the same magnitude as getting one more year of schooling… There may be personal costs associated with being black and not sounding black. But these costs would have to be pretty large. (When I have Asian Ph.D. students go on the job market in the United States, I tell them that I think there is rampant discrimination against non-English speakers and encourage them to adopt Americanized first names for the job market. Very few of my students choose to do so — either a testimony to the identity cost of pretending to be someone you aren’t, or possibly their lack of faith in my assessment of the amount of discrimination.)

Adopting an Americanized first name? Does playing into xenophobia render it ineffective? Would Levitt also suggest a woman named Shaniqua Keisha Jones change the name on her resume to S.K. Jones? (Probably!) Here's the problem with that: It's demeaning and patronizing. Some might argue you "do what you have to do" to get a foot in the door. But if you're intelligent and hard working, shouldn't your resume get you in the door no matter what name is at the top? No, you're saying. The world doesn't work like that. But couldn't it be said that the more HR people who encounter intelligent, hardworking people with names like Shaniqua Keisha Jones, the more people will stop pre-judging people with names like Shaniqua Keisha Jones. Ditto "sounding black," having a southern accent or a clearly Asian name. Deleting these things could be construed as self-hate, denial or disingenuousness. Is it better to be sneaky, calculating and take a "by any means necessary" approach in the workforce? Is "sounding black" something people need to apologize for? Do the people who "sound black" need to "invest in" the ability to sound more white? How best to bust a stereotype? By playing into it? Or defying it?

How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You “Sound Black?” [NY Times]

Since pop culture often reflects the zeitgest at large, what does it mean if we don't have any amazing non-white mother figures right now? Growing up, Claire Huxtable from The Cosby Show, Florida Evans from Good Times, the mom on What's Happening!! (and, to some extent, Shirley, on the same show) were strong women who were not just maternal figures but actual moms, juggling jobs and raising kids. American dreams, American stories. And they were not white. At some point, many TV moms disappeared — shows like My Two Dads, Silver Spoons and Diff'rent Strokes pushed moms aside. But today, the only non-white mom I can think of is the one on Everybody Hates Chris. Moms today are "hot" (Desperate Housewives), young (Claire on Lost*, Niki on Heroes) or animated (Family Guy, Marge Simpson.) But they're rarely anything but Caucasian. We live in a diverse, culturally rich country. Is Dina Lohan all we have to offer?

Black Mothers Underrepresented in Momoir Genre [Strollerderby]
There's Something Missing from Mommy Lit [AlterNet]

Earlier: Who Are Your Fave Pop Culture Moms?

*Yeah, Sun on Lost doesn't really count as her role as a "mom" has not been fleshed out.

I had a Korean boyfriend who was often mildly pleased to see an Asian guy with a white girl. He felt that Asian guys have it the worst when it comes to the what the American culture finds sexually appealing. There's a size legend about black men, the lure of the "Latin lover" and white guys rule the country. Where do Asian guys fit in? They're usually the butt of jokes, deemed "small" or geeky or not masculine enough. In his mind, the fact that a white woman could ignore the stereotypes and see an Asian man as sexy was a step in the right direction.

I have also known dark-skinned black women who felt unashamed to date white guys since the black men they knew were chasing white girls or wanted someone "light-skinned" and therefore more desirable, more beautiful. Maybe it's not revenge, per se, but it is a conscious decision not to try and join a club that won't have you, so to speak.

But even if you've been burned or scorned by experiences within your own race, does anyone really date with a vengeance? Maybe it's more about looking farther than just next door. Maybe it's about exposing yourself up to new worlds, to being open to a different experience. Or maybe, more and more, we're living in a world where the guy next door is a different race? I've dated guys who were Korean, Puerto Rican and Armenian. (Current boyfriend? Mexican.) And yeah, I've dated white guys. Never was getting revenge on black guys in my mind. (I cannot date guys who look like my dad or my brother, however. Because that is weird.) Mostly I find myself attracted to those who know what it is like to be "other." (And maybe that's why I have so many friends who are gay? That's a different thread.) But Ms. Kareem writes:

"When Asian men and black women date whites, or any other group, is it a way to give the middle finger to those they feel have rejected them or, at the very least, avoid ending up alone?"

And I have to wonder, could it be that they're genuinely attracted to that person? That they saw or felt something they liked? Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic/idealist, but. Could the reason be as simple yet complicated as this: Love is a funny thing?

Interracial Dating: Interracial Dating with a Vengeance [Racialicious]

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"Survey after survey has shown there isn't enough content reaching African-American women," says Michelle Ebanks, president of Essence Communications. "African-American women say they are looking for more content reflecting their voice and lifestyle. This partnership gives us the opportunity." The problem: Is there an African-American voice and lifestyle? I'm black and I never watch Oprah or Girlfriends (although my mom loves Girlfriends). My brother doesn't watch basketball (my friend Jonathan, who's Jewish, does). I have black friends with no interest in Tyra Banks and an Asian friend who loves her. Are the people who read Essence the same people who read Sister 2 Sister, Vibe and Black Enterprise? It's like targeting "women" with a site like Shine. Are they working women? Moms? Single women? Beauty-obsessed women? Bitter women? Does being a woman mean you automatically give a shit about Kate Bosworth? (I'll answer that one: No.) Black women come in a myriad of tastes, styles and voices. Can a website attract all black women? It'll be interesting to see them try.

Essence Enlists Warner To Reach Black Women On Web [Crains]
Essence Mag Uses Some Synergy to Turn Past Printed Page [AdAge]
Essence Magazine To Go Multiplatform [MediaWeek]
Overhaul for Web Site of Essence Magazine [NY Times]

Meanwhile, even white women are whitewashed in women's magazines, Alvarez claims:

The gold standard of white beauty is a woman who is thought of as being the least "ethnic" and most "neutral" as possible. Fair skin, fair hair and thin, often lacking in curves that would be considered vulgar or distasteful (or exotic?) the stereotype of corn-fed Midwestern girls or sun-kissed, muscular athletic girls are eschewed for fair, tall, boney girls — often with what is described as a "boyish" figure, one without the tell-tale markers of womanhood — hips, ass. Personality. The ideal: Gwyneth Paltrow.

Model Minority: How Women's Magazines Whitewash Different Ethnicities [Racialicious, via Guanabee]

This is interesting to think about when you know how well-informed Ms. Leibovitz is about historic imagery; nothing is left to chance and everything is "inspired," and purposely so.

Over on the blog Feministe, Jill Filipovic writes, "I see a scary animalistic black man, a primal scream, and a beautiful white woman. Google image King Kong for a comparison." What's interesting is that the editors had another, more "civilized" photograph of LeBron and Gisele they could have chosen. Upon seeing this more "civilized" image, blogger Angel from Concrete Loop asks, "Why wasn't this the cover instead of that other HORRID one?" Commenters on that site agree: "Lebron is straight up perpetuating a stereotype (that of the brutal, wild savage) that helped enslave, lynch, and murder hundreds of THOUSANDS of our black men for centuries... and I'm just supposed to be content because he made it onto "massa's" magazine?! Take that weak shit somewhere else," "MJ" writes. Adds "cococola72284": "This 'King Kong capturing the damsel in distress'... is offensive. Not only does this man look like an ape, but he's got this good ole prize, a white woman on his arm. There are a number of black high fashion models they could've paired him with and other shots they could've used of him. At least put him in a suit. He carries a suit VERY well." On this site, a shot of the cover prompted similar comments.

Why didn't the editors chose the more "civilized" image for the cover? Were they looking for something more dynamic and animated? Did they want something with action, with impact? Why not put LeBron James in a suit? (FYI, other athletes in the issue — skater Apolo Anton Ohno, snowboarder Shaun White and swimmer Michael Phelps — also appear in sport "uniforms" while the models wear high fashion.) Was it easy — maybe even on a subconscious level — to choose a photo that casts the black man as "big and scary" and therefore comfortable and familiar?

"Nobody says more about fashion size and shape than Gisele and LeBron," Vogue spokesman Patrick O'Connell tells Time. Really? Nobody??

LeBron James To Grace Vogue's Cover [Time]
I Know Vogue Isn't Exactly Racially Conscious, But... [Feministe]
Comment Spotlight: LeBron & The Vogue Cover [Concrete Loop]
Preview of US Vogue April 2008: The Shape Issue [ONTD]
Earlier: Holy Itshay, What Is That Big Black Man Doing On The Cover Of Vogue?!
Men's Vogue: Not Afraid Of Black People
What's The Message Behind A Black Man In Heels On The Cover Of Vogue?