Ann Curry simpers annoyingly throughout the interview (low moment: asking the 89-year-old Thomas what she wants people to say about her when she's dead), and she's got a lot to learn if she wants to live up to her "inspiration." Thomas, on the other hand, comes off as gracious yet direct. She emphasizes the achievements of other women journalists when Curry tries to single her out, but of the ten Presidents she has covered, she says, "I think every President could've done better." The best part, though, is when Curry asks her (again, simpering) if she thinks "if you had asked things more diplomatically, you might've gotten more of an answer?" Thomas says, "I think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that's the way I like to ask the questions."

It's an admirable answer because in a journalistic setting, it often seems like the shortest distance between two points — or least between the journalist and the source's approval and help — isn't a straight line. The easiest thing to do when interviewing someone is to softball, to make the source feel comfortable and at home, because this is what we're taught to do in social situations. Asking difficult questions basically means intentionally creating awkward situations, something most of us — especially women — spent junior high school trying to avoid. And while it's sometimes necessary to butter up a source a little bit, some questions — like, say, "Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?" — really can't be sugarcoated. Helen Thomas has spent her career going against all social conditioning by asking the most powerful people in the country questions that actually matter (as opposed to questions about, say, their obituaries) — for that, she deserves to be an inspiration to everyone.

Helen Thomas' Impact On Ann Curry [Today Show]

While the case of Laura Ling and Euna Lee was everywhere earlier this summer, the news on the two U.S. reporters jailed in North Korea has slowed to a crawl in the past few weeks. This is due in part to the fact that little headway has been made in their release, but some believe that this is part of a larger strategy, one that may ultimately work in their favor.

As Politico points out, for the first few months, the U.S. approach to the dispute with North Korea was characterized by harsh, sweeping criticism of the country's nuclear ambitions and the jailing of the journalists, along with other vices. But recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked separately for the release of the two women, stating on Sunday that "We believe that this is on a separate track. This is an issue that should be resolved by the North Koreans granting amnesty and allowing these two young women to come home as quickly as possible."

This may be all part of a calculated move to keep the story alive, but not in the spotlight:

According to Steve Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the change is a tacit acknowledgement that tough talk won't work to free the two women. "The statement by Secretary of State Clinton about amnesty gets us back into a position where it's plausible that the North Koreans could take a step to release them. It provides a type of opening that wasn't there in a previous stage."

However, some are extremely unhappy with Clinton's change in tactics. Reporters Without Borders has released a statement criticizing the State Department's handling of the situation. "The State Department has been extremely silent, and we've expected more from Secretary Clinton," said spokesperson Tala Dowlatshahi. T. Kumar, advocacy director of Amnesty International agrees, adding: "If there are no results, then you have to do something public. If there is no public pressure, then the tendency is for them to drop it."

Detained Journalists Get No Media Play [Politico]
These (Agonizing) Days [Huffington Post]

In a profile in this week's New Yorker, Evan Osnos describes Caijing's many scoops: the collapse of school buildings after the Sichuan earthquake, the SARS virus and the Chinese government's attempted coverup, the shady privatization of a conglomerate called Luneng. In each case, Hu and her reporters were willing to challenge a system that usually relies on intimidation to keep journalists in line. According to Osnos, China has 28 journalists in prison, more than any other country except Iran. The media are regulated by the shadowy Central Propaganda Department, which has some firm guidelines (no coverage of "the military, religion, ethnic disputes, and the inner workings of government") but usually relies on editors to decide for themselves what will get them in trouble. Professor Perry Link describes Chinese censorship as "a giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier." He writes,

Normally, the great snake doesn't move. It doesn't have to. It feels no need to be clear about its provisions. Its silent constant message is 'You yourself decide,' after which, more often than not, everyone in its shadows make his or her large and small adjustments — all quite 'naturally.'

Hu avoids provoking the "great snake" through careful calculation of how far she can go (Caijing eventually had to stop covering the SARS story) and through management of the tenor of her criticism. She says, "we never say a word in a very emotional or casual way, like 'You lied.' We try to analyze the system and say why a good idea or a good wish cannot become reality." As a result of Hu's calibrations, Caijing has become much more independent and internationally respected than most other Chinese publications (Xinhua, for instance, published a story describing a rocket launch before the rocket actually left the ground).

Some, however, say that Hu is just propping up the government in a different way from more traditional publications. Analyzing one of her 2007 columns, Osnos points out that she seems to see reform as a way to strengthen the existing government, not overthrow it. And Cheng Yizhong, a former editor-in-chief of Southern Metropolis Daily who was jailed after his investigation into the government's corrupt detention camps, says,

Caijing's topics haven't affected the fundamental ruling system, so it is relatively safe. I'm not criticizing Hu Shuli, but in some ways Caijing is just serving of more powerful or relatively better interest group.

Hu Shuli operates with relative freedom inside an extremely restrictive system, and thus is almost certain to receive criticism. Should she be doing more to challenge the government that censors her fellow journalists and sends them to prison? Perhaps, but it's not at all clear that Hu objects to the Communist government per se. In fact, conspicuously absent from Osnos's piece is any overarching statement of Hu's political beliefs. However, Qian Gang, a former editor of Caijing, offers this description of Hu's pragmatic approach:

A flood is ferocious, but it solves no problems. In Chinese, we say you can bore a hole in a stone by the steady dripping of water.

Image from The New Yorker.

The Forbidden Zone [New Yorker]

Freeman specifically mentions Christa D'Souza's Daily Mail article about her increasingly harrowing experiences with breast implants, and of course Liz Jones's truly upsetting story (also, predictably, in the Daily Mail) of trying to treat lifelong anorexia with three weeks of scones and brie and — shocker — still feeling bad about her body afterwards. But she has a larger point: a genre has sprung up in contemporary lifestyle journalism, in which "a female journalist describes her obsession with her weight/breasts/ageing face/food or alcohol problems/inability to have a happy relationship" and usually ends up "sufficiently unhappy to be commissionable for another very similar piece."

As Sadie pointed out in her coverage of Jones's piece (Jones is pictured above), this kind of writing is bad for everybody. It's bad for the writers, who — if they're not totally manufacturing their distress for the reader's benefit — probably need therapy. But Freeman argues that it's actually worse for readers. For them, she writes, articles like Jones's "are surely just as dangerous and potentially influential as the photos of the skinny models the journalist professes to abhor."

Liz Jones is certainly troubling as thinspo, but Christa D'Souza is more complicated. Her experience with scar tissue, lopsided breasts, cancer, pain, and the total absence of any self-esteem boost from her new breasts isn't going to convince anybody to get implants. But it might convince some readers — male and female — that women are "self-hating, self-obsessed," and that it's normal to be like this.

One of the best pieces of feminist advice I've ever gotten is not to insult my own body in front of others. It perpetuates the idea that women should hate our bodies — that our inevitable physical flaws are worth valuable brain-space and conversational time. But pieces like Jones's and D'Souza's aren't just body-snark, they're self-snark: public expressions of low self-esteem so intractable that it lingers for years, harms relationships, and even endangers physical health. Freeman says editors assign these pieces because they have a "misogynistic image of what women are like," and that may well be true, but it's a vicious cycle. The more "boom and bust boob" stories we read, the more it seems that women are like D'Souza or Jones — irrevocably fucked up by aesthetic or social strictures they recognize are unhealthy but can't seem to escape. And the easier it is to assume that we, the female readers, can't escape them either.

These strictures aren't just about beauty — Zoe Lewis's I-chose-a-career-and-now-I'm-miserable screed and Lori Gottlieb's cautionary tale about how failing to "settle" caused her lifelong loneliness are basically cut from the same cloth, maybe just a little more highbrow. All these sob stories basically promulgate the notion that women can't have it all, or even much of anything, because even smart ladies who write for newspapers and magazines are basically unfulfilled and miserable.

The truth, of course, is much more complicated than that — even the disturbing Liz Jones is probably happier, at least at times, than she seems in her anorexia piece. Freeman is correct that most confessional journalism of the Jones/D'Souza variety is likely conceived with the goal of "getting a reaction from readers," and female misery seems to get hits. But editors who rely on self-loathing for numbers (and we're looking at ladymags too here) need to recognize that they're exploiting their female writers and giving their readers a twisted view of what it means to be a woman.

The New Confessional Journalism Turns Female Writers Into Tedious, Self-Hating Semi-Celebrities [Guardian]

Related: My Boom And Bust Boobs: What It's Like To Suffer The Agony Of Enlargement Surgery - Only To Realise You've Made A Terrible Mistake [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Lifelong Anorexic "Forced" To Eat Normally For 3 Weeks
Settle For Mr. "Just OK" - While Your "Marital Value Is Still At Its Peak!"
Feminism Is The Supposed Key To Women's Unhappiness
The Self-Flagellation Of The First-Person Beauty Piece

Originally arrested for buying alcohol and later charged with espionage, Saberi only recently ended a hunger strike in protest of her imprisonment, when an appeals court agreed to hear her case. Though Saberi's original trial was held behind closed doors, her appeal "was arranged to appear fair and open." The appeal took place before a panel of three judges, and lasted much longer than the initial trial, which Saberi's father described as a "mock trial" that lasted only minutes.

Many aspects of the case remain murky. It's unclear why her appeal date was moved forward, from Tuesday to Sunday. The evidence against her still hasn't been released. One of Saberi's prospective lawyers was not allowed to meet with her in prison, and the paperwork she signed for her appeal was at one point "lost." And although Saberi has ostensibly been freed, her father told Reuters today he was still standing in front of the prison, waiting for her release.

Many suspect that Saberi's arrest was motivated by political concerns. Iranian conservatives may have wanted to derail the Iranian-American peace process, or the Iranian government may have wanted to use Saberi as a "bargaining chip." Whatever the case, Iran seems to have pulled back — but Saberi's fate will only be certain once she is actually released.

Less fortunate are journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were captured May 17 by the North Korean military on the border with China, where they were covering North Korean defectors. Ling and Lee have received less press than Saberi, in part because the U.S. hopes, according to the Wall Street Journal, "that not provoking the North Koreans may lead to a speedy resolution." But the two remain in custody, a source says "North Korea isn't talking to the U.S. at all," and many speculate that hardliners have gained power in the wake of Kim Jong Il's illness, and are forcing North Korea into an increasingly hostile relationship with the West. Now that Saberi is free, perhaps diplomats can turn their attentions to Lee and Ling — but their case remains far more uncertain, and the three women together form a disturbing pattern of U.S. journalists held for political gain.

Reporter's Hearing In Iran Moved Up [NYT]
U.S.-Born Reporter Freed: Iranian Judiciary Source [Reuters]
Roxana Saberi, US-Iranian Journalist, 'To Be Freed' [TimesOnline]
Iranian-American Journalist ‘To be Freed' [Financial Times]
US Journalist Appeals Against Spying Sentence [Independent]
Iran 'To Release' Reporter Saberi [BBC]

Earlier: U.S. Journalist Held In Iran Continues Hunger Strike
Roxana Saberi Ends Hunger Strike
American Journalists To Face North Korean "Justice"

Though TMZ dropped its plans to open a Washington office in 2007, it has increasingly been focusing on political figures. According to The Washington Post, TMZ has been trying to beef up its journalistic credentials in recent years by breaking big stories like Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant, Michael Richard's racist monologue, and recently, by releasing photos of a beaten Rihanna. Last month, TMZ got the attention of politicians with an exclusive story about Chicago's Northern Trust Bank, which got $1.6 billion in federal bailout funds, sponsoring a golf tournament outside Los Angeles with performances the bands Chicago and Earth, Wind and Fire, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Last week, TMZ founder Harvey Levin was invited to speak to journalism graduate students at U.C. Berkeley.

TMZ and other celebrity-focused websites like Hollywood.com and L.A. paparazzi blogger Zuma Dogg are covering individual lawmakers more as well. The Washington Post describes a recent incident in which Congressman Aaron Schock was interviewed by a TMZ reporter:

The freshman congressman, walking to the House chamber for a vote, was caught off-guard when a reporter approached him with a Sony camcorder, compared him to ex-fashion model and The Hills star Brody Jenner and asked him about D.C. nightlife.

The footage was shot by TMZ ... which cheekily suggested that the unmarried 27-year-old lawmaker must have "an impressive stimulus package." And while Schock managed to blurt only that he is "all work, no play," the airing of the brief encounter this month landed the Illinois Republican on the front page of the Peoria Journal Star and on several local newscasts. "I started getting text messages from a lot of stay-at-home moms in my district," he says. "I'm not Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. I was totally caught off guard."

Harvey Levin doesn't seem to see the same distinction between celebrities and congressmen. "We cover sports figures, chefs and people who are famous for all sorts of reasons ... and some of them are in politics," Levin told the San Francisco Chronicle. Levin admits that the millions of TMZ viewers are more interested in personalities than policies, but argues that attention from his camera crews may actually help politicians, since often even their constituents don't recognize them. "Our feeling is ... if you understand the personalities of some of these people, you care more about them," he says.

But clearly there is also a huge downside. Democratic political consultant Garry South, who was recorded last year by Zuma Dogg while meeting at a Malibu Starbucks with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom about his gubernatorial campaign, says the new paparazzi focus is likely to make politicians less candid even in private because they never know who is watching and filming. "It has politicians on notice, at least the savvy ones, that there is no privacy whatsoever anymore - not even in the bathroom at the urinal," says South. Newsom added, "We're in a reality TV series now in politics, 24/7."

Though more attention from the paparazzi may make politicians more recognizable to their constituents (especially if they're prone to cheating on their spouses or stumbling down the steps of the Capitol building) it's unlikely that the coverage will turn out to be as mutually beneficial as Levin makes it seem. News outlets are already focusing more on celebrity news and less on the boring political decisions that actually affect people's lives. Paparazzi prowling the streets of D.C. will probably make pols dress better on a daily basis, but overall TMZ's reporting will probably just lower the level of political discourse even further.

'The Hills'? No, TMZ Now Hits The Hill [The Washington Post]
Paparazzi Turning Lenses On Politicians [The San Francisco Chronicle]
TMZ Chief Is Speaker At Cal Journalism School [The San Francisco Chronicle]

The article, an overview of the findings of a recent conference, actually outlines a number of problems, including the dearth of women in the higher tiers of British journalism, their overrepresentation among lower-paid reporters, the extreme youth and tininess of models in fashion magazines, and "the near-pornographic portrayal of women in what were supposed to be mainstream magazines." It also celebrates how far journalism has come since the days when female reporters were relegated to a "women's page that concerned itself with clothes, a spot of cooking, an occasional nod towards a bit of undemanding culture."

Whitehorn also tells an instructive anecdote, about the coverage of a car expo for women:

One photographer immediately lined up several of the prettier ones gazing into the bonnet of a car. "Come on, dear, just hitch that skirt up a bit - yeah, thanks, that's grand." And the picture came out with a dismissive caption - that this was a day meant to interest women in the cars, but when something went wrong, they did what women always do - turn to a man.

We were all furious and I made a mental note that if the writer - Terry something - ever wanted a job on The Observer I'd do my best make sure he didn't get it. Only Terry turned out to be a woman. And you see the difficulty. If that's what the paper wanted and she didn't come up with it, the reaction would be that it's no good sending a girl, they never come back with the story you want.

She's trying to make a point about the need for more female higher-ups in journalism, but her own piece seems to suffer from the same problem. Although a good 75% of the article is totally nonsexual, somebody at the paper (maybe even her) has decided this is a story about sex, and given it a lead picture, headline ("Women on top"), and teaser ("An exposed bra. Skimpy hotpants. Does dressing like a soft porn star actually empower a woman, or is she simply exploiting herself, asks Katharine Whitehorn.") to match. Whether or not male editors are responsible for this choice, it's a little disturbing that someone felt the need to sex up an article whose only mention of sex is the complaint that women in the media are too sexed-up. Obviously we're no strangers to sex news here at Jezebel, but we hope we know the difference between "women in journalism" and "skimpy outfits."

Women OnTop [BBC News Magazine]

• A Pennsylvania man is facing criminal charges after throwing a party, complete with alcohol and a stripper pole, for his teenage son. The party was attended by kids as young as 14, and the father spent his time DJing and shouting "get on the pole" to the underage girls in attendance. • Media Bistro notices that all the major TV networks have male chief White House correspondents. • This story has all the makings of a sitcom: identical twin sisters Michelle and Teresa Frizziola are rookie NYPD cops. The 5'3" sisters are also fourth degree black belts in Goju-ryu karate. • An arrest warrant has been issued for suspect Ingmar Guandique in the Chandra Levy killing. • The remains of a medieval teenage girl who was decapitated for witchcraft are going to be given a Christian burial and funeral service. Nothing like apologizing 700 years after the fact! • Today is Girl's Day in Japan. The holiday is usually celebrated by displaying special ornamental dolls. • Today is also square root day: Celebrate by eating radishes, carrots or other roots. • This article debunks the 5 myths of fertility treatment. Short version: it's not easy, egg donors are risking their lives, and children born of IVF face serious health risks. • First "sexting," now this: "textual harassment." Stalkers are using text messages to send threatening messages to their victims. • The legal advocacy group that won their case for gay marriage in Massachusetts has filed suit today that seeks to extend federal benefits for spouses in same-sex couples. • Janis Ian talks to NPR about her famous song "Society's Child" and her newly released autobiography. •

Love, Condé Nast's new great white hope of a recession-era fashion mag, is Big News, as is its editor, Katie Grand, who's been a major fashion insider for years. Clearly, she's got serious chops. Which the Times gets around to after discussing her "fittingly high-pitched, cartoonlike squeak," the forementioned bag fetish, the stuffed guinea pig on the couch, and her getup: "Paper Denim & Cloth jeans, a vintage Sigue Sigue Sputnik T-shirt, a Chanel blanket wrapped as a scarf and glittery Miu Miu heels."

We get it: this is fashion journalism, and obviously this is a fashion writer, and to a degree, the disconnect between the launch of a very big gamble and such cute trivia probably doesn't seem as manifest to them as to the casual reader. Yes, we get that Grand, a major stylist, has worked with Prada, collaborates with Marc, dated Giles Deacon, hangs with Agyness and has worked her share of frivolously outré projects. But opening with that bag line does quite a bit to distract from concrete statements like, "‘It's very easy to be cool and self-indulgent,'' she said. ‘‘I think as an editor you have a responsibility to do an interesting, commercial magazine that people want to look at. We need a readership as well as advertisers,'' or,
"with the economy as it is, I wanted to do something that was a reality check on many levels.''

What that constitutes to a consummate fashionista, of course, is an open question. She says at one point,
‘‘They basically said, ‘Do whatever you want.' The fact that we have Beth Ditto naked on the cover shows that.'' Beth Ditto, nude, should not in itself be regarded as a piece of outrageous high-fashion performance art; challenging convention is very different from challenging conventions of beauty. And it's hard to get a sense, from this piece, of exactly what the magazine will be: "edgy," we're told, and involving a lot of her "favorite" personalities, but between the indulgent anecdotes about hats that resemble "an evening bathing cap," it's hard to say whether the insidery nature of Grand's career makes her better or worse suited to guaging the commercial marketplace. Certainly there's a lot to admire - and we like the stories of Grand's "earning money by knitting, mostly for other students, and writing knitting patterns for British Elle" while in school - but as evinced by the very tone of this profile, the demands of a resolutely fashion-centric world can be alienating to the rest of us when the chips are down. There's escapism, and then there's tone-deafness. We'll have to wait and see which Love is, because "Love Child" certainly isn't going to tell us.

Love Child [T Style]

ANA MARIE: Good morning!

MEGAN: Hey there! How are you?

ANA MARIE: A little tie-tie and already tired of the fucking shoe story.

MEGAN: I am actually really impressed with Bush's reflexes. Like, for all those politicians that took cream pies to the faces, Bush was like, nuh-uh. In slow-mo, it's very Matrix-y.

ANA MARIE: I think this should put to rest the rumors that he's drinking again. You know what's really going to suck about this, right?

MEGAN: Other than everything?

ANA MARIE: Journalists no longer be allowed to wear shoes. We're living in a post 12/14 world. And in that world, shoes just aren't worth the risk.

MEGAN: Dude, no one is taking my shoes. I stop with the pedicures in, like, November. I can't afford otherwise.

ANA MARIE: I doubt if you're alone. Lynn Sweet does not seem like a regular pedicure girl.

MEGAN: Plus, not to be mean to the White House press corps, but I'm betting some of those dudes have some gnarly, smelly feet. I really think a room full of unshod reporters' stank feet is probably more of a risk to the President than a shoe.

ANA MARIE: (And I just want to note that I had to cycle through a few names before I got to a WH correspondent that might not get regular pedicures. But I suspect Jake Tapper does!) Yeah, see that is where we disagree! I think many WH correspondents take VERY good care of their tootsies. It's not like they're out there pounding the pavement. Very little reporting involved in covering the White House.

MEGAN: I don't know, it's not like Maureen Dowd is there and can go all Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on him. [Ed: For those with better taste in movies than me, Elvira dispatches the villain at the end with a stiletto to the forehead, killing him. ]

ANA MARIE: I had forgotten that Elvira had her own movie. Thanks. You will not be shocked to know that right now on Morning Joe Pat Buchanan is showing a rather... uhm... exhaustive knowledge of Nazi history. Seriously, though: Pat Buchanan showing up to out-Nazi-trivia Bryan Singer about his own Nazi movie.

MEGAN: Yeah, completely NOT surprised. At least I can blame my Hitler trivia knowledge on the fact that I was a German history minor.

ANA MARIE: FWIW, I sense that Pat, like the heroes of Valkyrie, thinks that Hitler totally ruined Nazism.

MEGAN: Is is strange that I'm surprised that Bryan Singer is kind of hot?

ANA MARIE: I'm a little surprised at how young he seems, but not that he's hot. Usual Suspects was, fuck, over a decade ago?

MEGAN: Directors are so rarely attractive, though.

ANA MARIE: I have not made enough of a study of that. But speaking of studying: Trying to make sense of this Kristol op-ed. Have you read?

MEGAN: I find it hard to read while his grinning pumpkin head stares at me. It's already hard enough to decipher.

ANA MARIE: He and Jim Webb should hire themselves out for Halloween.

MEGAN: Is there enough orange paint in the world for that?

ANA MARIE: I think he wants a bail out? Or he's knocking the GOP for something?

MEGAN: Actually, I am a little horrified that I'm agreeing with some of the things he's saying about Republicans. He's still a reflexive idiot about liberals.

ANA MARIE: He has been kind of an idiot about Republicans!

MEGAN:

But despite the fact that the government is partly responsible for the Big Three’s problems, the right hasn’t really been stirred to enthusiastically promote a deregulatory agenda to help the auto companies. What excites it is mobilizing to oppose bailouts for unionized workers.

Last week, Senate Republicans picked a fight with the U.A.W. on union pay scales — despite the fact that it’s the legacy benefits for retirees, not pay for current workers, that’s really hurting Detroit, and despite the additional fact that, in any case, labor amounts to only about 10 percent of the cost of a car. But the Republicans were fighting Big Labor! They were standing firm against bailouts!

ANA MARIE: I'm not convinced he's always writing this column himself. Not that he's farming it out, but just engaging in automatic writing or something. Letting the spirits speak through him. And this spirit happens to be different than the "I HEART SARAH" one.

MEGAN: It's definitely written through his "all liberals are hypocritical" filter, though.

ANA MARIE: I think he's saying that they should do MORE to deregulate unions besides take on labor. Like, the problems of regulation go beyond unions. By saying that GOP shouldn't have gone after labor, he's NOT saying unions are good. And even though he likes the idea of the "car czar," isn't the car czar idea inherently anti-anti-regulation? My head hurts now. Let's move on

MEGAN: Well, I think he main point actually comes through at the end.

The bill would have allowed President Bush to name a car czar, who could have begun to force concessions from all sides. It also would have averted for now a collapse of the auto industry, and shifted difficult decisions to the Obama administration.

It's all about trying to make his Republican compatriots understand their role is to make Obama look bad.

ANA MARIE: AH! Ain't unity grand?

MEGAN: But let's talk cute: an Obama daughter-Chris Rock daughter playdate. That's a unity of cuteness.

ANA MARIE: But not BIDEN PUPPY CUTE!

MEGAN: Okay, the puppy is very cute, but: he used a breeder. Pound puppies, people, the nation is crying out for change.

ANA MARIE: And, seriously, who DOESN'T want a play date with Sasha and Malia. I mean, I want a playdate with them. I know, I would feel better about a rescue pup. BUT LOOK AT HIS EYES. The puppy's, not Biden's. Though I think that the national had a similar reaction when Obama picked Biden: "We would have preferred HRC BUT LOOK AT HIS EYES."

MEGAN: It is an extremely cute puppy, and the Biden granddaughters will, naturally, get to name him.

Originally, Brown said she was to bring two puppies to Biden, but Biden called and said he wanted to see all the dogs.

"He was very gracious," Brown said. "He hugged and kissed all of the shepherds."

There are also totally women in the world today wishing they were puppies.

ANA MARIE: I LOVE that detail.

MEGAN: Well, how do you not let puppies lick your face?

ANA MARIE: "He hugged and kissed all of the shepherds." Of course he did. That's the only part of the Vice President's job that Biden's not planning on eliminating.

MEGAN: I'm sure that's in the Constitution.

ANA MARIE: I am so glad I'm not in Chicago, btw. You can hear the chattering of teeth in the voices of reporters covering Blago/PEBO (PEBO = "President-Elect Barack Obama" I learned that very recently! Like, journo slang.)

MEGAN: I sort of love how more and more people are like, dude was craaaazzeee when he's obviously just sort of always been an asshole.

ANA MARIE: But you can't "plead asshole" in court.

MEGAN: Actually, I think that should be a legitimate defense. "But, Your Honor, I'm an asshole." I want to hear defendants say that, give 'em 30 days off their sentence or something.

ANA MARIE: I think that was Scooter Libby's first try.

MEGAN: Scooter left out the "stupid" part. Everyone already knows lawyers are assholes. That's the real meaning of "Esquire." Speaking of, I found Shep Smith's interview in Esquire kind of endearing but difficult to read in the absence of questions. Even writing that made me feel like I'd bought into something very bougie about writing.

ANA MARIE: Well it was like hearing one side of a phone conversation. A fascinating conversation! But still, a little disjointed. Maybe they're saving money by not printing the reporter's questions! Something that maybe places like the Tribune Co. and Newsweek should look into!

MEGAN: Less ink, less layoffs? Maybe they should look into this Internet thingie, where there's no ink and no layo... Oh, wait, never mind.

ANA MARIE: I was thinking more, like, how they don't have to pay extras in movies if they don't have lines. If you don't print the reporters' questions, you don't have to pay them.

MEGAN: Maybe we could just let all the people in the news write in the first person about what they're doing and just call it a day. The press is just like this unnecessary middleman in this day and age.

ANA MARIE: EXCEPT THEY'RE NOT, right? I was a conference last week and this guy from Google was all, "we hate it that the MSM is going under, because without them we're not going have quality information to index for people to search." So I was like, "You'll need to start hiring journalists then."

MEGAN: Oh, God, stop. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. Or crying so hard I'm laughing, I can't really tell.

Timmerman's goal in writing the book was to force consciousness of our clothing's origins — and how closely our buying habits are connected to the fates of those who produce it. Often, he says, we oversimplify the issue, and gives the example of the infamous Kathie Lee Gifford scandal, in which we learned the talk-show host's clothing line was being produced by child labor. The outcry led to a wide-scale boycott of Bangladeshi goods; in response, factories laid off child labor. Great, right? Well, according to Timmerman, who calls it "the toughest thing I came across...a really harsh reality," not entirely.

"It turns out that a lot of these kids kids actually needed to work — these children, just because they're not working in a factory, doesn't mean they're not working at other, way worse jobs in Bangladesh...all we're doing [in boycotting] is removing our guilt."

Timmerman is at pains to elucidate that he is "not a proponent of child labor" but does urge us to remember that while we may recoil at the words, it's important to take a realistic look at the situation. What do we really imagine will happen to these children if they stop working in factories? That they'll suddenly be given opportunities for education? As Timmerman points out, the alternative is more likely begging, brick-breaking or sex work. None of which is to say child labor is acceptable; just that our knowledge and concern — and activism — needs to go beyond easy shades of black and white. Timmerman also makes the point that as an educated consumer, it's important to make distinctions between factories and true "sweatshops" rather than condemning all foreign labor as such.

But is this the best we can hope for? A measured pragmatism that finds child factory labor preferable to child prostitution? The idealist in all of us doesn't want to believe it, and shouldn't. The ultimate and only course, as the author says, is addressing the grinding poverty that creates the situation. And none of this is to say that boycotting — and, more to the point, selective and educated buying — is not important. It's essential, and should become as second-nature as questioning the provenance of the food we eat, itself a relatively recent phenomenon. Many of us are quick to think of the plight of a factory-farmed animal but still able to buy a shirt at Forever21; it's this disconnect that Timmerman's book seeks to address. His point is, we need to take the time to learn where things are produced, and under what circumstances. (Alpha Consumer emphasizes the importance of looking up where things are manufactured — a small step that nevertheless connects us to the process.) Should people boycott what they find reprehensible? Of course, but with an awareness of the realities our actions create — and the impossibility of easy answers. We could all wear nothing but locally-made artisanal garb, and that's great, but it would do nothing for the poverty in Bangladesh; in fact, it's two different issues.

I'm not advocating the disingenuous piety of trickle-down economics, just saying that when we boycott, let's also do something pro-active, be it as simple as education or as old-fashioned as a donation towards sponsoring a children's organization. Not to be a total downer, but as a society it does seem like we have to wean ourselves off of a self-satisfaction we've come to take as our due for minimal sacrifice — while all the while not being overwhelmed by the reality of the task's scope. What say you?

Podcast: How Our Clothes Are Made [US News]

Related: Where Am I Wearing? [Amazon]

A vocal critic of Vladimir Putin and the Russian war with Chechnya, Politkovskaya wrote powerfully of Russian kidnappings of Chechen civilians:

Imagine that a group of strangers in uniform bursts into your house and takes away your loved one. And that is it, the end. First there was a man. Now he doesn't exist. He is wiped out of life, like a stick-figure from a school blackboard. You rage, you go mad. You beg for a piece of information. The ones who are supposed to search advise you to forget about it ... The most awful tragedy of current Chechnya is people disappearing without a trace.

She knew that her repeated trips to Chechnya and her criticisms of Putin (an ex-KGB spy whom one former associate accuses of using "Stalinist methods") and Russian-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov put her in danger; in Letter to Anna, she says, "why am I still live? If I speak seriously about this I would understand it as a miracle." It may be a miracle, too, if her real murderers are convicted.

After her death, Putin said that Politkovskaya's influence in Russia was "negligible," and that she was probably killed to make the regime look bad. But the NYRB cites a 2006 poll [site in Russian] in which half of respondents knew of Politkovskaya and over a third were familiar with her work. And several other journalists critical of the Putin administration have been targeted — two have been murdered just since September 2008. Before the trial, a lawyer for the Politkovskaya family found mercury in her car.

Even if the suspects in the trial are convicted, the person who actually ordered Politkovskaya's killing will remain unknown and at large. Russian exiles abroad believe the order came from Russia's Federal Security Service (Politkovskaya called them "Putin's guard dogs"), with the tacit approval of Putin himself. The trial is unlikely to reveal this or any other information, as it will probably be closed to the public. Meanwhile, Politkovskaya's son and her former newspaper are conducting their own investigation into her murder. Let's remember her as a woman, as a journalist, and as someone who tried to save her country from "an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance," a reality not specific to just Russia.

Who Killed Anna Politkovskaya? [New York Review of Books]
Politkovskaya's lawyer finds car filled with deadly mercury [International Herald Tribune]
Anna Politkovskaya murder trial begins in Moscow [Guardian]
Letter to Anna [Official Site]

Beginning when she was just 20, and the only black female news reporter in New York, Maynard covered such stories as the funeral of Robert Kennedy, the Apollo space missions, and the medical system in China. With husband Robert Maynard, she also founded the Maynard Institute, which trains minority reporters, editors, and newsroom managers. And she proposed that the American Society of Newspaper Editors strive for racial and ethnic parity in newsrooms by 2000. Sadly, that goal has now been extended to 2025.

Maynard described her ownership of the Tribune as her greatest accomplishment. According to onetime managing editor Eric Newton, the paper had an "utter lack of a glass ceiling." "The higher up you went in the newsroom management," he says, "the more diverse it got." Maynard was also known at the paper as a stickler for accuracy, saying, "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." Says the Maynard Institute's former president, A. Steve Montiel, "She was a fearless, astute champion of diversity in news media. We've lost a leader who made a difference."

Nancy Hicks Maynard Dies at 61; A Groundbreaking Black Journalist [NY Times]
Diversity advocate Nancy Hicks Maynard dies at 61 [SF Chronicle]
Nancy Maynard [Maynard Institute Official Site]

• John McCain called his wife a "cunt" sixteen years ago. The full quote, in response to Cindy's "playful" mention of his male pattern baldness, was: "At least I don't plaster on makeup like a trollop, you cunt." I have to give him bonus points for using the word "trollop" and also, calling her out on what looks to be an unhealthy relationship with Mary Kay, and by the same token I have to give Cindy bonus points for adopting a Bangladeshi child, weaning herself off painkillers and throwing all that addictive energy into applying nine coats of foundation. (And what can we say, Meghan: she comes by it honestly.) [Wonkette]
  
• Spike Lee is really glad he made Do The Right Thing, otherwise Barack Obama would have taken Michelle to see Soul Man and America's greatest union would have been jeopardized. Also: the "Clintons would lie on a stack of Bibles." [NY Mag]
  
• 61% of historians agree that Bush is the Worst President Ever, according to an unscientific History Network poll of 109 historians. And just how did he go about pulling that off? Well, he combined "the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover," in the words of one historian, and applied laserlike focus to doing "only two things well," explained one of the survey's "most distinguished" historians. "He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches." [History Network]

• We now interrupt our regularly-scheduled broadcast of John McCain's speech on the success of the troop surge to report on mortar fire hitting the Green Zone! [Think Progress]
• The Washington Post's Dana Priest, who won a Pulitzer two years ago for revealing the existence of those secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe where torture — which is not the same as torment! — is allowed...won another Pulitzer! For revealing that Walter Reed Johnson hospital is not much better! Dana Priest, incidentally, is female. [Wash Post]
• But the Post won other Pulitzers, unfortunately none for their courageous effort to legalize Ecstasy, but one for Gene Weingarten, who IMHO should have won a long time ago for this epic and eerily prescient masterpiece on the state of education in America.