Today in No Fucking Shit, Captain Obvious

As DIY Abortions Rise, So Does Guesswork and Failure

More women are heading to Mexico to buy abortion-inducing drugs, the New York Times reports, and it's opening them up to failed terminations and other dangers. ... Abortion-rights advocates are concerned that a lack of awareness about clinical options in the United States — as well as a lack of funds — could lead more women to go underground and risk their health in this way.

Gee, it's not like we've been fucking saying this FOR YEARS NOW or anything.  No, this is a totally unforeseen development!  Utterly unexpected!  Shocking!  Provocative!  Unbelievable!  ...whoops, sarcasm reserve ran out.  Been using a lot of it up on Tumblr lately, sorry.

On The Third Attempt to Pass Egg-as-Person Legislation in Colorado, Former Supporters Shy Away

[T]he political ramifications of the personhood amendment should continue to be a key part of the coverage. The amendment, which would ban all abortions and some common forms of birth control, is clearly of interest to women, in particular, and women are a key voters in Colorado elections.

You mean to tell me 51% of the population are a key voting bloc in elections?  My god, will the revelations never end?  Fetch me pearls to clutch and a fainting couch on which to delicately fall!

 My kingdom for a liberal media that's actually liberal and doesn't act like these things called "women" are mysterious creatures whose issues can only be observed from afar.  >.<

What Rush Has *Not* Apologized For - And It's Not What You Think

It's all over the everywhere, this Rush controversy, sweeping up even those people who hadn't ever paid much attention to his outrageous racism and sexism before.*  And in an unusual twist for these sorts of situations, Rush's "apology" to Ms. Fluke has actually been seen and shown for the total non-apology that it is.  Which is pretty cool.

But most of the criticism I'm seeing about his nonpology is that he apologized "for the words" but not the sentiment, and/or that he called them "poorly chosen" even though he repeated the statement several times over the course of a few days, which rather gives the lie to any protestation that they were chosen in haste and he just hadn't thought it through, oops.  Which are absolutely valid criticisms of his piss-poor half-assed attempt to shut his critics up "apology", by all means.

What I haven't seen much of, on the other hand, are the aspects of the whole controversy and subsequent nonpology that I actually found to be far more insulting, infuriating, and offensive than the slut/prostitute/poor word choice bit.

Firstly, everyone is talking about the fact that he apologized very specifically for those two words.  Nobody seems to have mentioned his complete lack of an apology for the demand for a sex tape, as if having a hand in subsidizing someone's birth control (no matter how far removed - it's not like you pay your taxes by handing over $50 to the pharmacist and then hand the bag of contraceptives to the person taking them) entitles one to turn them into a porn star against their will.  Honestly, of the two parts of his horrible spew of misogyny, I found Rush's demand for a sex tape posted on the internet to be far more offensive, far cruder and far more vitriolic than calling Ms. Fluke a slut and a prostitute, because of the way it framed and highlighted the "women's sexuality as public property" trope that is foundational to rape culture.  Where is the apology for that?  Where is the outrage that he hasn't apologized for it?

Secondly, I have seen surprisingly little commentary** that repudiates his assertion that he, as a taxpayer, was paying for Ms. Fluke's contraceptive medication in the first place, the premise on which his testerical little rant was based.  Because it's flat out bullshit - bullshit that he actually reiterates in his nonpology, no less!  "I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability?"  Except that Fluke's testimony was not even remotely about being on taxpayer-subsidized insurance like Medicaid or any such assistance program that would mean taxpayer funds buying her contraceptives.  It was about private insurance that she and other students were paying into through their fees to the university.  That's their money, and the organization's money, not taxpayer money!  So his whole premise for demanding she produce porn for his enjoyment, as punishment for the audacity to want to protect herself from pregnancy***, was fallacious from the first word onward.

I'm glad Rush is finally getting the backlash he has so richly deserved for so long.  I'm frustrated that it took this long, that it only finally happened when he called a white woman a prostitute and not, say, when he called the First Lady of the United States "uppity", and that even in this backlash many people are allowing a goodly chunk of his true fuckery to go unacknowledged and unexamined.  So please, I am asking everyone who reads this: the next time you get into a conversation with someone - or an argument, or a screaming match, whatever, I'm not picky - about this, please, don't just argue that it was wrong to call Fluke a slut and a prostitute.  Remember that those words are only about a third of the real problem here, and bring these other issues to light for other people as well.

*Which says a lot about our priorities, as a country and in particular the media's priorities in never really covering his more outrageous racist attacks, often against women of color, up to and including the First Lady (calling her "uppity", speculating on her "authentic slave blood", etc), enough to ever provoke this kind of backlash.


**Lol.  So pretty much as soon as I finish writing this and hit queue to publish it tomorrow, I come across this on my tumblr dashboard.  Okay, so not everyone is letting him get away with the lie within the lie, which is good - but I've been following this since it broke, and this is literally the first I've seen of someone calling it out, so.  I still stand by my assertion that there's very little commentary calling out that aspect of it.


***Her testimony wasn't even about using birth control for contraceptive purposes, anyway - nor was it even specifically about her own experiences needing contraception.  It was a compilation of stories of other women she'd spoken to, about using it to control PCOS and other medical conditions that have nothing to do with having sex and not getting pregnant.  Moar fallacies!  Moar lies!  Bullshit for everyone!

If you can't beat them, take credit for what they forced you to do!

Via Calitics, it seems Anthem Blue Cross (one of the health-insurance giants) is running an ad touting "100% free annual checkups" that they "offer".

A full-page ad from a magazine, showing a smiling doctor using a stethoscope on his patient; text reads "Anthem Blue Cross Free Annual Checkups" with further copy below explaining how "annual checkups help keep you healthy and that's why Anthem Blue Cross covers them at 'no extra cost to you'."

Well, this is awkward.  Because those free checkups that they're talking about like it's some kind of magnanimous caring gesture on their part to take care of their customers?  It's actually a requirement, part of one of the more popular provisions in Obama's health insurance reform bill that requires insurance companies to cover preventative care with no copay or other upfront cost to the patient.  And it's a requirement that the insurance companies, including Blue Cross, fought viciously against. 

Which makes it more than a little duplicitous to, once it turns out to be very popular with the unwashed masses, run big ol' ads saying "HEY LOOK HOW NICE WE ARE TO COVER THIS PREVENTATIVE CARE FOR YOU please ignore the fact that we had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing so".

But I suppose, in this era of Faux News and Tea Party absurdity, it's perfectly logical to attempt to reap public goodwill by pretending it was your idea all along.  After all, depending on where people get their news, all they know about "Obamacare" is that it's for commies and something about death panels.

Of course, we all know the "liberal media" won't bother to call them out on it.  And thus, the cycle of misinformation continues...

Bryan Fischer's Godwin on Steroids

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

              - Godwin's Law, the main corollary of which is that the first person to invoke a Nazi comparison loses by forfeit.  I also use it as a verb, as in "to Godwin a discussion".

If we were holding to that standard, Bryan Fischer (and indeed the whole Teabagger movement) would have lost the debate by Godwinning long ago.  However, on Tuesday Fischer, as he does with so many things, cranked the Godwin up to 11 with this epic screed [TW gratuitous Nazi comparisons and vicious anti-gay fearmongering]:

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. ... Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.

Wow.  Just...wow.  I mean, SIX instances of the word Nazi in six sentences.  Clearly Fischer means business.  Srs bizness.  Of the bearing-no-resemblance-to-reality-or-logic variety.

The AFA yet again tried to get its pet runaway train under control; of course, since it was on his radio show, they couldn't just edit it like they do to his blog posts.  So instead, they simply removed the video from their archive.  Unfortunately, as I keep trying to remind people, once you're on the internet as having said something, it's on the record forever, no matter how much deleting or redacting you try to do.

Of course, Fischer didn't help matters by going on another unhinged rant Wednesday about DADT, how the "homosexual lobby" (immaculately decorated, natch) is "just like the Nazis", and how any soldier who "[says] a word of complaint about homosexual behavior" will be, I'm not even fucking kidding, "sent to a reeducation camp ... to get your brain washed ... you're not getting out of that room until you crumble and admit you support sexual deviancy ... that's where it's going in the military."

How long before AFA finally wises up and drops this fuckbag like a ton of bricks?  How long before right-wing politicians stop appearing on his show?  Why the fuck is anyone fucking legitimizing such raw hatred and bigotry?

I Love The Liberal Media

Where by "love" I mean "roll my eyes at so hard I am in danger of spraining something", and by "liberal media" I mean CNN, who happily continues to employ this jackass as a contributor.

You know, when an NPR executive made a comment about the rampant and virulent racism evident in the Teabagger movement, there was immediately such a hue and cry that he resigned.  Wanna take bets Erick Erickson takes no such hit to his career, despite saying shit like this [TW for sexist stereotyping of women and disablism]:

It's, apparently, the women in the Obama administration who have decided we needed to go to war in Libya. … This is typical. This is so typ-- i'm mean, I'm going to bring my inner sexist out I'm afraid tonight, some of you are going to be very upset with me. But this is like women drivers. We're going to war in Libya, we have no plan, we have no map, even if we have a map of war, um, it wasn't going to get read, they were going to pull over and ask the French apparently for help, or at least make the guy pull over and ask the French for help. This is crazy.

So when a guy at NPR points out actual but unpleasant facts about the Teabaggers, he has to resign amid scandal, but a "political analyst" highly-placed enough to be included in CNN's coverage of the State of the Union address can blame "the women" - which is a sexist dogwhistle against Secretary of State Clinton's urging Obama to do something about Gaddafi, fruit of a seed Obama himself planted as a "joke" - and make sexist jokes about "women drivers", necessarily implying that he believes women should not be making major political decisions, and thus far the response has been...?  Anyone?  Bueller?

...Yawning, cavernous, echoing silence.  Yep.  That's our liberal media for you.

This Is Why I Resisted Medication (And Could Have Died From It)

[Trigger warning: descriptions of depression and suicidal ideation] [TMI warning: family who would rather not hear the raw details of my suicidal periods, turn back now]

First: holy shit, AOL still exists?  I thought that ancient behemoth died off by the time I'd graduated from high school.  Apparently not, given that the customers at work give me @aol.com email addresses fully half the time.

And AOL is even around as an internet news service these days, publishing ridiculously offensive content like this article (it's been scrubbed of the offensive bits already; here's a response to it that quotes the bad parts before they were taken out) about a woman who killed her children in South Carolina.  The short version is, a woman who may or may not have been suffering from post-partum depression (PPD) killed her children, and the police are looking at PPD as a potential motive.  The AOL article included quotes from a so-called "expert" - an expert in criminal profiling, mind you, not a doctor or anyone who would know two shits about how chemical imbalances in the brain *actually work* - basically saying that PPD is "a crock" and it's just an "excuse" for women who are whining about how they don't like their new babyified life.


Several mommybloggers got righteously outraged and called the "expert" on her shit, including an open letter posted here, which cited the author's own experience of PPD and describing the environmental, psychological, and physiological causes/triggers of PPD as best understood by current science.  She ended her letter by saying:

The women suffering from PPD/PAMD [Perinatal Anxiety and Mood Disorder], and those of us who have survived it, do not need any more blame and judgment.  Believe me when I tell you that we blame and judge ourselves quite enough.  We need compassion, help, and access to treatment.  We do not need to be told that our disorder is "a crock."

And lo and behold, a response appeared in the heavens...

I am not ignorant of your argument for PPD and I am not saying in some rare case such a thing could exist based on chemical issues. Generally speaking, I don't buy the chemical imbalance theory for any depression; I believe people just don't want to deal with real life issues and the fact that sometimes life is simply depressing and damn difficult. It isn't about chemical imbalance but tough times and our own issues.

Pat Brown
Investigative Criminal Profiler

Wow.  Not content with dismissing PPD/PAMD survivors, she's upped the ante to include ALL depression.  Let that sink in again...

I don't buy the chemical imbalance theory for any depression; I believe people just don't want to deal with real life issues...

I guess I spent most of my college years hiding in my apartment, barely able to get out of bed and face the world at least one or two days out of every week, battling on a daily basis the tantalizing thoughts of suicide that floated around in my mind, hating myself and picking apart my every tiniest flaw, terrified to go to class and be around people, sinking ever further into a desperate spiral of emotional/psychological agony not because I have a diagnosed mental illness, but because I just didn't want to deal with real life issues.


You know what?  Fuck you, you sanctimonious meat nugget.  I desperately wanted to deal with my real life issues.  I WANTED to be able to go to class, to keep my house clean, to have friends and a social life, keep up with my homework and get my degree.  I WANTED those things with a desperate hunger.  But I COULDN'T.  I wanted to deal, I tried to deal, but my brain kept getting in my way, dousing my efforts in fear and hurting until I could do nothing more strenuous than curl up under the covers and cry and wish I were dead.  You think that's fun?  You think fantasizing about one's own death in meticulous detail is preferable to dealing with real life issues?  What the fucking fuck.  


I wrote my first suicide note when I was 11.  I started self-injuring when I was 13.  I received some (ineffective) counseling when I was 15, then some better therapy when I was 17.  I didn't get onto medication, despite having very good insurance coverage that could have gotten it for me for free/low copay, until I was fucking TWENTY, nearly a DECADE after the first onset of depression.  You know why?  That stigma right there, that attitude the "expert" is showing.  Because I bought that shit wholesale, in Costco-sized quantities.  Medication was a sign of weakness.  There was nothing wrong with me except that I wanted there to be something wrong with me.  If I tried hard enough, I could just "snap out of it" and be ok.  I just had to think positive, buy a day planner, do my homework, and everything would be ok.  It was all in my head.  I just wasn't trying hard enough.  Antidepressants are just happy pills for people who can't cope with life.  You don't want to be the kind of person who relies on happy pills instead of her own strength, do you?  Be strong.  Be tough.  Suck it up and keep going.  Smile, even if you don't feel like it.  You thought yourself into this, you can think yourself back out.


Finally, finally, my therapist talked me into giving meds a try.  It took a therapist that I trusted and liked THREE FUCKING YEARS to talk me into trying meds for my depression, that's how strong the stigma against depression-as-illness had me in its grip.  I contacted a psychiatrist through the campus health center and began Lexapro.  It lessened the suicidal thoughts and made them easier to cope with, except it completely blocked my ability to orgasm, and after three weeks of that I stormed into my appointment and said "Find. Me. Something. Else. NOW."  Me - orgasms = REALLY REALLY UNHAPPY.  So we tried Wellbutrin instead.  And something happened.


Three or four weeks into taking it, I was walking home from class (a hell of a thing in and of itself; I was going to class more or less regularly!) and I realized I was smiling up at the sun for no particular reason, and I hadn't thought longingly about suicide once all day!  I was afraid to trust this sudden thing called happiness.  What if it was just a fluke?  What if it disappeared again?  I enrolled in a cognitive-behavioral therapy group - me, who was terrified of being around people! - and made friends.  One of my favorite memories of college was planning a day out together with three other women in the group, where we went to breakfast in town, then to the campus art department's Open Studios day together.  I was having a social life!  With other people!  It was amazing to me.  


So I have a question for this unmitigated fuckwit: if you "don't buy" that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain - ie, you don't believe that it's a real mental illness (and why the fuck is it any of your business to buy or not buy the categorization of depression as a mental illness anyway?) - how do you explain my experience, and the hundreds of others who could tell you similar stories?  If we don't have an illness, what good could medication possibly do?  And yet medication has clearly helped many, many people.  So how do you explain that?


I wonder if she, and those who hold similar views, realize the very real damage they do by perpetuating that stigma?  It is purely by the grace of a few very, very good friends that I am still alive today.  Friends who talked me down from the ledge over and over again, once or twice a month, like clockwork, when the desire for death became too much to stave off again.  Friends who, at times, literally physically restrained me from attempting suicide.  Friends who helped keep these episodes a secret from the rest of the world, because I didn't want anyone else to know how broken I was.  I could have died, several times over, because I refused to accept medical treatment for my illness.  Because of the stigma.  Because of that "I don't buy it" attitude.


To Pat Brown, and those who believe as this fauxpert does, who would dismiss all depression as people who "just don't want to deal with life":  

YOU ARE CONTRIBUTING TO A SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE THAT QUITE LITERALLY KILLS PEOPLE.  PLEASE FUCKING STOP.


No love,
A depressive in remission

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss...

Police closed Lafayette Park and chased the media back about two blocks away from the White House today, to prevent them from covering the DADT protest in which six servicemembers in full uniform chained themselves to the WH fence, a la Lt. Choi a couple weeks ago.  
 

Looks like the White House is in full damage-control mode, now that our community has gotten sick and fucking tired of waiting for movement on DADT repeal and has started holding feet to the fire.  What's the matter, Obama?  Don't like your "fierce advocate" facade being exposed for the cardboard cut-out it is?  You've tried to keep us quiet with the odd crumb here or there - partner benefits for federal employees (still hasn't been put into effect), Medicare/Medicaid hospital visitation (with no timeline for enforcement), a throwaway half-a-sentence in the State of the Union (even as you spent five or ten minutes per topic on other subjects, like terrorism! and war! and Main Street v Wall Street!) for DADT repeal - but we're not stupid.  We've noticed the total lack of leadership on the issues.  Even if it weren't for the rumors that your Congressional Liaison office is actively working to quell any DADT movement in the defense budget bill, we've still seen how utterly silent your administration is willing to be on our issues, like ENDA and DADT.  

But this?  Closing Lafayette Park entirely, and chasing reporters away from a protest?  Looks like the Obama administration is taking directions out of the Dubya-era PR book.  Am I the only one who remembers the promises of openness! and transparency! and change in the way Washington works!?  Because this is not something that inspires hope, and it's definitely not the change I believed in.

How Not To (Or, "Today in You've Got To Be Kidding Me")

I tweeted a pic the other day, of KFC's new monstrosity of a menu item, the Double Down.  The Double Down is two fried (or grilled, if you prefer...or one of each, if you go for a late dinner and they've run out of the fried ones halfway through making yours) chicken breast patties, with a few slices of cheese, some "special sauce", and two slices of bacon sandwiched between them.  It's the perfect Atkin's sandwich!  Meat as a bun!  No more of this wrapping one's sandwich in lettuce bullshit, let's wrap the meat in more meat!  It looks terrifying on the menu, but it's really not as bad as it sounds; I wouldn't want to have one very often, but it was an interesting novelty to try once.  And I was pleasantly surprised at the nutrition info on it; given that your average fast food burger has like 700 calories, and the fries alone are around 300, I expected the DD Horror to come out at some ungodsly 1000+ calories.  But it's actually only 600ish - although the fat and sodium are off the damn charts for that caloric level - putting it about on par with the Big Mac or a Whopper (no cheese, and still about 100 cal more).  So, yeah, it's bad for you, but only about as much as every fast food item at every chain is bad for you and not to be eaten in large quantities if you can avoid it, duh.


However, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is calling for KFC to avoid marketing the DD Horror to children, keeping ads 500 yards away from schools and other places kids congregate, and they want a warning label on it!  Now I am fine with all of that, actually.  I think fast food should be less marketed to children in general, in the same way that I think cigarettes and alcohol should be less marketed to children in general - these are things that one may choose to consume as an adult, knowing the damage one is doing to one's body, but that's an adult decision, and we don't need to be encouraging children to do things that aren't good for them when they're too young to know better.  And honestly, I would hope that the picture of the damn thing is warning enough - because I'm pretty sure anyone with a modicum of common sense will look at a picture of bacon and cheese sandwiched between TWO FRIED CHICKEN BREASTS and think "This is perhaps not a very healthy item for me to consume" - but if it's not, I could see putting something on it, perhaps with the fat and sodium values of the sandwich and something about "consuming excessive amounts of concentrated animal fats and sodium is Bad For You".  


The problem is, though, that PCRM is not calling for anything so sensible as that.  What do they want the warning label to say?

"WARNING -- Eating meat can contribute to obesity in children, and can increase their risk for heart disease, diabetes and cancer."

...
..............
....................?!?!?!


I'm sorry, did they just suggest that all children should be vegetarians, and if they're not, they will get DEATHFATZ and heart disease and diabetes and cancer??  Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the mere fact of children eating meat isn't the problem here.  The problem here is the fried, salty, baconized nature and overlarge portion size of the meat in question.  So why in the name of hell did a physician's group feel the need to focus on the OMG OH NOES NOT MEAT-EATING CHILDREN! aspect of this?  They could have warned about portion size!  They could have warned about saturated fats!  They could have warned about sodium!  They could have warned about deep-fried foods!  And yet they want to make their statement about how eating meat is bad for children, period.  


This? is How Not To have a moral panic about Thinking Of The Children.  


(Also, the linked article manages to get in a nice little "Eew, fatty fat chubbies!" at the end, with their "fitness guru" [who I have renamed as their "asshole guru"] making a crack about KFC as CFC - creating fat chubbies - because that's what you'll be if you eat this sandwich.  Sigh.  Argleblargh.  *headdesk*)

Let the Victim-Blaming Begin!

[trigger warning]

The six defendants in the absolutely horrific gang-rape case in Richmond (where as many as ten men raped a 15-yr-old girl for around two hours at the homecoming dance while as many as 20 people looked on and quietly passed the word around to their friends to come watch too) have entered not guilty pleas today.

The linked story is, for a mercy and a wonder, quite free of the usual shit reporting about rape. The assault is called what it is, not "forced sex" or any of that crap. But they include a quote from one Shyan Mason, a friend of one of the defendants, that literally made me cry.

"As far as with the girl, I'm not saying she is a bad person, but I feel that there had to be something that attracted them if they did it"

I'm sorry. WHAT? What. The. Fuck??? "Something that attracted them"? So you're not saying she's a bad person, of course, just that she brought it on herself somehow and so it's totez her fault that she was brutally gang raped for hours. She attracted them, that temptress; they couldn't help their poor widdle selves. Right.

How about we try something new for a change? BLAME THE FUCKING RAPISTS. Instead of blaming the victim of a crime, let's just go ahead and blame the perpetrator instead. Novel concept, I know.

And you know what? Even if there was "something that attracted them," that does not give them a green light to rape her! Her attractiveness is not her consent. You are not entitled to her body just because she attracts you. How is this a difficult idea to grasp?

Excuse me; I need to go watch videos of adorable kittehs to restore my faith in the world now.

Wednesday WTF: CNN's Definition of "Activism"

So Scott Roeder, the alleged murderer of Kansas' only abortion provider, Dr. Tiller, is set to stand trial in September. CNN chose to report this with the following headline:

Trial set for anti-abortion activist in Kansas doctor's death

W. T. F??? No. Not even fucking close. Activism means things like protesting, organizing, donating, speaking out, calling legislators, blogging, all sorts of things. One thing that is not included under activities described in the term "activism"? MURDER, you spineless whitewashing fuckwits! Also, for the record, Dr. Tiller didn't just drop dead. He was fucking MURDERED. Remember that part?

Activists don't kill people. Murderers kill people. Learn the fucking difference, CNN.

TIME: Silly Wimmenz and their Silly Spending!

So TIME magazine runs an article on their website, titled Why Women Aren't Richer. It boils down to this: Silly wimmenz, just stop and THINK before you whip out the credit card for that new designer purse!

The author starts out by discussing the 2-5% of Americans who are "compulsive buyers", noting that compulsive buyers are about equally split between men and women. But from there, she starts talking about the 12-15% of American women who can be classified as "excessive buyers" (basically defined as those who engage in retail-therapy shopping) with no mention of any corresponding figures for American men. Is there any percentage of American men who are classified as "excessive buyers"? Is it as evenly distributed as "compulsive buyers"? And because that's not enough gender stereotyping, she goes on to propose her own, totally unsubstantiated "theory" of wimmenz' spending: It's my hypothesis that an even greater share of American women are what might be called periodic excessive buyers. They buy things they later regret.

Because gods know, men never suffer buyer's remorse. Nope. Men make completely logical, rational decisions and never second-guess themselves later. It's only women whose silly ladybrains make them indulge in retail therapy. I'll admit, I do engage in retail therapy myself - more often than is good for my wallet, for sure - but you know? Among my group of family and friends, I'm not the only one who does so. And the tendency to retail therapy is spread pretty evenly between genders, in my experience. The author, on the other hand, doesn't deign to offer even the slightest shred of anecdotal evidence supporting her "theory". Just throws it out there, like it's totally self-evident and we need no convincing, cause women just love to shop, amirite?

So can we please stop acting like women are the only ones who act impulsively, already? Or like women are innately drawn to shop? For all that this article purports to be "helpful" in offering strategies for those who impulsively spend to feel better, it's just common sense wrapped up in sexist phrasing. Lazy "journalism" at its finest.

Writing for Teh Laydeez

During the election, everyone laughed when Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin what newspapers she got her news from, and got a stammering "Um...I don't know...whatever's handed to me?" in response. The general line of reasoning was, if she can't even credit what sources she learns of the news from, how can we believe she has any idea whatsoever what she's talking about? Even if one accepts that she doesn't *have* to read the papers, that she gets briefed by her staffers on events relevant to her duties, it certainly showcases a major gap between her and "average" Americans - a deadly image for the folksy, down-home persona she tried to project.

And yet, among the younger demographic, fewer and fewer of us would have an answer to the question of "What newspaper do you read?" It's not that we're uninformed - I subscribe to 60 blogs, at least a third of which are news-oriented or focused on timely and topical postings - but newspapers? Who reads those anymore?

Not women, according to a report from the International Newspaper Marketing Association. Women are a steeply declining readership for traditional newspapers, and zomg, the poor ol' boys at the top of the editorial heap just can't figure out why!

According to the report, newspaper studies have shown "that women respond most strongly to news that is intensely local, has an accessible graphic presentation, is solutions-oriented (this is especially important in foreign and political reporting, women say) and is told in a storytelling style, rather than a "just the facts, ma'am" approach." Really? I'm sorry, my ladybits didn't inform me that they prefer "intensely local" (as opposed to what? half-assedly local?) news to national and international news. Who knew my cunt had a reading preference?

Dear World: Stop regarding women as a "special interest group." We make up 51% of the damn population. If anything, men should be the "special interest group." Specifically, newspaper-people: Stop shoving stories of women being dismembered and stuffed in freezers, lost in poker games, kidnapped for refusing a marriage proposal, and beaten into the "Odd News" section. There is nothing odd about these things. Let women's voices be heard. 78-97% (depending on the paper) of op-eds are written by men. Actually use the word "rape" appropriately, instead of constantly talking about men "having sex with" unconscious women. Do these things, start showing that you think women are really people too, and your readership among women might come out of its freefall. No focus group necessary.