[New York, November 1. Image via Getty]

NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 1: A group of Hasidic Jewish girls watch the runners of the 40th ING New York City Marathon pass through the Williamsburg section of the borough of Brooklyn on November 1, 2009 in New York City. Meb Keflezighi who won New York City Marathon was the first American champion to do so since 1982 in the time 2:09.15. More than 40,000 people participated in the event. (Photo by Afton Almaraz/Getty Images)

[Brooklyn, September 7. Image via Getty]

NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 07: Participants wait to march in the West Indian-American Day Parade September 7, 2009 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. More than 2 million spectators were expected to attend the celebration of Caribbean culture. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Writes the New York Times' Guy Trebay,

Too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut, developed too young to come under the heading of a paunch, the Ralph Kramden is everywhere to be seen lately, or at least it is in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, the McCarren Park Greenmarket and pretty much any place one is apt to encounter fans of Grizzly Bear.

It's a fun piece, but I'm not quite sure what's given anyone the idea this is a new phenomenon: I'd go so far as to declare that the Grizzly-Bear-listening population, much like that of the general population and, indeed, members of the band itself, represent a wide range of physiques - and in any case were not those who were most prone to the overblown metrosexual orthodoxy in the first place. But some quoted in the piece suggest that this embrace of the gut could, in fact, be the hipster's contrarian response, not just to the pre-recession tyranny of Men's Health-style abs, but to the svelteness of the Commander in Chief. Being rebels sans causes, you see, these hipsters - who would, presumably, otherwise be hitting the gym between concerts? - have decided to develop guts. But why stop there? Maybe the gut - "the Kramden," to use the piece's term - is a response to the Recession, a sort of means of storing up supplies for the long winter, bear-style?

I'd be more inclined to point to the increasing acceptability of the shlub-with-hottie phenom in pop culture, something which we've detailed at some length in these digital pages. (And no, women have not embraced the Kramden; a letter in today's Wall Street Journal asking how to camouflage "flabby upper arms," and the tip we just received on combatting "the Stubborn, Unbeatable Bulge" is a reminder that insecurities are always in.) But even this would presuppose that this avant-garde gut is some sort of deliberate letting-go, or even subconscious rejection of norms. In fact, I think the phenomenon's a lot more straightforward: the hipsters who used to be really scrawny are now older, and can't drink as much PBR without it showing. And being women, we're nice about it.

It's Hip To Be Round [NY Times]
Youthful Blouses To Hide Arm Flab [Wall Street Journal]

[Venice, June 24. Image via Flynet]

MEGAN: So I am coming to you live from your ancestral homeland, aka, Brooklyn. It's very noisy.

SPENCER: You are not in Brooklyn. You are in Colonial Williamsburg.

MEGAN: Oh, believe me, I know. To get back here at one point, the cab driver insisted that he didn't know where it was (I had been in Park Slope) and drove me over the Manhattan Bridge, to the Lower East Side and tried to make me get out, which I refused to do until he drove me back over the Williamsburg Bridge, cursing me the entire way.

SPENCER: He has good taste.

MEGAN: I curse more profligately. D.C. is good for some things. So, did you spend the weekend worrying about the security of the homeland if Joe Lieberman is removed from his chairmanship? Because we wouldn't want the terrorists to win.

SPENCER: You know it. The terrorists fear no man like they fear the Jowler. To remove him from his chairmanship for the simple choice to campaign against the new Democratic president and for suggesting that a sufficiently Democratic Senate would end the country as we know it would be like blowing up the World Trade Center all over again.

MEGAN: You can't mess with the motherfucking Nutmeg State.

SPENCER: I want to play by Lieberman rules, you know? Not only ought there to be no consequences for my actions, I want to be actively courted, disloyalty rewarded. Josh Marshall had a good post on this on Friday. This isn't a negotiation! You campaign against Obama? You watch the Democrats gain seven seats, at least? You lose your shit, period. Do you think the Republicans would be this accommodating if Arlen Specter campaigned for Obama and the GOP retook the Senate?

MEGAN: I seem to remember them pretty effectively telling Jim Jeffords to fuck off when they fully took the Senate earlier this decade.

SPENCER: Besides, what's he really going to do? The New England GOP went extinct on Tuesday. Lieberman will either caucus with the Democrats, officially or unofficially, or he'll go down in flames in 2012. His state voted for Obama by fucking 22 points.

MEGAN: But Harry Reid thinks he's progressive. So, like, down is up and up is down and Harry Reid doesn't like making unpopular decisions — or, apparently, even popular ones — so I sort of don't understand why he wants to be Majority Leader.

SPENCER: And if there needed to be another reason here, my friend the unkillable Brian Beutler pointed out that Lieberman's gavel has the power to do serious damage to an Obama administration. But are you really sweating Harry Reid for that statement? Reid's people are saying there's no chance for Lieberman to keep his gavel, so who gives a fuck if Reid praises Lieberman?

MEGAN: I'm just sick of Reid being such a pushover all the time. He's the head of the Senate. The reason the executive branch keeps getting more and more powerful — besides the truism that every Senator thinks he or she will be President some day — is because squishes like Reid and Frist before him allow the executive branch to usurp too much power from the legislative.

SPENCER: But if that's the case, don't look at what he says, look at what he does. He's taking Lieberman's gavel away. That's not being a squish, it's defending the caucus and the Obama agenda. If he puts a crony in charge of the government affairs committee, that's bullshit and I said so here. Even the most outwardly-virtuous Obama administration needs congressional oversight and blah blah blah I hate all this goo-goo good government bullshit like Henry says in Goodfellas. What do you think of Larry Summers because I don't know what to think so help me.

MEGAN: I really, really, really cannot believe that the NY Times called him "a leading candidate to be the next Treasury chief." And I hope that when Valerie Jarrett said this weekend that we're all just guessing and that it's not from them that she's specifically talking about Summers. Because they are obviously, I think, floating him to see if they can get away with it, and I don't think they can and I think, worse yet, that they ought not to try.

SPENCER: What's the case against Treasury Re-Secretary Summers?

MEGAN: I think the biggest reason is that this Administration just shouldn't take on his women are innately not good and math and science bullshit that he said when he was President of Harvard. That is just some stupid, embarrassing, sexist shit that, rightly, caused him to lose his job and the trust and support of the faculty and the student body. I think that, given all the sexism charges floating out and around right now, the main guy that's going to be seen as running Obama's economic policy needs not be someone with his sexist head so far up he ass he can watch himself bloviate from inside his own mouth.

SPENCER: So who do you think would be a better pick? Give me your short list.

MEGAN: I mean, I like Moe's idea of Sheila Bair that she floated last week. It doesn't hurt that she's a woman, qualified and doesn't care as much about fucking Wall Street as Summers does — although I think those are good things — but I think picking someone like Bair would resonate more with Obama's themes that the next step has to be bailing out main street. Summers is a big business, Wall Street loving guy and always has been, and I think there's a good argument to be made that getting first and second quarter's earning and dividends back on track doesn't fix our economy. I can also get on board with Tim Geithner.

SPENCER: Oh shit Crappy Hour just went up in the Kutt! That's change I can believe in.

MEGAN: I mean, let's not take this as a sign that I'm on board with everything the all-union EPI is about, but yeah, I went there.

SPENCER: What are the relative merits of Bair and Geithner? Because I'll speak for myself. The true test of whether we have change I can believe in is whether I can buy a Range I can believe in.

MEGAN: Compared to one another, or to Summers? I think Bair would be an interesting choice if Obama is really serious about this Main Street bullshit he keeps talking about that continues to make me want to pound shots whenever he says it. I think Geithner is a choice more in the Summers school of though, though way less free trade-y than Summers, which is an apt criticism of Summers from the left to which Obama repeatedly promised to "have another look" at NAFTA during the primaries and is sending Emanual around to tell everyone to keep the Colombia FTA out of the new stimulus.

SPENCER: Can you explain Bair being better for this "main street bullshit"? Remember, I'm an economic illiterate. MATH IS TOO HARD FOR TEH BOYS

MEGAN: Ok, so, Obama is all about how now that we've giving away billions upon billions of dollars to the banks — and he wasn't even talking about the possibly incredibly illegal tax policy change that Paulson decided to pass to give them more money than Congress even intended — that it's time to turn to bailing out Main Street (drink!). Bair comes from the FDIC, so she's more intellectually engaged in issues on a daily basis that are actually affecting individual Americans than all in the weeds of intellectual economics and the kind of trickle-down stuff that's supposed to happen from fixing Wall Street. For instance, from the Kuttner article:

She has long waged a battle within the administration for direct assistance to homeowners, rather than having stressed mortgage holders be the incidental beneficiaries of bailouts to bondholders and banks. Last week, she went public with her dissenting views, giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal. "[W]e're attacking it at the [financial] institution level as opposed to the borrower level, and it's the borrowers defaulting. That is what's causing the distress at the institution level," she said. "So why not tackle the borrower problem?"

That's in line with what Obama has said about what the government needs to do next.

SPENCER: Is she the sort of Treasury Secretary who'd urge using fiscal policy instead of just monetary policy as a tool to get us out of the crisis? That's the most econ-wonky question I can ask and I don't really know what it means.

MEGAN: It means that instead of trying to manipulate the price of our currency to encourage exports or interest rates to encourage lending, she's try to spend money on stimulus or passing legislation that would restructure aspects of how we regulate or spend money in order to make longer-term economic changes. And, yes, I think she is. Certainly more than Summers. The question is whether this Administration or the Obama Administration can have the intellectual courage to suck it up, admit that there are some hard times a-comin', and rather than continuing to throw money at the problem in the futile hopes of staving off the worst of the collapse, will take measures to help the eventual recovery and prevent the next one. There's a real political risk to long-term policy investments when they might have to come at the expense of short-term political capital or gains. But, as I said, I'm sick of squishes. It's 2 years until the next election, someone should "run around yelling 'Fuck you!'" besides Joe Scarborough.

SPENCER: I want to give Calderone the link on that, since me, him and another friend are taking a bro-trip to New Orleans on Friday. Also, before you drive back to DC, drive to the Flatbush junction — south on Flatbush Ave till it connects with Nostrand — for a beef patty at Golden Krust. That's BKLYN.

MEGAN: Will it last 4 hours? I can bring you one.

SPENCER: Oh fuck yes.

Here in the US, a 12-year-old Brooklyn girl tied a belt around her neck and hung herself in her closet last week. Maria Herrera's mother claims that kids at school would "harass her, curse at her, call her 'train tracks' because she had braces" and "cut her hair." At Maria Hererra's memorial, classmates left notes that read "I am sorry" and "We won't bother you." Maria's mother says she went to the school to complain about the bullying and nothing was done.

In the UK, teachers have been instructed to crack down on bullying, manipulation and vicious behavior. But here in New York state, anti-bullying legislation has been proposed, but not passed.

Bullying is not new, but suddenly, we're living in a world where everyone's a critic. Cutting other people down is commonplace, a sport — from TV shows like America's Next Top Model and American Idol to blogs, MySpace and Facebook. Vicious words have always been present in school settings, but when we're in a society that seems to thrive on schadenfreude, how can kids feel like anyone gives a damn?

Cyber Bullying Common In Japan School Web Sites: Study [Reuters]
Bullies Blamed For Pre-Teen's Suicide [Gothamist]

Earlier: The Meanest Girls At School Are Often The Most Popular
Girl-On-Girl Crime: Schools Step In
If You Can Handle A Really Depressing Teen Suicide Story Right Now...

[Brooklyn, NY; January 23. Image via INF.]