Francis Kissling in Salon, at least, writes with some sense about this bullshit.

The only problem seems to be that some people think the face is too fat.

From her photos, it appears that Dr. Benjamin will need a generous size 18 military uniform. The anti-fat brigade, who have argued about her BMI and whether or not the term obese applies, wonder if a country plagued by obesity should have an above average-weight woman speaking to public health.

For me the answer is a resounding yes. This country is full of above-average weight women and children struggling for dignity as well as to lose weight. Achieving either of these is not easy. (Never mind that none of these criticisms have mentioned any actual health concerns Benjamin might or might not have, instead presuming "obesity" as a catch-all for bad health.)

In fact, despite the fact that the entire "theory" undermining the BMI measurement system has been proven to be ineffective for any real determination of unhealthy weight and that it's been shown to be disproportionately ineffective for African-American women in particular, people have looked at Regina Benjamin, determined her to be bigger than some predetermined physical ideal, assumed that means she has a high BMI, assumed that BMI (despite its known biases) is some indicator of health and thus made the determination that, despite her vast qualifications, we shouldn't have anyone who doesn't embody some bullshit ideal of physical imperfection helming an department that deals with health issues.

If I hadn't already heard this about Sonia Sotomayor and Elana Kagan — again today, even, about Sotomayor! — I guess I'd be a little less disinclined to immediately roll my eyes and think it sexist and sizeist. But not one of these assholes said a god damned thing when Obama nominated former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to head the Department of Agriculture, despite his oversight over: the food pyramid; agricultural subsidies that go heavily to grains and hardly at all to fruits and vegetables; the school lunch program, food stamps, WIC programs and the lists of foodstuffs that comprise what the poor are able to eat; and the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Nobody piped up when he nominated non-skinny former Congressman Ray LaHood to head the Department of Transportation, who has since become the face of an agency that provides oversight over the roads that make sure most Americans need do little more than walk from their buildings to cars and back again. And goodness knows none of these concern-trolling assholes had a word to say when Larry Summers was appointed to lead the National Economic Council, whose remit includes agriculture, health care, Social Security and labor issues. Google any of their names and the acronym BMI and you're more likely to read about the airline than weight — and any of the stories about weight aren't about theirs.

Just so long as I'm clear on the double standard: if you're a (potentially) overweight man whose job involves issues related to weight, you get a pass. If you're a woman, people feel inclined to debate your bodytype ad infinitum, even if your job has nothing to do with health issues (like being a Supreme Court justice). Glass ceilings, indeed.

Is Regina Benjamin Too Fat To Be Surgeon General? [Salon]

Related: Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus [NPR]
The Effect Of Sex, Age And Race On Estimating Percentage Body Fat From Body Mass Index: The Heritage Family Study [National Journal of Obesity]
Mark Levin: Sotomayor Is "Ruth Bader Ginsburg Plus About 50 Pounds" [Media Matters]
National Economic Council [White House]

Earlier: Obama's Surgeon General Pick Made Sacrifices to Treat Poor
Women Too Stupid To Stay Thin Are Not Smart Enough For Supreme Court
Why Sexist Larry Summers Shouldn't Get A Cabinet Slot

• Levi Johnston's pre-taped appearance on Tyra today prompted Sarah Palin to announce that Bristol Palin would advocate for abstinence and that Levi was a fame-seeking liar. Then she started cleaning a shotgun. [People]

• Sarah Palin's sister-in-law, Diana Palin, was coincidentally arrested this weekend on burglary charges after breaking into the same house twice. Levi Johnston should have known better than to fuck with this family. [Huffington Post]
• In other tales of Republican clusterfuckery, Greg Sargant asks, "House GOP Leaders Leaking On Each Other?" and I laugh and laugh and laugh at the thought. [The Plum Line]
• Former GOP Congressman John "McSlappy" Sweeney was arrested again on yet another DUI charge [Huffington Post]
• Sean Hannity says he's never watched porn because he has kids. Riiight. [Huffington Post]
• Mr. "Born With Kids" Hannity then accused Obama of deep resentment of people that can masturbate without soul-crushing guilt and hours of uncontrollable weeping Americans. [ThinkProgress]
• North Korea launched that missile thing they've kept threatening to launch, and we're all a little freaked out about it. [Washington Post]
• Even though we're pretty sure they fucked it up. [NY Times]
• Obama is letting photographers photograph the coffins of deceased service members for the first time in 18 years. Apparently, Americans don't feel badly just knowing they're dead. [NY Times]
• Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and dickhead Larry Summers made a shitload of money off the Wall Street companies he's still involved in bailing out. [Washington Post]
• Republican Representative Steve King of Iowa is scared that Iowa is about to become a gay Mecca because they won't discriminate against the LGBT community any more. [Think Progress]
• The six gay Iraqis brutally murdered in the last week for being gay probably would've liked it there, even with all the pigs. Oh, and the pork industry, besides. [ThinkProgress]

• Barack Obama made it official with Tim Geithner today, announcing that he will nominate Geither to the Treasury Department. Former Treasury Secretary Larry "Math Is Hard For Girls" Summers is headed to the top of the White House Economic Council and Berkeley economics professor Christina Romer will head the Council of Economic Advisers. Betcha she does math pretty well. [NY Times]
• Former Joe Biden aide Ted Kaufman has been appointed to fill Biden's Senate seat for two years, at which point everyone in the state assumes he'll quietly step down and let the currently-deployed Beau Biden run for it. [Associated Press]
• Susan Rice, who most people thought was about to get dicked over when it leaked that Jim Jones will head the National Security Council, is actually in the running to be our Ambassador to the U.N. [Washington Independent]
• Former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack swears he's not in the running to be Secretary of Agriculture. [Washington Post]

• Obama aide and transition co-chair Valerie Jarrett has her first graduation speech almost totally written, but it still makes her sound kind of like a cool woman to know. [NY Times]
• Speaking of cool women, Moe Tkacik fucking breaks down the financial and auto industry crises, and you'll be smarter for reading it. [New York Magazine]
• And now that she might not be running against one of them anymore, Republicans all just love Hillary Clinton. [The Daily Beast]
• Alan Colmes is leaving Hannity and Colmes but not Fox News. Yeah, Hannity's feet really do smell that bad, but he's got a contract through 2012 so somebody is buying stock in Odor Eaters. [USA Today, Politico]
• In the mean time, we're rescuing Citibank, and the Dow is going up but it's all only temporary because it's not the end of the financial fall-out anymore than today is the end of Alan Colmes. However, if you're a Citibank stockholder, it is the end of your dividends for three years. [NY Times, NY Times]

MEGAN: So, welcome to Crappy Hour, where lacking coffee is only one of many things wrong with every morning.

REBECCA: Well, I have to confess that over the past year, I've always taken the title of this feature as a reference to the general crapitude of the news discussed. I now understand that it is a reference to the actual hour at which the conversation takes place. It is indeed crappy. But I am awake! I have coffee! And a question.

MEGAN: By all means! I promise an answer. I won't promise that it will be good.

REBECCA: When someone becomes president, do his friends really stop calling him by his first name? I have wondered this many times, actually. Mostly while watching Aaron Sorkin movies. I wonder it now because we are living in an Aaron Sorkin movie.

MEGAN: It also worked like that for Michael Douglas in An American President. But Sorkin — and particularly Mary Louise Parker — was who I thought of when I saw the executive director of EMILY's list was joining the Obama Administration as communications director.

REBECCA: I'm really glad you brought this up. This makes me so happy. Count me among the happily surprised. I am a huge fan of EMILY's List, and I think this appointment is remarkable. To go into EMILY's List, an organization that by dint of its stated project supported HRC in the primaries — and busted its hump to get its constituents on board with Obama from the second Clinton conceded — is a real show of respect, and a tribute to his recognition of their impact on the political process, on Obama's part.

MEGAN: Also, as Executive Director, she's doing way more of the day-to-day work of the organization than Ellen Malcolm, and yet you have to be really, really into it to know her name. Which fits with No Drama Obama.

REBECCA: But then of course, I'm also one of the few, the proud, the thrilled...about Hillary.

MEGAN: Who, it is said, is willing to give up her lifetime Senate seat because she's "disenchanted" with the institution.

REBECCA: Regarding Clinton's "disenchantment.:" Sigh. Being happy about Hillary is always such a fraught position. I am amused, however, to already see the articles burbling with speculation about the nature of her relationship with Obama

MEGAN: Let alone her potential future relationship with him.

REBECCA: Well, the stuff about their relationship cracks me up in part because there is always — with regard to any Clinton — such a massive degree of projection into the particulars of a personal dynamic. The L.A. Times story, a heavy breathing, even without sexual intent or implication "Mr. Obama, who was in the first steps of what would become a strategic courtship, called afterward to thank her."

MEGAN: Maybe that's what it all is, it's just sexual fan fic. Maybe people aren't worry about Hillary crushing their balls, that's just mad they can't possess her sexually. All those Republicans and their repressed sexual fantasies.

REBECCA: Back when there were big heated arguments about whether he should pick her for veep, I used to think that it would be the right choice precisely because they are the Brangelinaniston of the political world. People cannot get enough of who called whom, who dissed whom, who had a secret conversation behind whose back, and who plotted to get rid of Bill!

MEGAN: It was really uncool of Obama to pretend that he wanted her as VP while snuggling up to Joe Biden.

REBECCA: The Pres-SecState that launched a thousand US Weeklies! Or a thousand touchy-feeling lurid relationship speculation pieces in the Times, and that gives life an energy to ye olde favorite Dem past-time, Clinton-hating! It's like a mitzvah for the Clinton critics! Something to kvetch about for....an indeterminate number of years! Yay!

MEGAN: But Rebecca! She's totally going to, like, start another war! She's not a flaming liberal! She is married to Bill!! We voted for chaaaaaange. (By the way, how come I haven't seen a piece in a major paper about Obama's supporters not being over the primaries yet? Hmm?)

REBECCA: Megan, no one wants to be over the primaries!

MEGAN: It was an exciting time, it's true.

REBECCA: The primaries were the most fun anyone in Democratic politics has had in a thousand years! This is why keeping Clinton in the picture is so crucial. Obama's great and mythic and No Drama and good and ethical and just and plain spoken and all.

MEGAN: He will dick you over, though. Just ask Susan Rice.

REBECCA: Or JOHN KERRY. Man, he must be pissed. But you know, Luke Skywalker would have been totally boring without his almost-rival partner in crime, Han Solo, who was flawed and possibly corrupt and motivated in part by personal gain but also really wanted thebest for the rebel alliance.

MEGAN: And at the end of the day, did you really want to hang out with Luke? Even his own sister preferred Han's company.

REBECCA: Um, BINGO! You want the character who's going to keep things interesting! And, on a serious note, could really shake things up by making some Obamaland hires at State, starting with Sam Power. I have no evidence that this is going to happen; it is simply my personal fantasy. But wouldn't that be interesting? But back to The Greatest Story Ever Told, can we talk for a minute about Andrew Sullivan?

MEGAN: I dunno, if she's getting her own staff picks, I'm guessing Sam Power will stay ensconced at Harvard.

REBECCA: Yeah, I know. I'm just looking for the plot twists. But did you see Sullivan?

MEGAN: Man, what is Sully's problem?

REBECCA: Writing about the benefits of Clinton working the Middle East, he writes, "And, of course, we all long to see Clinton in a veil." That was definitely my favorite part.

MEGAN: I liked "Her Imperial Highness of Appalachia."

REBECCA: Yeah I liked that too. He is so confused. I think a week ago, he was calling her the "permanent menace." He loves her! He hates her! He loves her! He hates her! His sister! His Daughter! His sister! His daughter!

MEGAN: Also, the part where Sully's all like, send her abroad so Bill can fuck around again was very classy.

REBECCA: He's a classy guy.

MEGAN: I mean, if there could be more sexual innuendos and double entendres in that piece, I'm not sure how.

REBECCA: No, it is a fine piece of campaign literature. Remember, she's the"good cop" to Obama's "bad cop."

MEGAN: Obama will be able to "show his dominance."

REBECCA: It's all part of Sully's elaborate fantasy world, where Hillary Clinton appears to him in a veil and punishes his transgressions.

MEGAN: I guess it's cheaper than advertising for it on Craigslist.

REBECCA: Suddenly, my Hillary-hiring-Sam-Power fantasy seems a touch bureaucratic.

MEGAN: So, you want to talk Geithner for a second? Speaking of fantasies.

REBECCA: You're pleased with the Geithner pick, I'm gathering...

MEGAN: Well, he is a hipster wonk that says "fuck" a lot. What's not to like? He's not Sheila Bair, it's true, but he's definitely not Larry Summers, and he's better looking to boot.

REBECCA: Better looking than Sheila Bair? Never! But ys, the Summers bullet dodged. I do think it should be noted that this piece begins "Mr Geithner looks a lot younger than his 47 years ..."

MEGAN: Which, after becoming Treasury Secretary, he probably won't continue to do so for very long. But it'll be sexy while it lasts.

REBECCA: Well, to be fair, the parenthetical immediately following says, "(though not as young as he did before the crisis began)" But today we are hearing how Larry fits in. I'm curious, myself.

MEGAN: Behind every great Treasury Secretary is a former one, grumbling and fingering his shiv? Wait, I'm sorry. No one should be forced to imagine Larry Summers fingering anything.

REBECCA: I was just going to object to your choice of words. And then take a long long cleansing swig of coffee.

MEGAN: I think I might need the whole pot.

REBECCA: Seriously, do you have any feeling about what we're going to hear about Summers' role today?

MEGAN: Blah, blah, blah, advisory role, yadda, yadda, great to have him as part of the team.

REBECCA: So let me ask you — do you think it's blah blah advisory role and not Treasury in part because of the women comments? I am genuinely curious on this point.

MEGAN: For my part, I think it was pretty clear that they were floating the fuck out of his name in the media to see if they could get away with it.

REBECCA: Yes, I thought so too. And it was such an explosive thing to float. Because that issue was so muddy, and Summers supporters are still so riled over the big deal those damn dames made. It was just a potential piece of dynamite, and I was surprised anyone at No Drama camp even dared to handle it at all. So I am interested to see how it gets tamped out and turned into a sweet smelling Connecticut Candle. I think that metaphor was way too labored.

MEGAN: I think it was the Obama camp testing what their mandate was on their left, and now they have an idea. Plus, if you're going to piss people off, you do it over Clinton and not Summers. People dislike Clinton for all kinds of reasons — include sexism — which can be marginalized or combated but most people just dislike Larry Summers for one.

REBECCA: Well, I move to end on a happy note, by sending former Washingtonienne sex blogger Jessica Cutler all our best wishes in her upcoming nuptials.

MEGAN: I'm glad she's found someone to spank her and fuck her up the ass but only after she's had a couple to drink, and most certainly with love. Who knew you had to move to New York for that?

REBECCA: An impressive recall of the Washingtonienne oeuvre! Though I think that Elliot Spitzer found that sometimes you have to leave New York to get all that.

For that reason alone, I'm not particularly sad to hear today that, according to Politico, he's probably off the short list for Treasury Secretary. The National Review's Kathleen Parker, however, disagrees. Of course she does.

Parker's thesis is, twofold: one, that of course women being innately bad at math and science is why they don't excel in math and science careers; and wo, that just because Summers once said a "dumb" thing that isn't really that off-the-mark should disqualify him for public office. Of course, Summers remarks were hardly off-the cuff, they were part of his prepared text for his speech that day, so they were something he thought about and concluded was a smart thing to say to a room full of economists. Check out how he prefaced his remarks about women in the sciences:

It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group. To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture.

These were not some sort of manifestation of foot-in-mouth syndrome, these remarks about women were part of his serious thinking about inequality in our society that included why there aren't more Jewish farmers.

By the way, Summers also thinks that one of the major reasons women don't rise to the top of their professions is because they are insufficiently committed to their careers once married.

And the relatively few women who are in the highest ranking places are disproportionately either unmarried or without children, with the emphasis differing depending on just who you talk to. And that is a reality that is present and that one has exactly the same conversation in almost any high-powered profession. What does one make of that? I think it is hard-and again, I am speaking completely descriptively and non-normatively-to say that there are many professions and many activities, and the most prestigious activities in our society expect of people who are going to rise to leadership positions in their forties near total commitments to their work. They expect a large number of hours in the office, they expect a flexibility of schedules to respond to contingency, they expect a continuity of effort through the life cycle, and they expect-and this is harder to measure-but they expect that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job, even when the job is not taking place. And it is a fact about our society that that is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men have been historically prepared to make than of married women.

I mean, nothing in there about how married men are able to sufficiently commit to their careers because, in many cases, they have wives at home who are socially and otherwise encouraged to sacrifice similar career success in order to deal with the rest of their lives or anything, it's just because women are being selfish, expecting to have lives outside the office. I'm sure that won't bode poorly for any married women with children that would like top jobs in the Treasury Department.

And then there are the other remarks for which he has been in my opinion, properly criticized, on women's intelligence and capacity for math and science:

It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability [emphasis mine] -there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.

Because no one, ever, has shown their to be bias in IQ tests, standardized tests or grading systems, right? These would be things that the President of Harvard ought to know or have known. But, nope, it's obviously not a testing bias that's been thoroughly studied and proven, it's just because women are innately less intelligent and good at math and science than men.

In the end, Larry Summers also dismissed the hypothesis that there is a large pool of high-achieving women (or minorities) out there in the world today being actively or passively passed over for jobs because, if there is — wait for it — the market would have solved it by now! Market forces would have caused some organization or institution to gather them all up and hire them (at, naturally, lower salaries than their white male counterparts, since they'd be in lower demand) and thus win out. No, for real, that's what he believes proves his point that it's not really discrimination! And so it's not discrimination or even socialized preference (in which girls are shunted to "girl" subjects") or discrimination, but the fact that women aren't as smart and they are really selfish about wanting to have personal lives.

And there are certainly examples of institutions that have focused on increasing their diversity to their substantial benefit, but if there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind, one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap. And I think one sees relatively little evidence of that. So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.

So, sure, Summers apologized and apologized and apologized for being a f'idiot, but let's not bullshit ourselves that he was speaking off the cuff or didn't mean it. Larry Summers believes that sexism doesn't play much of a role in women's status in the labor market — in or out of the sciences — and that it's basically our fault for not being as good as men and for wanting personal lives, and his evidence for that is that no one has snapped us all up (for less money, because that's how the market would work for his hypothesis to be correct). So I'm all for not hating on Larry Summers for the sake of hating on Larry Summers, but neither do I want a damn Cabinet Secretary who thinks that women and minorities are underrepresented in high-level jobs — the way that white guys in the NBA and Jews in farming are — because of innate mental differences. Because, really, that sort of innate stupidity in another old white guy is worth pitying, but it doesn't mean it should be promoted as part of a diversity initiative.

Summers May Be Off Treasury Short-List [Politico]
A Summers Break [National Review]
Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce [Harvard University]

Related: Sommers Remarks on Women Draw Fire [Boston Globe]
Chronicle of a Controversy [Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology]

Earlier: Would Someone Send This Woman To Thailand Already?

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

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

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

SPENCER: He has good taste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPENCER: Oh fuck yes.

The most interesting part of Scientific American's survey is the discussion of the "real-world impact" of attitudes towards women in science. The magazine says that at the top levels, many aspects of scientists' careers are determined by peer reviews and that there is a "shroud of secrecy" surrounding these reviews and that "awarding of grants, acceptance of academic papers for publication and decisions about hiring — are judged by a panel of other, often anonymous, scientists." It's possible that these anonymous scientists have completely sexist attitudes, keeping women from the highest levels of scientific achievement.

That still doesn't explain why Anna and I were awesome at math (and even enjoyed it!) until about age 12 or 13. Did teachers stop encouraging us? Were we getting tacit cultural messages telling us that girls aren't good at math? Were our tween brains addled by hormones? It's not entirely clear. What about you? Did you feel like you were encouraged at math and science, or did you find the same adolescent math block that we did?

Sex, Math And Scientific Achievement [Scientific American]