The Observer blames the bootie on Los Angeles, and advises that the optimal look for the season is one "that make you look like a sexy Martian." They add that, "we love ankle boots, hopeful shoes for hopeful times." Ankle boots themselves are inoffensive enough, of course. But the openworked, studded, bejeweled, toe-baring monstrosities stalking our streets today are to the utilitarian ankle boot what A.N. Roquelaure is to Anne Rice: a scary and unfamiliar mutation.

It's not just that every single shoe out there is a hideous object, some kind of kinetic wire sculpture ripoff, but they're also unflattering (foreshortening the leg) and impractical (open-toed boots, anyone?) How many times lately have we scanned a lovely gown on the red carpet, only to find our eyes accosted by some sinister melange of patent and buckles advancing up the leg? We are all used to senseless trends, but the scale and scope of this one is alarming. Whether it's a defiant nod to frivolity in straitened circumstances or a symbolic appropriation of the zeitgeist's ugliness (Weimar-style), is beyond my powers to say. But this I can say, and will say: please, I beg of you, make it stop.

Shake Your Booties, Ladies! Go-Go Shoe Is a Go-To [New York Observer]

First of all, there's no longer a shame attached to being a nerd. Anyone who has been paying any attention to American pop culture over the past 5 years knows that the complete opposite is taking place: nerds, once the butt of every joke, are no longer the pocket-protector wearing laughingstocks of society. Nerds, geeks, dweebs, and yes, even neomaxizoomdweebies are cool, thanks to the rise in Nerd Chic, with comic book movies raking in the big bucks at the box office, hipsters rocking thick black frames, nerd heroes popping up all over television, and obnoxious jocks, once the epitome of cool, finding themselves in the Douchebag Zone, where all high school glories go to die.

More importantly, Stein fails to recognize that any nerdiness Obama may show is probably a good thing: it means he's smart, that he's most likely down to earth, and that he, like most nerds, can probably laugh at himself. Still, any nerd qualities that Obama has are drowned out by his unshakeable coolness; the man has had everything under the sun thrown at him over the past two years, and has consistently displayed an ability to remain calm, cool, and collected under pressure.

Stein ends his article with this: "Of course, it's also possible that while our society is ready to accept a black President, it still clings to a treasured stereotype: that all black people are cool and all nerds are white," which makes NO sense at all when you consider that he spent the first three paragraphs of the article trying to tie Barack Obama to the most famous nerd of the 90's: Steve Urkel himself, who, of course, was also black.

I recognize this is Stein's attempt to be funny, but seriously, does anybody, anywhere on earth, look at Barack Obama and see Steve Urkel? The only remotely close comparison, if you're gonna take it there, is to reference Urkel's cool, calm, smooth alter ego, Stephan Urquelle, who was so rad that even Laura Winslow fell in love with him. Otherwise, this is a pop culture epic fail.

You call yourself a nerd, Joel Stein, but you seem to be a bit out of touch with the rest of us. (I say this as a blogging librarian who is also a level 47 arcane fire mage in World of Warcraft and who is currently writing this post on her Mac, which is named "The Hemulen" after a Moomintroll character, so please, do not mess.) Barack Obama is going to do just fine on Tuesday, as nerds, dweebs, jocks, geeks, homecoming queens, stoners, dropouts, and valedictorians alike head to the polls to support him. Oh, and Joel? Barack wanted me to send you this:

Can Obama Overcome The Urkel Effect? [Time]

Earlier: American Wit Joel Stein: "Feminism Demands That I Objectify Palin"

First off, Lafferty wants us to know that despite the interview with Charlie Gibson, the one with Katie Couric, the Vice Presidential debate and nearly every other time she's publicly opened her mouth without a speechwriter to put words into it, "Sarah Palin is very smart." As evidence, Lafferty cites, well, exactly nothing, but we, apparently, should just take her word for it.

I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action.

Oh, okay, well, if the ability to regurgitate information successfully is the definition of smart, go me and Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, it's sort of not, but that's about the only evidence you're going to get from Lafferty. So, then, I guess we're supposed to take Lafferty's word for it because she, herself, is supposedly smart. That may well be, but, if so, it's not evidenced in her piece about Palin.

Apparently, Palin was going to give a speech about women's rights — which, one assumes, was the speech Palin gave last week that Lafferty attended. Of course, most of that speech attacked Barack Obama in a variety of specious ways — from the charges about how he pays his Senate staff (which I took a closer look at last week than either Lafferty or the conservative shills she got the line from bothered to), it talked about the importance of having portable health care via McCain's ever-so-great-for-women tax credit ($2,500/year if you're single) rather than Obama's plan to McCain's tax credits vs. Obama's (despite the fact that Obama's are better for most women), it wasn't exactly a celebration of what the feminist movement or the McCain-Palin ticket would bring to women today. The sole example that Lafferty or Palin could find of a feminist agenda she supports is that of Title IX — and they conveniently don't mention McCain's plan to "reform" it to take the teeth out of it. Palin likes to talk a good game about equal pay — especially if it allows her to attack Obama — but she and Lafferty left out the fact that Palin doesn't support the Ledbetter Pay Discrimination Bill because it'll "turn into a boon for trial lawyers who, I believe, could have taken advantage of women who were many, many years ago who would allege some kind of discrimination." Oh, well, if the law would allow women to enforce their rights to equal pay, that's obviously bad and shouldn't be allowed. Despite these significant flaws in Lafferty and Palin's "equal rights" speech, let alone the fact that Palin (and, one assumes, Lafferty) worked in a reference to abortion killing teh innocent babeez, watch as Lafferty sits smugly on stage and accepts the applause from audiences that are ideologically opposed to the goals of the feminist movement. Some feminist triumph.

But back to the Daily Beast piece in which she defends Palin. She calls the book-banning controversy and the rape kit controversy "nonsense." Oh, really? I believe some people spent more than 6 words examining the so-called "debunking" of the rape kit issue and found that, far from it being "nonsense" it's actually a question of 1) whether Sarah Palin knew it was going on but didn't care because she figured the insurance companies would pay for it, or 2) was completely out of touch with her hand-picked police chief, the Alaska legislature and her own local newspaper in a town of 6,000 people. All "nonsense," obviously, there's no need to take anyone else's word for that besides Sarah Palin and the National Review's Jim Geraghty, of course. And while it is true that Sarah Palin didn't successfully ban any books or fire any librarians, she did try to do both things, over a book called Pastor, I'm Gay. But, once again, there was no apparent need for the ever-intelligent Lafferty to do any research or read a damn word about it once she'd made up her mind because,

I'm tired of the Democratic Party taking women for granted. I also happen to believe Sarah Palin supports women's rights, deeply and passionately.

And if Elaine Lafferty believes it — and it fucks over the 18 million other Democrats who voted for Obama in the primaries and the nearly 18 million Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton who now support Obama — then it must be true.

Lafferty than goes on to castigate women bloggers — including Feministing's Ann Friedman who, apparently, Lafferty can't bother to lower herself to name — for (horrors!) noting Palin's shoddy record on everything from reproductive choice to pay equity and declaring her not an actual feminist.

Why? Well, just because she said she was a feminist, because she supported women's rights and opportunities, equal pay, Title IV—that was just “empty rhetoric,” they said.

First off, for those of you who, like Prominent Feminist Elaine Lafferty who don't know, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act relates to the desegregation of schools, while Title IX is about women — and, as I noted above, Sarah Palin may be all in support of it but her running mate (and the guy who will get to make the decisions if elected) is not. The only decent point Lafferty makes in the entire piece objects to Kim Gandy's statement that Palin wasn't a woman — a statement that, like many other sexist statements, others have objected to as well. But then Lafferty goes on to say that the vast majority of American women will "get" Sarah Palin the way that elitist feminists don't and didn't "get" Hillary Clinton — despite the fact that everyone from Gandy to Gloria Steinem to Eleanor Smeal campaigned in support of her. And that there's where I had to roll my eyes.

Do you know when Elaine Lafferty made her first (and only) political contribution to the Clinton campaign? In August of 2008. It is, in fact, the only political contribution Lafferty has made in the last 14 years for which records are available. Steinem, on the other hand, has been donating politically that entire time — including to Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign, in February to her Presidential campaign and to a variety of progressive candidates throughout the years. Ditto Kim Gandy and Eleanor Smeal, to name two other feminists who supposedly didn't support Clinton enough. In fact, by their standards, Elaine Lafferty is a political dilettante.

Reached for comment, Ms. pointed out that Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal — who, unlike embittered P.U.M.A. Elaine Lafferty, is not voting out of frustration and bitterness, and in fact knows shit about the fucking issues — endorsed Obama but could not comment on Lafferty because of the apparent confidentiality agreement that they came to when Lafferty "left."

Basically, as far as Lafferty is concerned, there is one and only one reason to support Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a woman. She might be a woman who would roll back reproductive choice, deny women redress for unequal pay, stand by while her running mate dismantles Title IX (not that Lafferty knows anything about Title IX), provide women with worse options than her opponent on taxes and health care and, hell, while she's at it, get rid of those pesky VAWA provisions of Joe Biden's that force states to cover the cost of your rape kits because your nifty new insurance provider (assuming you have one, since your employer won't be providing it anymore) can just pay for that, but she is a woman. And since we share the same genitals and reproductive organs and — and since, like Geraldine Ferraro before her, she thinks that it's "speaking the truth" that Obama only got to be the nominee because of his race — there's apparently only one choice in this race. And that choice, despite the fact that she stands against everything feminism has ever stood for except for electing women to office, is Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin's A Brainiac [Daily Beast]
Photo via Jennifer Posner

Related: Les Ms.-erables Bust Cover [The New York Observer]
Palin Displays Her Feminist Side [Washington Post]
Clinton Backers By Her Side, Palin Makes Pitch To Women Voters [CNN]
Health Insurance And The Single Girl: What Will the Candidates Do for Me? [Glamocracy]
Tax Plans And The Single Girl [Glamocracy]
Obama, McCain Answer Questions On Title IX And Women In STEM [Title IX Blog]
Sarah Palin's Fake Feminism, Equal Pay For Equal Work Department [The G Spot]
Sara Palin In Henderson Nevada - Part 1 of 3 [YouTube]
The Pastor Who Clashed With Palin [Salon]
Prominent Feminist Blogger's Identity Revealed [Feministing]
Civil Rights Act (1964) - Public Law 88-352 Title 4 [About.com]
Elaine Lafferty [Open Secrets]
Gloria Steinem [Open Secrets]
Kim Gandy [Open Secrets]
Eleanor Smeal [Open Secrets]
An Open Letter to Senator McCain [Huffington Post]
Feminists for Obama
Geraldine Ferraro, Silda Spitzer And The Matter Of When To Speak And When To Shut Up [Women's Voices For Change]

Earlier: Pay Equity On Obama's Staff: Sarah Palin Is Both Right And Totally Wrong
Debunking The Sarah Palin Rape Kit "Debunkers"
Dear Gerry: You Gotta Think About What You're Trying To Do To Me

Can we just call shenanigans on this business, please, and stop acting like it's 2005? I know Angelina has a movie to promote, and the Jennifer Aniston/John Mayer storyline isn't exactly super exciting material, but doves, it's 2008. The world is in a bit of a shambles. Wearing a "Team Jolie" shirt at this point is a bit like wearing a "Kerry 2004" t-shirt in an unironic fashion. That mess doesn't matter anymore, it's the past, a lot has happened since then, let's all buy some new shirts and move on.

It's hard to say whose fault it is: the tabloids have been hanging on this lopsided love triangle for years, and with every movie premiere, there seems to come an interview from one member of this tiresome threesome wherein a "painful secret is revealed" or "wounds are healed" or "love conquers all." Angelina Jolie, in fairness, is more well known for her personal life than her films, and Aniston's post-Friends career has been quietly, but not overly, successful. Brad Pitt seems to stand around like any high school boy who has two popular girls fighting over him, wearing his stupid hat and showing little emotion. The Jolie-Pitts have created a life for themselves, adopting children and forming a lovely little family. And while they are overexposed, one can not deny the charity work the Jolie-Pitts have committed to over the past few years.

Do the celebrities know what they're doing when they drop quotes like this? Maybe. (Ok, probably.) Though she never said she stole Brad Pitt away, her quote was interpreted as such, which, as Jolie probably knows, will ensure that this endless cycle of nonsense and empty stories will fill the front page of every tabloid until her movie comes out, fades away, and another log needs to be placed on this ridiculous celebrity fire.

I suppose I am contributing to the problem by even discussing it, but please, people, for the love of all things, stop this madness. They don't care what you think of them, they just want you to think of them, period. And maybe if we move away from "homewrecker" and "boring" into something that goes beyond a 3-year old scandal, we'll all be better off.

Oh, and Brad, you really need to ditch that hat.

Angelina Jolie: I Fell In Love With Brad When He Was Still With Jen [US Weekly]

On the one hand, this shit fucking sucks. This is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave and we're supposedly Proud to Be an American[s] From Sea To Shining Sea and yet, 232 years after the founding of this country, 219 years after the signing of our (admittedly racist) Constitution, 145 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 143 years after the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution eliminated slavery, 140 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment gave African-Americans (and others) equal protection under the law, 138 years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment prohibited states from abridging the rights of citizens to vote because of their race, 132 years after the first of the Jim Crow laws abrogated the work that the Constitutional amendments started and 44 years after the Civil Rights Act supposedly put to rest any remaining doubts about what would be legal and what should not be acceptable in this fucking country, we've still got people who think that they are better than other people because of melanin content in their skin.

And, what's even more horrifying, that they think they can openly say racist shit because being at a Republican rally — the Republican party, notably, being the party responsible for the aforementioned Emancipation Proclamation and 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments — means that they are among "their" kind. And, given that neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin — the new heirs to the leadership of the party of motherfucking Lincoln — could take a minute, a second, to chide a supporter and say, "That language has no place in this party," they might be right. This is what Nixon wrought on this country and his party, this is what Rovian politics brings. There's no courage in ignoring who your supporters are. There's no honor in taking their votes if you can't take a minute to chide them for their racism. There would be honor and there would be courage in saying, "If you are voting for us because Obama is black, or because you think he is Muslim, we don't want your votes. Vote for us on the issues, or don't vote for us at all." But John McCain and Sarah Palin will take their support and their attendance at rallies with a wink and a well-coiffed nod and everyone will pretend that they didn't hear what was said and the racists will think they have someone who agrees with them in the White House and the rest of us will march happily on by like little lemmings and believe, as we want to believe, that they don't.

And on the other hand, if enough of those people come out of their noose-festooned closets wearing their Confederate-decorated clothing and quit talking about how the Flag of Intolerance is some sort of states' rights-Southern pride bullshit and acknowledge that it is about racism, showing their non-running red-white-and-blueblood for what it is, maybe I can stop hearing about how calling Obama "articulate" isn't really racist and calling him "young man" isn't really calling him "boy" and calling Michelle "angry" isn't playing to stereotypes because the people that want to turn a blind eye to the kind of underlying racism that pervades too much of our actions in this country won't be able to be willfully blind anymore. I understand that lots of people grew up with parents who preached tolerance and in environments that encouraged tolerance and lead (one might be tempted to say "sheltered") lives in which racism has never touched their lives in a way that they've seen or been able or willing to acknowledge, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And if the racists hiding among us — the guy who taped the "Whites Only" sign above my high school water fountain the year 3 African-American kids started attending my high school, for instance, or the woman who told AFL-CIO Treasurer Richard Trumka that she's not voting for Obama because of his race — have to come out and say it, then the rest of us have to acknowledge that it exists and that 44 years, and 138 years, and 140 years, and 143 years and 145 years hasn't been enough to wipe the stains of slavery from our country's soul or racism from its consciousness. And maybe once we recognize that as a country, once we acknowledge that the evil of it walks amongst not just the worst of us but some of the best of us, maybe then we can figure out why 150 years isn't enough.

Obama Hatred At McCain-Palin Rallies: "Terrorist!" "Kill Him!" [Huffington Post]
Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame [Washington Post]
Racism Without Racists [NY Times]
This Is Exactly What I Have Been Waiting For [Ta-Nehisi Coates]

This is the United States of America, and if you want the respect of me, or millions of other women, you should probably stop threatening us with hellfire and nonsense. And I don't think you, of all people, a woman who believes that rape victims should have to carry their rapist's babies, should be throwing around quips about hell and supporting other women. Maybe you should consider why so many women disagree with you, and if you really support your fellow women, you should be able to recognize, understand, and support their right to not blindly follow you just because we share the same genitalia. I don't know much about Heaven and Hell, but there's a special place on earth called the voting booth that I'll be visiting in November, and I sure as hell won't be supporting you. [Huffington Post]

So: Parker's "thesis," such as it is, is that, as the mother of sons, she's finally realized how much feminism has made everyone — including men — hate men. They're either all abusers or bumbling fools or feminized emo hipsters. The fact that women have had and raised children without fathers around is totally evidence of how we hate men and not how men have in many cases decided not to take responsibility for their half of the parenting equation but WHATEVER, that ruins her thesis about how it's all our fault.

At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public sphere, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished, along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector and provider, which are incredibly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy.

Also, according to Parker, we're always trying to fix so-called "masculine traits": traits she identifies as "honour, courage, valour and loyalty" that are completely lacking in women even after feminism because women are dishonorable, cowardly and disloyal and they tend to use two words that mean the same thing right in a row.

Although most people thought Parker was crazy to write a book about saving men, she says:

Once people actually read the book, they're surprised to see all the dots; once they connect them, they want to move Thailand.

Because, really, Thailand is a super-great role model for appropriate gender relations!

Unsurprisingly, Parker doesn't believe women should ever serve in a combat capacity and that we should all recognize innate differences between men and women (and she's not talking about the ability to pee standing up or bear children, but certain "special gifts".) Speaking of special, she has some really charming ideas about transgendered people that need to be shared and understood:

Factually, however, the pregnant "man" was really a pregnant woman who mutilated herself and grew a beard. She kept her reproductive organs, had her breasts removed and took male hormones.

She also thinks all our gender problems would be solved if we kept people sex-segregated until the age of 30. I'd say we could start with her, but then I'd have to listen to her some more. Maybe isolation is the key. Can we isolate her?

Q & A With Kathleen Parker [Time]
Save The Males [Real Clear Politics]
Save The Males! A New Book Says Society Is Biased AGAINST Men. Ridiculous? Hardly, Says Amanda Platell [Daily Mail]

Gerry, look, I mean, I guess I sort of understand. You grew up in a certain time and a certain place where there was this level of casual, quasi-open racism. You're 72, which isn't really that much younger than Barack Obama's sort of racist grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, 86, and we all know that he forgives her and considers that sort of typical and, frankly, so do I. But you're also a glass-ceiling-breaking politician, smart, brilliant and trailblazing, and you shouldn't have to fucking be told by someone that racism fucking exists in this country and that it pervades a lot of what goes on in this country in big and small ways. Why the hell would you, as a supposedly liberal fucking Democrat, want to wade into that pool?

So, look, the first time you opened your maw in March and said "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is," I sort of wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to think it was an off-the-cuff remark, I wanted to believe that you were trying to say something only about sexism, about the dual burden of sexism and racism that women of color face in this country and you just misspoke, I wanted to buy into that dream I had as a 6 year old in 1984 that I could be like you someday and tear down barriers and stand up for the (good) things I believed in.

But you had to fucking stomp on that, didn't you. You had to "defend" your reputation, you had to call the freaking Daily Breeze back and tell them "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?" You had to go on Fox News and say "What I find offensive is every time somebody says something about the campaign, you're accused of being racist," and let Republicans rub their slimy little hands together in anticipation of the Democratic party fall-out and your ouster from the Clinton campaign and make it look like you had no fucking clue why people were so offended that you'd suggest that a black man, a man of mixed race born in the sixties (you remember the sixties, right Geraldine? That would be the time that maybe half of the country thought Jim Crow and segregation and racial discrimination were a-okay and miscegenation laws were still on the books?) was having an easier time of it than a white woman? No, Geraldine, see, the problem was not that you were inappropriately being called a racist, it's that your idea of a defense of those charges was not to go back and apologize or clarify what you meant and then duck down for a couple of weeks, it was to attack people who were — whether rightly or wrongly in your mind — offended by your comments of being racists themselves. And so I tucked my disappointment aside and joined in the many, many calls for you to just shut the fuck up so I could go back to pretending that you were not a stupid, racist old lady who was willing to turn a blind eye (and ear) to her own defects to talk about sexism.

And then you stepped in it again, calling Obama a sexist without any evidence other than that which you said came from his "supporters" in the media and those on the ground and, Geraldine, that's not evidence that he is a sexist, so you both ruined your own (potentially good) point about the pervasiveness of sexism and, plus, frankly, no one really cares to hear a racist yell on and on about sexism because there's both but racism has an uglier face, one filled with hundreds of years of beatings and lynchings and people being classified as sub-human because of the color of their skin and wars (and that's just if you're talking racism against African-Americans). Sexism is a terrible scourge on the equality this nation promises, but it's simply not the same.

And then, today. Your editorial. Geraldine, I literally cried in frustration that you can't see what you're doing to the Democratic party, to the women's movement, to the uneasy détente between the (almost exclusively white) old guard feminists and those feminists of color who have complained for decades about the short shrift their issues have been given in the larger women's movement. What, you hadn't noticed that? You titled your piece "Healing The Wounds of Democrat's Sexism" and then you rip open the flesh of Democrats' racist wounds — you do remember the fifties and sixties well enough, I assume, to recall which party's Southern Senators kept a federal civil rights law off the books for decades, right? And you side with the so-called Reagan Democrats, those bastards that frankly kept you from the Vice Presidency, in charging the party with reverse racism.

As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Racial resentment, Geraldine, is racism. Why can't you see that? People coming up to you and complaining that they can't complain about black people is them complaining for being looked down upon for being racists! And, yes, their time ought to have passed, it should pass, they should learn and understand that racism should have no place in our society and as a party leader, a stalwart, a barrier-breaker you should be breaking it to them that "getting treated fairly for being white" means losing sometimes, and sometimes it means losing to a person of color. It means you are not always going to come out ahead, it means that the advantages your fathers or mothers faced 40 or 50 years ago (or less long ago than that) because of the color of their skin should disappear and you should lose to better-qualified candidates of color and then you should not ever, ever even in the dark recesses of your small, reptilian brain think "Well, that's what affirmative action has wrought in this country," because that, Geraldine is racism. And it's there, and it's palpable and the fact that you are the educated white Reagan Democrats standard bearer for how sexism is worse than racism and it's not really racism if it's just "racial resentment" makes me sick to my fucking stomach.

And I'm gonna add this, just so you don't point to me and say, well, there's someone who doesn't understand sexism. Is there sexism? Sure, God knows I've been turned down for jobs in favor of less qualified men, replaced men in positions and not earned as much, been hooted and hollered at on the street and been called all nature of diminutives in the work environment and out and had all manner of shit thrown at me my entire life for being a smart girl or a bitchy girl and all the rest of it. But do you know what no one has ever, ever called me? The N-word. Ask around, Geraldine, it's still in use. So, I recognize that I'm damn lucky not only to be a woman (because I love being a woman even if sexism exists for the rest of my life), but that I'm lucky that in addition to putting up with sexism I don't have to put up with racism. The fact that you don't recognize that makes me deeply, deeply sad and furiously angry at the same time.

Healing The Wounds Of Democrats' Sexism [Boston Globe]
Obama Calls Grandmother 'Typical White Person' In Radio Interview [Fox News]
Clinton disagrees with Ferraro on Obama [Boston Globe]
Ferraro, Again: "Attacking Me Because I'm White" [Politico]
Gender Issue Lives On As Clinton’s Hopes Dim [NY Times]

YOU CAN BE A GOOD PERSON AND BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.

Imagine saying "karma is a bitch" to Job. Or, you know, Jerome Kerviel. GOD THAT SOUNDS DUMB, doesn't it? Has anyone who has ever said that read anything, ever? Wait, forget that, did they ever go to fucking high school?

TIBET IS COMPLICATED

I like Buddhism and I despise Chinese autocracy. I can sympathize with any ethnic group that has endured sixty years of unending campaigns of re-population, marginalization, the exile and imprisonment of its most venerated members. But the fact is that, hi, the Chinese government has not really been good to any of its people, especially the religious ones, Tibet's claim to territorial sovereignty is pretty weak, and this problem whereby many Chinese have adopted this sort bigoted notion of Tibetans as backward descendants of the foul-smelling brutal savages responsible for the nation's darkest period — darker than the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? Probably not something too often discussed in history classes! — is a basic problem of they don't exactly get democracy.

THIS WEEK'S NEWSWEEK WONDERS YET AGAIN WHETHER WE ARE THE DUMBEST GENERATION.
It quotes that George Santayana quote about being condemned to repeat history etc. etc. That was from 1905. In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in an elegy to a historian that is now the forward to a book about the Mongols I bought in hopes of better understanding China's historical relationship with the people of its Western steppe regions. "It is extraordinary to see how ignorant even the best scholars of America and England are of the tremendous importance in world history of the nation-shattering Mongol invasions," he wrote, calling the Mongol conquests "terrible beyond belief "and "the most stupendous fact of the thirteenth century" and shaming some British historian who had written an essay about the thirteenth century in which Genghis Khan went unmentioned. I read this, and thought, "How nice it is, the prospect of once again electing a president with some understanding of history! (Since I am not going to have time to actually do it myself." And then I saw this. Oh, well. You have to start somewhere!

"...In our reluctance to appear nagging, scolding, hectoring, or petty, many of us have made a practice of enduring minor affronts not realizing that a failure to decry the smaller indignities can foster blindness to the larger ones," writes Fortini, who, three paragraphs later, explains that her "first experience" with sexism occurred when she was asked by a high school debate coach to loosen the bun in her hair). "We then find ourselves shocked when one of the smartest, most qualified women ever to run for public office is called 'fishwife-y' by a female pundit on national television."

Who exactly is this "we" Fortini is talking about? Are the young, well-educated women quoted in these articles — most of them economically secure and white — really so shocked to discover that misogyny exists, even among their seemingly-sensitive male (and female) peers? You can argue that young women's failure to see the pervasiveness of sexism in this society underscores the fact that the work done by second-wave feminists in the 60s and 70s has paid off, and maybe you'd be right. But I'll go out on a limb and say the problem isn't that women are reluctant to "decry the smaller indignities" of being female, but that a lot of them seem so willfully blind to them in the first place. (Talk about the dumbing down of America.) Maybe that — not the identity politics in the race for the Democratic nomination — is a good thing for elite, solipsistic, newly-outraged Americans, female and male, to start focusing on.

The Feminist Reawakening [NY Magazine]
Hey Obama Boys: Back Off Already! [Salon]

Earlier: Some Men Who Hate Hillary Are Sexist. We Get It. Now Let's Move On
Ms. Matriarch To Daughter: When Push Comes To Shove, [Why] Can't You Vote For A Woman?

Like, yeah motherfucker, that is what you do. I didn't choose to have a motherfucking period every month, but I was sufficiently blessed to be born in a country where most citizens have televisions and access to cars and the toilets are evolved many stages beyond the outhouses and holes in the ground used by our ancestors. So WHATEVER. I refuse to buy into this "don't flush tampons" crap when there are people who still can't pick up their dog shit and also people who charge their companies to fly around their own private jets and people slaughtering crippled cows and people mutilating other people's genitals...anyway, you get the idea.

Sometimes it's a statement of fact, but more often these days it's a euphemism for "what you do when you possess the attention span of a five-year-old." The patina of tech-savvy well-roundedness only makes it seem more like another way The Man is trying to force you into mindless fembotry.

Here's a quote from the story. Did we read it? Let's just say we skimmed it thoughtfully, because that's how the author meant for us to read it when he was writing it while checking his email and bidding on those Bose speakers and listening to Stern. It's about a survey of women as to what they feel their competitive advantages over men in the workplace might be.

The first query was: What intrinsic qualities do women have that give them a competitive edge over men?
By an overwhelming margin, the trait they touted most was their multitasking expertise."I challenge any man to talk on the phone, send a fax, reply to an e-mail, change a diaper, get a toddler a snack, monitor what your school-age children are watching on TV and add to the grocery list — all at the same time," wrote Heather Lawrence.

Wome Take Off The Gloves And Come Out Multitasking [NY Times]

The Vogue cover turned out well, as many remember: Oprah looked hot. But there was something spooky beneath the Vogue image's Meisel-perfect, glossy veneer; namely, the idea that even a woman who had made her fortune validating women's strengths, hopes and dreams — and becoming one of the most powerful people on the planet in the process — would so eagerly and willingly help to perpetuate the "cover lie" of a medium that has made its mark by invalidating women's strengths, hopes and dreams with an endless parade of stories on how to be thinner, sexier, trendier, and — ugh — better in bed.

The post we put up yesterday of an unretouched Redbook cover image caused a bit of a stir. It was meant to. But more than courting publicity and traffic, the image we obtained and displayed was meant to show just how far the Cover Lie extends; that even in and on a women's magazine meant for a more mature female audience (working moms, etc.) and featuring a more mature female celebrity (career-woman and mother-of-three Faith Hill) the lies and half-truths continue to be perpetuated. Honestly, it sort of broke our hearts that it was Redbook; the magazine has been criticized before for some questionable covers (see Aniston, Jennifer; Roberts, Julia) and, after all, readers of magazines like Redbook worry that they can't have it all as it is (the great career, the loving husband, the healthy kids, the perfect body). Plus, at this point in the evolution of the celebrity-sartorial complex, who or what exactly is Redbook — or any number of other women's magazines — fucking kidding with such a female forgery? Go to any name-brand, pop culture website and you can see galleries upon galleries of images of celebrities (female and male alike) in their normal, un-retouched, unlit and still-sickeningly-hot states. These pictures are perhaps the new cultural currency, as Virginia Heffernan of NY Times wrote the other day (they certainly increase our traffic!) So why do women's magazines continue to insist on providing readers just the opposite? Is it stubbornness? The selling of fantasy? Or the selling of other things, i.e. advertising revenue? And if so, is it really necessary to shave 10-15 pounds off a woman and erase exactly what it is (the freckles, the moles, the laugh lines) about her that makes her human and accessible and interesting in order to sell a bit of fucking soap? Look at the picture above, and tell us that Faith Hill is not fucking gorgeous and vibrant just the way God — not Photoshop — made her.

Some would say yes, the half-truths of women's magazine covers and cover-lines are necessary (these people usually work on the business sides of such magazines). Others would say yes because they know no other way, or are too afraid to say no (these people often toil on the editorial sides of such magazines). But as necessary as retouching may seem in order to fill the coffers of corporate behemoths like Procter & Gamble, Revlon or Warner Brothers Records it is not okay for the rest of us — the readers, that is — that this goes on. In a world where lying, deception, and the fudging of facts has become endemic in everything, all the way up to the highest levels of government, this is yet another example of a fraud being perpetrated on the public... and the public, for the most part, is not yet in on the joke. Magazine-retouching may not be a lie on par with, you know, "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," but in a world where girls as young as eight are going on the South Beach Diet, teenagers are getting breast implants as graduation gifts, professional women are almost required to fetishize handbags, and everyone is spending way too much goddamn time figuring out how to pose in a way that will look as good as that friend with the really popular MySpace profile, it's fucking wrong. And we're glad you agreed.

Earlier: Here's Our Winner! 'Redbook' Shatters Our 'Faith' In Well, Not Publishing, Maybe God
The Annotated Guide To making Faith Hill Hot
The Five Great Lies Of Women's Magazines
Related: Oprah Winfrey & Beloved [BBC]
Doctored Cover Photos Add Up To Controversy [USAToday]
The Beautiful People, The Uglier The Better [NYTimes]