My secret theory about the wacky Republican primary season is that they're jealous (as usual) of liberals and Democrats, who got to have a long, drawn-out primary last year. I mean, it wasn't actually that fun for us, and some people will never be friends again, but it sure got us a lot of attention! So, they're trying to repeat it, but as usual when conservatives try to act like liberals, it ends up being a weak and pathetic imitation. Just a theory.

Anyway, to recover from the shitshow that was last night's debate: Panda Party! And a song for the Republican primary:

And come join us for the Panda Party!

Updated to add: Jesse and I will both be tweeting the Florida debate tonight. Please tune in! To us, that is. If you don't want to listen to Gingrich go off on a lecture about how 8-year-olds aren't earning their keep, I can't blame you.

If this was a Tumblr, these would be two separate posts, but since it's an old-fashioned blog, I'm cramming them into one. 

First thing: My immediate response to Newt Gingrich whipping out his weird moon man fantasies again is that I've finally determined what sitcom character I believe Gingrich is. I've already dubbed Ron Paul to be the Dale Gribble of the contest, but Gingrich may be an even better character:

You could really play a "Newt or Dr. Spacemen" game with some of these quotes:

"Science is whatever we want it to be."

And isn't it easy to imagine this coming out of the mouth of Newt, the so-called historian: "Boy, it's crazy to think we used to determine questions of paternity by dunking a woman in water until she admitted she made it all up. Different times, the 60s."

And this is completely unrelated, but awesome. Samhita Mukhopadhyay----author, feminist, friend, and all-around excellent person---has put up a Tumblr to protest Valentine's Day called Occupy Valentine's Day. It's a great place for all you radical perverts to explain that you're too busy having butt sex to worry about buying no-doubt non-sustainable flowers in a scripted act of relationship maintenance. There's a submit button at the top where you can submit pictures of yourself holding signs, videos, cartoons, "bitch, please" gifs....

Whatever your heart desires. Marc and I did one together, and let me tell you, it wasn't easy coming up with this idea. The first 30 we came up with were schmoopy, and my lifelong rejection of public acts of schmoopiness is one of the top ten reasons I don't like Valentine's Day in the first place. We eventually decided nothing is less schmoopy than an animated gif that has lots of curse words.

He was much easier to work with than the cat when I'm trying to get her to do something cute so I can take a picture of it. Seriously, read the whole blog and submit your own. There are some truly inspiring entries on there, and some faces you may recognize.

This is why I hate, absolutely hate Dana Milbank-style "both sides do it!" false equivalence when applied to the reproductive rights debate. One side believes full access to contraception and safe abortion is a basic human right and good public health policy. The other side is concerned that human fetuses are in your food. Yes, you read that correctly, but in case you're still reeling from the sheer paranoid stupidity of it all, here is NPR totally confirming the story:

A bill introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature has some folks scratching their heads, as it prohibits "the manufacture or sale of food or products which use aborted human fetuses."

Since the bill was introduced late last week by State Sen. Ralph Shortey, a Republican from Oklahoma City, corners of the Internet have been buzzing with the news, as people try to figure out two things: 1) is this real; and 2) is there any reason the bill might be needed?

1) Yes. This guy really did introduce this bill. 2) No, and how stupid do you have to be?

Shortey is now in full blown wingnut deflection mode, giving weird and obtuse answers when asked about why he wrote this bill. But I have no doubt that he literally thinks fetuses are going into food. Anti-choicers have a lot of weird theories about what abortion providers do with the fetuses they remove. The answer, in the real world, is they dispose of it like you do all biowaste removed during surgeries. In most abortions, the embryo is just a teeny portion of everything removed during the procedure, after all. But there's a ton of lurid urban legends in Christian right circles about fetus-eating, and claims that abortion providers keep fetuses in their refrigerator in order to eat them, I suppose on their lunch break or something. It's a little hard to understand how people can be so delusional, but you have to remember, these are people who believe in angels and demon possession and that Tim Tebow is blessed by god. They have a lot of practice believing impossible things. 

Beyond the obvious, here is why this paranoia is so ridiculous: 88% of abortions are performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. 61% are done in the first 9 weeks. Here is the Web MD description of a fetus at 12 weeks:

The fetus now measures about 2.5 inches from crown to rump and weighs between three-tenths of an ounce and half an ounce.

Let's face it: it would take a lot of fetuses to get even your bare minimum of protein requirements in a day. An adult man needs about 2 ounces of protein a day, so you'd need something like 4-6 abortions per day to reach just that. It's not something the fast food industry could really rely on. Mathematically, it's implausible, and of course, real world-style, it's just ridiculous to believe this. 

Because I am a massive nerd, I love Wired. But the cover story in the latest issue left me pretty frustrated. Don't get me wrong; it's super interesting. The writer, Tom Vanderbilt, looks at the various ways that Google and car companies are closing in on cars that will drive themselves, using robotics technology that can basically learn how to operate a car like a person. Besides describing the technology, Vanderbilt examined the question of whether people would even want that. After all, Americans love the freedom and control that a car represents. But as one Google researcher pointed out, that's not really how the daily experience of a car is for most people:

“Most of driving is not a car commercial,” he says. “The average American commutes 52 minutes a day, with the purpose of getting from point A to point B, not with the purpose of winding through the mountains and enjoying The Sound of Music.”

I agree with this sentiment. Owning a self-driving car doesn't mean that it always has to be on autopilot; on those occasions when you're driving through the mountains, car commercial-style, you can turn it off. But most time spent in the car is a drag: going to work, going to store, trying to find a parking space, boring crap like that. I bet a lot of people would love to pass the responsibility on to a robot, so they can then, as Vanderbilt admits, use the time for texting or looking at Facebook on their phones. 

Which brings me to why I was frustrated. These companies are spending a lot of money on researching self-driving cars to address the desire of people to be able to commute without having to drive. But there's already a superior solution to that problem, one that addresses both the desire to not drive and it's better for the environment: public transportation. People don't need self-driving cars! They need better trains and buses, and more accessible trains and buses. Imagine if the resources being devoted to self-driving cars were instead aimed at expanding the public transportation infrastructure and making in more comfortable. For instance, Vanderbilt is right that people's desire to surf the net instead of watch the road could incline them to want to avoid driving to work, if that were an option. Well, why not put high-speed wi-fi internet on all public transportation, and then advertise the shit out of it? Instead of spending money on developing self-driving cars, what about high-speed trains? What about more subway systems? There's a serious "reinventing the wheel" problem here. 

But Vanderbilt addresses none of that, even though that question hangs in the mind of any halfway intelligent reader. I did a Ctrl-F search for the word "train", to make sure I didn't accidentally miss mention of the competition. The first time the word appears on the page, it's in the comment section. Actually, the first comment:

I'd love to live in a city where I could walk or bike safely to nearly all of my regular destinations and take a train or bus to the other ones.

Self-driving cars are a bad solution to a problem caused by automobile-centric urban planning and design that demands the need for cars.

Exactly. For all I know, the price of getting access to the prototypes was to not mention the obvious---that self-driving cars are a distraction from the real transportation needs of our country---but it's a weird oversight. If Google really is interested in not being evil, they should redirect their brain trust away from self-driving cars and more towards better and more extensive public transportation. Even something as simple as making Amtrak more comfortable and appealing would be an interesting and more useful project. 

Taxes are confusing. No, not because of our insanely complex tax code, or because of the various forms we have to fill out every April. No, taxes are confusing because we've spent the past thirty-two years hearing from the modern Republican Party that taxes are too high on high earners and too low on low earners and that corporate tax rates are simultaneously too high and there are too many handouts for industries. You may think you're taxed one way, but the GOP is here to tell you that you can't trust your paycheck or your tax return or anyone else's tax return, because there's an economist at the Heritage Foundation who woke up in an opium den and figured out how you're being double taxed.

With this in mind, I'd like to share with you the Republican Guide to Taxation, a handy guide to figuring out how the GOP thinks about taxes. Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger.

Topic 1: How Much Do People Pay In Taxes?

Well, it depends how you look at it. From an income perspective, most people pay very little to nothing. All of those people who work pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, but those don't count because they're benefits that people in lower income brackets may one day receive. People who earn a lot of money, however, pay a criminal amount of taxes. 

From a consumption perspective, you pay around, say, 30 to 35% in "embedded taxes". This calculation comes from a top secret formula that can best be summarized as follows:

What's a good, round number that people will buy? + What's higher than the consumption tax we want to put in place? = Embedded tax rate.

Simple enough.

Frequently Asked Questions

But...wait. If you're poor, virtually all of your income goes toward consumption. So doesn't that mean that poor people actually pay a 30 to 35% tax rate?

Technically, yes.

Then poor people would seem to have a really high tax rate according to this math.

That's until you realize that the poor pay for all of their food with food stamps. Food stamps come from tax dollars. Basically, hard working job creators pay taxes to produce food that poor people buy with the very tax dollars job creators paid in the first place. 

Then...hold on, what?

Don't worry about it. All you need to know is that thanks to Obama's oppressive tax system, the minority of Americans pay for the majority.

Isn't our tax system basically Bush's tax system with a payroll tax cut added in?

Barack Obama has been president of taxes since 2001.

Topic 2: Double Taxation

As you may know, Mitt Romney has a tax burden under 15%. You know this because you're dumb and you believe the liberal media spin that comes from using arithmetic on numbers to arrive on figures. Taxes are not calculated using math. Taxes, at least for the richest Americans, are calculated using inferential accumulation.

Here's how it works. A corporation is a distinct legal entity designed to acheive certain business goals and absorb certain legal liabilities from its owners and operators. Corporations pay a corporate income tax in America that is the highest in the developed world, except for corporations who have accountants, in which case it's usually really low.

Corporations earn money, and pay taxes on their profits. Individuals are allowed to invest in companies by purchasing stock in them. Stock is a capital asset. If the individual holds on to that asset for more than a year and then sells it or receives a dividend from it, their profit is considered a long-term capital gain. Capital gains are taxed, and long-term capital gains are taxed at lower rates than regular income.

The original rationale for this was that long-term capital gains, if taxed as income, would almost always be taxed at the highest marginal income tax rate because people who get long-term capital gains tend to be really rich. Really rich people would be less likely to invest if they had to pay regular taxes on the money they earned for putting their money at risk to get more money back by letting other people do things with it. This is in stark contrast to rich people who put their money at risk by owning and operating businesses that do actual things and produce goods and services, who pay higher tax rates because they're chumps.

So, the corporation pays corporate taxes, and then when it pays out dividends to stockholders, the stockholders pay taxes on the money they receive. This happens because the government taxes realization events - when a person actually receives money they didn't have before. The corporation pays 35%, at least technically, and then the stockholder pays 15%. Most people, when confronted with this, would think that the stockholder pays 15%. This is because most people are subliterate, thanks to government schools. 

In reality, the stockholder pays 50%, because corporations aren't people and only people pay taxes. The stockholder is thus double taxed, because the legally distinct entity that paid taxes on its profits and wasn't necessarily obligated to pay the stockholder anything when it earned those profits could have paid the tax money out to stockholders and didn't, because, again, the food stamps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Didn't Mitt Romney say that corporations are people?

Corporations are only people in terms of buying political ads. At all other times, they are simply legal fictions necessary because the government won't absolve participants in capitalism of legal responsibility for killing people.

If double taxation exists, then what's Mitt Romney's actual tax burden?

Romney pays 35% in corporate taxes, plus 15% in capital gains taxes. He donates about 13% to charity, which also counts as taxes because...well, I don't have an explanation for that one. He pays about 10% in state and local taxes, let's say. He pays the 30 to 35% embedded tax on everything he consumes. He will be leaving an estate worth hundreds of millions to his family, so let's put in the 35% estate tax rate that he'll pay even though he'll be dead and his children will be the people actually writing the check for the property they inherited.

All told, Mitt Romney's tax rate is 143%. No wonder he does his own laundry. 

Okay, folks. That's it for our first installment!

Most mornings, except weekends, at Casa del Marcotte, we get up in the morning. The first thing on our minds is work. I make coffee and get right to it on my computer, since I work at home. My dude gets dressed, walks to the subway, and takes the train to his office. Often we both work late---really often. Like most Americans, our lives are basically consumed by work. Unlike a lot of Americans, we're lucky because we have fulfilling jobs, for sure, but they are still work. Like most Americans, 100% of our income is from work, except maybe like the occasional birthday or Christmas card from relatives with a check instead of a present in it. Americans work more hours than our counterparts in Western Europe and have fewer vacations. (Being a freelancer, I haven't really taken a vacation-vacation where I completely unplug, I think, ever, actually. But being unable to unplug is increasingly a part of even salaried and hourly employees' lives.) Because most non-retired Americans are dependent on work for 100% of their income, losing a job is devastating, often worse that a divorce. Because most of us derive 100% of our income from working, taxes are a legitimate burden, though one most of us---except a few extremist wingnuts---believe is part of the responsibilities of being an American. 

Contrast that with what we've learned about Mitt Romney from his tax returns: 1) He pays a low rate in taxes, lower than many of us who derive our income from working 2) His work income is pocket change compared to the money he makes sitting on his ass paying other people to make money for him and 3) He makes more in a day doing nothing than your average American makes in a year of life being consumed by work. 

The critical words here are DOING NOTHING. Romney jokes that he's "unemployed", when in fact the proper term is the "idle rich". He was employed at one point, sure, but it's laughable to say that his wealth is the result of "hard work", as every wingnut apologist mindlessly says. Most Americans don't have the option of making more money sitting on their ass than working. Retirement is usually associated with terms like "fixed income", not "exploding amounts of wealth". But the claim from Republicans is that by taxing money you make by not working, you're somehow discouraging productivity, so we need to lower taxes on money made from not working, and shift the burden to those who actually work for their money. I hope it's clear what a giant pile of bullshit that is. If we actually want to adjust taxes to encourage productivity and discourage idleness, we need to jack the rates up on people like Mitt Romney and possibly even lower them on those of us whose lives are occupied by work from the time we get up in the morning to, if we're lucky, sometime after dinner. (And many of us work harder than that.) You know, those of us who contribute something.

Anyway, Atrios put it best, and while this has been quoted everywhere, it bears repeating:

Romney has said he was unemployed. He's right. He actually does nothing to earn most of his income. He's just in possession of a giant pile of cash. He pays some people to do stuff with that giant pile of cash so it earns a rate of return. And because we are ruled by horrible people who think the lives of the 1% are more important than everyone else, the tax rate on any money that pile of cash earns is much lower than it is on the money earned by people who actually work.

He snipes that those of us who work and want those---like him---who don't because they can just live like kings off investments to pay more taxes.....well, we're consumed with "envy". Perhaps. Or perhaps it's just that we actually believe, unlike Republicans who just pay lip service, to the concept of work, and we want the people who actually do it to get their fair share of the pie, instead of feeding it all to those who just feed off the money others actually make. 

Introducing this video, Atrios says:

And bring back New Coke!!! Of all of the recent mostly pointless wingnuttery, the lightbulb fixation has been the most amusing/bemusing.

What makes the lightbulb thing the bestest of current wingnut obsessions is that it's a perfect summation of what makes up the modern wingnut. Should you need to craft a future panic to gin up a bunch of wingnuts, I suggest carefully studying this list, because it's a pretty great blueprint.

1) Bullshit. This is one of the most important aspects. For some reason, they can't get quite as whipped up over something that's true. In some cases, that's beause reality is boring, but clearly that doesn't explain all of it, because even if their claim was true---that the government is banning incandescent light bulbs---that would still be roughly the stupidest thing to get upset about, possibly ever. No, I believe they get more excited over lies than the truth is that believing something that's not true makes them feel like they're in a secret, special club. That other people disagree with them because of our tedious adherence to facts and reality increases their sense of specialness. It also helps feed their sense of victimization. They're oppressed by the facts and all those stupid liberal fascists who insist on them. Because of all this, bullshit is way more interesting to the average wingnut than facts. 

2) Pettiness. What's weird is that even if it were true, and the entire country was being forced to move to CFLs for daily use, the rational response would be, "So what?" The wailing from wingnuts on this is that CFLs are "ugly", but what's interesting about this is that they're really not. I have nothing but CFLs in my house, and they work great. You could probably even do some empirical research showing that your ordinary American can't tell the difference between a new incandescent and new CFL. They flicker a bit more when being turned on, and that's it. Small price to pay to reduce our nation's energy usage and forstall global warming, right? But pettiness is where wingnuts find their home. They love turning a molehill into a mountain, because that means that every time they flip on a light, they can burn with rage at the evil liberals who are controlling their lives through light bulbs.

3) Selfishness. They really do find it mildly arousing to say, "Screw the planet, I like my light bulbs the way they are." Sure, they rationalize this by pretending not to believe in global warming, but feigned disbelief is just an extension of the larger selfishness problem.

4) Near-psychotic fear of change. They like the world the way it is, and any change is taken as a personal affront, no matter how inconsequential to their personal comfort.

5) Paranoia. This goes back to pettiness. They love to sweat the small stuff, because it makes the grand conspiracy of liberal fascism they believe in seem omnipresent. This is why wingnuts in the past got so attached to fears about fluoride in the drinking water, and now are crapping their pants over fears of mandatory CFLs. They like to feel that the Illlumnati even have their fingers in how you light a room. 

But most importantly of all:

6) It pisses off the liberals. It honestly should. This petty, selfish, idiotic, childish, paranoid behavior should piss off anyone with an ounce of decency. But what's funny is that they've been crying wolf so long that it fails to anger anymore, and instead causes mockery. I mean, they're willing to act like paranoid idiots just to get a rise out of us. Don't they have anything better to do with their time? Get a hobby, like replacing all your incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, and then starting a photoblog showing how nice the light is. But Wingnut America is so committed to the "pissing off the liberals" mentality that they'll try to pretend the peals of laughter aimed in their direction are wails of anger. It's sad, really. 

Idea for the Newt Gingrich picture shamelessly stolen from Gawker.

Jesse and I will be live-tweeting the debate, starting at 9PM EST. Now that Newt Gingrich actually has a chance, it should be a pretty interesting debate. If you want to follow us, I tweet here and Jesse tweets here.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and while it's good news that you can still get an abortion in all 50 states in this country (sort of), the fact of the matter is that we've lost a lot of ground. Legally, for one thing, but psychologically as well. I examine the problem at RH Reality Check, talking about how people are growing more accustomed to the idea that female sexuality is male property. Depressing stuff, but it's important to realize that this battle is not and has never been just about abortion. It's about women's rights and women's roles, and whether we should be full citizens or be managed and controlled by fathers, husbands, ministers, etc. Which is why I loved the picture that the New York Times chose to illustrate this story about the growing acceptance of anti-contraception views amongst Protestants.

In a single image, we get what anti-choicers believe men have lost, and what they believe stripping reproductive rights will return to them: Woman as pet dog. 

We don't even get the dignity that cats get, in their worldview. No wonder they don't care if Gingrich told his second wife she should just put up with the third one. Your dog doesn't get a vote when you get a new dog.

Some feminists tend to dismiss everything anti-choicers say out of hand, but what I think is interesting is that they're often quite right on the facts of what reproductive rights mean for women, but they're just wrong when it comes to their beliefs. For instance, this passage in the Times piece: 

As Dr. Paris suggests, much of the new birth-control skepticism comes from the suspicion that contraception is allied with more nefarious practices. In the 1970s, abortion became a central issue for evangelicals; now some worry that the kind of woman who controls her fertility is the kind who would abort an unwanted fetus. Antifeminist Christians worry that secular culture both encourages women to take the pill and leads them into the work force.

There's something a little strange about the distancing language the writer, Mark Oppenheimer, uses here. I would say that it's encroaching on the status of "indisputable fact" that contraception makes it easier for women to enter the work force. I would also argue that they're not wrong to believe that that exceedingly rare women who "doesn't believe" in contraception is probably not going to have an abortion when she gets pregnant. The problem is that they extrapolate incorrectly from there, assuming that taking away women's contraception will somehow magically make them feel more passive and accepting of the idea of constant, forced childbirth. The data shows the opposite, that the more hostility there is to reproductive rights, the more abortions there are, because more women are facing unwanted pregnancies. Simply enshrining one set of values into law doesn't magically make the population agree. Anti-feminists know this very well, since they adamantly resist laws that reflect women's equality. The problem here is their woman-as-dog model doesn't allow for understanding that women have minds of their own, and so they tend to think that simply demanding it will get instant, dog-like compliance. You see this a lot with antis who wave off your questions about the inevitable black market that arises when abortion is illegal; they have convinced themselves women only seek abortion because women are dumbly following orders, and they'll change when they're given a different set of instructions.

What Oppenheimer doesn't talk about. but that picture illustrates so well, is what anti-feminists really feel is lost with what they call "contraceptive culture": men's god-given right to have a woman---perhaps several (though in a row, mostly)---who follow them around, worshipping their every move, submitting completely and joyfully. I suspect this fantasy never was a reality, but I suspect a lot of Christian fundamentalists have convinced themselves that giving women the power to say "no" to men is what made us so maddeningly unwilling to play the supplicant. No to sexual overtures, no to marriage, no to demands that we wait on you, and most importantly, no to letting your magical seed plant itself in our bodies whenever it wants. That's why I believe that modern conservative Christians don't worship Jesus so much as Sperm Magic. The last few paragraphs of this piece makes that clear:

It then occurred to me that a few decades ago, when evangelicals and Catholics were further apart on birth control, they were also pretty far apart on questions of salvation — evangelicals were quite clear that Catholics were going to hell.

So I asked Mr. Surratt if Mr. Santorum would have any trouble getting into heaven. His answer confirmed that for today’s conservative Christians, the differences between Protestant and Catholic have gotten narrow indeed.

“That’s a God deal,” the pastor told me. “That’s his deal to judge. I’m glad I don’t have his job.”

When the differences between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics were about things like the worship of saints and transubstantiation, well, there were real differences there. Now they're coming together to worship their true god---Sperm Magic---in basically the same way---fighting against women's rights---and so there aren't any theological differences to fight over. The chumminess that follows is predictable enough. 

The subject of Jay-Z and Beyoncé is not one I tend to think about much---yeah, they promote retrograde gender roles in their music, but that's more common than not, honestly---but the recent rush of politicized stories around the birth of their daughter has caused me to pay attention. For The American Prospect, I have a piece up about why it was not a good idea for so many liberals to be passing around tabloid stories claiming that Lenox Hill Hospital was so protective of the couple while Beyoncé was giving birth that they prevented other couples from receiving decent care and treatment. The main reason is basically, I think the stories are bullshit. There's only one couple really hitting the tabloids---which they went to instead of going to the hospital first---and some of what they claim to have sen is fishy. The woman also made a particularly revealing comment, saying, "I guess that was the only special event happening in the hospital." Complaining that celebrities get a lot of attention for doing normal people things strikes me as not news. Also, honestly, a blessing for us non-celebrities, who can walk around unmolested by photographers who can sell photos of us doing our grocery shopping for thousands of dollars. Anyway, I also have points about class resentments and why we need to be thoughtful about how we look for examples to highlight for political purposes.

But mostly I just caution people not to exploit obvious bullshit for political gain. It just makes you look foolish. That's why I rolled my eyes at all the people breathlessly passing around that poem supposedly written by Jay-Z where he denounces the word "bitch", now that he has a child that will undoubtedly be called that name in her future, because pretty much all women are. I didn't think it was clever, like when the Yes Men punk corporations by pretending to be them and getting them to have to go on the record defending unconscionable acts. Mainly, it's because I'm not a big fan of reducing discussion of complex problems to simple point-scoring on words. When you do that, perversely, you give cover to people expressing foul ideas, by letting them know, "Hey, as long as you use code words instead of the really obvious ones, you can always say, 'Hey, it's not like I said X, like those real -ists!'" Or, let me quote Ta-Nehisi:

I understand the focus on the word "bitch," given its particular history and usage. But we should mindful of reductionism for reasons both political and artistic. There is a whole school of thought that holds racism is impossible unless attended by the word "nigger." And there are plenty of ways to regard a women as bitches, without ever saying the word.

You really see this problem on the heels of the South Carolina primary, which Gingrich won mainly by running around insinuating racist arguments without saying them out loud, and then when he was called on it, his supporters took umbrage because they've put so much work into avoiding saying the N-word. Where is their cookie, you food stamp lovers? There are plenty of rappers and singers who don't use the word in their lyrics, but paint a condescending and toxic view of women that's harder to argue with, because it's more complex. But instead of reinventing the wheel, I'll just link Samhita and my podcast where we discuss this. Samhita was also quoted in this article, which I highly recommend reading. 

All of this, however, is really just an excuse for me to post this video, which is how I imagine Jay-Z's conversation with his daughter about the B-word went before he announced that the poem was definitely a forgery:

After not one, but two debates and a couple of weeks of candidates playing a game of "who can blow the hardest on the racist dog whistle?", we're finally reached the South Carolina primary. Honestly, in my mind, this is when it really starts. New Hampshire and Iowa aren't representative enough to matter.* South Carolina is totally a different ball game for Republicans. While it's not a moderate group at all, it's bigger and more representative. So if an outlier candidate like Gingrich actually comes out on top, that's going to matter. A lot. 

Jesse and I will be breathlessly covering the returns tonight, starting at 7PM EST. For obvious reasons, we've decided that we're going to use Twitter for our play-by-play coverage. If you don't follow us, you can follow me here and Jesse here. And let us all pray to the Spaghetti Monster for Newt's eventual victory. 

*Yes, yes, pedants. I know you're gleefully running to your keyboard to say, "NUH-UH. They matter in the DEMOCRATIC primary." Yes, but please stop being so literal. It's clear we're discussing the Republican primary season. And yes, I know some of them are caucuses. Calm down.

Can fashion be feminist? It's a question that's gotten some traction now that Ms. has a full-length article about it in their most recent edition, excerpted here. My take on this perennial question is that it's asking the wrong question. Asking if "fashion" can be feminist is like asking if English can be feminist. Those on the "no" side could always point to the sexist history of the language that persists in certain common words, but at the end of the day, it's not like feminists in English-speaking countries are going to stop speaking English to make a point. A better answer is, "Language is dynamic and therefore neutral, and we can manipulate it for feminist ends." For instance, we can write feminist things. Or we can replace words like "chairman" with "chairperson".

Same thing with fashion. One problem is that people tend to think of fashion and think of high fashion only---or maybe high fashion mixed with a little bit of trendy but cheap fashion---which is like thinking of English and only thinking of literary fiction, with a couple well-regarded genre novels tossed in for flavor. Because of this, people mistakenly think they can opt out of fashion. They do this by saying things like, "I don't care what I wear, clothes are just for covering the body." (That clothes cover the body is true enough in cold weather, but honestly, people could just walk around naked in the hot weather if clothes had no value as a semiotic system. Their value as preserving modesty is over-rated; even cultures that don't fetishize "modesty"---including some parts of America---have clothes.) I've read enough on this subjec to know that the sociological view is that clothes' primary function is as fashion, and concerns like comfort are less important. Honestly, even modesty is a semiotic function of clothes; that you conceal your naughty bits doesn't mean that people don't know they're there. Which is why different cultures define appropriate modesty differently.

But I digress. The point is there is no opt-out clause. If you don't care and just thrown any old thing on, the message you send the world is, "I don't care and just throw any old thing on." Which is fine, but don't pretend you aren't sending a message just as surely as someone who carefully selects and color-coordinates an outfit is doing. 

Nor is fashion strictly a female thing. High fashion pays more attention to women than men, but because all people wear clothes, we all participate in the system. Personally, I find what' called "street fashion", i.e. fashion put together by ordinary people without a lot of money but who put a high value on self-expression and creativity, to be the most interesting fashion of all. It tends to be more interested in what is flattering, and more fun to look at than 90% of what fashion designers put together. If you take this view of fashion as a whole, then, I would say that of course fashion can be feminist. Even fashion that puts an emphasis on flashiness and beauty can be. Samhita and I discussed this on our recent podcast. Personally, I'm a big fan of using fashion to reclaim and subvert strict gender norms put on women. For instance, I love it when women reject the obnoxious pressure to be subtle in order to be considered "classy"; bring on the bright colors and flashy accessories. Some times we all have to be subtle for certain situations, but I love not having to be. 

While there's often a lot of discussion of these issues on an academic level, one thing I find that's often missing is direct, pragmatic discussion of how to make fashion choices that express feminist values, especially if you want to be both feminist and look good. For that, I really appreciate Greta Christina doing a once-a-week look at fashion from a pragmatic point of view. She's not doing it as an expression of feminist values, but I think that's a byproduct of the project. For instance, yesterday's post is about the difference between fashion advice geared towards concealing the supposed flaws in your body and fashion advice about putting your best foot forward. 

The distinction between the two can sometimes be hard to grasp---part of the problem is most fashion magazines conflate the two---but aside from learning that you don't have to be mangled and uncomfortable to look good, it's probably the most important aspect of doing fashion in a feminist way. One really good example is the question of high heels. A lot of short women are drawn to really high heels because they think it conceals how short they are. This is bad for two reasons. One, high heels are painful and should be used only rarely, if at all. Two, it actually looks kind of weird for short women to wear really tall heels. It's out of proportion with your body, and looks like you've been jacked up, making your legs look out of proportion. Tall women actually tend to look better in really tall heels. If you approach fashion as embracing your body instead of trying to "fix" it, it's much easier for short women to see that it's just as well to wear low or no heels. And of course, tall women are better off not trying to hide it, I think, though there's no shame in wearing a shoe that says, "I won't be leaving early tonight because my feet are killing me."

In my experience, feminists who embrace fashion tend to look awesome, because they eschew the push towards conformity and embrace their bodies as-is. Big boobs? Flaunt 'em. Fat? Sweet, you can get away with big accessories. Flat-chested? Lucky you (or me, in this case), you look great in those loud prints that others tend to overlook. It's way more fun that way. 

Style guides I've read that try to be more "embrace yourself as-is" and less "oh my god, hide your shame!" and can recommend are anything put out by the publishers of Lucky, such as The Lucky Shopping Manual: Building and Improving Your Wardrobe Piece by Piece or The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style: How to Wear Iconic Looks and Make Them Your Own. They're a little more conservative than I am, fashion-wise, and they do screw up on occasion, but by and large they embrace the idea of embracing your body as-is. For instance, they advise fat women to wear string bikinis instead of try to cover up, on the grounds that most bathing suits that are more modest tend to just cut you off in awkward places, whereas bikinis you tie on create a more clean line. More gleeful and provocative is The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men, which also briefly addresses men's wear, as well, and can be used for women who prefer that kind of clothing, though there may be better style guides out there for that. She also has a couple of moments of reflectively treating certain features as flaws, but she mostly stays away from that and puts the emphasis on flaunt-what-you-got positivity. I learned a lot from that book, especially in terms of not being afraid of colors or patterns. 

Other thoughts and recommendations welcome in comments!

Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame has a new book out, analyzing the cultural divide between the haves and the have-nots.

Well, to be more accurate, between the white haves and the white have-nots. I know, you're shocked.

The entire premise is so asinine that I have a hard time summarizing everything wrong with it, but it suffices to say that trying to explain economic stratification since 1960 without referencing race is like trying to explain a flood without referencing water. Add in his inevitable conclusion that poor people are poor because they're government-dependent moral failures, and you've got a glorified Gingrich campaign stop.

Like the advice column addict I am, I don't ever miss Dear Prudence, though I rarely say more about it than to tweet it. But this one shocked me, so I have to quote it:

My girlfriend and I are in law school together and have been dating for six months. Things are getting serious—she is the love of my life. Her best friend is getting married this spring, and my girlfriend is the maid of honor. I was excited to attend this wedding as her date. However, she recently confessed that she had previously made out with three of the groomsmen, including the best man who will walk her down the aisle. I was completely taken aback by this. She said who she made out with in the past isn't really any of my business, but she wanted to tell me so I wasn't in the dark at the wedding. I’m pretty upset. She said I should consider how she feels, having to participate in a wedding along with these guys. That makes sense, but those are the repercussions of her actions. Should I go to the wedding and be uncomfortable watching her walk down the aisle with someone she's kissed before, who is still in love with her? Or should I just skip the whole thing and save myself some emotional trouble?

Prudie demonstrates more restraint than I would, but her advice is basically, "Grow up." I realize that most advice columnists stick pretty stringently to the rule that you only advise the person who wrote in, so she leaves it at that. But I want to write a piece of advice to the unfortunate woman who is dating this choad:

Run away. 

He's going to fight you, and be a massive asshole who hits below the belt when you try to break up with him, but that isn't going to get better. The longer you're in, the longer he will draw out the break-up, since he'll have more to hold over your head in an attempt to control you. So leave now. It doesn't get easier after this. This guy is throwing off red flags like a motherfucker. He's like the living embodiment of a mindfuck. He claims in a single paragraph that you're the "love of his life", but then proceeds to dress you down for supposedly being a giant slut. He goes through the like 2/3 cycle of domestic abuse in this paragraph. He's already trying to drive a wedge between you and your friends, by convincing you to quit on your friend's wedding, which will probably piss her and a lot of people off, making it harder to maintain contact with them, and making you ever more dependent on him, making it even harder to leave the next time he dresses you down for your "actions". Or, if he can't get that, he'll at least derive satisfaction from knowing that you'll be forced to explain all night why he's boycotting the wedding, which as close as he can get to painting a scarlet A on your bridesmaid's dress. 

By the way, can we talk about the phrase "repercussions of her actions"? Any man who says this about sexual activity you engaged in as a free, single adult before you started dating him should be dumped immediately, and his angry phone calls and emails ignored and deleted. It's not just that he's a horrible prude and dangerously jealous. It's also that he's already cast you as the naughty girl and himself as the moral authority whose job is to discipline you. That will come up again and again, as he recasts his own flaws---in this case, being a jealous idiot---as your sins, for which you deserve "repercussions". You've been together for 6 months and he's acting like judge and jury more than infatuated boyfriend, all protestations of "love of my life" aside. 

By the way, guys who get really serious really fast are also ones to look out for. Six months is good for "I love you" and maybe even "let's move in together". But "love of my life" and pushing for a permanent commitment is scary. Coupled with the jealousy and mindfucks, I say get away and get away fast.

For more information on red flag and domestic abuse, read here.

Panda Party time!  The title, of course, refers to Rick Perry's sudden and much lamented departure. We'd all grown fond of the way he would grunt out catchphrases during debates, a nice counterpoint to Gingrich droning on and on, as if he was saying anything more meaningful than shouting out catchphrases. Part of me is beginning to feel for the also-rans in the Republican race. Each of them had a moment where the party was lavishing attention, telling them they're the one and only, and then they were suddenly dropped as everyone ran back to Old Dependable. It's like being the mistress who gets a long story about how he's going to leave his wife for you, only to have him, after he satifies himself, yank his pants up and run back to his wife. 

So here's a song for today, and the Panda Party begins now.