Miller's ex-fiance, Michael Scanlon, pled guilty to conspiracy charges relating to his business partner, Jack Abramoff, and the man they had both worked for, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. By then, Scanlon and Miller had broken up, rather dramatically. Miller in Howard Kurtz's profile:

"The day before her bridal shower, Miller says, Scanlon called off the wedding. They reconciled, Scanlon backed out again, and three weeks later he married a 24-year-old waitress from [a] Delaware resort town."

According to a 2006 front page story in the Wall Street Journal, Miller's "jilting" motivated her to help bring down Scanlon, and, by extension, Abramoff and eventually DeLay, who eventually resigned.

Miller is not the most sympathetic character: besides being DeLay's image-maker, she worked as a flack in the State Department in the lead-up to the Iraq war, and defended the Republican rent-a-mobs during the 2000 Florida recount. And yet it's hard not to see how her story — by both her own actions and the way she's been portrayed — has been heavily shaped by her gender. Miller didn't respond to requests for an interview to talk about this aspect of her experience. Still, the whole affair ticks off so many stereotypes that are used against women in public life, and whether or not they're true in this case, they still made me wince. Among them:

1. She's a ballbuster. Kurtz says she got through a job interview for DeLay by telling herself, "Don't show fear." In 2004, Miller famously cut off a video interview with her then-boss, Colin Powell, on Meet the Press, either because it was going long or because Tim Russert was going to ask a hardball question about the rationale for the Iraq war. The Washington Post wrote of Miller at the time:

In just six months on the job, Miller, 33, who controls access to Powell, seems to have made more enemies than usual among the reporters who cover the State Department. "Her manner is brusque, abrasive, demeaning," said one, asking to remain anonymous so as not to be frozen out of interviews with Powell. "She's not doing the secretary a service; she's doing him a disservice."
...

In 2001 Miller was working as press secretary to then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay when she lashed into Post Magazine writer Peter Perl while he was doing a profile of her boss, screaming: "You lied! . . . You betrayed him! You twisted his words! . . . We don't know you. You don't exist. . . . You are dead to us." A DeLay spokesman told us yesterday, "Tom thinks Emily did a fine job for him."

2. She's a blabbermouth. Kurtz's profile today:

Miller does have a tendency to over-answer questions. "I just have no filter, and I really need to work on that," she says. "If it's in my head, it comes out of my mouth."

She also claims to have been manipulated by faux-empathy when the FBI craftily sent two female agents to interview her:

The FBI contacted Miller months later and arranged an interview with two young female agents, who questioned her on matters ranging from Scanlon's strange use of different first names to his work for the tribes. Her lawyer had warned her to limit her answers, but Miller says she babbled on after the agents commiserated with her romantic turmoil. The lawyer chided her afterward: "You won't shut up!"

3. She cooperated with the FBI because she's a woman scorned.

This has been the stickiest part of the story. In the thicket of business deals and lobbyist favor-trading, the "hell hath no fury" storyline was certainly sexier and more digestible. It's a retelling that Miller disputes, telling Kurtz, "At the end of the day, what do I get? I get to be known as the woman scorned, forever?"

4. She is (now) needy and vulnerable.

Miller is all about her softer side now. "I was so ambitious in my 20s and early 30s. I worked all the time," she tells Kurtz. "It was all about success and power. Somehow I thought that would make me happy, and make me feel good about myself." Now, she is writing about DeLay returning to Dancing With the Stars and about unabashedly wanting to find a husband.

Miller has also been fighting her portrayal in a new film about the Abramoff scandal starring Kevin Spacey. She tells Kurtz that in the film, "I'm a bitch, I'm materialistic, I'm bad in bed."

Women like Miller test the outer boundaries of my feminist solidarity. Is there evidence that she was not the most discreet or pleasant person to deal with, and that she represented the most machine-like, lobbyist-friendly streak of Washington politics? Yes, very much so. Was her role in the scandal blown out of proportion (Abramoff has blamed her for his jailing) in part because the bitchy, wronged-female revenge narrative was so saleable? Also yes.

In the meantime, Miller says she's tried to start over, this time with "a sense of empathy and compassion for others who are struggling." Everyone deserves another chance, right?

Sideswiped By Scandal, Trapped By the Past [Washington Post]

Related: Behind Unraveling Of DeLay's Team, A Jilted Fiancée [Wall Street Journal]
Fox News: Conservative Women Are More Scrutinized By the Media [Feministing]

Can you imagine a straight anchorwoman — like, say, Campbell Brown — portrayed this way? Would it be a sly little joke if the opening was thinking about Campbell Brown and two men? No, right? Because Campbell Brown's sexuality and her hetero-marriage aren't part of her persona. It's accepted, like the fact that she's brunette or white, as part of background information. And yet, for Maddow — who is exactly as matter-of-fact about her life partner as Brown is allowed to be about hers — the rules are different.

Her sexual orientation has been discussed, debated, and made her an object of lust for both men and women. And although she rarely discusses it as An Issue, by sheer virtue of the fact that she's not trying to hide it, it's super-interesting to people in a way that Brown's heterosexuality isn't. It pains me to say, but the fact is that in our society to this day, there's still this tacit belief that gay men and lesbians are somehow more sexual than the average hetero-American. People seem to think that while hetero-marrieds lie in bed at night and wonder why they're not having sex, or argue about it, or sleep soundly without ever thinking about it, gay people are making constant whoopie, free from the social constraints surrounding sex. Being an avowed homosexual in this country practically means that many people think that your sexual orientation is more of a part of your consciousness and conscious behavior on a minute-by-minute basis than the average breeder.

And maybe because, as a homo- or bi-American, one is subject to discrimination and hate based on who one loves or chooses to have intercourse with, one's identity is more a part of one's daily consciousness than for a hetero-person — just as one might say that some women are more conscious of the social meaning of gender in this society than some men, or many people of color are more conscious of the social meaning of their skin color than the average white person. But that's not why Maddow is memorialized holding a drink and inviting the recipient to consider a sexual act. It's because when many people think "lesbian" they think "sex with women".

Rachel Maddow E-Cards [Cerebral Itch]

Miss Buffalo Chip isn't a beauty contest in the traditional sense — it's a relatively debauched topless (and sometimes bottomless) multiday contest where women dance, jiggle and reportedly even perform blow jobs on bananas for the titillation of the spectators. And John McCain offered up his 54-year-old wife as a contestant.

And, let be frank, he didn't do it just because she's pretty or has an enviable body for a 54-year-old woman or because he's proud of his wife's brand of socialite beauty. He did it to pander to the crowd's idea of appropriate masculinity, and that apparently includes over-sexualizing your wife and the mother of your children for the amusement of a few people in a crowd. McCain offered up the thought of his wife objectifying herself for the sexual gratification of others (at his suggestion) in order to get a couple of chuckles, inspire some male fantasy and make a few "friends." Fun!

And you might say that John McCain didn't think of it as an objectification ritual, or that he didn't know that it involved nudity and displays of stimulated sex acts or whatever. Well, then, why wasn't he offering to get his very pretty daughter Meghan up on stage? Suggesting a 24-year-old woman participate in a just-a-beauty pageant wouldn't be so outside the the norm, if he thought it would be just a beauty pageant. But he knew that it wasn't, and he doesn't think of his daughter in that way and wouldn't in a million years as a father suggest or even intimate that his daughter should get on stage and flash her breasts, ass and (potentially) her external genitalia at a group of strange men for admiration, money or votes.

But what does it say that he would suggest it of his wife? I think it's another piece of gravel in a growing mountain of evidence that John McCain doesn't think a lot about women, their place as equals in society or their rights in that society. But he does seem to think a lot about us as sexual beings — or, at least, sexual objects.

McCain Makes The Rounds At A Biker Rally [CNN]
Obama, in New Stand, Proposes Use of Oil Reserve [NY Times]
Tax Plans And The Single Girl [Glamocracy]
McCain, 2013 and the End of the War on Terror [AC360]
Topless in Sturgis [Politico]
Getting An Eyeful In Biker Heaven [ESPN]
Sexist McCain Moment of the Day [Feministing]
What John McCain's Jokes Say About His View Of Women [Glamocracy]

The story raises a number of thorny issues: Do administrators and guardians have the right to deny sex lives to patients? It is not as if these are children who could be psychologically harmed by it; one assumes that these are adults who have enjoyed normal sexual relationships throughout their lives. What constitutes "consent"? While both parties' faculties may have been compromised, they were also on an equal footing. Perhaps most importantly, the relationship seemed to bring the couple tremendous happiness; who was it harming? Although Bob's son is unquestionably cast as the villain of the piece, he was within his rights as his father's legal guardian to try to safeguard his father's well-being as he saw fit; would it not be equally high-handed for a court or administrator to override his judgment, or perhaps his values?

The article suggests that Bob's son's reaction was as much "ick factor" at the thought (and sight) of his nonogenarian father's active sex life as reasoned concern. It is certainly true that as a society we're conditioned to think of old-folks' sex as automatically risible and somewhat grotesque. When it came out that Sandra Day O'Connor's husband, suffering from dementia, had acquired a "girlfriend" in his home, no one's reaction was revulsion, and Mrs. O'Connor's attitude - that the friendship made him happy and was no reflection on her marriage to the man he had been -seemed humane and reasonable. Had the story involved the sordid sexual element, would people have been as sympathetic?

Stripped of societal context and even the emotional complexities of a "real" relationship, there is a basic quality to the sex in this case - as both emotional and physical need - that is somewhat jarring. We've made such a cult of sexiness, eroticism, procreation and sexual politics, that this kind of innocent sex between two people with dementia is perhaps the only kind left unexamined. While the story is a tragic one, it's making us think about things we don't want to - never a bad thing - and maybe showing that attraction can run deeper than we know.

An Affair to Remember An Affair To Remember [Slate]

Related: Justice O'Connor's Husband Finds New Love [CBS News]

Only once have I seen someone masturbate in public, on a subway train several years ago. I was the only passenger in the car other than the man in question and, fortunately, I was able to exit at the next stop and wait for the next train to come. But I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to a woman who might get onto that car after me; was I wrong for not doing anything more? I imagined myself grabbing a cop off the street and telling him or her that there was a guy jerking off on the downtown 1 train; I could only imagine the response I might have received.

Meanwhile, Yale University is also continuing to deal with a non-traditional form of sexual harassment, specifically one perpetuated by members of the Zeta Psi chapter, who, as was mentioned before, held up a sign in front of the university's Women's Center reading, "We Love Yale Sluts." (The Women's Center is demanding apologies not only from Zeta Psi, but also from the administration, whom it is urging to take disciplinary action while simultaneously upping the center's budget.) In my mind, words like those hoisted by Zeta Psi fraternity members are just as dangerous, if not more so, than the public exposure occurring at Tufts: The actions of Zeta Psi aren't those by a mentally disabled man, unaware of his actions, but my overly educated, highly privileged young men who are perpetuating hate and harassment with malicious intent.

Public Masturbation A Persistent Problem At Tisch Library [Tufts Daily]
Yale Women's Center Demands Change Over Sign [US News & World Report]

Earlier: Yale University Sluts Strike Back At Sexist Frat Boys