"We have a lot of people … [who have] lost their jobs, who don't have health care, even children that are in homes don't get three square meals a day. But this man sits with guards protecting him, he's receiving free medical, free meals." •  A recently freed Spanish skipper claims that Somali pirates are holding a 12-year-old Ukrainian girl hostage aboard another hijacked ship. Ricardo Black says he met both the girl and her parents. "Her mother begged me to take [her daughter] with me," he told a Spanish paper. • A New York teacher is suing the Department of Education because she claims she suffered injuries after she slipped on garbage, including condoms, that had been left on the floor. She's particularly mad about the condom bit (although there is no news about whether or not they were used): "They caused, allowed and permitted condoms to be distributed by school personnel to the students, many of which were opened during the school lunch period and thrown on the floor," she said in the suit. • Five high school freshmen were arrested in California for the sexual assault of two ninth-grade girls. Police say that the boys accosted the girls at school and groped them during a lunch break. • Forbes has compiled a list of the top earning states for women. Washington D.C. is at the top of the list, with women making an average of $866 a week, only 7.8% less than men. Also high on the list are Maryland, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. • Rusty Kanokogi, advocate for women's judo, has died at the age of 74. Kanokogi devoted the past twenty years to making women's judo an Olympic sport, an effort that was recognized by the Japanese government, who awarded her the Order of the Rising Sun last year. • The Virginia Military Institute is facing charges of sex discrimination. The Education Department first brought the complaint against the Military school in 2008, claiming that the "climate and culture" of the school was derogatory and discriminatory towards women.  • According to FBI data released today, reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008. The number of racially motivated hate crimes fell less than 1 percent, but there was an 11 percent increase in hate crimes against homosexuals and a 9 percent increase in crimes against religious groups. • Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, says women should ignore the new breast cancer screening guidelines that delay the start of routine mammograms until 50, because it would save money but not lives. • Senator Harry Reid says that right after the Senate's vote to begin debating health care legislation on Saturday, he got a call from Ted Kennedy's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy. "She believes that Ted was watching," said Reid. "I'll remember the call always. She of course was crying pretty hard. We both felt that he's watching us tonight." • Today President Obama announced "Educate to Innovate," a 10-year campaign to increase American students' achievement in math and science. It involves $260 million in corporate donations, a National Lab Day, and an annual national science fair at the White House "to show young people how cool science people can be." • A reporter for The Guardian visited an Iraqi jail to talk to women who have attempted to commit a suicide bombing. She found many have lost close male relatives, lived in isolated communities dominated by extremists, and felt choosing to be a suicide bomber made them special, even though they couldn't control much else in their lives. But, one detective investigating the women cautioned not to generalize because, "All the cases are different. Some are old; some are young; some are just criminals; some are believers. They have different reasons." • The late Sister Maria Alfonsina Danil Ghattas is one step closer to becoming a saint after thousands of worshipers gathered in Nazareth for her beatification yesterday. She helped found the Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary of Jerusalem in the 1880s, which continues to run schools for Palestinian girls in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. • Libby Longino is one of only 32 students to win a Rhodes Scholarship this year, but she won't be lonely at Oxford University: her boyfriend Henry Spelman was also selected. They are both seniors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Longino said, "I could barely hope it would turn out this way." •

Hamilton had counted Ralph Lauren among her clients since she started modeling at the age of 15 and she says that she considered the people who worked there her second family — at least until April of this year, when Ralph Lauren summarily fired her. The stated reason was that the label dumped Hamilton "as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us." What Ralph Lauren allegedly told Hamilton's agency, Next, is that the 5'10" 5'8", 120 lb model had become too fat to fit into its clothing.

Ralph Lauren's behavior since these images came to light, on the blog Photoshop Disasters, has single-handedly turned a small PR crisis into a full-fledged disaster. First, the company had its lawyers try to sue Photoshop Disasters and BoingBoing, the second blog to pick up the story, for copyright infringement for reporting on the ad. The threats — and the fact that Ralph Lauren managed to get Photoshop Disasters' ISP, Google-owned Blogspot, to remove the image — not only came across as ridiculous and bullying, but only served to draw hundreds of thousands of eyes to the story. (The Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Telegraph, Current TV, and Mother Jones, among other outlets, jumped on the story with more or less alacrity.)

The company's apology, when it came, seemed sincere — but today, Ralph Lauren sought to distance itself from its decision to create and run the ad: "The image in question was mistakenly released and used in a department store in Japan and was not the approved image which ran in the U.S."

And for it to emerge that the model in question is a justifiably pissed-off employee that the brand threw under the bus six months ago for being "fat" — that's just the cherry on the Ralph Lauren public relations shit pie. The company's admission of "responsibility" for the ad, coming after its attempt to minimize the ad's significance, rings as hollow as its protestation that Hamilton is a "beautiful and healthy" woman, and that the Photoshop incident had "absolutely no connection" to the company's decision to fire her. Which is it? Is the ad a one-time "error" that was "unapproved," or is it something Ralph Lauren is prepared to take true responsibility for? Is Hamilton "beautiful and healthy," or is she unable to meet the obligations of her contract because of her weight?

Models get fired, or simply passed over for work, all the time for being overweight, but it's a practice that rarely gets addressed publicly. (Not least because anyone outside the industry might struggle to grasp by what measure a size 4 twenty-something who's represented a brand for nearly a decade could be considered "overweight.") There have even been cases where models who have had eating disorders, having entered treatment, have lost work or agency contracts because of their choice to try and get better. As much as it sucks that Hamilton was fired so coldly, it's kind of thrilling that she's willing to talk about it.

Did it never occur to Ralph Lauren to fire the photographer? Or the retoucher who created the image of the near-death Bratz doll Hamilton? Why didn't it consider firing the person who was responsible for releasing the image, if indeed that was a "mistake"? Why did Ralph Lauren's sights immediately fall to rest on the person involved who bore the least responsibility for the drastically altered image in question: the model?

What else isn't so great? Hearing some of Cosmopolitan editor Kate White's statements in the full segment. It seems to be the rule that any model, when doing television appearances, needs to be chaperoned by a fashion magazine editor, à la Ali Michael and Teen Vogue's Amy Astley. At least, that's the only explanation I could come up with for White's presence. After grabbing Hamilton's spotlight and hitching her wagon to the attendant publicity by offering her an 8-page spread in her magazine — a favor that Hamilton, having graced the covers of numerous international editions of Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue, including one of my all-time favorite issues of Vogue Paris, hardly need lower herself to accept — White, much like Ralph Lauren, set about walking the delicate line of admitting that there might be a "problem" in fashion without doing anything so creative as taking responsibility for it.

"It really starts with the sample clothes, because they've down-sized, they're now like a size 2 or 4," says White. "To some degree, it relates to the Kate Moss era. Before then, supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Christy Brinkley, they were really curvy. But they got skinnier and skinnier, and the clothes got smaller, and so it creates this cycle where you have to fit in the clothes to get the job, and then the models get smaller and that's who we have to use in fashion stories."

Notice the absence of subjects in that sentence: "it" creates a cycle. (A cycle! Those can be really hard to stop.) "It" relates to Kate Moss, or at least her "era." "The clothes" got smaller. (All by themselves?) The underweight ideal body that the fashion industry promulgates to women all around the world — and the underweight bodies that real fashion models are required to maintain, and which some cannot but maintain through unhealthy means — are problems that everyone is prepared to "acknowledge" in the fashion industry. People write letters about it. They institute meaningless, unenforced laws. What nobody has yet done is actually make a serious, thoughtful attempt to confront these problems of the industry's function — and this is an industry which is structured to punish the sufferer of an eating disorder who decides to enter treatment — and to solve them.

White's perspective on the basic problem is troubling: "The models" got smaller — seemingly of our own volition — and that's who she "has" to use in fashion stories.

The Cosmopolitan editor goes on to say, "I think women have to protest — and back it up. Because sometimes women say they want real girls in stories, but often those stories don't rate as well. Or if you put a heavy celebrity on the cover it might not sell as well. So women have to complain, and then back it up with their actions. Their pocketbooks." If we don't have the magazines we deserve, it's really our own fault.

• New lows in celebrity sartorial publicity: Dior would like everyone to know that Madonna was wearing its sunglasses when she visited the victims of her stage collapse in Marseille, which killed two workers and left eight injured. [WWD]

• A Tracey Emin etching of Kate Moss is among artworks for sale via raffle - tickets are just £1 - to benefit Mothers4Children. [Telegraph]
• For some reason, Levi's decided to give its Fall '09 lookbook a jailbird theme. Since, at least before orange jumpsuits, denim was the fabric of life in the big house, the lookbook features models styled for mug shots, and photographed through bars. (The bars appear to actually be...a fire escape.) File under Annals of Idiocy, subsection Stupid High-Concept Lookbooks. [HighSnobiety]
• Levi's has also just acquired its own footwear and accessories licensee for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, DC Co. The company wants to strengthen its presence in those markets. [WWD]
• An American Apparel store in Silver Spring, Maryland had its window broken, allegedly because the window display featured the company's "Legalize Gay" gay rights t-shirts. A threatening telephone call was also received by another area store after the attack. The company took down its window displays - "We just don't want a broken window," explained the Silver Spring store manager, Kassandra Powell - but released a statement affirming its support of gay rights, and its intention to continue running "Legalize Gay" ads in Washington, D.C., area media and providing its t-shirts to local activist groups. [The Sexist]
• Angie Everhart is eight days away from giving birth as a single parent. Her worst pregnancy cravings were for egg salad. [People]
• Jerry Hall's advice for modeling (and life?): "Be nice to everyone, even if you don't want to. Just be nice and gracious. And don't show your bum." [WWD]
• That's one way to multi-task: Alexandra Richards had a hotel minion perform a pedicure while she deejayed. "Stuff that you can't do while getting a pedicure" seems like as good a definition of "actual professional labor" as any; this anecdote therefore proves beyond all doubt that deejaying ain't a real job. (But doing pedicures sure is.) [P6]
• Bar Refaeli's new campaign for Rampage is predictably hot. [People]
• Gloria Vanderbilt told model Kiera Chaplin, Charlie and Oona Chaplin's granddaughter, that she was the spitting image of her gran. "Oona and I were often mistaken for being sisters," explained the newly minted erotic novelist. [P6]
• Top model Du Juan is being sued by the Chinese agency New Silk Road for allegedly violating her contract with them when she signed with international powerhouse agency IMG in 2005. New Silk Road wants a portion of Du's IMG earnings, and an approximately $439,000 fine. [China Daily]
• Erin Wasson is joining Swiss skateboard company Doodah's line of naked supermodel boards. Isabeli Fontana, Lara Stone, Toni Garrn, and Edita Vilkeviciute are already featured on individual skateboards, wearing shoes they could not actually skateboard in. [The Cut]
• Naomi Campbell is featured in a similar state of undress for a new D&G perfume campaign. Which motivated the Sun to write the pun, "breast assets." [Sun]
• French fashion house Cacharel is re-launching itself at Paris Fashion Week this September. [WWD]
• Scott Schuman's book, The Sartorialist, is rolling off the presses now, even though the official release date is not until August 12. The cover features stylist Julie Ragolia. [The Sartorialist]
• American Eagle's "Artist" jean, which was a best-seller until it was discontinued last year, has been brought back after a redesign. The new cut is intended to be more flattering to a lady's rear. The jeans will retail at $39.50; the two kinds that have "destroyed details" cost $10 more. [WWD]
• American Vogue's Sarah Mower writes that fashion this fall is going to be a grown-up affair - that clothes will no longer worship at the feet of youth. The girl in the photo illustrating this story looks to be about 14. [Telegraph]
• Steve Madden, which produces watches through a licensee, allegedly found fakes for sale on eBay. Imagine! But when they asked the site to remove the items, eBay didn't comply, so the company is suing. [Reuters]
• Stylist Patricia Field designed an Ugly Betty-inspired Diet Coke bottle. It's pink. Will people seriously buy anything? [Fashionista]
• Charlotte Russe announced a 4.9% drop in third-quarter profits, to $6.3 million. [WWD]
• Avon has announced it will be laying off 1,200 people, or 2.8% of its workforce, over the next four years. [AP]
• Escada's bond exchange, which needed an 80% acceptance rate from bondholders in order to save the company from bankruptcy, has only met with approval from 37% of the company's creditors. So it has extended the exchange period until August 5, and implemented an exchange of stock to raise additional cash. [WWD]
• 1.4 million pairs of children's shoes are being recalled. The shoes, shaped like racecars, have wheels which can detach and pose a choking risk. Buster Brown & Co.'s eight different styles of shoes were sold at retailers including JC Penney, Famous Footwear, Meijer, Sears, Target, and Wal-Mart, and can be returned for a full refund. [WWD]

In 2004, major league baseball team the Oakland A's had a Mother's Day promotion. Before the game they sponsored a 5K run for breast cancer research, arranged for free mammograms for the women present, and gave out floppy plaid sun hats to the first 7,500 ladies to arrive. Rava attended the event, and when he was not presented with a hat of his own, he decided to sue.

As Rick Reilly reports for ESPN The Magazine, Rava's case is nearly won:

A judge has given preliminary approval to a $510,000 settlement — roughly half to lawyers and the rest to the "victims" — the poor, downtrodden gender-disadvantaged waifs like Rava who didn't get their floppy Mother's Day hats. This is where you come in.

If you can prove you were one of the first 7,500 people there that day, you get $50 in cash, two-for-one A's tickets and a $25 Macy's coupon. It won't be hard. All you have to do is (A) state under oath that you are a male, (B) show some kind of receipt for your ticket and (C) swear you were there early. That's good enough. There's no video, and nobody's going to spend $5,000 deposing you over $100.

So far no one has come forward to claim any hat money, and several fans have spoken out against the lawsuit. "The entire settlement should be donated to the Breast Care Center at UCSF," says A's fan (and decent human being) Ben Huber.

But this isn't the first time Rava has sued over male discrimination: Rava has been involved in more than 40 male anti-discrimination lawsuits, sometimes as the plaintiff, but other times as the plaintiff's lawyer. He has sued restaurants and nightclubs for their women-only promotions, and he sued the Angels for giving away a $1.45 tote bag to women in 2005. He also sued Club Med for a vacation package that offered women a $400 discount on airfare (as reported here, at Mensactivism.org). While we recognize that some of these cases aren't all that fair, Rava seems like a real asshole. After realizing that Rava doesn't live or work in Oakland, Reilly phoned up Rava to ask him why he was at the A's game the very same day that they were holding a women-only giveaway. Rava wouldn't say. Reilly finally asked him the question everyone is thinking what would your mother say?:

"I am sure my mom would be proud of my lawsuit against this major league baseball franchise that denied male and female consumers under 18 years of age free fishing hats based on sex and age," he says.

Sadly, Rava's mother is unable to support or refute his comments. She died at age 53 of breast cancer.

Make $100 The Sleazy Way [ESPN]

• In your daily back-to-bed moment of despair for Western culture, Heidi Montag has become a bathing suit designer. [E! Online]
• Elle MacPherson reportedly shops at Toys in Babeland. Unless there's some other "toy" store near Schiller's. [FWD]

• Claire Robinson, a former model and Canadian beauty queen, is suing her former acting agent, Jack Gilardi, and management company, Los Angeles's ICM. Robinson alleges that Gilardi's friend John Rockwell raped her in 2008, and that Gilardi himself touched her inappropriately in the back of a limousine. Robinson's class-action suit also will challenge the legality of an entertainment industry practice known as hip-pocketing — which I actually had to Google, because as it turns out there is an indignity that models are not subjected to — and will seek to designate ICM, one of the world's biggest talent agencies, under the RICO statute. Robinson claims that being hip-pocketed left her and others sexually vulnerable to their agents. She also says Gilardi and ICM sent her on fake auditions, or auditions for jobs for which they knew she was not qualified. In addition to actual damages for what she says is her ruined career, Robinson and any women who join her class action are seeking punitive damages to the tune of 10% of ICM's gross earnings for one year. ICM denied any and all wrongdoing through a spokeswoman. [AP]
• Calvin Klein finally won approval to tear down his 50,000 square foot castle in the Hamptons. The $5 million beach behemoth was originally built as a much smaller structure in the 1920s, and then renovated and expanded into something that looks like a Disneyland ride you'd take on shrooms by an eccentric junk-bonds billionaire in the 80s. Klein's new home will be a comparatively modest 17,000 square feet. [Newsday]
• Blind items: "Which unhinged, avant-garde downtown NYC designer is rumored to be in the running for a top job at Escada? Talk about non-traditional casting." And: "Which super-famous European supermodel fired her NYC apartment-sitter when she came home after an international job and found a condom at the foot of her bed?" [Stylelist]
• Whoa. Marvel Comics is creating a series called Models Inc., featuring some of their more fashionable superheroes — plus a cartoon Tim Gunn. He saves fashion from evildoers. [NY Times]
• Aboriginal artist Gloria Petyarr has designed a scarf for Hermès. Petyarr, who lives in a remote community 250 km from Alice Springs and has no access to a telephone, was paid a "substantial fee" according to an Australian gallerist known to the artist, and would earn royalties from sales of the scarf for 75 years. Her design features medicinal plants used by Aboriginal peoples. [Reuters]
• The bankrupt men's wear giant Hartmarx, which owns the brands Hickey Freeman and Hart Schaffner Marx (Barack Obama's suit brand), may have found a savior in the London-based private investment firm Emerisque. Emerisque is said to be offering to keep the chain in operation and give 80 cents on the dollar to Wells Fargo, Hartmarx's $100 million-plus creditor. Union leaders at Hartmarx's Chicago factory have threatened to sit in if Wells Fargo accepts a buyer who will liquidate the business. Negotiations are ongoing. [NY Times]
• Ann Taylor is dabbling in a little self-blame for poor sales results. CEO Kay Krill described some of the chain's troubles as "self-inflicted," saying "the product assortment was not compelling or relevant." Beats the old "it's the economy" excuse. And they're revamping their product lines to address it. [WSJ]
• Limited Brands suffered a 92% plunge in first-quarter earnings. Sales dropped 10% overall, and same-store sales fell 7%, which means that new stores opened in the past year actually did worse than their established counterparts. The company offered little explanation for the disastrous results in its one-page quarterly statement. [The Street]
• Andreas Ortiz, the man who runs Technical Garment USA, a small garment factory in the fashion district which was raided by the New York State Department of Labor last month, denies his business is a sweatshop. Ortiz is accused of failing to pay overtime and violating legal employee rest times. Two employees interviewed in Ortiz's presence claimed to earn $10 an hour, and to be paid on time. [NY Times]
• Agyness Deyn, new face of Uniqlo, is in this cute ad spot for the Japanese brand. [Grazia]

The case, detailed in today's NY Times, is heart-wrenching. The family was on vacation in Miami when Lisa collapsed, and when they arrived at the hospital a social worker allegedly told Langbehn that she was in an "antigay city and state" and would require health-care proxy forms in order to visit the ER. Although she produced the forms, she was still not allowed to see her partner for eight hours, only permitted access for five minutes while a priest administered last rites, and denied a chance to let the three children say goodbye until after Lisa was brain-dead. When Lisa's sister arrived, she was immediately admitted.

This Miami lawsuit, and a similar case in Washington State, raise an issue that is not a new one; hospital visiting rights is a common theme in the argument for gay marriage. And of course, a positive ruling vis a vis visiting rights could have major implications for all unmarried couples, to say nothing of friends and any number of relationships beyond traditional marriage. If successful, a ruling in Langbehn's favor could compel hospitals to respect a patient's wishes; right now, it's generally subject to a doctor's judgment in the case of emergency care.

Of course, there are legitimate legal reasons for having put such a policy in place - when it comes to questions like life support or other major decisions, it could conceivably get dicey to allow just anyone agency in these matters, to say nothing of legally problematic for hospitals. And certainly we get that you can't have various strangers wandering around the ICU, if that's what medical pros are concerned about. But surely there are simple, practical means of expanding this policy - the insurance equivalent of 'in case of emergency?' In a time when we're more than aware of the fragmentation of many family relationships and the importance of others, such restrictive policies and narrow definitions seem impossibly retrograde - and, when we hear about specific cases like this, inhumane. One of the more depressing aspects of the article, of course, is that legality is not guarantee of fairness - prejudice and cruelty can still find a way - but at least it's a start.

Kept From a Dying Partner's Bedside [NY Times]

Allen is suing American Apparel for putting his picture on billboards in Los Angeles and New York City's Lower East Side back in 2007.

Image via Curbed LA

The image, a still from Annie Hall (from the scene where Allen, eating dinner with Annie's family in character as Alvy Singer, imagines himself through Annie's very Gentile grandmother's eyes — or, maybe, it's some combination of how he imagines the grandma sees him, and how he imagines himself at that moment). The Yiddish text, which, along with that prominent American Apparel logo, overlays the still, translates to "the holy rebbe."

The company didn't have the director's permission to associate his likeness with its brand, and now Allen wants $10 million in compensation.

So far, American Apparel's legal team, led by lawyer Stuart Slotnick, has focused its efforts entirely on attacking Allen's image. Slotnick said the director "devalued his reputation by becoming involved with his lover Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom he later married," and that therefore, his image on some billboards oughtn't be worth anything close to $10 million. Slotnick also requested, during the discovery period, the nude photos of Previn, taken by Allen, that Mia Farrow found when she discovered Allen had been sleeping with her daughter.

But! "Dov (and everyone else at the company) LOVES Woody Allen," says memorandum-writer "Iris", who is undoubtedly Iris Alonzo, a company creative director and Dov's assistant. Alonzo has modeled for the brand; there was a photo of Dov kissing her in reporter Claudine Ko's infamous Jane article (that was the one where Ko described Dov masturbating in front of her), and the only picture on Alonzo's profile on the company website looks like exactly what it is: her ass with a red handprint on it.

Back in 2005, Alonzo claimed in an American Apparel ad to be busy reading The Collapse Of The Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom by Philip K. Howard. Which must have been as formative as it was informative, for now, she wishes to share her insight into the real nature of the company's sticky situation with Allen.

"Some of you may know," Alonzo writes in the memo, "that the billboards with Woody Allen's picture, and the text 'Our Spiritual Leader' (that's what the Hebrew [sic] letters said) were intended to be a social statement and not an ad. We making [sic] a comparison between Woody Allen and Dov and the scene in Annie Hall where Alvi [sic] is judged by his girlfriend's grandmother. At the time, many people consumed [sic] with the sexual harassment lawsuits that we were facing, and through that experience, we saw firsthand what media scandal feels like and how quickly the truth gets lost."

The memo goes on to say the billboard "was in no way intended to sell clothing," and that the statements made by Slotnick, the company's lawyer, about Allen's compromised reputation "aren't inaccurate" (although Alonzo seems to mean to say that they are inaccurate, since she takes pains to point out Charney's deep and abiding respect for the director and his work — "For the 5 years that I've worked here, I can't tell you how many times I've been made to watch Annie Hall or Zelig or Hannah and Her Sisters again because Dov wanted me to see something amazing just 'one more time.' "). Alonzo also denies Slotnick tried to get the nude photos of Previn: "We did not request the nude photos of Soon Pi [sic] (Woody's wife) and I'm sorry if any of you were under that impression."

The memo wraps up, "for everyone not directly involved, I hope you can trust that we will adhere to the ethical principles that this company believes in." (Alonzo may display an almost touching innocence of conventional English spelling, punctuation and grammar, but she has a certain knack for comedy.)

So there we have it: American Apparel's grand counter-argument is a denial that gigantic billboards with the company's logo (and extensive use of the Allen billboard image online) do not constitute advertising, and that the lawyer in their employ doesn't actually speak for them. And what was supposed to be American Apparel's commentary on "how quickly the truth gets lost" when salacious sex cases make the headlines (by the way, Iris, those vintage 2007 sexual harassment lawsuits? Plenty are still ongoing!) ended up with the company trying those very smear tactics against Allen, because of salacious sex allegations. Which isn't just "ironic", it's actually ironic, if you think about it.

The case goes to court on May 18.

American Apparel LOVES Woody Allen, Internal Memo Explains All [Gothamist]

Related: Breaking: Woody Allen on Alvarado/Sunset [Curbed LA]
Woody Allen In Legal Battle With American Apparel [WCBS]
Iris [American Apparel]
Meet Your New Boss [From Jane, via OneAngryGirl, PDF]
American Apparel Plays Hide The Quarter [The Spunker]

27-year-old Canadian @Maureen (Evans) has, with her collection of condensed international recipes, become something of a global sensation. I regret to say that certain things about the description of her in today's Times set of my "petty" alarm. To wit,

Though not a trained chef, she is an enthusiastic home cook and traveler, with a close connection to Twitter through her partner, Blaine Cook, who was Twitter's lead architect. They live by the sea in a rented castle; when I reached her by phone the other day, she said she was looking out over the low tide.

We've already mentioned her real job description; she describes the "tiny recipes" as " a coffee-break hobby."

But, pettiness aside, her tweets are rad. Her recipes, described as "Delicious ideas from all over the world" are inventive, ingeniously broken down, and very appealing. The ones yours truly have tried have worked, and the author of the article tests a bunch with no problems. Here's one: "Strudel Pastry: cut 2T butter/1c flour/mash tater. Knead w 2t yeast/2T h2o; rise 1h. On flour cloth gently pull 17x25"; trim-1"/butter well."

She says she likes the challenge of the condensation; the Times reporter likes the challenge of decoding them. Figuring out the recipes takes way longer than reading them, and while this may seem counterintuitive and gimmicky, it demands a level of detective work and basic know-how modern cookbooks, ironically, have rendered obsolete. In this sense, she's really a throwback to the receipt books of an earlier age, which assumed a breadth of knowledge and expertise and so could give only the broadest strokes of an idea. Beyond sites like this, Twitter's a boon for people looking for ideas; you have only to ask what your followers are having for dinner and get a barrage of suggestions and links. It takes some of the loneliness out of menu-planning and cooking. Lots of food bloggers and food diarists have taken advantage of the medium, and on a practical level, plenty of food trucks have started tweeting their whereabouts to hungry customers. When it comes to dieting, tweeting is great, too, as people can keep food diaries and compare notes with others on sites like tweetwhattyoueat.com.

If that's the sublime - and hey, this is Twitter, here - get a load of the ridic, also profiled in today's "Dining In." Basically, Danyelle Freeman, the New York Daily News' critic and a well-known blogger, has had her identity stolen - or so say she and her lawyers. A guy called Adam Robb Rucinsky has adopted her "Restaurant Girl" moniker and parodies Freeman's breezy, dizzy tone on Twitter. This might constitute trademark infringement, but is only really problematic if it moves beyond parody into impersonation. Thing is, it's hard to say: a lot of his writing is uncannily like hers. Weirder still, he adopts her "voice" on a blog devoted to Freeman's work, and on, um, his personal blog. Whether it's legal or not, this has clearly gone beyond idle interest into something quite peculiar.

Has Twitter changed the way we eat? Well, probably not, but certainly how we think about food: our obsessions are out in the open now, for good and bad. Even if you're not sold on a 140-character recipe, you can probably appreciate the back-to-basics streamlining it entails. And that someone's 140-character parodies can be recognized as riffs on 140-character originals? Altogether, this shows that when it comes to food, you can say a terrifying amount in a very few words.

Lawyers Enter Twitter Tempest [NY Times]

Take 1 Recipe, Mince, Reduce, Serve [NY Times]
Twitter for Your Lunch [New York Observer]
Latest Twitter Food Trend, Kogi BBQ [Look And Taste]
Tweet What You Eat [Official Site]

As mentioned previously, these unkind words were launched at model Liskula Cohen by class-act blog Skanks In NYC. The 36-year-old model, who has appeared in Vogue and other fashion magazines, is suing Google, which hosts the blog, for defamation, in an attempt to force the blogger out of anonymity. In the lawsuit, Cohen states that the blog's slings and arrows paint her as a "promiscuous woman who is filthy, disgusting, foul and a whore," a rep that's not done much for her "desirability for endorsing products." While the uncharitable could perhaps suggest that this desirability was already somewhat in question — and, further, that said anonymous asshole is considerably more fixated on the model's activities than is the public; and, further still, that this is in fact the first we have really heard of her and this kind of publicity isn't really serving to distract from a site we'd otherwise be unfamiliar with — the real question, which Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory poses is, does she have a case?

Not exactly. As a lawyer tells her, for the case to hold water, the model would have to prove that Skank's assertions were not just their opinion, but rather, deliberately misleading: "a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to a person's reputation." In other words, well-nigh impossible to do. (Although it does seem like she could probably prove pretty conclusively that she's not the #1 skank in New York — surely there's gotta be some viable competition, both amongst celebrities and professional prostitutes, no?)

Of course, however much flack she'll take for the law-suit, her thin skin, the fact that she had an unpleasant bottle contretemps with a bouncer last year, and the possible publicity ploy — in short, however misguided it may be - we get why someone would want to do it: on a basic level, it seems wrong that a stranger (or, even worse, not) should be able to write vile things anonymously. Sticks and stones nothing, reading that has to be a punch to the gut for anyone not trained from childhood to weather gratuitous insults. And the internet is, as pundits are fond of saying, still the "wild west," legally speaking. There's certainly scope for precedent-setting and why not in this case, frivolous though it may seem? It would be nice if there was some resolution to this case beyond "Skanks in NYC" getting more hits, Cohen humiliating herself, and the rest of us just feeling really, really sad. Because we imagine the wild west being slightly more exciting than that - or at least involving more frontier justice.

Model Sues Over "Skank" Comment [Salon]

Earlier:Rag Trade: Model Sues Google After Random Blogger Calls Her "Old Hag"

• The Bushes spent about $3.7 million dollars on real estate in a pricey Dallas neighborhood, and boy, are you going to seethe with jealousy when you see the house the Presidency can buy you. [Washington Post, The Smoking Gun]
• Italy is struggling with a rise in puppy smuggling due to a love of specific breeds and a declining economy. More than 70,000 puppies are smuggled into Italy every year, despite the fact that nearly a quarter of them die on the way and half die within a few months of arrival. There's a video. [BBC]
• Pastor Rick Warren says the Bible calls us to invade Iran. I don't think it says what he thinks it says, but that might be because I read it for my own edification and not to use it to make zillions of dollars or justify my existence. [Washington Independent]

• The recently-published jury instructions in the Lori Drew case make it more clear why she didn't get convicted of any felony counts. [Wired]
• Fred Thompson recently promised that he was getting out of politics and going back to acting. He lied to you. [Time]
• Conservative scribe and Earl of Minor Despair Bob Novak would totally out Valerie Plame again because the media was mean to him after his did so the first time. [Think Progress]
• Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee doesn't think enough LGBT people have been beaten or killed while seeking equality in this country to qualify as a civil rights movement. Also, he thinks if they would just quit choosing to have teh buttsecks, they could have all the rights they ever wanted. [Think Progress]
• Some wacky Republicans who probably spend a portion of their time bitching about tort reform and vexatious litigation are filing lawsuits upon lawsuits about Barack Obama's birth certificate because blah blah blah crazytown nonsense. [Honolulu Advertiser]
• Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, she of the horror of women who don't always wear stockings, is going to challenge Texas Governor Rick Perry in the 2010 gubernatorial primary because she doesn't think he's Republican-y enough. [Dallas Morning News]
• Sarah Palin is totally snubbing Oprah, because Real Americans would definitely go talk to Larry King first. [Huffington Post]
• Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with an assist from Governor General Michaëlle Jean, has shut down the Canadian Parliament to keep from being thrown out of office. And here you were all worried that George W. Bush was going to be the one to try to upend the democracy he supposedly serves. [NY Times]

His popped-collar, spikey-haired presence was so far beyond regular douche, so far beyond uberdouche, he could spontaneously create a new element on the periodic tables—Douche Nine.

While I doubt we've heard the last of this case, in which both plaintiff Mary Nelson and defendant Charney are acting like they're angelic victims facing manipulative, evil foes, if you believe the latest, American Apparel may only be guilty of stupidity. In any event, here's their side of the story (if you can't bear to read the super convoluted details, scroll down to the bottom for the short version):

So — and this, at least, is uncontested — a California appelate court released a decision this week about the latest sexual harassment lawsuit against Charney, in which Mary Nelson alleged she'd been subject to workplace harassment and AA said she'd just been a bad employee who cursed all the time and is disgruntled at being fired.

What we read Wednesday is that Charney settled but in exchange forced the woman to claim she'd lied to save the company's rep. According to American Apparel, the shoe is on quite the other foot. Here's what they allege:

-They were totally ready to go to trial because they knew the plaintiff, Mary Nelson, had no case.

-The night before the trial, Nelson's lawyer called AA "to plead with them not to go to trial" and said Mary Nelson had admitted that she'd made everything up and would rather have an arbitration hearing instead of a trial. (Allegedly, they said they couldn't just drop the case because Ms. Nelson had spent too much in legal fees and was in over her head.)

-American Apparel agreed, but only if Nelson would, at said hearing, admit that she'd fabricated the charges. Said arbitration would involve a judge of American Apparel's hearing, who would then rule in AA's favor, as pre-arranged by both parties. In return for doing the arbitration on these terms, American Apparel would help foot Nelson's legal fees (hence the $1.3 million.) American Apparel would then publicize the forementioned press release, clearing Charney's name and talking about First Amendment rights. (Her legal team said okay.) To quote the AA statement:

In response, Ms. Nelson's lawyer, Mr. Fink, devised a settlement agreement whereby his client would agree to certain stipulations amounting to a confession that her charges of sexual harassment were bogus, and that she had never been subject to any harassment or a hostile work environment. This confession would then be presented in an arbitration proceeding, and following American Apparel prevailing in arbitration, the company would issue a press release announcing the resolution of the matter. In exchange for this, American Apparel would pay a fraction of the legal fees that had been incurred by Ms. Nelson to date. American Apparel refused to entertain any potential settlement arrangement that would not result in a complete public vindication and an admission by Ms. Nelson that she had not been subjected to any wrongdoing, as the company has maintained over the past several years, preferring instead to be eventually vindicated in court

But it didn't really work out that way. Apparently Nelson's lawyer didn't show up to the arbitration hearing; as a result, the arbitrator couldn't rule, which meant AA couldn't issue its press release. Which in turn meant that, in the company's view, Nelson had breached her part of the bargain and had forfeited her $1.3m. In response, Nelson's lawyers declared the arbitration a sham and a fraud and why should they have to show when everyone knew what the verdict was anyway? Our presence wasn't part of the bargain; pay up! Result? No one was happy and the case ended up back in court, with both sides filing for action — Nelson to get the money and AA to compel the original arbitration.

Cut to the latest: When the court was reviewing everything, they obviously wanted to see the settlement agreement. Nelson's lawyers said, sure; the settlement agreement should not be under seal because California judicial proceedings are public. Since part of the settlement was confidentiality, AA calls this position a breach of confidentiality. Still with us? The first court ruled that American Apparel can't compel Nelson back to arbitration over the breach of settlement. So AA appealed — and that's what we're all reading about now. The latest court has ruled that, yes, AA can compel arbitration on these two points.

However you slice it, apparently there was indeed what Portfolio refers to as "a bizarre piece of theater concocted as part of the settlement proposal." Whoever initiated it, if there was indeed a sham arbitration, and the court wasn't feeling it, and said, "There would be considerations of illegality, injustice, and fraud which would affect our powers as a court of equity to enforce the 'arbitration' contemplated" by the settlement, were they to go through with it.

However absurd the farce, though — what Portfolio calls "a sham arbitration to issue a press release" — nothing about it, with its foregone conclusion, would technically have been illegal. Stephen Gillers, an ethics professor at New York University School of Law, tells Portfolio, "The lawyers had no duty to insure that the public got the facts or that the issues were resolved based on a real trial before a real tribunal with real evidence. Arbitration is private and contractual and if the parties were prepared to agree to fool the rest of the world, that's their business even if foolish. People have a right to be fools so long as they break no law."

Since this is a right Dov Charney has long exercised, it's certainly plausible! We said when we heard about this case that we kind of hoped the initial allegations were not true, and while there's nothing thrilling about finding out a woman fabricated claims, either, it's certainly less distressing than knowing a huge company was throwing its weight around at the cost of an innocent person's reputation. It's weird that they're making such a big deal out of the case - why bother to appeal and bring so much attention to the case? Is it really about clearing their name, or is there more at stake? Fine print says that the $1.3 million wasn't just for legal fees; the appeal court decisions says it was for "alleged emotional distress damages," which sounds murky. In any event, it sounds like there's a lot of grey area still waiting to come out, so stay tuned.

Layman's Timeline:
-Woman accuses Dov Charney of sexual harassment.
-Right before the case goes to trial, her lawyers call American Apparel and withdraw all charges. Can they skip a trial and just take the case to arbitration, since they're in so deep?
-AA says, okay, but if we agree to drop the trial, you have to really make sure Nelson takes the rap to undo the damage to our rep; Nelson has to say she lied. The judge will rule in our favor. We'll make it public with a press release. In return, we'll pay $1.3 million of her legal fees.
-They have the hearing. Nelson's lawyers don't show. Their position? Um, why do we need to be there for a farce? AA's position? Well, actually, you do, so the judge can formally clear us and we can do our press release! So, we're not paying her $1.3 m.
-Things get ugly; both sides want to go back to court. They do. The judge wants to see the weird initial, fake arbitration agreement. Nelson says sure; AA says no, it's private. They accuse Nelson of breaking the confidentiality agreement; the first judge overturns the case; a second gives AA the go-ahead.
-Docs hit the media. It looks like AA was trying to pay Nelson off while lying about the outcome. Maybe not true, but still really, weird/confusing.

Playing Dress Up [Conde Nast Portfolio]
Earlier: Dov Charney May Be More Of A Scumbag Than Anyone Realized

Here's what On Point says (they have a link to a PDF of the legal papers, by the way): So, Nelson sues Charney. Charney's legal team suggests they decide the case by arbitration to avoid the publicity of a trial. Fine. In fact, though, there was nothing to "arbitrate." Here's what Charney apparently wanted: to secretly settle, then have a pretend arbitration, which would then be "decided" in Charney's favor... and the case dismissed. At which point AA would release a statement (which they'd already written) proclaiming his triumphant exoneration. Basically, AA would pay the woman to shut up and pretend she was a liar so Charney had one less sexual harassment conviction on the record and could get back to the important business of promoting fair labor practices and half-naked teenagers. Or, as the prefab press release put it, “I am pleased that we have been able to bring clarity to the role of the First Amendment in the American workplace."

Here's the agreement Charney and his people allegedly wanted, to quoteOn Point:

According to the settlement agreement, the arbitrator would be chosen only by the defense, would be presented with 'a stipulated record of facts, and would decide that Nelson 'was not subjected to unlawful sexual harassment.' Following the filing of the arbitrator's 'decision,' American Apparel would be allowed to issue the press release.

On Point's information is said to be based on an unpublished decision from California's 2nd District Court of Appeal. And yes, they allegedly rejected Charney's "compromise." As the appeals court put it, “[T]he proposed press release is materially misleading — among other things, no real arbitration of a dispute occurred and plaintiff received $1.3 million in compensation.”

According to the article, Nelson's attorneys were predictably appalled. However, since her lawyers reportedly refused to go along with what they called a "sham arbitration," the AA people are using their non-cooperation with the charade as an excuse not to pay her the settlement. Now they're going to arbitration for reals, we're told.

I'd really like this to not be true. Because, if true, it's further proof — albeit irrefutable, revolting proof —of a sense of self-righteous entitlement that would be really terrifying in the head of America's largest manufacturer. What we already know about him for sure is damning enough! While we're likely to learn more about the case, it should be said that a lot of this squares with Charney's sense of grievance against the "selfish" women who are willing to compromise his important work for the sake of their dignity. Even were one prepared to regard the plaintiffs with a cynical eye, there would be no justifying what amounts to fraud, and at best a shocking attempt at public manipulation. Stay posted.

Fashion Mogul "Fakes" Arbitration In Harassment Case [On Point News]

Earlier: Everything You Didn't Know About Dov Charney And Weren't Afraid To Ask
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