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

But, in the last year or so, lawyers representing asylum-seekers say that the Department of Homeland Security's already-opaque decision-making structure has significantly decreased the number of asylum petitions from gay Latinos that it accepts. But even Jorge Saavedra, who directs the Mexican government's AIDS programs and is openly gay and HIV-positive himself, says that homophobia still runs rampant in Mexico.

Why now? In 2006, Mexico passed a same-sex unions law that  as one assumes many in the LGBT community in the United States could already guess  did nothing to end the scourge of homophobia and, some say, might have made things worse by making homophobes more anxious and aggressive toward gay Mexicans. In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security  for completely apolitical reasons I'm sure  decided last year that every single asylum petition from Mexico has to undergo a "special" review by the Department in Washington. Grants of asylum have begun to plummet, even as Mexicans seeking asylum continue to report tales that ought to horrify us all  including tales of being forced to perform sex acts on prisoners for the amusement of the guards and of being fired for being HIV-positive.

But, you know, that's no reason to take their tired, their poor, their huddled masses longing to breathe free or their gay citizens trying to escape a life of abuse. Homosexuality's a choice after all.

As Latin Nations Treat Gays Better, Asylum Is Elusive [Washington Post]

MEGAN: So, want to talk a little about the hotness quotient of Obama and Edwards on stage together? Because it was hot. I actually watched the speech, and usually I just listen while typing on my computer but Edwards looked so damn cute. He had this look on his face when he got on stage like, whoa, this is a big rally and these people are screaming and I'm not used to it but I think I like it.

MOE: Yeah, I think I sufficiently reveled in that yesterday evening. Apparently it cut off a discussion of my friend Ben's book on NPR. I'd love to hear what Elizabeth has to say though. It's so crazy to think that they've been this political partnership for his entire career and they can't see eye-to-eye on this one. Was that 41-point gap in West Virginia what finally dragged him in? I've been reading, like, other stuff this morning.

MEGAN: I'm not sure why she's not on board except that maybe she really likes Hillary Clinton more than Obama? But someone other than me hit the nail on the head yesterday  if he waited any longer, he wouldn't have been any big deal to the campaign, and I think he wanted it to be high profile when he did do it. I mean, he did it in Michigan, so it's a way to endorse that, in his mind, doesn't affect the remaining primaries.

MOE: For instance by some achievement of sheer "clicking on new tabs" fatigue I got through Matt Bai's epic Times Magazine cover story on John McCain's foreign policy beliefs. I also read most of this profile of his wingman/ghostwriter Mark Salter in today's Journal. Here is what I learned: some people think John McCain doesn't hate war enough because the whole time they were romping around the country trying in vain to tell the difference between VC from "South Vietnamese civilian ally" he was at torture camp learning to channeling his hate for, to paraphrase Glenn Beck, all those small people who were different from him.
MEGAN: Ah, yes, torture makes you love the war, check.
MOE: But Matt Bai seems to think he learned his foreign policy in...academia! At the National War College after he got home from torture camp. He looks at David Petreaus as the modern-day Creighton Abrams, who John McCain thinks might have won the war if they hadn't spent the first fifteen years or whatever fucking it up.
MOE:

"It's a little bit eerily reminiscent, in that search-and-destroy is basically the same tactic that Rumsfeld, Casey, Sanchez, et al. employed," McCain told me, referring to George Casey and Ricardo Sanchez, the two previous generals to command coalition forces in Iraq. "Go out, kill bad people and then go back to base. That's basically what search-and-destroy was. We obviously failed to learn that lesson in history." In McCain's war, then, David Petraeus, the more innovative general who took over in 2007, is now playing the part of Abrams, pursuing a winning strategy that needs only the patience of the American people and their government to ultimately succeed.

MEGAN: I think I'm more of a pessimist about human nature than you in general.
MOE: Like, I think you genearlly have to be really poor and really bored.
MOE: Well you know how the astrology works on that.
MEGAN: So, since we're not really poor by world standards, does that mean the US is really bored?
MOE: Well, who are most of our homicide victims/perpetrators? They're not the plutocracy, you know?
MEGAN: Well, but the ones who make the decisions about going to war are...
MOE: They're the disposables generally. I mean, I've covered cops. And yeah, there's a lot of boredom there.
MOE: Well sure. I mean, remember how it used to thrill Rumsfeld to say the word "kill"?
MEGAN: Yeah, I can see that. I thought about being a cop for a while, but then I would've had to have gotten into really good shape or something. Plus I don't like wearing a uniform and my parents didn't think someone with my temperment should have a gun on them.
MEGAN: Do you remember how the dude refused to have a chair in his office? Craaaazy dude.
MOE: I mean, that's another thing. Our troops: 4,000 have died. According to this Forbes story the national homicide rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2006, and that's probably risen slightly. How many is that? I can't do math. Meanwhile a million Iraqis have died since the war began, and a lot of that has been us  not generally Haditha or Eggnog massacres but just basically air strikes and shit, but a lot of that has also been sectarian violence, and that is only exacerbated when people have no money, no job, a ton of fear, and shit all to do.

MEGAN: It's like 15,000 people, given the population of 280 million, I think, but I suck at math when hungover.
MOE: Economic development, as much as I like to say "yeah fuck that whole scam", can be a very positive thing. That said  god this is a depressing IM  as the this story about how the dearth of Good Samaritans and/or any sort of civil society in China is kind of part of the reason a government can't really rely on economic development alone.
MOE:

For the first few hours, Mr. Deng called for help. He spoke from under a deep pile of broken concrete slabs to his mother and his wife, Qin Ke. "I told him I would get him out," says Ms. Qin, whose legs were gashed as she dug in the debris. "But he said he was too badly hurt. He said he wouldn't make it. He told me not to wait for him." Overwhelmed by the scale of the damage, China's emergency workers have engaged in triage, focusing resources on flattened schools and other places with large concentrations of casualties. That has forced many in the quake-ravaged region such as Ms. Deng largely to fend for themselves, relying for assistance only on that bedrock institution of rural Chinese society: the extended family.

Internal government records show that most sedated deportees, such as Ade, received a cocktail of three drugs that included Haldol, also known as haloperidol, a medication normally used to treat schizophrenia and other acute psychotic states. Of the 53 deportees without a mental illness who were drugged in 2007, The Post's analysis found, 50 were injected with Haldol, sometimes in large amounts.

Haldol gained notoriety in the Soviet Union, where it was often given to political dissidents imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals. "In the history of oppression, using haloperidol is kind of like detaining people in Abu Ghraib," the infamous prison in Iraq, said Nigel Rodley, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Essex in Britain and is a former United Nations special investigator on torture

Last Thursday, he came out swinging against Sen. Obama after the Democrat said Sen. McCain was "losing his bearings." Mr. Salter complained publicly that the Democratic front-runner's comment was a "not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age." The jab, he said, was "typical of the Obama style of campaigning."
The Obama camp fired back at Mr. Salter. "Clearly, losing one's bearings has no relation to age, given this bizarre rant that Mark Salter just sent out," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

MEGAN: And voting for McCain over Obama would be a terrible mistake says Hillary, so all you HRC supporters should listen to your candidate and pull the lever, or else the rest of us will be blaming you in November.