Earlier: •Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Feminists
• Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Michele Bachmann
•Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Perez Hilton
•Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. The Real Housewives Of New York
•Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Kathy Griffin
•Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Sarah Palin
•Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Amy Winehouse
•Conceptual Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Latarian Milton
•Comic Confrontations: Judge Judy Vs. Crazy Hillary Supporters

• Shh! Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson went on some kind of super secret date in Paris. Don't tell!

As you may recall, Owen and Kate were an item in 2006; she broke up with him in 2007 and he allegedly attempted suicide shortly after. [The Sun]

• Is it possible to resign from the human race? Nadya "Octomom" Suleman was offered $1 million to make a porn flick. [TMZ]
• By the by, Nadya Suleman told Dr. Phil that the hospital may not release her kids unless she can prove she can care for them. [LA Times]
• Warren Beatty wants Lindsay Lohan to star in a film he's working on, and to live in his house. Here's to hoping she plays his daughter and not his love interest. [Fox 411]
• There's a warrant out for the arrest of Adnan Ghalib: He's charged with assault with a deadly weapon, battery, and hit and run. And awful facial hair. [TMZ]
• The LAPD is still "vigorously" investigating how that picture of Rihanna was leaked to TMZ. [E!]
• Chris Brown is reportedly taking anger management classes. [Gatecrasher]
• Alex Rodriguez just found an apartment on Manhattan's Central Park West, two blocks from Madonna's home. Be careful: Jesus is watching! [Page Six]
• This was bound to happen: Slumdog, the musical. Proceeds would help fund Mumbai's destitute kids. [Hindustan Times]
• It's cool that housing officials in Mumbai plan to give the Slumdog kids' families some free apartments, even if it is a publicity stunt, but you've got to imagine that the kids friends and cousins are like so, so jealous, no? [The Sun]
• If you were watching the Oscars in Asia, the words "gay" and "lesbian" were censored. Gay Asians are pissed! [AP]
• Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes is going to be a gay ol' time: Apparently Holmes and Watson share a bed. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law under the covers! [News Of The World]
• Finding Nemo vet Ellen DeGeneres will do another animated flick, Dog Show. Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey are the lead voice actors. The plot? A stray dog and her misfit friends "shake up the purebred world" of a Westminster-like dog show. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Will Iman pop up on Project Runway? [Page Six]
• Jay-Z and Khloe Kardashian had drinks and Jay left a $2000 tip. Klassy! [Page Six]
• Chow Yun Fat had eyelid surgery? He says: "As I grew older, my eyelids began to droop. I began going for cosmetic surgery in Hong Kong when I was filming The God Of Gamblers in 1989. If you go to Hong Kong for cosmetic surgery, I can introduce you to the doctor. He's cheap and good." Uh, thanks? [Straits Times]
• A TV commercial in China has David Beckham "talking" about an anti-impotence drug and saying, "It's the secret weapon with which I can satisfy Victoria." They're using celeb faces without permission. [Daily Mail]
• Eartha Kitt was nowhere to be found in the "In Memoriam" section of the Oscars. A fan contacted her rep, and her rep responded: "It was noticed and I'm handling it the best I can. Please continue to send your thoughts to ABC and SAG." [ONTD]
• Eartha Kitt's publicist tells Page Six: "It's clear that [Oscars producers] thought that publicist Warren Cowan was more of a household name." [Page Six]
• Robert Pattinson had better "watch out," because Taylor Lautner, the Twilight/New Moon werewolf Jacob Black, is a "hunk." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Evan Rachel Wood will play Juliet. In Romeo And Juliet. On the stage in Theatre In The Park in her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. Congrats? [Mirror]
• Pictures of Lily Allen dressed as a panda and a baby bird just make you like her more. [The Life Files]
• OMFG: Gossip Girl will return to the CW in the fall! So will One Tree Hill, 90210, Smallville, Supernatural and America's Next Top Model. Fate undecided: Privileged. [Reuters]
• Guests were "encouraged" to wear pink at Paris Hilton's second birthday party of the year. [Page Six]
• Jimmy Fallon on Late Night: "I have a realistic attitude about all this. People are going to see me who are awake at 12:30. College kids and prison guards." [The Daily Beast]
• Apparently Simon Cowell's comment about wanting to be frozen after death was a joke. [AP]
• Tiger Woods is talking about being lucky to get to stay home with his wife and kids while recovering from a knee injury and holy crap his daughter is adorbs. [People]
• In Amy Adams's next film, Sunshine Cleaning, she plays a single mom who cleans up crime scenes to make enough money to send her kid to private school. Oh, and she wears $100 jeans. [USA Today]
• Tommy Hilfiger's new wife is three months pregnant. (Tommy's daughter Ally is about to turn 24.) [Page Six]
• LOL: Keith Richards is telling people to sober up? [Page Six]
• Sandra Bullock stopped by Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis to research her role for The Blind Side, a film about a student who left his impoverished life and went to live with a wealthy couple, going on to become a successful football player. [UPI]
• By the by, Sandy Bullock sleeps with three dogs in her bed. [Page Six]
• The Killers are countersuing a former manager in Nevada federal court; both sides seek millions. [USA Today]
• Craig Bierko maybe dated Meg Ryan, Charlize Theron and Gretchen Mol. He definitely had something going on with Janeane Garofalo; he calls her "he" and she calls him "she." [Village Voice]
• If you want to read Mike Leigh's Oscar diary, it is here. [Guardian]
• The lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies has resigned in a "mutual agreement." [ONTD]
• Blind item: "Which rock star has extra-special house parties? Guests check their clothes at the door, don a robe and indulge in huge bowls of every drug you can imagine." [Gatecrasher]
• "Like we've always said - someone that's good to our Mom, that's very important. And someone that has a good sense of humor." — Nick Jonas, on what kind of girl he and his brothers want. [Mirror]
• "She is pathetic now. Madonna used to be a symbol of rebellion in the '80s, someone who was against religious orthodoxy. Now we have this Madonna who is always preaching kabbalah, trying to teach people how to live their lives" — Camille Paglia in Brazil's Veja magazine. [Page Six]

It's not that Cooke doesn't offer good examples of this feminist regression — she does, from the country's deplorable rape conviction rate to the media's mauling of Amy Winehouse — it's that she, and the editors of the Observer, barely managed to speak to young British feminists about what was going on in the grass roots of the current movement.

Sure, she has one brief quote from 27-year-old Jess McCabe, the woman behind the excellent UK Feminist website The F Word, but of the eight articles about women in the Observer special, not a single one is written by an emerging feminist or speaks in depth to a woman under 35. There's an article about the women behind the 1970 National Women's Liberation Conference, and another article which is an interview with retired newscaster Anna Ford. But the only article that even attempts to speak to women in their 20s, barely bothers to speak to women specifically involved in the feminist movement.

That particular article, "What's it like to be young, female and living in Britain?" asks a range of young women, from models to Olympic athletes to a few activists, about their personal experiences. Silver medallist in modern pentathlon, Heather Fell, says: "In some ways I'm a traditionalist — I think the man should be there to look after the woman. For me, feminism means women thinking we can do everything without needing men and I don't agree with that." They speak to a 21-year-old engineer who says she's never encountered sexism, and a model who helped found the model's union in the UK who says, "I never liked the word 'feminist' — for me it always meant being against men, whereas I see myself fighting for general equality." One of only two self-proclaimed feminists the Observer talks to is burgeoning politician Rania Khan, who says "I describe myself as a feminist, but feminism doesn't make sense to me as a separate entity. I see it as part of the wider struggle for equality, alongside class and race. I want to see more women, especially from ethnic minorities, involved in politics. Women need to be educated and empowered to take those key positions; only then will we see change."

Khan's brief comments in that one article say far more about the state of modern feminism than the thousands of words spilled by older, and dare I say, more out of touch feminist lights. It's a movement that has become more global, and while it's certainly less cut and dry than the battles those 70s feminists were fighting, that doesn't mean the current issues are not important, or that feminism is dead. This is not to denigrate those incredibly important battles in the least, but I wonder if in some ways, it's time for print media to start handing over the mantle.

Two self-proclaimed feminists I see published in the MSM quite frequently are Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia. Both these women have contributed to the feminist lexicon, but these days they seem to be purely deliberate provocateurs, one of whom is obsessed with denigrating Hillary Clinton's appearance, and the other busy lashing out at Lady Di. The Observer's spread even includes one of these past-prime provocateurs, Fay Weldon, who has written in the Daily Mail recently about how teen girls should be temporarily sterilized and how the Spice Girls ruined feminism. Maybe the picture of modern feminism would not seem so bleak to the Observer if they looked beyond the old-fashioned, all-white faces of 20th century feminism to the new movements roiling right under their noses, yet curiously off their pages.

How Far Have We Come In 80 Years? [Guardian]
It's Been A Long Journey — And We're Not There Yet [Guardian]
The Interview: Anna Ford [Guardian]
What's It Like To Be Young, Female And Living In Britain? [Guardian]

Earlier: Camille Paglia Hates Hillary, Loves Mailer, Is Miffed At Madonna
Who's Afraid Of The Badly Dressed Princess?
Daily (Hate) Mail
British Novelist Says Spice Girls Made Generation Y Drunk, Slutty

But the provocateur's latest pro-Palin essay takes a weird turn into nonsenseland with this sentence: "Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World." Wait…what?

What a vast oversimplification of the feminism of literally hundreds of countries, each with its own set of cultural values, economics, literature, and religion. How does Sarah Palin, a woman who has barely traveled outside of the United States, who favors "small town," "real" (read: white) America, who is staunchly Christian, help expand feminism into the Third World? Solely by being a pro-life working mom? Of course, Paglia barely explains why Palin is a savior for feminism in developing countries, probably because she's a maverick!

In addition, as Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte pointed out earlier this year, the governments with the greatest percentage of women "including Uganda, India, Pakistan and Costa Rica — have laws mandating that women hold a certain number of seats in some of their lawmaking bodies" Hmm, that sounds dangerously close to the dreaded socialism, and something small-government loving Palin would surely not approve of.

Honestly, I don't understand how anyone can take Paglia seriously as a feminist voice when she's so clearly and grossly biased. She hates, hates Hillary Clinton, as she's expressed on several occasions, mocking her looks as well as her personal life. In this essay, Paglia first says, "I was irritated by Hillary Clinton's aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama's curt dismissal of the issue." But guess what! When her beloved Palin brought up Ayers, Paglia became worried! "My concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign…his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed." Is she serious with this shit?

Paglia decries what she describes as "A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage," Democrats displayed when dealing with Sarah Palin. If she wants to see a shocking level of irrational emotionalism, I suggest she look in the friggin' mirror.

Obama Surfs Through [Salon]
Checking In On Feminism Overseas [LAT]

Earlier: Camille Paglia Fighting Old Personal Battles With New Palin Sword

Paglia was once upon a time a pre-eminent feminist writer. Whether you agreed or, like me, disagreed with her, she was well-respected and well on her way to being part of the feminist canon, even if as a rape-apologist, Madonna-loving contrarian dissenter. These days, she's calling Hillary a "man-hater," calling Hillary simultaneously not pretty and not manly enough, belittling Hillary's forgiveness of Bill, insulting Madonna's appearance (while, let it be said, I had trouble finding a picture of Camille that isn't at least 10 years old if not 20), nominating Sarah Palin as the biggest new feminist thing and hating on urbanites from the distance of the suburbs for not being patriotic enough. It's kind of a sad, blow-hard-y end to what could have been an interesting career.

So, to today's piece! It's that time of the month (for me, anyway) when Camille takes letters from readers. And, oh, what fan-girl and -boy pieces of trite claptrap they are... so much so that you'd think Camille never got a dissenting letter in her inbox. She's loved, you see! Respected by the masses! They don't see her constant "I am one of the masses, not a Ivory Tower intellectual despite being a wealthy, suburban lesbian professor and author" as cliché at all. And they love how she ties everything into her Italian-American roots and the "solid" women of her childhood memory, even as she rages against Hillary's body type and rags on Madonna for no longer being pretty enough.

These days, Sarah Palin's more her type, as she marvels at her "digs and slams" against Biden last week and talks about how her love for Palin is something more than simply sexual:

When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex — I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal. The question that keeps popping up for me is whether Palin, who was born in Idaho, could possibly be part Native American (as we know her husband is), which sometimes seems suggested by her strong facial contours. I have felt that same extraordinary energy and hyper-alertness billowing out from other women with Native American ancestry — including two overpowering celebrity icons with whom I have worked.

Someone other than me should probably talk about the way Paglia fetishizes Native American women there, I'm not sure I have the vocabulary other than to say that it made me squirm uncomfortably. That, and that I have the sneaking suspicion she wouldn't say anything nearly as complimentary about Michelle Obama. Oh right, she didn't.

But let us not forget Paglia's ode to Governor Palin's language skills and intellect, which left me a bit flummoxed — especially the part where she compared to to poetry and wasn't even talking Dadaist poetry.

On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse — which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies).

Camille, I'm just going to put it out there, sometimes even poetry can say something. In fact, that's sort of its purpose. If it's just a bunch of pretty words strung together with no deeper, layered meaning, it's a fucking Hallmark card, not something that belongs in my Norton's Anthology.

I could go on — God knows Paglia did — but I don't need to tread in the footsteps of Kathy and Amanda. Paglia has a good 2,000 words of sycophantic questions and breathless answers in which she acknowledges her writing skills and her superiority over the "musty circles" of "media insiders" like "that viper, Katie Couric," who obviously just edited her whole CBS news interview to make Sarah Palin look stupid. Not Camille's fantasy girl, not the woman that proves her right about feminism being for the pretty girls and the sexy girls and the ones who love men and who would never get raped because they're too smart and have sex but the right kind of sex and not too much of it and not in a way that pleases men too much or doesn't please them enough. Between Camille's many, many references to how she's totally going to vote for Obama despite her obvious ladyboner for Sarah Palin — let alone everything else she's ever written and her need to fill her column with praise for her own self — it's really hard not to just sort of feel sorry for her.

She spends all her time lashing out at 10- and 20-year-old criticisms, on everything for her long-ago Madonna ladyboner to her "vision" of feminism (which is as schizophrenic as, um, well, a schizophrenic) to her fetishization of various ethinic stereotypes — including her own— and it's just starting to get a little worn around the edges. Using Palin to illustrate why she was always right is just another desperate lunge at those who disagreed with her intellectually, and those who disagreed with her ideas about feminism, femininity and sexuality —without questioning her intellect, her feminism, her femininity or her sexuality. So I understand the defensiveness on some level because I've been there. But I see now why I ought to stop. I don't want to be still talking about whether I look more like Miss Piggy or Ursula in 20 years (personal opinion: Ursula) or whether it's "right" to love Madonna (you will pry The Immaculate Collection from my cold dead hands). So, I'm going to try not to, and maybe if Camille tried to let go of those things herself, she'd find herself with more interesting things to say. Maybe.

Nobody's Dummy [Salon]

Related: "That Viper, Katie Couric." [The G Spot]
A Day In The Life Of The Only Appreciator Of The Masculine Life Force [Pandagon]
Poll of the Day: Who Does the New Wonkette Resemble? [BigHeadDC]
Poor Little Female Bloggers [WizBang]
Obama's Best Veep Choice [Salon]
Photo via Ann Althouse

"Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days," Camille blathers on in her praise of Palin. And it sounded very much like what Sarah Palin recited in her RNC acceptance speech: "A writer observed, 'We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity,' Palin said. "And I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman. I grew up with those people. They're the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad — and they're always proud of America. "

The implication with both Paglia and Palin is that people who live in cities are intrinsically less patriotic than those who are from Mayberry. We must be one hell of an unpatriotic country, then, because according to a 2005 U.N. survey, 80.8% of the American population lives in cities and suburbs. What's more, during this election cycle it's not only urbanites who have been made out to be unpatriotic. It's anyone who's not Christian.

First there's the whole Obama is a Muslim meme, and people jumping on Obama saying, "my Muslim faith." That's just flat out anti-Islam prejudice. But then there's Palin's Evangelism. Much has been made of Palin's Pentecostal church, and while some of what has been said about the Alaska governor's religiosity is overreaction, she has said several things that are deeply disturbing for anyone who believes strongly in separation of church and state.

Beliefnet.com editor-in-chief Steven Waldman writes in the Wall Street Journal: "What should be of concern to religious minorities is that Palin signed a resolution establishing a Christian Heritage Week. It didn’t actually declare the U.S. to be an officially Christian nation but it plucked Founding Fathers quotes way out of context to misleadingly imply they were devout Christians." In addition, Palin "told a group of young church leaders to pray for a gas pipeline because it was God’s will. 'God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built. So pray for that.' This is well beyond what President Bush customarily said. Asserting that God endorses a particular energy strategy or public works project is exactly the sort of mindset the Founders feared. The vote-for-this-because-God-says-so approach means that those who oppose a particular policy are violating God’s will — and good Christians should view them that way."

Though Paglia would certainly accuse me of being trapped in the allegedly closed-minded "mental zone" of New York City, I am deeply disturbed by these cultural assumptions. It serves precisely no one to play into the I'm-more-patriotic-than-you-are pissing contest. By Paglia and Palin's implied parameters, as a Jewish urban dweller I might as well be an Iraqi insurgent for my suspected level of innate patriotism. And as much as I believe in questioning authority and looking at our country critically, I wholeheartedly love America. "I have spent time debating with myself the notion of love of country," My mother wrote me in an email this week. "After all, this country took my parents, and they prospered and so in turn have we and you. Jews don't fit in a lot of places...we have to remember that." Trust me, mom, I haven't forgotten.

Fresh Blood For The Vampire [Salon]
Is Sarah Palin Bad For The Jews? [Radar]
The Passion of Palin: Separating Real Concerns From the Hysteria [WSJ]

Earlier: Pig Lips, Crazy Eyes, Camille Paglia And The Dear Leader

MOE: Hi! I am um in the [redacted]. You can delete that part though. Remember when I chatted you from [somewhere else] and mentioned I was in [somewhere else] and hoped no one would notice? They did.

MEGAN: I will redact your location from the transcript! I am still in upstate New York, but I don't care if people notice.

MOE: Whoa, can't read past the headline, Camille Paglia. I think we should talk about North Korea a bit today too though, just putting that out there. And oh yeah Obama the chauvinist pig.

MEGAN: I'm down with that schedule of events, even if it does force me to read Camille Paglia and even (horrors) agree with her, despite her overwrought boating metaphors:

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain's credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let's turn the damned page.

Oh, but then she sets to world right on its axis by accusing him of trying to "act black" by dropping his G's, as though nobody does that.

I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin' his g's like there's no tomorrow.

And now I feel okay about mildly disliking her.

MOE: She had to bring BDSM into it, didn't she. Now I am getting an image of Sarah Palin …ugh, she is conjuring up scenarios that will be used against me later when she figures out how to ban me from the Library of Congress or something. Also, droppin one's Gs is not a fucking African American pastime Camille Paglia. It's called L-I-V-I-N.

MEGAN: It's also called not being a prissy intellectual. BUT, she does agree with you that there wasn't enough foreign policy in Obama's Invesco speech and then she decides that Palin has supplanted Madonna as a feminist superstar:

In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

This is, by the way, your BDSM-like punishment for linking me to Paglia before I finish a cup of coffee. HA, Camille Paglia might be older than John McCain, in the end:

She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919.

How many frontierswomen do you think Paglia knew personally or saw speak?

MOE: Hahahaha you mean like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman? Because I sorta see how they're pursuing similar strategies with the hair.

MEGAN: I will admit, I watched that show. My parents were very strict about TV and didn't have cable. See, I tend to think of Sarah Palin's hair as "wedding hair," but she is wearing it down more and more. My Glamour editor at the conventions said she thought she wore it up to look taller, but I did notice that McCain's kind of short when she's in heels so I'm guessing that's why she's wearing it down now. Okay, here's my last Paglia quote because you will appreciate it and because I frankly can't read any further after this without hurting myself or other people:

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil).

MOE: I really can't figure out how one advances to such lofty ranks of academia only to turn around and promulgate such partisan caricatures.

For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is "cool," and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications.

MEGAN: Um, see, this guy lost me in the first paragraph:

But as Bob Woodward is the latest to remind us, it is presidents, not their understudies, who shape the destiny of nations.

OH REALLY FOUAD AJAMI? Dick Cheney had nothing to do with nothing? Bob Woodward is all knowing? Fuuuuuck you.

MOE: Wow I always figured Camille lived in the terrible drug-addled overtaxed national chain store underserved den of iniquity that is the other side of City Line, the glorified sixth borough Philadelphia. Now I realize she is a real true American, or something.

Oh right? Too ADD to remember that line just now. Um, what's he smoking, seriously? Did Bob Woodward's latest book finally debunk that batshit liberal conspiracy that Cheney somehow runs the Bush Administration?

MEGAN: I think Woodward's book — like all of Woodward's books, relies too heavily on the Big-Man theory of political science in which all of the actions of the entire Executive Branch rest on the shoulders of one man. Thus, is Bush really in charge and his minions report to him rather than — as is always the case — power being actually more diffuse in practice because Bush's speeches are scripted, his opinions are formed by underlings and presented to him and his policies formed by committee. Only people with outsized personalities and force can actually ram their own ideas through that system, which is why people credit Dick Cheney with having more power than the average VP — and, from what I've heard, rightly so.

MOE: Of course he does…From what I recall of Woodward's previous books Dick "Big Time" was Woodward's "Big Man" in a lot of ways, right? Unless I'm thinking of the books on Condi Rice, or by Ron Suskind, or, fuck if I know. Anyway I just don't think this fact is disputed. Cheney runs shit, the end. Next up: Obama makes a coy little joke employing a shop-worn cliche and the Republicans go positively deranged. I can safely say I would feel the exact way if McCain made a the same comment re Hillary. It was sorta funny! Not offensive! Imagine if this happened in the UK. You might have to leave the bar at 11 p.m. and that would suck, but no MP would have the conscience to feign "offense" about it. Oh god…BOAR WAR.

MEGAN: HAHAHAHAHA. Oh, shit, I miss your puns. There are a total of 5 people in America who might get that.

Anyway, I I wondered aloud this morning whether pigs have lips but a Google image search proved that they do and that they can be eaten, were one to be so inclined. I think the campaigns need to sack up and have a pig-lip eating contest and whomever gags first concedes the Presidency.

MOE: Sorry, not my pun. It's the cover of the NY Post. I still need coffee. Hey, check out the pic of the guy on this story about how Palin is "energizing women of all walks of life." That dude looks pretty energized. Or possibly "diabolical"!

MEGAN: Um, I love how the Washington Post just called him a woman. Like, I loved it almost as much as the Post's headline writers, who have apparently expanded the audience for jokes about British colonialist conflicts by a factor of 10.

Anyway, what I want to know is how come since Obama's next line was about stinky rotten fish, no former female Massachusetts governor is calling out Obama for making inappropriate comments about the smell of Sarah Palin's vagina? Huh, Jane Swift? Did you miss that? Because I really think commenting on vaginal odor is, like, totally worse than saying she looks pig-like, not that he said that either but if this is taking-fake-offense day, that's the fake offense I'm taking. Jane Swift doesn't care about women with vaginal odor.

MOE: Hahaha maybe you could be the first. Do you think some people become Republican spinmasters just for absurd opportunities like that? Sorry I'm reading about North Korea. The government is claiming Kim is fine, he sent a birthday greeting to Bashar Assad just to prove it, no one can say what said birthday card consisted of but wouldn't it be cool if it were some sort of strippergram, "foreign doctors" have maybe been summoned to the country to nurse Dear Leader back to health, I am still struggling (Googling) to figure out who noticed Kim's absence in the first place. Does the Chosun Ilbo or whatever have a Pyongyang Bureau? Does Xinhua?

MEGAN: I'm going to go out on a very wide, broad limb here and suggest that one of Seoul's newspapers of record probably doesn't have a really big Pyongyag bureau, if only because of the Dear Leader's penchant for kidnapping South Koreans (and others). Xinhua might, in which case I'm sort of curious what China's interest might be in promoting a story that Kim Jong Il might not be long for the world. Either way, you'd think that if Kim Jong Il was so cool with counterfeiting money and pirating everything under the sun that he might've pirated a couple of copies of Photoshop and kidnapped a couple of South Koreans or Japanese people that know how to use it to take care of contingencies like this.

MOE: I feel like the news out of North Korea would be a lot more interesting if the South Korean papers had a "really big bureau" there. I feel like news about the place always comes from people who've gotten out, though. Oh yeah and Vice. And when they have an anniversary celebration, are there C-Span feeds of that? Because this here is straight-up Kremlinology.

On Monday, North Korea's nominal No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, gave a 60th-anniversary speech that referred to Kim Jong Il mainly in the past tense, said Jonathan Pollack, an Asia expert at the Naval War College. "Generally, when he is praised to the skies, it is in the present tense. But the predominant tone is looking back," he said.

MEGAN: Do we pirate their cable?

5.) Anal Is Optional Some gay men I know who are in their mid to late 20s have never had anal sex and don't really ever want to. Maybe they just haven't met that special guy to lose their anal virginity to, or maybe they are correct in the assessment that it just isn't for them. (I wouldn't know about pitching, but catching can hurt like a motherfucker.) Other gay guys I know only have anal sex with someone They're really close to. In this day and age where porn is so pervasive, people feel required to be a little more adventurous (which can be a good thing!), but just because you're open to trying new things, doesn't mean that your asshole is. And forcing the issue can lead to rectal bleeding.

4.) Sex Can Be Expected Or A Given For the most part, when gay men go on a date, or hook up with someone they've met on the internet or whatever, both parties assume (and hope) that the end result of the evening will be sex. I totally get this. Particularly because, personally, I would never be alone with a man unless I'd already decided that I wanted to fuck him, and also because I don't see the point in holding in my farts around someone all night long unless I got something out of it. Camille Paglia has said that "one of the costs of modern feminism is that women must be like gay men who understand that every date is a sexual encounter," adding that the way for women to be safe in our sexual relationships is to acknowledge and accept that it's dangerous territory, and to be equipped to deal with all that that entails. She's said, "Everyone in the gay male world knows that the price of sexual adventure can be death, so I am tired of young women regarding themselves as a special class that somehow wants a perfect experience."

3.) Stay Friendly With Former Lovers Every gay guy I have ever met stays friendly with at least some of his former hookups. Sometimes they become really close friends. Sometimes the old flames (heh) set them up with other guys they'd slept with, acknowledging that they are much better suited for each other. Sometimes they have sex with their ex-BF's ex-BFs. It's called "six degrees of Kevin's bacon." This might just be a New York thing, I dunno. But it's kind of a good idea. I say, yes, stay friendly with past hookups — and eliminate any jealous feelings — especially if they're hot or really genuine, because birds of a feather and all that. They might be able to set you up with someone else that you can actually date long term.

2.) Dominant/Submissive Roles With most gay couples there is a top and there is a bottom. But there is a give-and-take aspect to pretty much all sexual relationships across the board. In straight relationships, there seems to be this embarrassment for "progressive" people about a man taking the dominant role and a woman taking the submissive role. It's like the parties involved are afraid they'll set the women's movement back 50 years if a girl's hair gets pulled, or if her ass gets smacked, or if she's told what to do in bed. As long it's between consenting adults, no one should feel bad about what turns them on. Gay men don't have this problem of dividing the sexual power play.

1.) Resolving Our Sexual Selves With the Rest of Our Lives Identifying as gay means that your sex life helps defines who you are way more than it does for straight people. Perhaps having it so out there is why it's so much easier for gay men to embrace their sexuality while also embracing other facets of their lives, like for example, domesticity. Maybe it's part of the whole virgin/whore thing, but people find it weird when hyper-sexual women are also into things like, say, homemaking. It's totally accepted that gay men can be equally psyched about going to Bed, Bath, & Beyond and sniffing out a sale on pillows and matching damasks, and going to bed and having marathon sex (maybe in a threesome?). But people still have this stereotype in their minds of what a woman who enjoys filthy sex should be like. We should all accept that women, too, are multi-faceted creatures who might be into sucking a dick one night, and tatting a doily another; nailing a picture to the wall one night, or getting nailed against a wall another.

Earlier: Mad Men: Don Draper Dominates Dames

• On the eve before the Texas/Ohio primaries that could end the Hillary Clinton candidacy, Camille Paglia decided to give an exclusive interview to...US Weekly. In which: she praises Barack Obama for his superior kung fu skills and rails against Hillary for hiring a team "so self-infatuated with their own clever superiority, that in fact they're quite transparent," and also choosing to appear in US Weekly. [US Weekly]
  
• Whatev! Hill's in "happy-warrior mode." [NY Times]
  
• "Colombia has become the Israel of Latin America." Hugo Chavez re the killing of commander Raul Reyes and 16 other FARC guerrillas on Saturday. [Haaretz]
  
• Ummmm, we're busy dealing with the Israel of the Middle East right now, mkay guys?(Hahaha Kthanxdie). Condi visits tomorrow following Israeli air strikes on Gaza that have killed 117 Palestinians. [Wash Post]
  
• Rush Limbaugh asks his callers to vote for Hillary because "this is too good a soap opera...We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically. It's obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it, they don't have the stomach for it... I know it's a difficult thing to do, vote for Clinton. But it will sustain this soap opera, and it's something I think we need and it'll be fun, too." [CNN]

• Why does Russia bother holding elections? Uhhhhh, so stupid uninformed people like us won't get it confused with, God forbid, China. [Slate]
• Warren Buffett says the country is "essentially" in a recession. [CNBC]
• An that he'd put either Clinton or Obama in charge of a business — just not Berkshire Hathaway. [Reurters]
• John McCain wants you to know right now while his opinion is still irrelevant that he is in favor of interest rate cuts. [WSJ]
• Thousands of southern Chinese are protesting the construction of a chemical plant near their fishing villages after the same strategy worked to get the project moved from the city of Xiamen. (Um, just how pristine and unpolluted were any of these places before the residents started getting all NIMBY on economic development's ass? Just wondering.) [Wash Post]

Then comes crazypants Camille Paglia, who hates on Hillary in a screed in Salon. Because of Hillary's upbringing alongside feckless male siblings, Paglia posits that Clinton hates all men: "Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them...Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip."

Possibly to balance out Camille's rant, Salon also runs a far more sane and well-argued piece by Frances Kissling, who says that while Clinton intelligence is to be respected, she's bothered by Hillary's "stereotypical male" posturing. "In [Hillary's] own mind it is only a certain kind of man who is qualified to be president," Kissling writes, "and she will be that man: tough on everything from war, flag burning, kids' access to video games, illegal immigrants and Palestinians. She has missed the opportunity to talk about what it really means for women to be equal in this country."

Finally, Gail Collins in the New York Times has a different spin on why women in New Hampshire were possibly affected by Hillary's show of emotion. "This week, Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who's overdosed on multitasking," Collins says. "They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids/go back to school/start a business/become a lawyer. But there are days when they can't meet everybody's needs and the men in their lives — loved ones and otherwise — make them feel like failures or towers of self-involvement. And the deal is that they can either suck it up or look like a baby."

For Crying Out Loud! [Guardian]
Hillary Without Tears [Salon]
Why I'm Still Not For Hillary Clinton [Salon]
Hillary's Free Pass [New York Times]

California Senator Dianne Feinstein also gets some Paglia love for having "true gravitas — a rare quality in women." Then Camille opines that Dianne Feinstein should have been the first female nominee for president. (Because even though America might not vote for a woman, they'll jump at the chance to vote for a Jewish woman) Further on, Camille admits that Madonna didn't want to meet her after that Madonna — Finally, a Real Feminist story in the 90s, perhaps because the pop star was intimidated by her intellectuality. "I attributed Madonna's skittishness at the time to her uncertainties about her education (she had dropped out of college after one semester to seek fame in New York)."

So to recap! Women rarely have true gravitas, should be stylish and warm but not too aggressive or shrill, and Camille Paglia is smarter than Madonna. (Paglia also defends Norman Mailer's place in the sexual dialog of the 70s and calls him "pussy whipped.") I'd foment some righteous indignation about it but I'm too exhausted from the anger aroused by the rest of her column to deal with it.

Queen Hillary's disruptive court [Salon]
Madonna — Finally, a Real Feminist [New York Times]
Earlier: Gorgeous Star-Fucking Hillary Clinton Aide Buys Fake Handbag And Other Stuff Vogue Left Out

"These girls are lowering themselves to the level of backstreet floozies. They are cheapening their own image and obliterating all the glamour, which is the heart of the star system."

Find out who said it, after the jump. And prepare for your head to explode.

Yup. That's right. Camille Paglia. Camille fucking Paglia in In Touch magazine. Maybe the social theory of Dyonisian human sexuality ain't paying so well these days.

Expect Germain Greer in Life&Style and Naomi Wolfe in Star any day now.