Ever get the feeling that the media has a double standard in the way it covers the personal lives of male and female celebrities? Well, yes, of course you do. Female celebrities are shamed for the way they dress, for who they date, or how they party, whereas male celebrities are cheered, and even encouraged for the same things. Recently, Leonardo DiCaprio was seen hanging out with about twenty women. The media applauded his virility. Well, Think Progress wrote a mock article showing us what it would be like if the media treated DiCaprio the same way they would treat a woman who was seen hanging out with twenty men. And it is a gem:
“A lot of these women are blonde, I assume,” said psychologist to the stars, Kevin Springfield. “And Leo has never won an Oscar. So he’s trying to replicate what he doesn’t have — a beautiful, gold statue — with the next best thing: women who look like beautiful, gold statues. But that’s not going to satisfy him.”
Sources close to the star describe him as someone who “never got over” his true love. “Gisele wanted a family,” a friend reported. “And he just wasn’t ready, so she left him. He’s got a whole complex about it now: the quarterback gets the girl, and what does the drama geek get? Just a bunch of meaningless flings. Just trying to fill that void.” Last night’s antics are just the latest in a years-long stream of debauchery and decline.
Maya Dusenbury over at Feministing takes a deep look at the Rolling Stone scandal involving its story about sexual assault on the University of Virginia's campus. As you know, the Rolling Stone piece had gotten widespread media attention -- twice -- once because of the sensational allegations in the story, and a second time when Rolling Stone retracted the story because of discrepancies in its chief subject's gang rape account. Dusenbury evicerates the trope going around the media that this all went bad for Rolling Stone because of "feminism" and a "believe the victim mentality":
The Washington Post has reported that Jackie said she felt “manipulated” by writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely and said that at one point she asked to be taken out of the article and Erdely refused. If that’s true, that’s a clear violation of ethical journalism guidelines for reporting on sexual assault. If that’s true, that failure by Rolling Stone is worse than any of the many failures that came after it. And if Rolling Stone was so eager to keep Jackie’s story in the piece that they were ready to run it against her will, that suggests their willingness to bend their fact-checking standards may have had less to do with some feminist “sensitivity” to a survivor’s request and more to do with not wanting to risk losing a particularly shocking tale of a gang rape that would help their article go viral in the way it ultimately did.
She concludes that this is really about poor journalism and the failure of fact-checking than it is a story of how we can't take rape victims at their word. She points us to this Vox article by Amanda Taub. Taub explains that trauma victims often have discrepancies in their stories:
It is a depressing certainty that this story will be used for years to come as a defense by those who do not want to believe rape victims' allegations. But that is the wrong lesson to draw. Rather, this story should be a reminder of how difficult it is to accurately report on traumatic events — and the heightened ethical responsibilities that fall on journalists who do so...
...I was a lawyer before becoming a journalist, and I worked with refugees and other trauma victims. That taught me that it is incredibly difficult for traumatized people to tell an accurate story, even if they are trying to do so. There are many reasons for this. In severe cases, post-traumatic stress disorder can cause memory loss, or make the true details of stories too painful to recount. One client of mine would shut down physically when asked to recount certain events, falling into a narcoleptic sleep mid-sentence. Another time, a woman I was interviewing about her sexual assault suffered a mental break and regressed to childhood, begging me to bring her to her long-dead mother.
I have always believed that some of the worst ideas in Congress are a result of "bipartisanship." Any time I hear a "bipartisan deal has been brokered..." I brace myself for the bad news. Among bipartisan deals since the 1990s are DOMA, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, No Child Left Behind, the USA PATRIOT Act, the authorization for the Iraq war, and the Congressional prohibition against shutting down GITMO --- just to name a few. John Nichols at the Nation takes a look at the latest bipartisan "accomplishment" and it is ugly:
The problem with bipartisanship as it is currently understood is that, for the most part, cooperation in Congress serves the elites that already are living large thanks to federal tax policies that redistribute wealth upward
That was certainly the case this week, when the US House voted 378-46 for the so-called "Tax Increase Prevention Act...
..."The bill is full of deficit-financed corporate giveaways that won't stimulate the economy or help working Americans," notes Ellison, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "The bill retroactively restores the bonus depreciation tax break, which doesn't increase economic growth because it helps companies pay for equipment they've already purchased. It also costs $1.49 billion. The active financing exemption allows companies to keep a huge amount of profits overseas and costs $5 billion. The bill also provides tax breaks for motorsports tracks such as NASCAR ($33 million) and racehorses ($45 million)."
The bill passed 378 to 46 with 176 Democrats voting to continue the corporate tax give-aways. Nichols says it faces a tougher challenge in the Senate where Democrats there are skeptical of it. Let's hope it is halted there.
And finally, for some comic relief. We go to Jonathan Chait of the New York Magazine for this one. It is well-known that Fox News' demo trends a bit "upward" in the age category (O'Reilly's median age is 72.1 years old). Fox News moved Megyn Kelly to primetime in hopes of bringing down the median age of its viewers. It has worked-- sort of:
And it turns out Kelly is bringing down the age of her audience — all the way down to a sprightly median age of 71.7 years old. Her audience agrees with her that Jesus was white because they knew him when he was still alive.
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