Attention, print media: Content has always been free

I ran across this sentence in a New York Times article today about the expected Apple tablet.

Almost all media companies have run aground in the Internet Age as they gave away their print and video content on the Web and watched paying customers drift away as a result.

This makes that vein in my eyelid throb. Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that these writers seem to think that readers only want content if it costs them money, but if it’s free they’re suddenly not interested. This sentence is emblematic of the intensely stupid way reporters write about the collapse of print media. They think that their content generates revenue—that readers pay their salaries, basically. In fact, content has always been free. What subscribers and newsstand buyers pay for issues doesn’t even cover the costs of printing and delivery. Content attracts eyeballs; print media makes money by charging advertisers to put their messages in front of those eyeballs. Producing content costs publishers money; ads pay the bills. It’s the exact same model as television, which everyone understands, but suddenly when we’re talking about pieces of paper instead of moving images, everyone gets confused. Or rather, reporters, who tend to have grand and romantic ideas about who they are and what they do, sell their reporter-centric version of the universe to readers, who are apparently tricked into believing that it’s true because it’s so often repeated.

But lisa over at Sociological Images put it so succinctly that I’m going to let her have the last word, with a few keywords swapped to make it about print media:

The real purpose of print media isn’t to inform you, but to collect a predictable audience that publishers can then sell to companies. Ads. Ads are the reason that journalism exists.

Sex: It’s all about ejaculate

So a recent study found that daily ejaculation improves the quality of men’s sperm. This isn’t really surprising, since emptying out the built-up stores causes the body to make a fresh batch, and fresher means it’s had less opportunity to become damaged. That part’s all well and good, and may be helpful to couples trying to conceive.

But look how it’s being reported:

Daily sex makes for healthier sperm

Having sex every day improves the quality of men’s sperm and is recommended for couples trying to conceive, according to new research. [...]

Frequent sex does decrease semen volume but for most men this is not a problem.

“It seems safe to conclude that couples with relatively normal semen parameters should have sex daily for up to a week before the ovulation date,” [head researcher Dr. David Greening of Sydney IVF] said in a statement.

That’s weird, right? I mean, the study specifically states that daily ejaculation produces better sperm, not daily sex. I have it on reliable authority that in most men, ejaculation can be achieved without sex, even if you have a pretty broad definition of “sex.” Unless you take a completely dude-centric view of sex, in which case I guess it makes total sense. Every erection is entitled to a woman-hole to stick it in, so if a dude ejaculates, there must have been sex. What the holes think doesn’t count, so it’s not sex unless a dude ejaculates.

But I find this advice disturbing not just because it exposes a rather narrowminded chauvinistic leering and misogynistic unenlightened take on ejaculation and its relationship to sex, but also because it’s directed at infertile couples.

I have no personal experience with infertility. I am not trying and never have tried to conceive; my close friends either have not had or have chosen not to tell me about any problems with infertility; and I have not, unlike Dr. Dude here, worked with any infertile couples. And yet I am somehow aware that sex might not always be superawesome happyfuntimes for infertile couples who are stressed out, undergoing treatments that mess with their reproductive systems, and feel required to have sex on a schedule whether they feel like it or not.

Says one infertile woman, who is writing an article trying to convince readers that infertile couples can have hott sexxx while trying to conceive:

[Y]our libido hits as far as the queasy notch on the love-O-meter, and every time you think of sex, you think of the once fun, carefree thing you and your husband used to do, but now is a reminder of the life you cannot create, and the rigidness, calendars, Dr. appointments and finances that goes a long with trying to.

Julie of A Little Pregnant describes one of her and her husband’s infertility-occasioned rolls in the hay as the “Worst sex ever“:

Sad and freaked out to begin with, I felt no desire whatsoever. [...]

But to accomplish the goal, the well-placed deposit of a copious spermy payload, I willingly played along. What else could I do but pretend to enjoy it? The goal was indeed accomplished, with heroic effort and no small relief.

I lay awake for a long time afterward. Not only did my body feel misused, not only did I feel angry and sad about the likely failure of this cycle, but I also felt small and dishonest to boot.

I don’t know about you, but that description hit me like a punch to the gut when I first read it because it sounds so much like how some people talk about sexual assaults they’ve survived, particularly rapes in the context of abusive relationships. And that is clearly not the case here. Julie makes it clear that both she and her husband were consenting, if not enthusiastic, and that he enjoyed it as little as she did. But the playing along to get it over with, the pain, the used feeling, the self-hatred, they’re all part of a familiar refrain for those of who’ve read victims’ accounts of sexual assaults.

And this doctor is saying to infertile couples desperate to conceive, desperate enough to snatch at long shots and eke a glimmer of hope out of as-yet-unverified studies, “Hey, if you really want a kid, just inflict this sickening pain on each other every single day.” And media outlets around the world are repeating this assvice with prurient, winking, lascivious glee. Way to go, guys.

Maxim: We are prevented from acting professionally by our proximity to BOOOOOOBS

My housemate Alexx, whose unexpected receipt of Maxim first alerted me to the whole all-gamers-must-love-tits crapfest, tried to opt out of Maxim and get his refund online so that things might process sometime this century. But when he submitted his form, all he got was this lousy ultra-charming error message:

OOPS?

You know, we could try and say this was part of the plan…

But guess what? We’re too busy trying to act like we’re working and not just looking at hot chicks to care.

<3 the Maxim Dev Team

Ha! Check out this hilarious and edgy error message, you guys! No one could be mad that we are preventing them from getting their money back when we are such lovably cheeky little scamps!

Because guys are incapable of not staring at tits. It’s in their DNA! Because “I was too busy sexually harassing that model” is an awesome excuse for not doing your job. Because only straight dudes would be doing anything at all on the Maxim website, and all straight dudes would be totally sympathetic to this “problem” that Maxim employees have of being unable to tear their eyes away from some hot chick’s cleavage. And because Maxim employees are all straight dudes, so this serious and totally real medical condition afflicts everyone in the office.

It might not seem worth spending any time or energy on breaking down the logic of such a minor and poorly executed joke, but you know what? Encouraging the objectification of women in order to excuse your shitty customer service is doubly offensive, and I’m not going to let it pass without comment.

Roundup: Reasons my mood matches the weather

For those not in Boston, the description that suits both is “foul.”

• This tidbit on the front page of the Boston Globe‘s website:

Cuts reached, Times does not foresee closing Globe
With the 23 percent pay cut imposed on members of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the paper’s owner, the New York Times Co., said today it has achieved the savings it needs and doesn’t foresee shutting down the paper.

Now, of course I’m happy that the Globe won’t be closing. But I was never really afraid that it would be closing, because this same little melodrama plays out every year or two. Each time, the Times Co. tell the unions that if they don’t make big sacrifices, the paper will shut down and everyone will lose their jobs. And yet even though the company almost never gets the full amount of concessions it was asking for, the paper miraculously continues to publish! Why, it’s almost as if the parent company were exaggerating the paper’s financial distress in order to cheat employees and weaken the unions! But that can’t be, because corporations are fundamentally ethical and have come to recognize the important role unions play in today’s business world.

• Dr. Tiller’s clinic is closing permanently. It’s hardly surprising, as there are few people trained to do the procedures Dr. Tiller performed, and, thanks to terrorists like Scott Roeder, fewer still willing to perform them, but part of me was hoping that something amazing would happen to allow the clinic to carry on its vital mission. But in real life, terrorists often win.

• This dude’s “My Brief Life as a Woman” article. He was prescribed Lupron, which suppresses sex hormones, as part of his treatment for prostate cancer and discovered that the drug induced in him a state similar to menopause. From this he “confirm[ed] my lifelong sense that the world of women is hormonal and mysterious,” including such difficulties as uncontrollable food cravings and weeping jags brought on by nothing in particular. It’s not worth going into any depth about this, but let me briefly enumerate the assumptions required to make this article possible:
  1. His problems were all caused by hormone fluctuations, none from the side effects of Lupron itself, even though I hear it’s a pretty powerful drug.
  2. The symptoms produced by testosterone withdrawal in men in no way vary from those produced by estrogen withdrawal (menopause) in women.
  3. Menopause, far from being a relatively brief transitional phase between two much longer, more stable phases in a woman’s life, is pretty much the state of all women, all the time.
  4. Despite being in a constant state of hormonal change (…is that even possible?) for decades on end, women have developed no strategies for coping with the effects of these fluctuations and are completely at their mercy.
  5. Men experience no hormone fluctuations similar to those of the menstrual cycle or menopause in women that would alter their moods or produce physical changes.

• I saw this cartoon on the front page of Slate the other day:
  

For those who can’t see the image, Osama bin Laden is in a cave reading a newspaper with the headline “Obama Reaches Out to Muslims” and declaring “And we’ll be reaching out to Christians.”

Ha ha ha! Get it? It’s funny! It’s totally funny! Don’t you get it? It’s funny because A) America is a Christian nation, and attacks on America—even those directed at international symbols of secular concepts and institutions like finance/capitalism and the U.S. government/democracy—are properly understood as attacks on Christianity and Christians, for it is our official national religion with which Muslim extremists take issue, B) the primary purpose of Obama’s Cairo speech was to combat terrorism, C) giving speeches is all the Obama administration is doing to combat terrorism, and D) making a public gesture of basic respect for the 1.5 billion members of the world’s second-largest religion would do nothing at all to prevent terrorism and might even encourage it! Now you get, it right? I shouldn’t even bother typing anymore, because surely you are now laughing too hard to read this through your tears of mirth!

CNN knows what’s important

ETA: Sadly, Mariana Bridi da Costa died just hours after this was originally posted.

A 20-year-old Brazilian woman is likely to die from a simple UTI. Mariana Bridi developed a urinary tract infection which went undiagnosed and has turned into septicemia. Doctors have removed her kidneys and part of her stomach, as well as her hands and feet. “They say her situation is very critical and that her chances (of survival) are not really significant, but she keeps on surprising everyone,” said a spokesman. “Two weeks ago the doctor gave her 24 hours to live and she’s been fighting and resisting—she’s quite amazing.”

What headline did CNN put on this story?

HOT WOMAN DISFIGURED!
Hotness in photographs undiminished

Silly me, I thought the story here was that something as simple as a UTI could turn into something highly deadly. I see this story and I wonder, What happened? Did her doctors ignore her symptoms? Did the traveling she does for her job keep her from seeing a doctor in time? The story mentions she was living with her boyfriend; was she reluctant to admit to sexual activity in a country where the Madonna/Whore complex reigns supreme? Clearly somewhere along the line, something went horribly wrong. But CNN only wants to tell me how hot she is, and how promising her modeling career was, as if the tragedy here is that if she somehow manages to survive she will no longer be asked to parade around in a swimsuit and have her picture taken. Even for Mariana, who we are repeatedly told always dreamt of being a model, the loss of her career will probably seem the smallest price she had to pay for life if she manages to hang onto it.

You keep it classy, CNN.

Quickie: Palin’s wardrobe*

This is gonna be fast because I have to leave, ironically enough, to go clothes shopping, but for the love of giant green Mutsu apples**, can we all stop talking about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe?

First of all, the $150,000 figure is really not that ridiculous. Clothes, particularly women’s clothes, are extremely expensive, and she has to look very good, for a number of reasons. She has to be the anti-Hillary, first of all, playing to a very narrow idea of femininity and taking care not to recall in any way that Scary Mommy figure who almost castrated every breathing male in the country by having power over them. She can’t afford to be seen as anything other than impeccably dressed because she certainly can’t overcome a poor first impression with her air of easy competence and her vast knowledge base. She owes her success in no small part to, yes, a cult of personality, and part of the attraction is that she looks good. (Same applies, obviously, to Obama and Bill Clinton.) And finally, let’s face it, part of the reason she energized the base, and was chosen to energize the base, is because she is Caribou Barbie to a certain brand of Republicans. She’s like the perfect plaything to them: Pretty and empty-headed, all accessories included. Just record some anti-woman talking points on her say-and-play voice box and you can get hours of entertainment dressing her up and creating fantasy lives for her to lead. Sarah Palin smacks down Joe Biden! Sarah Palin out-executives Barack Obama! Sarah Palin sells off the Senate’s chairs on Craigslist when it tries to override her veto! Sarah Palin shoots a moose, cooks it for your dinner, gives you a blowjob, and shuts the hell up!

And dressing her up is integral to this fantasy, fast as it is now fading. Dressing her up is part of why they can like her—because she doesn’t threaten them. She is a strong, ambitious woman just like Hillary Clinton, but she’s not scary because the dressing her up, along with all this “learning at McCain’s knee” grossness and her demonstrated willingness to bow to the almighty Penis Power by bearing a baby no woman could possibly want just to prove her husband’s continued virility***, makes them feel that they are still safely in charge, even if she’s the one in the Oval Office. They think that if her programming ever failed and she started voicing opinions different from theirs, that all it would take to get her back on track would be for a guy—any guy, even them—to sidle up to her and whisper, “Psst, honey, you don’t really want to do that, do you?” Dressing her up like that kind of dude’s fantasy of a working woman—woman first, worker second—is a huge part of creating that fantasy. Spike heels, tight skirts, jackets cut as much unlike a man’s as possible—it’s like her outfits are pulled straight out of their fantasy lives, giving them the illusion that they had a hand in dressing her. And a person you dress isn’t your superior, or even your equal. A person you dress is your child. Maintaining this illusion that Joe Asshole is the giant hand making Caribou Barbie act is worth any amount of money to the party, so getting it at $150,000 is a relative bargain.

Furthermore, I bet Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe is worth $150,000, or at least something on a similar scale. The only difference is that she, like the rest of us, built her wardrobe piece by piece over a number of years. But Sarah Palin got lifted from Outer Mooselick to the national stage overnight, and didn’t have time to build a wardrobe. The clothes she had weren’t suitable for the job she’s seeking, and neither she nor the campaign itself could afford to re-outfit her, so the RNC handed a few consultants an expense card and Palin’s measurements and sent them to Nieman and Saks with orders to make sure she would never be caught wearing repeats. Oh, what, you thought she went herself? Not a fucking chance, buck-o. Every minute of every day is booked for her from now until Nov. 5, and not with non-poll-affecting shit like checking out her own ass in a three-way mirror. No, if she’s not in front of a crowd, she’s traveling to the next crowd or sleeping. Possibly both of the latter two at once. So, yeah, a bunch of image consultants with someone else’s credit card and no budget constraints blew 150 grand on nice clothes. Wouldn’t you?

So, no, I don’t think the $150,000 number is unreasonable at all. But the real reason we should stop fucking talking about it is that it’s not really a slam against an out-of-touch GOP. Let’s quit lying to ourselves: When people say, “OMG, the RNC spent more than I make in five years on Sarah Palin’s outfits!” what they’re really saying is, “OMG, that Sarah Palin chick is so vain and frivolous!” Because that’s how it is for women. Women who appear not to care whether men find them appealing are threatening bitches who just need a good dicking, except no one would touch them with Bea Arthur’s dick, amirite!? Women who men find appealing but accidentally let slip that they don’t just roll out of bed looking like a dude’s pornified wet dream are high maintenance and shallow and, by extension, dumb. That’s all there is. Only ugly women can be smart, and they’re all bitches. Pretty women can only be stupid.

That’s why most of the columns on this topic start off “God, the GOP’s stepped in it this time,” and end with “What did Palin even spend it all on?” Because it’s really about Palin. It’s about Palin. It’s about Palin. It’s. about. Palin. Get it? It’s the party’s credit card, but the real story’s about Palin. About how she’s totally frivolous because, like every other candidate, she’s working with her party to build an image, and about how frivolous women are dumb. Can’t trust those bitches, spending all your hard-earned money on shoes! Don’t they know how hard you work? Don’t they know how much things cost these days? Why do they need another cardigan or pair of pumps anyway? They already have like a million! Dagnabbit, you have three pairs of shoes and that’s plenty! What does she even do with all that stuff?

You see it now, right? The reason this story is sooooo appealing, that no news outlet or blog or stranger on the bus can resist it, is that it feeds that narrative. That women really are too shallow to do serious shit like run the country or work outside the home. That women are bad with money. That women are stupid. That women can be safely shut out and dismissed. That men should really be in charge. In a campaign season where, for the first time, several women are unapologetically demanding a desk in the White House, these narratives about stereotypes confirmed and order restored are just too tempting to ignore.

————————–
*OK, it turned out kinda long, but it’s still quick for me because I just ranted and posted without bothering to edit for clarity or flow or anything. Sorry!

**Fucking delicious, BTW.

***In case it wasn’t completely, brain-numbingly obvious, that was sarcasm. Many parents choose to have children they know will have Down Syndrome, and many of them do so for reasons that have nothing to do with their stance on abortion. I wouldn’t pretend to know what factors led to Sarah and Todd Palin choosing to carry Trig to term, but I think it’s telling that the base jumped to the conclusion that it’s because the governor is pro-life. Regardless of what led to their decision, as a pro-choice liberal I support it and advocate for more and better assistance for caregivers of special-needs children.

Just a reminder

Rachel Maddow’s show premieres tonight at 9 on MSNBC.

Don’t expect coherent posting about it from me, though, because certain distressing news will necessitate heavy drinking for the rest of the evening.

Dick move alert!

You heard it here first: McCain likely to be a huge dick tonight!

Several Republican sources told CNN late Wednesday that McCain has decided on his choice of a running mate. Some suggested that reporters could learn that person’s identity as early as Thursday night not long after Obama’s acceptance speech.

There’s manipulating the news cycle, and then there’s this bullcrap. Baseball fans may be reminded of last year, when Scott Boras, agent to superstars and an extraordinarily slimy greedball even for an agent, decided to announce that his client, one little-known guy named Alex Rodriguez, had opted to become a free agent during the 7th inning of the clinching game of the World Series. (This Red Sox fan, who was forced to listen to the breathless speculation about what salary A-Rod would command next year while watching her team—what was it again? Oh yeah—WIN THE WORLD FUCKING SERIES, was particularly unappreciative.) Nothing like getting your grubby hands all over someone else’s moment of glory to make yourself look like a classy dude.

The thing that really kills me about both these announcements is that they’re huge on their own merits and would dominate the news cycle for days no matter when they were announced. If you don’t need to piggyback on someone else’s fame but pull this kind of stunt anyway, you’re an even bigger dick.

And I can’t help but notice that the media seem inclined to just sit back and wait for McCain to tell them who he picked for veep, whereas when it was Obama they had simultaneous stakeouts going in four states so they could preempt him by 4 fucking hours. Dear Media-types: You and your buddy John can share my special Dick of the Week Award. The prize is three-hour wet willy. Love, the Boston Brahmina.

Bits ‘n’ pieces

Three things that are making me cranky:

1. This:


You stay classy, Boston Globe.

2. This Dear Prudie letter.
   Let me sum up:

Letter writer: I agreed to go on a cruise with an acquaintance and now he’s exhibiting borderline stalker behavior.
Prudie: Jane, you ignorant slut! That’s what you get for expecting men to treat you as anything other than a fuckhole.

3. The gossipy piece I saw on some news station or other last night talking about how the next president, like four of the 6 who immediately preceded him, will be left-handed, and spouting all sorts of cockamamie reasons for the predominance of lefties. They’re better multitaskers! They think they’re special! They overcome the adversity of a right-handed world!

Apparently nobody in the media owns a motherfletching calculator or understands basic precepts of statistics. Like, “weird shit happens in small samples.” About 10-15% of the population is left-handed, and come January, we will have had 43 presidents, 7 of whom were or are lefties. That’s about 16%. If they’d done this piece before World War II they’d have been noting that all but two presidents were righties and wondering what was wrong with lefties that they couldn’t seem to win elections.

And as long as I’ve already stooped to bitching about fluff pieces: Has anyone else noticed that 48% of the population is male but 100% of presidents, including the next one, have been/are male? What is it about men that make them so successful in seeking the presidency? Multitasking skills? A sense of their own exceptionalism? Overcoming the adversity of an woman-dominated world? Magical penis powers?

Three things that are making me happy:

1. Clinton’s badass speech.
   We’re going to pretend that I wisely turned off my TV as soon as it ended and did not see the pundits attempt to find something to bag on, and did not throw anything at my screen, and therefore my thoughts have no cause to wander to less pleasant things when I remember the fabulousness that was that speech. Because it was FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC by anyone’s standards, and every time I think about it I get a warm, fuzzy feeling.
2. The “Protect yourself from John McCain” condom that my friend who’s covering the DNC promised to bring home for me. (You guys, he’s only 24 and the wire service he works for sent him to Denver! That’s a big fucking deal! And I’ve been telling him for years that I planned to ride his coattails to glory, so my plan seems to be progressing nicely.)
3. I have a Bachelor’s degree! Finally! Well, I’ll get the actual degree in the mail in a couple weeks, I suppose, but summer session grades posted today, and my degree audit now shows happy little “100% completed” graphics!

Dammit, Joss, you too?

Is anyone else here watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog? It’s the Joss Whedon internet-only project created during the writers’ strike. The comic-book musical follows Dr. Horrible’s efforts to get into the Evil League of Evil, led by supervillain Bad Horse (the Thoroughbred of Sin), and it’s pretty funny. But a song in Act I contains the line, “So make the Bad Horse gleeful or he’ll make you his mare.” Ha ha! Get it? Being the female is bad! Rape is funny!

I know it’s hardly the worst transgression on the wide world of the internets, and I find it a bit easier to forgive because the joke itself is at least a little funny and I know Whedon is no misogynist turd, but I think it’s because he’s such a prominent ally that I’m a little disappointed. I’m not generally a fan of the genre(s) in which Whedon usually works, but I do tend to give his projects a try because he writes smart, funny scripts full of strong women. I expect his shows to be a small feminist safe haven, where for once I won’t find myself jarred out of passive entertainment mode and into a seething bitchfest by some fresh insult to womanhood. The letdown when that expectation turns out to be misplaced can be pretty intense.

Please, oh please, let this happen

From today’s New York Times:

“At some point, I don’t know when, [Rachel Maddow] should have a show,” said Phil Griffin, hours before he was promoted on Wednesday to president of MSNBC. “She’s on the short list. It’s a very short list. She’s at the top.”

At the moment every slot at night on MSNBC is taken [...] But some shuffling could be in the offing; [Chris] Matthews’s contract, for example, is up next year.

I’m still not here

Sorry about the impromptu vacay. Got caught up in finals, then scarpered off to the Cape for another weekend. I have a bit more schoolwork to do and then I’m daytripping to New York Tuesday, so real posting will probably resume Wednesday.

In the meantime I will merely say, what the fucking fuck, New Yorker? I know it’s supposed to be satire, but the right has been impossible to satirize for at least the last five years, and the magazine carrying the standard for the hoitiest, toitiest intelligentsia this side of a Parisian salon cannot claim ignorance of that fact. This is not a joke. This is not a caricature. This is what the Bush base really thinks of the Obamas. Seeing this picture on the newsstands adds to the constant drumbeat of “The Obamas are America-hating, power-mad terrorists” that voters have been hearing for months, but this time the message comes with the cachet of the New Yorker.

Let’s start a meme

I voted for Hillary Clinton way back on Super Tuesday, and on November 4, I will happily and without reservation cast my ballot for Barack Obama. I will not stay home. I will not write in Senator Clinton. I will not cast a protest vote for Ralph Nader or Susan B. Anthony or my grandfather. I will not, under any circumstances, vote for John McCain. I will vote for Senator Obama with a song in my heart and a smile on my lips, then I will go home, raise a glass, and watch the results roll in.

We all know that this media narrative that Clinton voters are abandoning Obama in droves is complete and utter bullshit, but it seems like it’s only those people who actually conform to the meme who are speaking out. So let’s start a new meme. Let’s all of us former Clinton voters who will vote for Obama in the general start saying so, in blog posts and in comment sections, in newspapers and in magazines, on TV and on the radio, to our friends and to reporters. Maybe we can’t change the narrative, but we can make the media look stupid for pushing it.

They’re not even trying to hide it anymore

OK, let’s play a game. Which is running for president, and which ran the Kentucky Derby?

Not that hard, right? So why is the press having such a tough time with it?

(Screencaps in case they come to their senses at some point.) This is what three and a half minutes of Googling on Eight Belles’ tragic demise gets you. And those are just the ones that mention Clinton in the headlines — I didn’t count the ones that mentioned her in the lead (most of them) or in later in the story (all of them). I can just hear the He-Man Hillary Haters Club press drooling over this story: “The primary is already covered like a horse race, see, and Hillary’s girly pick lost to a Big Brown boy, and then died! It’s so perfect! How can we possibly resist!” Sometimes they’re not brave enough to spell it out for you outright, and sometimes they totally fucking are.

Shoehorning Hillary Clinton into this story, which has nothing to do with her, comes from a deeply misogynistic desire to revel in her death-by-proxy that’s nearly laughable in its transparency. Furthermore, if Hillary’s the dead-loser-horse in this metaphor then, logically, Obama is the winner, the “powerful stallion.” Comparing a black man to an animal is such an obvious and commonly-discussed racist trope that even I, Whitey McPrivilegepants, am well aware of its nasty implications.

Please, media-types, stick to talking about the candidates in the context of actual political news. Your disgusting prejudices are slightly less obvious that way.

Bad blogger, bad!

Having driven off both of my readers (hi, mom!) with two months of non-posting, I wish I could at least offer a good excuse for my indolence. But, alack, all I can tell you is that I’ve been trapped in a vicious cycle: I keep putting off blogging because I have so much schoolwork to do, and I keep putting off schoolwork because I’m an inveterate procrastinator. Today I realized that since I’ll clearly never finish my homework, I may as well blog. So without further ado…

Dear Mr. Sorkin,

I’m sorry, but I just can’t see you anymore. I’m sure this comes as a shock. I know we’ve been together a long time—ten years now—and you probably thought that anyone who watched more than three episodes of Studio 60 would never leave you. And it’s not that I stopped loving your snappy dialog and your witty characters, or even that I’ve lost patience with your heavy-handed moralism or self-congratulatory use of polysyllabic words and little-known historical factoids. No, the problem is that the only thing I managed to do over Spring Break was download and watch all 45 episodes of Sports Night, which led me to the inescapable conclusion that you’re a Nice Guy^TM.

I can’t believe I missed it until now. I’ve always had concerns about your female characters, sure, but I chalked up the unlikeliness of their love interests to social awkwardness and a touch of Gary Stu syndrome on the part of their author. Besides, I told myself, much could be forgiven in someone who consistently wrote smart, strong women, even if they did turn into gibbering idiots when it came to the objects of their affection. But Danny’s creepy, creepy, relentless, unwanted, and super-creepy pursuit of Jordan on Studio 60 raised concerns I couldn’t ignore. And with those already in mind, the Nice Guy^TM-ness of Dan Rydell’s pursuit of Rebecca Wells was just too obvious to ignore. I mean, really: Flawed but fundamentally kind sportscaster Dan meets Rebecca, who initially rejects him for sharing an occupation with her asshole ex-husband. After he overcomes her objections and falls head-over-heels, she cruelly spurns him in order to get back together with her asshole ex-husband. Later, when she comes crawling back, Dan cruelly spurns her in order to punish her for the horrible crime of not appreciating the glory and all-around niceness of Aaron Dan. It’s Nice Guy^TM 101.

So, Mr. Sorkin,—Aaron—until you realize that behaving decently toward a woman does not obligate her to sleep with you, I just don’t think I can watch any more of your shows. You could try taking a women’s studies class. You could try being nice to women with no ulterior motive and see how that goes. You could try hanging out with Joss Whedon, if he’ll put up with you. But you have to do something. Until then,

A cordial adieu from
the Boston Brahmina

P.S. It’s really, really not me. It’s you. Seriously.

It’s SCIENCE!

Did you know women just aren’t as funny as men? Yup. Can’t help it. It’s their lack of testosterone. Science says so!

At least, the BBC (and a number of other sources) think science says so. Multiple media outlets reported on a study, written by one Professor Sam Shuster and published in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal, which finds that men are more likely to crack insulting jokes about a unicycling researcher than women, suggesting that humor is tied to testosterone. The problem? The article is a joke.

It’s a gag. A larf. Mr. Shuster is pulling your leg. The Christmas issue of the BMJ, like many other research journals this time of year, runs a number of goofy, just-for-giggles articles, including this one, and another about which kind of candy bar has an internal structure most similar to that of human bone, and yet another about whether magical powers in the Harry Potter books are inheritable genetic traits. Anyone who passed 8th-grade science should be able to see that the article is a joke, or at least deeply problematical. The guy rode a unicycle through the middle of town and concluded that because men were more likely to make fun of him, they were funnier. Neither the environment nor the test-subject pool were controlled to make sure only one variable was being tested. The “jokes,” notes even the learned professor himself, weren’t funny, and were clearly just a mocking form of aggression, rather than actual humor. For the love of Pete, Professor Sam Shuster is a dermatologist.

So why is this obvious prank getting so much serious coverage? Basically, because editors love science and health stories.

More specifically, editors’ bosses — media company owners — love science and health stories because lots of people read them. Readers want the latest news from Iraq, sure, but market research shows they’re much more likely to read stories they think affect or relate to their daily lives. That’s why community newspapers keep growing while the rest of the industry shrinks — people care more about whether their local zoning council will allow that new Dunkin’ Donuts to be opened down the street from them than they do about how their senator voted on the minimum wage increase. Bigger papers try to meet this need by running more local and human interest stories, and by covering every new development in science and health research. After all, everyone worries about heart disease, or has a friend who got cancer, or would want to know if a new study showed that letting kids suck their thumbs for too long leads to overeating later in life.

There are a few serious problem with this trend. First, very few media outlets can afford to pay a science editor or reporter, so the people assigned to sort through and synthesize the dozens of science press releases they get every day may not be equipped to distinguish good science from bad. This leads to a lot of junk studies getting broadcast to a much wider, and much less savvy, audience than they would have had access to if they’d remained relegated to academic journals.

Second, reporters are rarely trained in how to interpret experiment results, so they’re prone to misinterpreting or exaggerating researchers’ conclusions, which is how a study finding that the number of human genetic variations increased rapidly after a massive population boom, a fairly uncontroversial discovery, becomes a story about how evolution is creating more differences between races, a conclusion which the study in no way supports.

Finally, sometimes there’s just nothing to report, but reporters are serious under pressure to come up with something anyway. Desperation drive them to overlook the poor quality of studies that come to exciting, controversial conclusions, like this one, or to try to spice up something dry, which leads to distortion of the actual results.

Alone, these problems are disturbing, because the average reader has even less training than reporters in interpreting data, and has the added disadvantage of not being able to see the original academic articles. This knowledge gap, combined with our society’s enormous faith in science, creates a public ready to accept at face value whatever it is that the media tells them science has discovered. That may not be such a big deal when the story is that eating more spinach may help prevent cancer, but it becomes pernicious when the study being reported is the kind editors drool over: one that claims to have discovered something that explains The Way We Are. When someone claims to have proven that girls are genetically predisposed to love the color pink, or that black people are inherently less intelligent than white people — no mater how iffy the science or how biased the researcher — it gets tons of coverage because the stories are controversial and relate to everyone’s lives, so they’re guaranteed to pull in readers. Readers, in turn, love the stories because they confirm and justify their prejudices and affirm that Some People Are Just Different, which means that the fact that those people earn less for the same work or are much more likely to be living in poverty is the fault of their unfortunate genes, not part of a larger system of oppression in which the reader is unconsciously, uncomfortably complicit.

Every person who believes the comfortable lie that society is meant to be structured the way it is takes us one person further away from a truly just and equal society. This stuff matters, it’s pervasive, and we need to start calling the media on it.