[San Diego, November 15. Image via Getty]

SAN DIEGO - NOVEMBER 15: A fan of the Philadelphia Eagles cheer for their team against the San Diego Chargers during the NFL football game at Qualcomm Stadium on November 15, 2009 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

• Ellie Nesler, the vigilante mother who killed her son's molester in 1993, died on Friday of breast cancer. She was 56. • Police in Mumbai have announced that they will be creating special separations for couples, families and single women during public New Year celebrations. • Officials at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island announced that the zoo's giraffe, Sukari, gave birth on December 23rd. • What are some of their weirdest things that pets have eaten? A kitchen knife, a bell, underwear and "a man's wig" top the list. • Six cats were given CPR by firemen in England through a special breathing apparatus after they were rescued from a house fire. • A new study in England claims that male teachers are more likely to have a lesson disrupted by students than female teachers. • Interesting news for gardeners: a new study claims that human hair can be a nutrient source for crops when combined with compost. However, more studies are needed to see if hair is safe. • Researchers from the University of New Mexico claim that rapping can be traced back to the barrooms of medieval Scotland. • Sondra "Miss Football" Fortunato says she may shift her team allegiance from the NY Giants to the Philly Eagles because she is sick of being hassled by Giants Stadium staff over her skimpy outfits. • A self-proclaimed "Robinson Crusoe" in Australia is seeking his own "Girl Friday" in the online trenches of love. •

MOE: Hi! I am um in the [redacted]. You can delete that part though. Remember when I chatted you from [somewhere else] and mentioned I was in [somewhere else] and hoped no one would notice? They did.

MEGAN: I will redact your location from the transcript! I am still in upstate New York, but I don't care if people notice.

MOE: Whoa, can't read past the headline, Camille Paglia. I think we should talk about North Korea a bit today too though, just putting that out there. And oh yeah Obama the chauvinist pig.

MEGAN: I'm down with that schedule of events, even if it does force me to read Camille Paglia and even (horrors) agree with her, despite her overwrought boating metaphors:

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain's imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain's credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain's sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let's turn the damned page.

Oh, but then she sets to world right on its axis by accusing him of trying to "act black" by dropping his G's, as though nobody does that.

I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama's efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin' his g's like there's no tomorrow.

And now I feel okay about mildly disliking her.

MOE: She had to bring BDSM into it, didn't she. Now I am getting an image of Sarah Palin …ugh, she is conjuring up scenarios that will be used against me later when she figures out how to ban me from the Library of Congress or something. Also, droppin one's Gs is not a fucking African American pastime Camille Paglia. It's called L-I-V-I-N.

MEGAN: It's also called not being a prissy intellectual. BUT, she does agree with you that there wasn't enough foreign policy in Obama's Invesco speech and then she decides that Palin has supplanted Madonna as a feminist superstar:

In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

This is, by the way, your BDSM-like punishment for linking me to Paglia before I finish a cup of coffee. HA, Camille Paglia might be older than John McCain, in the end:

She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919.

How many frontierswomen do you think Paglia knew personally or saw speak?

MOE: Hahahaha you mean like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman? Because I sorta see how they're pursuing similar strategies with the hair.

MEGAN: I will admit, I watched that show. My parents were very strict about TV and didn't have cable. See, I tend to think of Sarah Palin's hair as "wedding hair," but she is wearing it down more and more. My Glamour editor at the conventions said she thought she wore it up to look taller, but I did notice that McCain's kind of short when she's in heels so I'm guessing that's why she's wearing it down now. Okay, here's my last Paglia quote because you will appreciate it and because I frankly can't read any further after this without hurting myself or other people:

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil).

MOE: I really can't figure out how one advances to such lofty ranks of academia only to turn around and promulgate such partisan caricatures.

For Mr. Obama, the race is about the claims of modernism. There is "cool," and the confidence of the meritocracy in him. The Obama way is glib: It glides over the world without really taking it in. It has to it that fluency with political and economic matters that can be acquired in a hurry, an impatience with great moral and political complications.

MEGAN: Um, see, this guy lost me in the first paragraph:

But as Bob Woodward is the latest to remind us, it is presidents, not their understudies, who shape the destiny of nations.

OH REALLY FOUAD AJAMI? Dick Cheney had nothing to do with nothing? Bob Woodward is all knowing? Fuuuuuck you.

MOE: Wow I always figured Camille lived in the terrible drug-addled overtaxed national chain store underserved den of iniquity that is the other side of City Line, the glorified sixth borough Philadelphia. Now I realize she is a real true American, or something.

Oh right? Too ADD to remember that line just now. Um, what's he smoking, seriously? Did Bob Woodward's latest book finally debunk that batshit liberal conspiracy that Cheney somehow runs the Bush Administration?

MEGAN: I think Woodward's book — like all of Woodward's books, relies too heavily on the Big-Man theory of political science in which all of the actions of the entire Executive Branch rest on the shoulders of one man. Thus, is Bush really in charge and his minions report to him rather than — as is always the case — power being actually more diffuse in practice because Bush's speeches are scripted, his opinions are formed by underlings and presented to him and his policies formed by committee. Only people with outsized personalities and force can actually ram their own ideas through that system, which is why people credit Dick Cheney with having more power than the average VP — and, from what I've heard, rightly so.

MOE: Of course he does…From what I recall of Woodward's previous books Dick "Big Time" was Woodward's "Big Man" in a lot of ways, right? Unless I'm thinking of the books on Condi Rice, or by Ron Suskind, or, fuck if I know. Anyway I just don't think this fact is disputed. Cheney runs shit, the end. Next up: Obama makes a coy little joke employing a shop-worn cliche and the Republicans go positively deranged. I can safely say I would feel the exact way if McCain made a the same comment re Hillary. It was sorta funny! Not offensive! Imagine if this happened in the UK. You might have to leave the bar at 11 p.m. and that would suck, but no MP would have the conscience to feign "offense" about it. Oh god…BOAR WAR.

MEGAN: HAHAHAHAHA. Oh, shit, I miss your puns. There are a total of 5 people in America who might get that.

Anyway, I I wondered aloud this morning whether pigs have lips but a Google image search proved that they do and that they can be eaten, were one to be so inclined. I think the campaigns need to sack up and have a pig-lip eating contest and whomever gags first concedes the Presidency.

MOE: Sorry, not my pun. It's the cover of the NY Post. I still need coffee. Hey, check out the pic of the guy on this story about how Palin is "energizing women of all walks of life." That dude looks pretty energized. Or possibly "diabolical"!

MEGAN: Um, I love how the Washington Post just called him a woman. Like, I loved it almost as much as the Post's headline writers, who have apparently expanded the audience for jokes about British colonialist conflicts by a factor of 10.

Anyway, what I want to know is how come since Obama's next line was about stinky rotten fish, no former female Massachusetts governor is calling out Obama for making inappropriate comments about the smell of Sarah Palin's vagina? Huh, Jane Swift? Did you miss that? Because I really think commenting on vaginal odor is, like, totally worse than saying she looks pig-like, not that he said that either but if this is taking-fake-offense day, that's the fake offense I'm taking. Jane Swift doesn't care about women with vaginal odor.

MOE: Hahaha maybe you could be the first. Do you think some people become Republican spinmasters just for absurd opportunities like that? Sorry I'm reading about North Korea. The government is claiming Kim is fine, he sent a birthday greeting to Bashar Assad just to prove it, no one can say what said birthday card consisted of but wouldn't it be cool if it were some sort of strippergram, "foreign doctors" have maybe been summoned to the country to nurse Dear Leader back to health, I am still struggling (Googling) to figure out who noticed Kim's absence in the first place. Does the Chosun Ilbo or whatever have a Pyongyang Bureau? Does Xinhua?

MEGAN: I'm going to go out on a very wide, broad limb here and suggest that one of Seoul's newspapers of record probably doesn't have a really big Pyongyag bureau, if only because of the Dear Leader's penchant for kidnapping South Koreans (and others). Xinhua might, in which case I'm sort of curious what China's interest might be in promoting a story that Kim Jong Il might not be long for the world. Either way, you'd think that if Kim Jong Il was so cool with counterfeiting money and pirating everything under the sun that he might've pirated a couple of copies of Photoshop and kidnapped a couple of South Koreans or Japanese people that know how to use it to take care of contingencies like this.

MOE: I feel like the news out of North Korea would be a lot more interesting if the South Korean papers had a "really big bureau" there. I feel like news about the place always comes from people who've gotten out, though. Oh yeah and Vice. And when they have an anniversary celebration, are there C-Span feeds of that? Because this here is straight-up Kremlinology.

On Monday, North Korea's nominal No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, gave a 60th-anniversary speech that referred to Kim Jong Il mainly in the past tense, said Jonathan Pollack, an Asia expert at the Naval War College. "Generally, when he is praised to the skies, it is in the present tense. But the predominant tone is looking back," he said.

MEGAN: Do we pirate their cable?

MOE: Thomas Frank: What exactly is he doing on the WSJ op-ed page? Does Rupert Murdoch have a soft spot for his eviscerations of late capitalism or is he friends with Peggy Noonan? Anyway, I want to have his babies etc. A long time ago I was dating a dude who not only remembered Valentine's Day, he bought me Commodify Your Dissent as a present. He is now married. (Let it be a lesson!) Anyway as presents go it was nice to see Thomas Frank in the papers and Bob Novak glowering in the corner.
MEGAN: Really, really working, If I'm ignoring you, it's because you're not talking about work and thus I am ignoring you.
MOE: Why is Novak always number one on the "Most Viewed List"?
MEGAN: I think Bob Novak lacks the ability to do anything but glower.
MOE: No dude he rules the most emailed list!
MEGAN: I think he hires those Chinese services that will click over and over to drive up your page views. They're really cheap, apparently.
MOE: Hey can you explain to me what Jimmy Carter is doing with Hamas?
MOE: I mean, I guess he is trying to broker some sort of piece but I haven't been able to click any of the links, mostly because of laziness.
MEGAN: Trying to maintain a sense of political relevancy? Fucking with Bush? Helping McCain win the election? Umm, overestimating his own diplomatic prowess?
MOE: Rick Santorum is on Fox News incidentally.
MOE: Warning America that Barack Obama is not a uniter.
MEGAN: Charlie Wilson was on MSNBC.
MEGAN: Like, the real guy, not Tom Hanks. But Rick Santorum is smarmy.
MOE: WHOA holy shit.
MEGAN: Also, I guarantee he's got dentures. And I would not hit that.
MOE: I just scrolled down on the Thomas Frank thing.

He will begin a weekly column each Wednesday in the Journal on May 14.

MEGAN: Wait, so, like, he'll have a weekly column starting in a month? I don't understand newspapers really.
MEGAN: Also, it is apparently a Tom Petty morning on MSBNC.
MOE: Yeah I guess but Thomas Frank? In the Wall Street Journal? Fuck...
MEGAN: Well, it makes more since then Bill "The Joker" Kristol in the motherfucking New York Times/
MOE: Ooooh, quick quiz! How many times since he won the nomination has John McCain been photographed wearing a flag pin on his lapel?

MOE: No takers?
MEGAN: But he doesn't have to because he's a war hero! And he's not a Muslim! And his middle name isn't Hussein! And he's not a Democrat, which means he is, by his very political affiliation, a patriot (if not a nationalist). Being a Republican is like having the American flag tattooed on your soul which is singing along to Proud to Be An American while your heart beats a military tattoo.
MOE: And being Barack Obama is a kitchen sink full of Yellow Peril!

MEGAN: Ooh! Ooh! Did you see? One of her foreign policy advisors, Richard Baum (who I'm gonna guess your dad intellectually opposes) resigned from Clinton's campaign because of her China-bashing?
MOE: Do you understand the subtle subliminal message Obama was trying to summon when he used that esoteric kitchen sink metapor? Because I think all the elitism made it fly over my head
MOE: Yeah Dad? I dare you to economically oppose this:

"Our reasoning was that while China certainly bears a share of responsibility for these (and other) problems, much (if not most) of the blame, at least on the economic issues, lies elsewhere," Baum wrote in an e-mail. He attributed the problems, at least in part, to America's high level of consumption, deficit spending and selective trade protectionism.

On the question of human rights, Baum said he and others in the advisory group believe the Chinese leaders respond better to persistent advice than "self-righteous finger-pointing aimed at publicly shaming and humiliating them."

MOE: So wait, the Pope...the spin seems to be that he's made all those pedophiles the centerpiece of a PR coup! But is it "just words" so to speak?

Anne Barrett Doyle, a founder of BishopAccountability.org, an online archive of the scandal, said that by condemning only pedophiles and not those who kept them in ministry, "it was a signal to us he will take no action. He came here to achieve a public-relations triumph and he did it."

MEGAN: Actually, that's what totally struck me about everything he said about the pervs. Unless I missed it, and I'll admit that I sort of stopped paying that much attention at some point, I didn't hear him say anything about the pedo-enablers, which were as much a part of the problem as everything. The fact that the Catholics has pervs among their ranks? Forgivable, presumably. The fact that Church leaders decided to fight the slow decline of men entering the priesthood (with the exception of my grad school friend Marcos, which, congrats!) by keeping pervs in the priesthood and moving them around every time they get caught molesting yet another young kid is the problem that strikes at the heart of the Church's relationship with the faithful, IMHO.
MEGAN: It's just another example of the kind of hypocritical, bad-stuff-enabling blind, overly-hierarchical patriarchy that drove me from the Church in the first place.
MOE: Why am I seeing so few quotes from the pope himself? What does he sound like? What did he say actually? Am I the only one who did not know Frank Bruni is a foremost chronicler of the abuse scandal?

MEGAN: I did not know that about Frank Bruni. I mean, I didn't hear a ton of him talking (I skipped listening to the Mass, obviously) but he has a very, very soft voice. Kind of high-pitched. German-mixed-with-Italian accent. Not a great public speaking voice, but perhaps he's more forceful-sounding in German or Italian.
MEGAN: And on the abuse, he said something along the lines of "it was really bad" and then he prayed with the survivors that stayed Catholic and met with him!
MOE: Why is it news that Obama thinks McCain would be better than Bush? Isn't that sort of like saying McCain knows more about foreign policy than Spencer Pratt?

MEGAN: Because, apparently, you can't acknowledge that some people in the other party are better than others or something.
MOE: Ugh did you read anything in the Times magazine? I just remembered it was the green issue. I am pretty sure green issues would do better if they made them some more synthetic color like neon orange. But anyway, the nation's railways are apparently expanding for the first time in ever. No way, right?! But it turns out their fuel efficiency for freight is 3x better than that of an 18-wheeler.
MEGAN: That's what the CSX commercial tells me, anyway.
MOE: Oh my god and file this under CNN reporters you could actually totally see walking through Central Park in a crystal meth haze.
MEGAN: I am sooooo sad about Richard Quest. Meth is bad, people, bad! Its use is correlated in the LGBT community with a rise in the incidences of STIs including HIV.
MEGAN: Also, it's nasty on the teeth. Oh, Richard. Please don't! Who else will I get my breathless Royals coverage from?
MOE: Well aren't we just all PSA today. Yeah, an increase in dumb behavior results in an increase in things that you get from engaging in dumb behavior. And yeah, if your teeth weren't British before...speaking of I have a case of Adderall mouth I should attend to.

MOE: Tomorrow's the primary. I think I'm voting in it. There's supposedly all sorts of horrible negative ads. Have you seen any of them?
MEGAN: You should totally vote in it. Are you going to Philly for it? Did you know I'm there covering it for Glamocracy?
MOE: Peggy Noonan thinks Hillary is finished and her campaign is officially in the red. Peggy loved a speech she gave but thinks she needs four more years to overcome the whole pants thign.

She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you'll know she's making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts. Gone will be the pantsuits that made her look like a small blond man with breasts. It's the new me, I wear skirts! Her first impulse is to think cosmetically. A long and weary life in politics has left her thinking this is the way to think.

MEGAN: I try not to watch political ads because I kill enough brain cells with drinking.
MOE: The Bush twins are apparently going to be at the 92nd St. Y tomorrow night, so I might come back up.
MEGAN: She looks like a small blonde man with breasts? Peggy, please.
MOE: I dunno

MOE: I kind of love how carried away she gets:

The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification.

MEGAN: Well, if you came down tonight, we could Crap on Philly tomorrow morning and you could be back in time for the Bush twins.
MOE: Hahaha you want to come to my polling place?
MEGAN: Wow, so Nooner's a Laura Bush fan? I prefer my political wives be actual humans.
MEGAN: That would be hilarious! Where's your polling place? I could take pictures of Democracy In Action!
MOE: It's at 12th and Federal, a South Philadelphia social club with a name that translates to "Home of the Crazy" I think...um...and speaking of, is all they're talking about on the non-Fox News the Weather Underground?
MEGAN: Sixties radicals play big with the still-think-we-coulda-won-Vietnam Fox News viewership. Pat Buchanan is yelling on MSNBC.
MOE: About the weather?
MOE: Michael Moore just endorsed.

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name.
Seriously, I know so many people who don't care if the name under the Big "D" is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

MOE: Okay dammit, I can't find that John McCain clip. I'm refusing to take meds today because I've got all this work to do later, and I'm all over the place. On one side of me this woman on Fox News is saying we're not in recession, that the media and a vast Hugo Chavez-led left-wing conspiracy has formulated this whole con to get people to hate business and the free market, and I seriously want to reach into the TV and strangle her. Also, bitch is so young she looks like Enron collapsed before her first Purity Ball. Also, and this is shallow, but the hair: needs a blow out. Who are you, Southern-accented apologist for the plutocracy? Maybe you should spend a little time reading business news before you go on airing your conspiracy theories!!!
MOE: But anyway John McCain went on Letterman and made some funny cracks (and some nine-times-warmed-over ones but no one seems to be clipping those) and meanwhile Barack Obama has been bro-ing down with the sports talk radio guys on Philadelphia's WIP.
MEGAN: Do you mean this clip? The thing I hate about candidates on late night talk shows is that I don't really need to know that they can be "funny" anymore. They're just sort of not.
MOE:

After Obama spoke about former Sixers legend Julius Erving - Dr. J - being a boyhood idol, Cataldi asked whether Obama would rather be the president or Dr. J.
"The Doctor," said Obama. "I think any kid growing up, if you got a chance to throw down the ball from the free throw line, that's better than just about anything."

The victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result

Perhaps you can feel it in the strange way that the war is beginning to feel increasingly like a distant, historical event in two very different films. In Ellen Spiro's "Body of War" (co-produced and co-directed by Phil Donahue), video of the October 2002 congressional debate on the Iraq war resolution has that familiar-but-foreign quality of things now slipping into the near past. Politicians hector each other, with faces less wrinkled, hair less gray than they have today. Names that were once so familiar you felt like they were family (what happened to Phil Gramm?) are slipping into the realms of amnesia. The urgency of the threat of weapons of mass destruction — announced by the president and parroted by the Congress — feels odd, too, not just because no WMDs were found but because the very foundations of the war have shifted so many times over the past half-decade.

Obviously, the New York City Region of the Gay Officers Action League does not agree with me. The decision not to prosecute Lane on the original charges sends a "disturbing message" to the public, they say. Oh, and perhaps it does! That the judicial system is capable of being twisted and corrupted by the feminine wiles of one of those hot insane women, perhaps? But you know, it's capable of much worse. In the meantime, we have a beloved term of endearment, and a temporarily vindicated bona fide train wreck on the loose. PAGEVIEWS! I eagerly await her apology to us dykes on Howard Stern.

Gay NY Police Officers' Group Criticizes Case Against TV Anchor [Newsday]
Alycia Lane: 'I'm So Glad This Is Over'
TheVery Public Self-Destruction Of Alycia Lane [Philadelphia Magazine]

Don't get me wrong, they could both use dental insurance and a new Medici family, and Philippe could probably stand to lose some of the tattoos, and my understanding is that Jayson likes to travel north to expand his, uh, whorizons — but dude, there are a lot of cute people in that town! (Not that we believe um, geographic regions should ever be judged by such superficial factors; that would totally be against everything we stand for.) But this is about civic pride. Don't let them embarrass themselves! If you are even tangentially related to anyone in Philly, help out and send a flattering picture of yourself.

Looking Good Philly [Philly.com]

Q: How surprised were you that women would want to start relationships with the guy who raped them? Did you understand it on an intuitive/emotional level or did you only come to understand it on an intellectual level?

A: Well, I think a lot of this has to be considered within a larger context. Firstly, remember that this whole thing begins with — begins on — Match.com. So, off the bat this is a situation where one's suspending disbelief, in terms of accepting that the things the other person, whom you've never even seen in person, is saying about himself are true. To these women he wasn't just "the guy who raped them"; he was also a smart, seemingly successful, good-looking trauma surgeon. Now, for some, that will bring up the question of whether these women had reason enough to accept the things he was saying about himself, namely that he was a doctor (or, to some, a CIA agent, and an astronaut); about that, I suspect it's reasonable to be dubious. But the point is, you're not just waking up in the morning to some random loser or some frat boy in college — you're waking up to a guy whom you met in person for the first time the night before and found likable and drank at least moderately with and believe to be a trauma surgeon, and whom you're now looking at smiling at you across the pillow, contemplating that he might also have just raped you. I mean, for most of us this does not fit the profile: good-looking trauma surgeons who live in fancy high-rises are not rapists. So I think it's possible to understand pretty easily how in the cloud of the next morning her intellectual self might overtake her instinct. And since he for the most part did not really betray any overt violence after the initial night, for those who allowed him into their lives subsequently one can see how these women might convince themselves they were initially wrong, that the memory was flawed. One other thing I want to add is that he fooled some very intelligent women. His former longtime girlfriend/fiancee, a respected lawyer and intelligence analyst for the military, believed for the few years that they were together that he was all these things: that when he'd gone away for some time after September 11 he was in the caves of Afghanistan he said he was in; that when she met him for a meal in the cafeteria of the Center City hospital, he in his white coat and scrubs, that they were in fact sitting in his place of employment; that he was not dating and fucking hundreds of other women. These scenarios he presented were fairly elaborate.

Q: I don't know if you've read all about it on my blog, but I was date-raped in Philly in an incident I never could have in a million years gotten prosecuted. I was resentful in large part because I'd only had sex with two other people at the time, and sex, in my mind, was this muddled concept that was supposed to involve affection, warmth, some element of commitment, etc., which I think is why I so desired, after I chewed the guy out, to semi-befriend him and make the experience somehow "meaningful." At the same time, it probably hastened my adoption of the "oh who cares, whatever, it's just sex" philosophy of fucking that now, given the same situation, would have made things much clearer in my mind, like: "Did I want to have sex with this person? Is this person going to get me off? Is this person going to even try?" Thoughts that didn't occur to me at the time. Anyway! So I couldn't help but notice that a lot of the victims you spoke to were Catholic. Not that I blame that! But, um, did you talk to any of the victims about whether Jeffrey got them off?

A: Hmmm. Shit. That's a question.

I guess I'd say first that your story seems to demonstrate what I was trying to say before: that women apparently often attempt to befriend their abusers after the fact, to convince themselves that their belief is wrong and they could not possibly have been raped, or, continuing to blame themselves here, to elevate the sex to something more meaningful/morally acceptable than "casual sex" (not to mention than "rape"), because you're right, at least some of these women had not really had many partners. (I guess I'd say here, too, that, at the risk of sounding like a dick, not every woman who says she's been date-raped is necessarily ight about that, in an objective sense, particularly when there's alcohol involved, because actions at the time and recollections after the fact are not always what they'd be were it not for alcohol. So we agree that not every claim is necessarily fact, and I mention this because it plays a role in this conversation, in terms of a woman's reaction to an incident.) At the same time, some of these women were sexually empowered, they had had many partners, they were sexually experienced, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that they would have had sex with a guy they'd only just met. So I think that that added sometimes to their confusion about what had happened — remember that many had not conjured that they could have been drugged until much later — and I know that that affected the jury; the jury was not of the mindset that women are chaste, that single women couldn't possibly desire sexual satisfaction, too — the fruits of Sex & The City, I'm told.

As to getting off, it stands to reason that at least some of the women who maintained relations with him after the fact — some for some time — might not have always hated the sex (one told me it was only good, though, "once or twice").

And I should probably mention, too, and this is often really tragic, that sexual assault victims can climax spontaneously during their attacks, even under the most difficult circumstances. It's anatomical, and a fact that tortured many young boys assaulted in the Church abuse scandal. So it's really irrelevant.

[GOOGLE: This turns out to be true. I'd never heard that before! It's like, guilt/fear makes it really easy to get off. Confusing!]

Q: Your last page was about a woman Marsalis met while skiing in Idaho just over a week before his first criminal trial started. She went with him to a bar and saw something granular in her drink and before she knew it she was getting raped. She reported it immediately; she also happened to be gay. The last paragraph is particularly powerful:

Which is to say that should K. be telling the truth, and should a jury believe her, one woman will finally succeed in doing what some 30 others did not. She will have convinced herself, immediately and independent of the influence of anyone else, that the position she awoke to that morning was not of her choosing or consent. She will have convinced herself that she bore no guilt in the matter and had been horribly violated. And she will have convinced herself that the person sleeping beside her, the good-looking, safe-looking man she'd only just met, the kindly paramedic from a few hours earlier, was for her at that moment as he lay there one thing and one thing only: the rapist she could not avoid confronting.

A: I think the Idaho case is really just extraordinary. First of all, I'm not a lawyer, but it's my understanding that the case was not admissible here because it was at that point — and remains still; the case is still probably a few months from beginning out West — still only an allegation, not fact. A person needs to be convicted of something for it to be potentially admissible. This is the same reason his first rape case in Philly was inadmissible in the second, final trial; he had been acquitted of all the charges the first time, so the fact that he'd been accused was immaterial. Having said that, his two sexual assault convictions from that second trial here could be admissible in Idaho.

But about the Idaho case ... That he would be accused of drugging and raping a woman out there just a week or so before his initial trial was scheduled to begin in Philadelphia is really unbelievable. The court records indicate, as well, that that case seems strong, with more evidence, an accuser — who happens to be a lesbian — who went to police within hours of the alleged assault, eyewitness testimony that the woman was severely intoxicated and Marsalis was all but carrying her, and what would appear to be a starker jury pool to decide the case. It seems to put whatever questions linger about the actions of some of the accusers here in Philaladelphia into a different kind of perspective.

DailyCandy Atlanta has forgotten that it spends most of its time telling us to starve ourselves pretty and suggests we spend our weekend gorging ourselves on fried Twinkies.

DailyCandy Chicago seems to have forgotten that the whole point of DailyCandy is that it's supposed to refer us to something. Saying "Don't get a sunburn" with no external link = not doing their job.

DailyCandy Dallas thinks we should see Space Jam this weekend. You remember Space Jam, don't you? That cartoon/live action movie starring Michael Jordan and the Looney Toons????

DailyCandy Los Angeles thinks we care about bars that serve things other than booze. And more specifically, about bars where we can pick garden plants.

DailyCandy Philadelphia seems to think it makes sense that we'd fork over $10 to lead ourselves on a self-guided tour.

DailyCandy San Francisco thinks that design-your-own-salad spots are still a new thing. Yawn.

Low rise jeans seemed like such a good idea when we were all young and lithe and had never even heard of love-handles. But these days, those of us who eat more than a grape a day fret under the tyranny of of nubile teenage jeans that mercilessly expose our muffin-like countours to a laughing world.

I don't know that this guy can do anything about it all, but if you're lucky enough to be in Philly, it's worth a shot. Maybe he can stitch a steel girdle to your waistband.

[via dailycandy]