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I'm prepared to take the heat for my controversial opinion that the appearance of Miley Cyrus' cherubic face on the side of a package of condoms would be a positive development and significantly raise the profile of contraception among teens. It's easy to see though why some, if not most of participants in this debate don't see her as the right girl for the job. I still do, for exactly the same reasons that the endorsement seems taboo:
She doesn't have to do it. You're right, Rachael. Miley Cyrus has no obligation to get behind the LifeStyles campaign. I just think that her "do as I say, not as I do" demeanor has been frustrating to watch, especially when so many look to her as a role model. And as I said, I'm not advocating that she break her own vow of chastity. But if she, as a teenager, is going to display her sexuality on a public stage she might as well focus on a positive, as opposed to a hypocritical message while she's at it. I don't think Miley is obligated to provide sex ed to a million young girls, I just think it would be progressive, inspiring, and much more honest if she did.
She's a girl. I've got to protest the suggestion that the role of condom spokesperson be outsourced to Miley's male equivalent. Condoms are worn by men, yes, but their benefits are often much more tangible to women. Females are both more susceptible to infection and slower to exhibit the symptoms that allow for the detection and treatment of many STDs. Many of the most serious problems for women are the result of undetected chlamydia and gonorrheal infections. Ectopic pregnancy, infertility, cervical cancer—these problems are admittedly not those of a pre-teen. Rather they're the problems of an ill-educated preteen who had unprotected sex and didn't suffer the consequences until 20 years down the line.
Beyond these health reasons, however, there's a cultural standard that's begging to be overturned by Cyrus' endorsement. Before Trojan's 2007 "Evolve" campaign, most U.S. condom advertisements not only perpetuated a male-centric model for sex, they were also frequently misogynistic and occasionally violent in the messages they portrayed. Isn't it about time that an intelligent young woman replaced the machismo that dominates the market today?
She's (too) young. According to a Durex Global Sex Survey in 2007 the age at which virginity is lost in developed nations varies between 15 and 19. In the United States, it's 16. And this is the age at which people first have sex, not the first time they think about sex or are exposed to it. Of course, every parent has the right to breach the topic of sex and contraception when they feel that the time is right. But in reality, relying solely on parental and/or scholastic guidance hasn't really been working. Miley's peers are already having sex. Girls younger than Miley are already having sex. By the time they're watching Gossip Girl, it's probably too late. In my opinion kids, specifically girls, should know about contraception long before they know everything there is to know about sex, something I think every parent would like to control but ultimately cannot. Kids learn about sex from other kids. And unfortunately, when they get the message about safe sex from their parents (if they get the message about safe sex from their parents, and the most at-risk teens usually don't) it often comes after they've already become curious or nervous about the subject or received conflicting accounts from their equally uninformed friends.
It's a total sellout. It's undeniable that both Miley and LifeStyles have already gained by the mere hint of their association. Considering the minute possibility that Cyrus would ever get behind their product, this may be all that LifeStyles was hoping to accomplish in the first place. I don't think it's necessarily exploitive for LifeStyles to target Cyrus with their offer—they're looking to make a big impact among teens and she's one of the most visible celebrities in any demographic. For all we know, this was an insider deal and the Cyruses wanted the offer to be extended just so they could shoot it and any rumors of her waning abstinence down. So, if the damage has already been sort-of caused and both sides have already come out ahead—what's the big problem with finishing the deal?
Whether you think it's exploitive or a setup or just plain inappropriate the fact of the matter is that updating the way teens and young girls learn about sex is no easy job but someone's got to do it. Miley Cyrus has this chance. And whether it's Miley or some other courageous young celebrity who ultimately takes up the cause of teen sex in earnest, it's not as if everything will suddenly be changed. But this would be a pretty good start.
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Nayeli,
In regards to LifeStyles offering Miley Cyrus a condom-endorsement deal (talk about a dead-on-arrival proposal), Noreen and Torie made a lot of the points I was going to make, so I won't be redundant. (Except to say I can totally imagine an 8-year-old running up to me, waving a box of Miley condoms, and asking if she could have them. Parents have a responsibility to teach their kids about sex, but they have the right to determine the time and place of that conversation. The pharmacy aisle at Target would not top my list.)
But I'd like to focus on your point about "denying contraceptive education to teens." Cyrus' refusal to take $1 million to endorse a commercial product is not denying anyone an education on birth control. Suggesting as much puts a burden on Cyrus that not only did she not ask for but that runs counter to her abstinence pledge (and so far, she deserves the benefit of the doubt on the authenticity of that pledge). It's the jobs of parents and, in this day and age, schools to teach kids about contraception.
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Nayeli, I think it's pretty clear what Miley Cyrus is afraid of (though the better question might be, "What are Miley Cyrus' handlers afraid of?"). She might want to escape Disney's clutches, but becoming the underage spokesteen for a condom company seems like an easy no. She's a Christian who advocates waiting till marriage, so promoting condoms might make her seem hypocritical. (I'd like to forget I ever saw those much-blogged "sexy" photos allegedly taken from her iPhone—thanks, Perez Hilton.) More importantly, she isn't exactly marketed to her teenage contemporaries. Middle- and high-school shows on Disney, Nick, etc., are aimed at elementary students, not teenagers. They aren't accurate depictions of adolescent life—they're an idealized, sanitized world in which you get punished the first time you make a mistake like cheating, lying to your parents, or drinking. They're morality shows. I was a Saved by the Bell fan as a kid and still love looking back at those shows for the unrealistic way they portrayed high school. People "went steady" and exchanged friendship rings. School dances had punch; prom had a hoedown theme and was held in the gym. And certainly no one had sex. Safe sex is a message that needs to be out there, but someone who actually appeals to teenagers, not the prepubescent, should be making the pitch. I'd like to propose an alternative celeb, but I'm pretty out of touch with who's hip these days. Maybe the cast of Gossip Girl?
Like Noreen (who I think very astutely diagnosed LifeStyle's motivation for the offer—and there's something so exploitative about the company publicly salivating over using a tween star to sell contraceptives), I would be discomfited if I saw 15-year-old Miley Cyrus' just-recently-orthodontiaed grin slapped on a condom box in the "family planning" (what a laughable euphemism that is) section in the grocery store aisle. I can just imagine a 6-year-old walking past the department grabbing the box and saying, "Mommy, can I get this?" That might make me sound prudish, but so be it.
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Evidence today of the persistent nature of the significance of race in the campaign: The percentage of young people who say they're unwilling to vote for a black candidate is 22 percent, according to one poll, and not dropping. Get it together, 18- to 29-year-olds! But Obama's comment is still problematic. He raised race not in terms of voters' attitudes, but in terms of Bush and McCain's—when, John as you say, they haven't given him call to. I suppose the Obama camp could argue that McCain's supporters are doing it for him. But the ellision seems like a bad idea. For one thing, if McCain is going to be accused of race-baiting whether he actually does it or not, doesn't that give him less incentive to muzzle the 527s that might do this? And for another, we expect Obama to be America's leading sensitive spokesman on racial politics. If he's careless about who he tags as a bigot, that gives the rest of us license to be.
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Nayeli, maybe I'm just a little more cynical than you are, but I don't read the Miley Cyrus condom non-deal as a "huge loss," but rather a huge gain for both the starlet and LifeStyles. Though of course you're right that it would be wonderful if someone with the influence and reach Cyrus has among teen girls took on the issue of safe sex (and that missed opportunity, indeed, is a loss), I think the LifeStyles offer has a lot more to do with the buzz generated by even the proposal of the pairing. LifeStyles gets gratis association with the Hannah Montana brand, with all its increasingly fraught but consistently lucrative connotations. Canny Miley gets to continue her coy, stutter-step march toward sexpot-dom, chastely refusing the condom deal but grabbing some column space that portrays her not just as a cute little kid any longer.
I'm also not sure, even if Miley were to take on the issue of safe sex as her particular project, that becoming a spokeswoman for a condom company would be the best soapbox—setting aside issues of objectification and commercialization, women don't wear condoms. It's true that women shouldn't be passive about their sexual health. But why should the onus for safe sex be put only on the woman, as this kind of marketing seems to suggest—couldn't, say, Zac Efron slap that oh-so-manly mug on a condom box and encourage teenage boys to take responsibility to wear them, and not just when nagged to by a pretty girl?
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A guest post from Slate's John Dickerson:
"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said this week. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."
I'll give Obama "scared," and he's got a good case on the patriotism charge, too, but race? Wouldn't the world have gone nuts if Hillary had said something similar about being a woman? They would have said she's playing the gender card. Despite the reckless McCain attacks, about which I've already written, there's no evidence that he's ever made Obama's race an issue. In fact, he's done the opposite -- he called out one of his supporters for doing so at a public event. Immediately, without it becoming a flap. McCain's "black" daughter (she's actually Bangladeshi), we also might remember, was used in an attack against him. So, why isn't Obama going too far here? I suppose one response is that if McCain can completely make up things about Obama then Obama can make up things about McCain. Of course, yelling racism is taking it one step beyond making up his positions on oil, energy taxes, and his visit to the troops in Germany.
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Hot on the heels of last week's contraceptive debate comes a fresh piece of news that is bound to stir the pot among condom fans and haters alike: Condom manufacturer LifeStyles is courting Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana star and one-time Vanity Fair pinup, to be its new spokesgirl. Cyrus seems an unlikely candidate. At 15 she is younger than the age of consent in most states and once infamously (and unoriginally) proclaimed her intention to stay a virgin until marriage. Fearing for the already doomed reputation of the Hannah Montana brand's flagship starlet, the Cyrus camp has already denied that any deal with LifeStyles is in the works, and it's pretty much certain that they wouldn't accept it anyway. Despite LifeStyles' offering of $1 million and a lifetime supply of prophylactics to secure Cyrus as the face of safe sex, we're probably never going to see Billy Ray's baby on the side of a box of condoms.
This, to me, seems like a huge loss. Not only for Cyrus (lifetime supply!) but also for young girls who look to her as a trendsetter for both clothes and behavior. Modes of sexual practice seem to follow a trickle-down pattern, with women passing on their wisdom and advice to those less in-the-know. Miley Cyrus, role model to millions, is therefore in an ideal position to promote a healthier example for young women who are probably already contemplating or having some form of sex. Her celebrity endorsement could be the first since that of Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes to significantly de-stigmatize condoms among teens and reverse some of the bad PR they've been receiving lately.
As we've seen, teen celebrities' vows of virginity are hardly guaranteed to stave off unplanned pregnancies, nor have they proven inspirational among their peers. And it's unsurprising that the threat of pregnancy and STDs doesn't stop teens from having sex altogether when it doesn't even stop grown Jezebels who should know better.
So what are Miley's people afraid of? That she's too young to know about condoms? I see denying contraceptive education to teens as akin to preventing alcoholics from entering rehab just because they're too young to legally drink: blind adherence to an ideology that's being flouted at large. Do they fear for her future earning power? It's unlikely that Cyrus' endorsement of LifeStyles would derail her seemingly unflappable star. Her career would continue, albeit probably not with Disney, which has reacted less than happily to displays of sexuality by its young stars in the past. And what's more, Cyrus would be free to keep her promise of premarital chastity (though that, too, seems doubtful). Cyrus' promotion of safe sex needn't be a promotion of licentiousness. It should simply prompt young women to be more scrupulous and pragmatic about the choices they make, encouraging longer, healthier lives among those who've already made up their minds to have sex.
Read more on Miley Cyrus and condoms from XX Factor contributors Noreen Malone, Torie Bosch, and Rachael Larimore.
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Emily, you and Michelle Obama aren't the only ones who love The Brady Bunch. As I read that nugget in Jodi Kantor's New York Times story this morning, I couldn't help thinking about another politician with a Brady connection.
Allow me to quote from that oracle of our modern age, Wikipedia. This is from the entry on Louisiana's current governor:
According to family lore, Jindal adopted the name "Bobby" from the character Bobby Brady after watching The Brady Bunch television series at age four. He has been known by that name ever since-as a civil servant, politician, student,and writer--though legally his name remains Piyush Jindal.
C'mon, John McCain, please name Gov. Bobby Jindal to be your running mate!
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The New Yorker has a fascinating piece this week about devadasis, sacred sex workers in India. It's not online, but it's worth checking out. Delhi-based journalist William Dalrymple (author of White Mughals) focuses on two contemporary devadasis dedicated to the goddess Yellamma, in the southern state of Karnataka. It's a hard tale. Both women take a certain pride in their work—they make relatively good money, for example, and they have more dignity than "common" prostitutes. Because they're considered auspicious, they're often invited to bless upper-caste weddings and receive various gifts during holy days. At the same time, their lives are exceedingly grim. AIDS is a major issue, and many women are sold into the profession against their will by destitute families.
Dalrymple quotes his subjects extensively—at one point, there are nearly 20 unbroken paragraphs of straight quotation—and he does a skillful job of revealing the tensions between what these women say their lives are like and the reality of those existences. I found myself wishing for more, for better context, though. I still had a lot of questions about the practice when I was finished—like, for example, how legitimately "sacred" is the sex work if the priests themselves denounce these women? Maybe Dalrymple's chapters about devadasis in the forthcoming anthology Aids Sutra (about AIDS in India) or in Dalyrmple's own book about pre-Hindu religious traditions will shed more light on the subject.
In the meantime, you can check out Mrs. Marcus B. Fuller's The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood—written in 1900—for her take on the subject.
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Was Carolyn Maloney not adorable on Colbert last night? She has a new book out, Rumors of our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, about how little the wage gap has narrowed over the years—and what is the glass ceiling made of, Plexiglas? But Maloney did break one barrier last night, becoming the first member of Congress I've seen on that show who actually seemed to get the joke, understand the deal, and have ever heard of the program prior to appearing on it. So the laugh was not on her when she kept right on pitching Obama while Stephen pretended to use a breast pump that sounded more like a buzz saw—supposedly to show how right employers are to fire lactating women for distracting their co-workers. And when he asked for guidance on the proper way to compliment a subordinate on her great breasts, Maloney didn't fume like all those unfortunates who'd come on before her, whose passive-aggressive aides seemed to have forgotten to brief them. Nor did she play along to her own detriment, like that ninny Robert Wexler, who Colbert got to say that of course he loves cocaine and prostitutes. She was funny, but without making an ass of herself. And I guess it's a sign of how far we still have to go that I actually found myself feeling relieved.
Emily, your post on relating to Michelle Obama because you both grew up grooving on the Brady Bunch seems like exactly the sort of response that Bill Bishop (also hawking a book, The Big Sort) was talking about on Jon Stewart last night when he said we don't actually vote on issues any more. Instead, having organized our whole lives around sticking to our own kind, politically speaking, we tend to go for the candidate who most reminds us of ... us. "We vote lifestyles,'' he said, in response to campaigns designed to hold a mirror in front of the voter and say pssst, "Vote for you!'' Not that you're going to base your vote on the Marcia Brady connection or anything. (And thank goodness, because Michelle was really more of a Jan.) Even after all that has been written on the role emotion plays in our electoral decisions, there's still more to this than we'd like to admit. But enough of this, or authors are going to be calling my house at all hours trying to get me to stay up late more often.
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We are both Brady Bunch addicts, I learn from Jodi Kantor's story in the New York Times today. What does this mean? Well, for me it means lots of childhood afternoons spent reveling in the scrapes of a family that was even bigger than mine. Since I'm the oldest, it's no surprise that I fixated on Marcia and Greg. Remember his groovy pad? Ridiculous, yes, but also familiar, in the sense of wanting to grow up and away from a household filled with younger kids. I think it was this preview of adolescence that stuck with me, rather than the show's retro-gender roles for the parents. Of course, for Michelle O. the show's significance could be entirely different—there's its utter whiteness, for example, and those loopy trips to Hawaii and the Grand Canyon. But never mind—this is exactly the sort of tidbit about a candidate's family that gives me a sense of closeness. False, no doubt. But I get to imagine sitting down and talking favorite episodes with her.
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The following is a guest post from former competitive swimmer Michelle Brafman, who teaches and writes fiction in Washington:
Dara Torres. Dara Torres. God, it would be so easy to hate her. Let's start with the abs that defy nature, maddening proof that a 41-year-old mother can successfully model a bikini. There are the masseuses and trainers who knead her muscles and stretch her limbs myriad times a day to flush out lactic acid built up from swimming laps and pumping iron while a nanny cares for her toddler. I'm guessing she's not folding much of her own laundry, but I could be wrong.
I'm not bitter. Really, I'm not. If I sound a little obsessed though, it's for good reason. If I had a quarter for every time someone asked me "So what do you think of that Dara Torres?" I could fill every parking meter in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. Why do people associate me with Dara? Believe me, it's not the abs. Dara and I are of the same vintage; I swam competitively for almost 20 years, and like Dara, I was a drop-dead sprinter, not an Olympian but an NCAA All-American.
My daughter's recent foray into competitive swimming has catapulted me back to this chapter of my life, particularly the swim meets: the thick summer air scented with chlorine and mildewed towels, the national anthem performed slightly off-key, and the munchkin swimmers hooting and hollering for each other. By the last event, I'm fighting the urge to pull on my Land's End tankini and recruit one of the timers to run a clock on my own 25-meter freestyle.
Last week, I traveled back to Milwaukee, my hometown, to visit a high-school friend and former swimming buddy; within hours of my arrival, we found ourselves in front of the Whitefish Bay high-school pool, sheets of rain pounding the roof of her minivan and drenching our clothes during our short sprint to the field house. We made our way past the faded canary-yellow lockers, up to the pool, to the record board that hung in the diving well. Phew. My 100-yard freestyle record, now more than two decades old, still stands. We giggled at the absurdity of my pilgrimage—not my first, I confess—as we fanned our T-shirts and shorts under the warm air blasting out of the hair dryers.
Unlike Dara, I have no aspiration to break my record. I just like to know that it's there. I have new dreams, my strongest my humbling desire for my children to grow into happy, healthy, and compassionate beings. From watching footage of Dara and her daughter frolicking in the pool, I suspect that she shares my hopes. Dara and I have got dreams for ourselves, too. For the past eight years, I've spent the bulk of my free time writing fiction. I write after my children go to sleep, before they wake up, and during random cracks in the day. My house could be cleaner, our dinners more edible, and our cottons less wrinkled; my lower back is a mess, and I've written through elbow pain which has left me with a recurring case of tendonitis. I likely earn less per hour than we pay our teenage baby-sitters, and there are no guarantees that I will publish anything I write.
There are no guarantees that Dara's enormous financial and emotional investment in her swimming will yield any hardware at Beijing. Athletes and artists gamble hours of sacrifice on a medal or a record, and the few who score big undoubtedly overcome hurdles along the way. Dara's suffered a torn meniscus, a bone spur in her shoulder, and various personal and professional hiccups. Writers suffer plenty of setbacks. I've received rejection letters that have made me want to throw in the keyboard, letters that demand to be shaken off so that I can plot another comeback. I always come back.
In 10 years, I'm not going to remember the editors who have passed on my stories, and I probably won't think much about the ones who haven't. In the year 2018, will anyone recall if Dara broke the world record in the 50-meter freestyle or if she even medaled? Probably not. My hunch is that we will remember Dara Torres for redefining our notion of our collective potential, as a species. Body and mind. We will remember that three weeks after she gave birth, she broke an American record in the 50-freestyle, the most exacting physical and psychological race in competitive swimming. We will remember that she did it by training as smart as she did hard, and by plugging her ears and singing "la, la, la" when the skeptics got nasty.
I'm fairly certain that I won't redefine any idea of a greater literary potential, but I'd be pretty happy if I realized my own. I'll keep at it. When my demons taunt me and I need to find my way to the junction of talent, heart and promise, I'll think: Dara Torres, Dara Torres.
For more on Dara Torres, Slate's June Thomas and Josh Levin discuss her amazing form at Bloggingheads.tv.
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You know it's a bad day when the inspector general for the Department of Justice issues a report with your name in the title. As in"An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General." When DoJ hires career attorneys—as opposed to lawyers who are political appointees picked by the administration in power—it is barred from considering "politics" or "political affliation." Goodling broke this rule in lots of ways. The IG reports that sometimes she got right to the (illegal) point by asking job candidates, "Why are you a Republican?" On the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr describes a similarly soliticous moment. Goodling also blocked the detailing of a lawyer to particular projects because she thought that lawyer was gay, even though DoJ policy prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Was Monica Goodling, young Christian college graduate, really at the heart of all the hiring shenanigans going on at Justice? When Dahlia and I (with Slatesters Kara Hadge and Chris Wilson) wrote up potential Bush administration proseuctions last week, we suggested that Goodling might not have been as involved as some of her higher-ups. And we thought that because Congress gave her immunity from prosecution, except for perjury, when she testified in 2007, her role might be to help catch bigger fish. Now I'm less hopeful. Because Goodling no longer works at DoJ, she can't be compelled to talk unless a criminal investigation is opened. Breaking the civil service laws at issue here doesn't count; that's not a criminal violation. And nothing in the IG report, based on my quick skim, reaches to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is the big tuna. Did Goodling really dream all of this up without Gonzales' explicit urging or tacit approval? I'd say we've learned from the IG that if Gonzales (or someone from the White House) was in on Goodling's out-of-bounds litmus tests—and I still don't see how she comes up with this all on her own—he was smart enough not to leave an e-mail trail behind.
And so for now, we have to settle for Goodling's embarrassment, along with that of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' former chief of staff who turned on his boss before Congress. Sampson and Goodling are responsible for what the IG calls "the most systematic use of political or ideological affiliations in screening candidates for career positions." This involved the hiring process for immigration judges. Sampson went so far, in 2003, as to make the White House the "sole source" for generating IJ candidates. He told the IG he thought that the judges were political appointees. The report doesn't buy that excuse and finds that both Sampson and Gonzales committed misconduct. That's something. But the whole thing makes one former DoJ attorney I know "physically sick." Nor, he says, has current AG Mukasey done nearly enough in response. He says, "Simply expressing regret and issuing the odd memo is not the response of a real manager and certainly not a response that recognizes the importance of righting an institution as important and fundamental to the country."
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Now this is interesting: Obama might pick a Republican woman as his running mate. It's hard to know how seriously to take a trial balloon like this; some of the people rounding out these lists are obviously there for courtesy's sake, or in the hope of attracting some of his or her supporters on the cheap. (And Sen. McCain, sir, if you are really considering that Joe Lieberman fella, I know someone you should speak to without delay—a guy you used to work with, actually. Joementum notwithstanding, I'm not sure he will hold up under pressure, is what I'm saying.)
If Obama did choose former Bush ag secretary Ann Veneman, who served during W's first term before going to work for UNICEF, it would definitely send a great message about bringing Americans together. Maybe it would close the sale with those Hillary fans who are still playing footsie with McCain, and draw in some independents, too. But according to Politico, Veneman "was close to food and agriculture industries'' and "clashed with farm-state Democrats and environmentalists,'' and I'm not sure how many people would view the selection of an anti-enviro, pro-industry Bush retread as the kind of "fundamental change'' he is promising. Wonder if Caroline Kennedy is considering putting herself in contention, as Dick Cheney did when he ran Bush's vet-the-veep team?
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Here's the thing: I just do not see you chasing anybody into the men's room in the middle of the night, Emily B. Or you either, Mickey. And believe me, I mean this as a compliment. So, if you wouldn't want all-night stakeout duty outside the hotel where the National Enquirer seems to have cornered John Edwards and his "love child''—sorry, but I can't hear that phrase without imagining Diana Ross breaking into song—why are you so enthusiastic about having someone else do the dirty work?
Isn't cheering and leering from the comfort of the cheap seats on something like this (yeah, you go out and get that sleazo story that I personally would consider beneath my dignity) the journo equivalent of being a Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld-style chickenhawk? And isn't there a journalistic equivalent of the fruit of the poison tree? I mean, this is how sex scandals become news: Either the stories burble up from the tabloids, like toxic sludge at a superfund site, or the former lover steps to the microphone, a la Gennifer Flowers. (I used to think the reason we had so many more Democratic than Republican sex scandals was that the conservatives were rather more liberal in taking care of their former close personal friends—a theory developed after some or other supposed mistress was busted for failing to pay duty on several fur coats she was bringing into the country. But this is an outdated assumption on several levels.)
Anyway, the relevant question isn't whether every time a fire breaks out in somebody's pants it's news; if people want to know about it—and oh, we do, and me as much as anybody—then of course it meets that low bar. To me, the question is whether this is how we in the news business want to spend our time, energy, and ever-shrinking resources. Mickey quite fairly accuses me of failing to get totally "inside the marriage'' of John and Elizabeth Edwards and I don't disagree; that is an awfully big claim. (That he saw my piece on them as a PR release in defense of their big ol' house, however, just shows that the reader brings at least as much to the story as the writer does; I'd be willing to bet good money—euros, in other words—that Elizabeth didn't see it that way.) In any case, there is a difference between "inside the marriage" and inside the pants! We can learn plenty that's legit and pertinent about a candidate by looking at his or her spouse and their relationship without necessarily providing a detailed sexual history.
And if you think stories like that are no problem to double rivet even if you wanted to, just look at the debacle of the NYT piece on John McCain and Vicki Iseman; four top reporters were on the case for months and netted only hearsay that struck readers across the political spectrum as cheap and beneath the paper's usual standards. Not that I'm looking down my nose at their efforts, because the exact point at which the public interest outweighs privacy concerns is not always so easy to pin down, either. On the contrary, it's because I've been sent out on so many stories like that—located out there somewhere in the vast expanse of moral gray area—that privacy issues are not theoretical for me.
Grieving relatives? I've knocked on their doors at daybreak and approached them coming out of church. Politicians and their personal lives? I've asked questions that made even me wince lots of times, and written a handful of stories that were true but broke my own heart to see in print. On one memorable occasion, I was ordered to "dress up like a delivery girl if you have to'' to get the scoop on Donald Trump's first divorce. (No, it didn't come to that, but I did come back with the story and made my editor's day.) So I'm not pure, pretending to be pure, or acting like these aren't ever hard calls. And if you've never toiled in these particular vineyards, then how much easier it must be to declare, as Emily did at this week's "Gabfest," that love affairs involving public figures are always news and that proof of philandering is automatically disqualifying. (Can I possibly have heard you right? You really couldn't bear having an AG who had fooled around? After all we've been through with this crew of perhaps perfect husbands who happened to be lousy public servants?)
So here's my invitation to Emily and Mickey: If you are so high on stories like this, if they seem to you such a cinch to nail down and such a no-brainer to run with, then what's stopping you? It's not like all the good ones are taken, just because the Edwards story is already in print and available at your local supermarket. No, there's a wide selection of rumored philanderers out there—gay and straight, old and young, R and D—just waiting to be bagged. And once you have done that, then you can get back to me on whether that experience has altered your opinion at all, about either the righteousness or the relative value of these stories.
Meanwhile, the bottom line for me looking at the Slate site back when we started this conversation was wow, here we have this great, well-reported story on how a bunch of top Bush officials may have committed war crimes they will in all likelihood never be prosecuted for—but a luv child, now that's a clear career-ender? Sometimes, I just think that when it comes to sex, our whole country needs some kind of therapeutic intervention.
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Your Friday firestorm watch: After NPR (NPR!) published an audio essay titled "Sex Without Condoms Is The New Engagement Ring" (which prompted a heated debate) Moe Tkacik of Jezebel responded with a wistful ode to the joys of barebacking. "[H]ere is the irrefutable," she writes: "it feels awesome." The biggest downside, as Moe sees it, is the increased likelihood that you'll have to have some very awkward conversations with your future partners.
The post has generated a lot of comments, both on and off Jezebel, ranging from people who agree with Moe to those who find her sentiment to be glib at best, flagrantly irresponsible at worst. Moe—who’s about to leave Jezebel for Gawker—seemed to take all the hubbub as one big don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out, and a few hours later posted a bitter, rambling non-apology.
Ignoring her ill-advised detour into STD statistics (the apparent point being: Lighten up, ladies. Chances are you’re white, which means you probably don’t have AIDS!), she touches on some issues that we’ve been mulling over here on "XX Factor," particularly with regards to Jezebel—namely, what’s the line between honesty and indulgent oversharing? Can you still be a feminist if you sometimes have very un-PC desires and opinions? Should young female public figures try to comport themselves with more decorum and propriety, or is that a condescending point of view?
In this case, at least, I’m more offended as an editor than as a feminist—Moe’s second post, in particular, flirts with incomprehensibility. As far as the charges of irresponsibility go, I’m tempted to say: Meh. Frankly, if you’re going to take sex-ed advice from a Web site whose best writer goes by the moniker “Slut Machine,” well, you have bigger problems to deal with. I’m mostly disappointed that the NPR story’s initial thesis—that deciding to go mano-a-mano with your partner can be considered a serious expression of commitment, especially when skyrocketing divorce rates mean that a marriage certificate isn’t the signifier it once was—got lost in the shuffle. That idea has a kernel of weird, gross, uncomfortable truth about it. I'm a big fan of Jezebel’s dedication to airing “Id-level truths,” as Moe put it in her second post. Sometimes I just wish they let their ego do a bit of cleaning—not for decorum’s sake, but for clarity’s.
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Hmmm. What must Yoko Ono, herself a formidable artist and media force, think about her de facto daughter-in-law's performance art in New York magazine this week?
Charlotte Kemp Muhl, apparently Sean Lennon’s girlfriend and Sarabeth DeLeury (a "philosopher and actress"), Charlotte’s "best friend," are pictured in the magazine’s weekly portrait essay called "Look Book." The best friends are "trying to create a new way of moving forward as a collective." How? "We eat watermelon and make art."
There was no age listed for them in the piece, but they appear to be teenagers pictured provocatively touching tongues and spouting inanities ("We're friends with Sean Parker, who invented Napster, who just sold his business for, like, a billion dollars and always carries around a syringe full of antidote"). The “best friends” met at a party, where someone noted to Charlotte, "Hey your breast is hanging out." When Sarabeth heard her reply, "That's OK, I have another," the two became soul sisters. The two later “went to Europe and L.A., where … we both had mental breakdowns.”
I suspect the women are not total nitwits (despite one blogger calling them "culturally parasitic members of the human race") and were instead engaging in high-octane preciousness and self-parody. After all, Ono's art usually contained a deep bed of irony.
Even if it was a satire, two gratuitous mentions of the iconoclastic artist struck me as odd. Isn’t there some code among Gen Y not to discuss friends in the context of their well-known forebears? Perhaps the iconoclastic Yoko is in on the joke (it's not clear whether NY mag is ... ), or maybe young Charlotte represents some kind of cosmic karma messing with the older artist's oeuvre.
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Last year, when he was running for president, Rudy Giuliani explained his thinking about the courts. He complained that "civil litigation consumes 2.2 percent of America’s gross domestic product" and argued that "to reduce the impact of the trial lawyer tax, we should reform the system by adopting rules that discourage frivolous lawsuits."
This week, Rudy's son Andrew, 22, filed a suit against Duke University, where he is a student, because he was cut from the golf team. The suit "accuses the university of bad faith by aggressively recruiting him to play golf for Duke and then dashing his dreams by taking steps to remove him from the team," the NYT writes. Andrew G. wants damages and "the right to use Duke’s golf center for the rest of his life." This is such a genius exhibit of self-parodying entitlement that I almost wish Rudy were the GOP candidate, so he'd have to answer for it. As is, he's getting away with no comment. I will have to content myself with the service Andrew does himself by including, in the court filings, that "he may have misbehaved in February when he tossed an apple in a teammate’s face, flipped his putter a few feet, threw and broke a club and gunned his engine in a parking lot."
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This week's renewed discussions about women "opting out" of the work force—or being forced out—make me think of Joan Didion's 1967 essay "Goodbye to All That." It's about her life in 1950s New York as a twentysomething, when the city emblematized endless possibility, even though she was making very little money. She loved her career and reveled in the sensory experiences of just being there. And then her attitude toward the city soured with age, when she realized "that not all of the promises would be kept."
I was reminded of Didion's journey to disillusionment when I came across a couple studies about women's success and happiness this week. The first (which is new only to me) was a New York Times article from last summer about how young women in their twenties actually out-earn men in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and several other big cities. These women have more education than their male city peers and are less likely to be married and raising a family than their suburban female counterparts.
The second study (by USC's Richard Easterlin and Anke Plagnol of the University of Cambridge), forthcoming in the Journal of Happiness Studies, found that women overall are happier than men—until the age of 48. The authors measured happiness as a combination of financial and family satisfaction, and men exceeded women in the first category at the age of 41 and in the second at 64. This seems to suggest that somewhere between 41 and 48, women are more satisfied with their family situation than with their finances. Now add in the conclusions of the previous study of urban women—are young women happiest when facing bright prospects unrelated to their family situation or marital status? Or has the availability of greater professional opportunities simply postponed women's frustrations with the working world?
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On Thursday, the usual taping of Slate's Political gabfest turned into a smackdown on the question we've been debating on "XX Factor"—should the National Enquirer have published its John Edwards story. Here's the resulting slugfest, from Slatesters John Dickerson, David Plotz, Bill Smee, and me. Go to minute 29:00 (about two-thirds of the way through) for the Edwards bit (the earlier segments are about Obama and McCain). Forgive the profanity—don't listen to it with the kids!
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Melinda, I don't mean to sound calloused and insensitive on top of my stated willingness to invade personal privacy, but, notwithstanding how plucky and determined she is, Elizabeth Edwards has inoperable metastasized cancer. Cancer grows, that's its job (though, to be sure, effective treatment can slow it way down and seems to be doing so for Edwards). Of course, one hopes for a miraculous survivor story, but a practical conversation about the other woman who might someday be raising her children is, though unimaginably difficult, not inappropriate.
I had breast cancer in 1995 and share Melinda's post-surgical hopefulness. If I'd had a less positive outlook, however, I would certainly have wanted my husband to remarry someone who could be a mother to my then-minor child. (I would, however, expect him to sequence the two events more traditionally than John Edwards has.) Now that Edwards must, as Emily Y. points out, inevitably exit political life, the next order of business should be the welfare of all his young children.
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I'm with Emily B that you can feel terrible for Elizabeth Edwards and still recognize the John Edwards' love child story is news. It's especially news since Edwards has always made biography his strongest selling point. I see Edwards as a sanctimonious phony with no public policy accomplishments, and no record of the kind of executive skill it takes to head a Cabinet department. So if the National Enquirer story has killed his chances of having a high post in an Obama administration, then thank you, National Enquirer.
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About a minute into overreacting to Bonnie's completely hypothetical scenario—hello, Elizabeth Edwards is still very much alive!—I see that I may be identifying with her a little too closely, as an oversharing cancer survivor and all. (Plus, my husband has a nice head of hair! OK, I made that part up. Good thing he never reads this blog.) Still, I can't bear to see her written off when there's always the chance of an alternate ending.
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OK, Melinda and Hanna, I wouldn't want to have the job of stalking John Edwards either. But so what? If it's true, the National Enquirer story about him and Rielle Hunter is news, absolutely clearly and by any definition I can think of. And if I'd stumbled on that story—yes I realize that's a fairly ridiculous hypothetical, since the prize goes to the digger, but just imagine for a sec—I'd surely have published it. And I don't really care if the hypocrisy parallel with Larry Craig is exact or not, or how far down the VP list Edwards was when the story broke. He is a major Democratic politician. He could run for election again. He could be in an Obama Cabinet. The press has been poring over sex scandals involving Republicans all year—not just Craig but also David Vitter and the D.C. Madam and whoever else I'm forgetting. I am sorry for Elizabeth Edwards, and their kids, and for the disillusionment of Edwards fans everywhere. But Rachael is right. His middle-of-the-night hotel skulking is fair game. (Plus the part of the story involving his friend Andrew Young is so odd that it's begging to be explained.) Sure, maybe Edwards would still make a great labor secretary or head of HHS, whether or not he's had an affair, etc. And if he loses out on that post because of this, that may be too bad. But tough patooties. He should have thought about that before he started it (if, if, if it's true). The purported hubris is staggering, and we're better off knowing about it.
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