American Apparel Is Completely Ridiculous: But you knew that. Charney lives in a "gated, marble, gold-encrusted mansion on a hill" with a rotating roster of hipster employee/roommate/assistants plus:

A young, loud, pear-shaped man named Johnny Makeup wanders in wearing a Mickey Mouse sweater, purple jeans, and shiny loafers. Johnny says Charney recruited him from an American Apparel store in New York after being charmed by his sense of style. Now he’s apprenticing in the P.R. department, where his tasks include putting together music mixes, updating his MySpace page, making Charney salads, and keeping him company. He lives in Charney’s mansion and calls him Daddy.

“Daddy,” he says, as he plops onto the leather couch next to the desk, “I saw a vagina for the third time today.”

Dov Charney Is Pervy:Again, we knew this. The not-quite-ironic retro-porn aesthetic, the legions of sexual harassment suits, the tales of sexually-charged work environments (yes, putting it mildly), underage shenanigans, one on one photo shoots with the boss, personal hiring sessions, naked and near-naked romping, coke orgies, orgy-orgies, financial shadiness, and the on-record masturbation are legendary in the bad way. Quoth The Dov,“'Fashion is about sexuality...It’s hard to be fashionable and sanitize it and take the sexuality out of it. It’s tasteful. It’s utility—it’s not Frederick’s of Hollywood. It has to make you feel attractive. Sex makes you feel beautiful or handsome.'" Well, okay then!

Dov Charney Is Genuinely Obsessed With Tee Shirts: Although An Immigrant, Charney was always obsessed with the preppy American style of the 80s; visiting his grandparents in Florida, he fell in love with Lacoste and Gant. "In 1988, while a high school senior, Charney started American Apparel." It bore the slogan, “Canada’s direct source for American-made T-shirts and fleecewear.” Even today he's allegedly obsessive about the product - weird, since it's kind of notoriously crappy.

American Apparel Really Is An Okay Place To Work: In a city full of sweatshops, AA's 4,000 plus employees make $12 an hour, get health insurance, and have access to "an in-house health clinic, subsidized meals, English-language classes, and a host of other cushy incentives." When Charney had to fire 30 workers who didn't have paperwork, he gave them each $30,000 of company stock.

Charney Seems Really Committed To Free Trade: The pro-immigration ads AA has been running lately are a testament to the company's stance; not surprisingly, Charney's been served with a notice of inspection from Immigration, which is yet to take place. Lately he's been working on prioritizing AA's "Legalize L.A." website. The company is also highly involved in the May 1st immigration protests, which apparently involves Johnny Makeup carrying around a Paris Hilton cutout and screaming, “'Immigrants are hot! Come party with the immigrants.'” How would Charney characterize his positions? “'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall! It’s because I’m a Jew! Birds are free! We want to go somewhere, let’s go! I just don’t believe in borders, in the end. The Americans who do just don’t trust humanity.'”

American Apparel Is Really Paternalistic:Whatever its virtues, critics allege that Charney only wants his workers happy on his own terms, that he needs to play Lord Bountiful. They claim that he bullied his workers into not unionizing. Says Kimi Lee, director of the Garment Workers Center,“'It isn’t a shining star, but it’s not a sweatshop. It could be better. Even though Charney talks about workers’ rights and trumpets all the things he’s done, he’s not letting the workers speak for themselves. It’s significant that he doesn’t. It’s very paternalistic. He believes he’s treating them better than anyone else could'.”

Dov Charney Is Crazy:“'See! That’s what a beautiful, intelligent woman wants, to go to dinner in a pair of pants that makes her look good. She’s on top of the fucking world. That’s what it’s all about. The pants! The pants! That’s all a beautiful woman wants! A pair of pants that takes her into a restaurant. She looks beautiful. She looks intelligent! She’s got a pair of pants! She’s on top of the world—and it’s the pants, the pants!'”

Here is the real issue: According to the piece, Charney is for real. He's really pervy. He's really into tee shirts. He's really committed to free trade. And he's really, really crazy. His persona is not a hipster pose; it seems to be who he is. As a result, it's silly to regard anything about American Apparel as a business model; it's one (crazy) guy's dream. Charney seems genuinely aggrieved that people can't forget all about his silly old sexual harassment and focus on all his good works. "It’s a victory that we’re able to make clothing that people love in a place that isn’t embarrassing. Get over the ads. Get over the complaints. Get over the fact that I made a mistake making a comment to one or two girls. How selfish! Why couldn’t they just walk away? Think of the thousands of suppliers, the thousands of sewers, the workers!”

It doesn't seem to occur to him that living with a bunch of college students, or representatives like Johnny Makeup don't exactly enhance the company's "seriousness" profile. Says one of his defenders, "Dov is a character, and it’s easy to make him a target." Um, okay, except that no one's forced him to be the completely public face of his brain child. He's obviously infantile, thinks he's a victim, refers to himself as "an immigrant" repeatedly — allying himself with his laregly Mexican workforce — breaking into Québécois French. It would almost be one thing if he were like, "our aesthetic is offensive and demeaning but the kids like it and clearly we're onto something, and that allows us to make the changes we really care about."

But that's not what he thinks; he and the company are creepy and skeevy. Hipsters think it's ironic. Probably in the hands of marketers it is; but there's no irony or contradiction to Charney; whatever he wants is good, and right, and of a beautiful piece. Which is kind of scary. It's not unusual in the history of industry for a mogul to be a monomaniacal egotist. But for that kind of craziness to be the basis of a real lifestyle movement? Unsettling, to say the least.

Barely Legal [Portfolio]

Earlier: American Apparel Will Make You Look Like A Fat Hooker
If You Go Work For American Apparel Can You Really Expect Dov Charney To Wear Clothes?
American Apparel's Dov Charney Explains It All For You On SNL
American Apparel CEO Orders Subordinate To Pleasure Herself; She Services Him With A Lawsuit
Everything I Needed To Know About The American Economy I Learned At American Apparel

• Victoria Osteen, wife of megachurch pastor Joel Osteen, is in court today facing a lawsuit that her "on-board temper tantrum caused the [flight attendant Sharon Brown] to lose her religious faith and suffer a flare-up of hemorrhoids." Osteen was reportedly trying to get a spill on her first-class armrest wiped up and elbowed Brown on the way to the cockpit to complain. The Osteens have already paid a $3,000 FAA fine for interfering with a flight crew. [WorldNet Daily, HuffPo]
• In other salacious news, the National Enquirer has finally gotten around to posting its pictures of John Edwards' Beverly Hilton romp. Hey, did anyone notice that he's not wearing the same clothes in the pictures they said he was wearing? That's weird, right? [National Enquirer, Glamocracy]

• The government came out with almost all of its evidence against Bruce Ivins, the anthrax scientist who killed himself as the FBI were preparing to arrest him. It seems pretty cut and dried — including the part where he misled investigators by telling them the anthrax belonged to an unnamed "other scientist" in the lab. Guess Moe and I were right. [Washington Post]
• In China news, President Bush today said that "America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates, and religious activists." Of course, he then said that they'll get to actual freedom through free trade, so it's China-policy-as-usual. [MSNBC]
• John McCain seemingly has his own Norman Hsu, as the media investigates Harry Sargeant III's large-dollar bundled from unregistered voters and first-time contributors. Corrections to the story, by the way, are already available. [Washington Post]
• A U.S. military tribunal convicted its first person — Osama bin Laden's driver Salim Hamden — of driving bin Laden but not of engaging in terrorism. It apparently means we'll be keeping him in prison for life instead of killing him, and that the military is going to keep on keepin' on with their Alternative-to-Justice Department. [Washington Post]

MOE:: So okay, tonight is a really important night. Hillary needs to win or else, well, as she told Jon Stewart, it's pretty pathetic.
MEGAN: I have to say, I watched that and she didn't cackle even once.
MEGAN: Although a darker brown suit would've been better.
MOE:: She did a really good job. And that was a funny answer. Everyone's really impressed that she's not "acting like a loser" yet, you know? Like at this Eva Longoria-moderated town hall meeting in Texas yesterday. Um, did you know Eva Longoria is a former Miss Corpus Christi? Because that was news to me.
MEGAN: Whoa, that is news to me, too. But, yay for a short girl winning a beauty contest!
9:05 AM
MEGAN: I mean, the problem becomes that if she actually doesn't pull it out today, does she continue to act like a winner and try to keep going through Pennsylvania anyway.
MOE:: Okay, so today's big news to me is that Alex P. Keaton would be an Obamican. This revelation comes to us via his ghostwriter Gary David Goldberg. "I think Obama's slogan is very similar to Alex's own personal mantra: "Of Course I Can." Now ha ha ha yes that is fiction, but the rationale behind it sort of mirrors the rationale behind this nonfiction blog post by Netscape co-founder and gazillionaire Marc Andreessen, who also gave money to Mitt Romney. The Obamicans are, to me, the most fascinating niche of the Obama constituency, because they are willing to discard all their ill-conceived ideology just to get someone motherfucking smart in the White House.
The other person, or their software, refused the request.
9:10 AM
MOE:: Okay, so today's big news to me is that Alex P. Keaton would be an Obamican. This revelation comes to us via his ghostwriter Gary David Goldberg. "I think Obama's slogan is very similar to Alex's own personal mantra: "Of Course I Can."
MOE:: Now ha ha ha yes that is fiction, but the rationale behind it sort of mirrors the rationale behind this nonfiction blog post by Netscape co-founder and gazillionaire Marc Andreessen, who also gave money to Mitt Romney. The Obamicans are, to me, the most fascinating niche of the Obama constituency, because they are willing to discard all their ill-conceived ideology just to get someone motherfucking smart in the White House.
MEGAN: Well, but presumably they consider their ideology to be somewhat less ill-conceived most of the time.
MEGAN: I mean, do they not consider Clinton smart? Because she's not stupid. And neither's McCain, even if I disagree with him politically. So why are these guys going for Obama, who is legitimately considered to be far more liberal than Hillary by more than just the National Journal?
MOE:: Yeah and it also gets to this nagging curiosity: Is Obama really a Leftist? Does he really hate NAFTA? What did NAFTA ever do to him?
MOE:: I like this snippet from the Andressen blog post:

We then asked, well, what about foreign policy — should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?
He said, directly, two things.
First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy — and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.
Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.