"You really think I've never kissed a guy before?"

"The characters on the show are the only people who pretend I'm not gay. It's like the season that Clay Aiken was on American Idol."

Oh, Joel. Keep entertaining me on Community, too!

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Speaking of Edward Cullen . . .

Let the comparisons continue.

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Blair Switch Project

The relevant funny starts 3:30. B-T-dubs, last week's Gossip Girl was L-A-M-E. As I told Stephanie, the episode turned out to be bo-ring. Serena almost got raped (again!) by some guy who overdosed on his own line of cocaine; then she called 911 for help. Why does she think she killed him? Why should I care? Why does she keep feeling sorry for the people who try to rape her?! Did she forget what happened with Chuck in the first episode? Dude!

Shocking Gossip

Exclusive: A Gossip Guy Comes Out! But Which One?, Ausiello Report via Defamer.

Is anyone 1) surprised, or 2) under the delusion that it's not Serena's formerly-highlighted brother Eric?

Although, I would love if the show finally admitted that Chuck is on the down low, because you know that is sooo how he rolls. "Top or bottom, Chuck? Top or bottom?"

Confirming what we already knew.

School Ties, by Bill Keith, Out magazine.

Josh Schwartz just needs to write that Very Special Episode episode where Chuck and Nate introduce Dan to the Long Island Ice Tea, and include him in their secret love that dare not speak its name.

What? It's already in the books, sort of!

I do have one qualm with the article: Chuck has not "bedded both leading ladies". That was Nate.

Also, look, Marco's out!

Things I liked this week

Jokes that objectify women, by Matsu at media girl.

Let She Who Is Without Period Stains Throw The First Tampon, by Margaret Cho at The Huffington Post, via Feministing.

The Slut on Gossip Girl, by Jessica Wakeman at The Huffington Post, via Feministe.

Know Your Limit . . . For Rape?, by Cara at The Curvature, via Feministing.

Montana, nation's least-black state, confronts issues on MLK Day, by Rob Chaney at Billings Gazette, via Racialicious.

How would Chris Matthews sound if he talked to men like he talks to women?, by Hart Seely at Slate, via Feministing.

Also, I am now cross-posting my relevant musings at BlogHer.com, so tell your friends in China!

Happy reading!

Update 1/28/2008 - I forgot this one:

That fragile male ego, by media girl at media girl. including privilege, a poem for men who don't understand what we mean when we say they have it, by D. A. Clarke.

. . . privilege is being
smiled at all day by nice helpful women, it is
the way you pass judgment on their appearance with magisterial authority,
the way you face a judge of your own sex in court and
are over-represented in Congress and are not strip searched for a traffic ticket
or used as a dart board by your friendly mechanic, privilege
is seeing your bearded face reflected through the history texts
not only of your high school days but all your life, not being
relegated to a paragraph
every other chapter, the way you occupy
entire volumes of poetry and more than your share of the couch unchallenged,
it is your mouthing smug, atrocious insults at women
who blink and change the subject -- politely -- privilege
is how seldom the rapist's name appears in the papers
and the way you smirk over your PLAYBOY . . .

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Sunshine and Rain

(I heart Psych.)

Things that made me upset this week:

The CW's views on the roles of young women in society, as featured on Wednesday episode of Gossip Girl (at 3:23).



If you can't see the video, of if The CW has snatched it off of YouTube, here's what the closeted attempted-rapist said to the recently-dethroned Queen B:

"You held a certain fascination when you were beautiful, delicate, and untouched. But now you’re like one of the Arabians my father used to own: Rode hard and put away wet. I don’t want you now and I don’t see why anyone else would."

As I told Carrie on South Dakota Dark, Chuck's pot needs to meet Blair's kettle.

Talk about "rode hard and put away wet." Or in his case, "put away in a gay closet." What Pandora's Box of STDs is that boy dragging around in his pants?

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What is wrong with Gloria Steinem?

. . . Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter) . . .

. . . So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what . . .

No wonder so many progressive non-white women don't consider themselves feminists.

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I didn't know 30 Rock was on last night, and I missed it. :(

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Janet Jackson's video for her new single, "Feedback." I have been playing the song all day almost every day for the past month. But the video needs help. And more dancing.

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Things that made me happy this week:

My friend Chrissy saved this week's 30 Rock on her DVR, so now I can watch it this weekend.

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Psych is coming back tonight!

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I got a Hello Kitty calendar. It only took me a week to realize that I would need a new one for 2008.

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I'm sure some more good things happened, but I can't think of them at the moment.

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"I'm talking about Big Companies, and their Two-Faced Fat Cat Executives."

Because I'm too lazy to write my own Gossip Girl recaps:

"What's with the business formal? Are you being arraigned for something?": Gossip Girl, by Carrie at South Dakota Dark.

You can read my feelings in the comments section that follows.

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Victor, Victrola, by Jacob at Television Without Pity.

"What if there was this gay serial rapist who accidentally fell in like with his best friend's girlfriend, who was kind of his best actual friend, because they were kind of rapists together, and they got together in the seamiest, creepiest way...but you were cheering them on the whole time, and kind of got teary when they sealed the deal, even though it was presented in weird '90s Nine Inch Nails jumpcuts played against weird '00s emo-punk-rock crap? Like their creepiness cancels each other out and it's kind of...sweet? Like, 'Way to lose your virginity to the gay best friend of your shitty boyfriend'?"

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‘Gossip Girl’ Exceeds Our Expectations … Again!, from New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer.

• Okay, so Vanessa sneaks in while Dan and Serena are making out, which brings to bear the question we've been wondering since she first stepped foot through his window. What if he were masturbating?? This is high school, not Clarissa Explains It All; you can't just sneak through a boy's window without warning if you don't want to see some frighteningly awkward hunching maneuvers and a flash of low-grade Internet porn. Minus 5.

• Aha! Only a few minutes later, Vanessa comes in and Dan is looking at porn. Except he's still not masturbating. Not to be vulgar, but in what world would that happen? Minus 5, for willfully and repeatedly ignoring the libido level of a high-school boy. These creatures will hump APPLE PIES, people.

Josh, if you're reading (fingers crossed!), did you write this third one? Because I don't know many bloggers who can work in an effective Clarissa Explains It All reference.

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My thoughts on this week's 30 Rock:

"A whale is trouble! I have to go." Love love love Al Gore.

"What do you do with the Pop-Tart?!" Ewww. Poor Liz Lemon.

Also, Mr. Pancholy, please get more press so I can link to you in a Joseph Gordon-Levitt manner. You are so funny and talented. You're like a primetime broadcast version of Lloyd.

I didn't realize until right now that David Schwimmer wasn't playing himself. He was playing a previously out of work actor named "Jared." Right.

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I haven't finished watching The Office yet, but my initial thoughts include these: Jim, everyone likes to have their own special day on their birthday. I know I do. (Winky-wink.) Kate from Jon & Kate + 8 acknowledges this, and she has eight kids who share two birthdays. You only have thirteen employees for an entire year. Plus, party planning is Angela's entire reason for being. Let everyone have their own day and their own cake.

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What I didn't like about the Gossip Girl pilot.

From the comments section of the Gossip Girl recap on the site that must not be named:

Allison says:

. . . I have to say I did not approve of the scene where Serena has sex with Blandy McBlanderson [Nate] being interspliced with the scene where Steff/Chuck is trying to rape her. It's just offensive to parlay glorious bar sex with a frickin rape attempt and that idiot Blair child being over-dramatic about Blandy's revelation of the sex scene. That combined with the other attempted rape (two date rape attempts in one episode by the same guy?!) made me feel like the show was normalizing date rape . . .

For more astute observations on this based-on-a-book television show, you can read my comments here, here and here on South Dakota Dark. I'm funny!

Also, there is no need to euphemistically refer to Chuck's actions in the pilot as attempted "date" rape. He wasn't on a date with either Serena or Jenny when he attacked them. He is an attempted rapist and he should be in prison. That goes for real life attempted rapists as well. Because, as we saw in the show, the attempts don't stop even when the victims fight back, and those are only the attempts we know about.

Word to Big Bird

Meaning, I agree with what is said below.

Wes Anderson: the ultimate heartbreaker, by Thea at Racialicious.

Have you ever woken up one morning and suddenly realised that an old and cherished friend doesn’t care about you or anything you represent, and actually either ignores or caricatures your existence?

Well, neither have I. But too many times I’ve realised that a director (or musician or writer or artist…) that I love like a friend actually creates art that exoticises, fetishises, or all out erases who I am. I’ve managed to recover from the horror of finding that much of the music I used to like is grossly sexist, (see our little blurb about Jessica Hopper’s famous article on emo music here) but I’m still working on getting over my ex-friend Wes Anderson...

Characters of colour in Anderson’s films are always caricatures, hilariously exotic. Anderson uses “race as a novelty”, says salon.com, “suggesting an assertively white-kid view of the world.”

These characters are funny not because of their personalities or life situations - unlike Anderson’s white characters - but solely because they’re brown. It’s like Anderson is saying, “The pirates are Filipino! How hilarious is that??” Needless to say, I don’t get the joke...

Anderson’s beautifully filmed and bizarre characters, who somehow made madness, dysfunctional families and alienation seem not only manageable but funny, were like friends who reminded me that I wasn’t alone. There were many times that Anderson’s movies comforted me with the message that yes, everyone gets lonely, and yes, there are still reasons to live through it. It was like Wes really got me.

But here’s the thing about Wes Anderson: he positions himself as an outsider, and his protagonists are always outsiders, painfully awkward and deeply deficient in social skills but also desperately seeking love (and you will notice that his white characters are capable of longing for love in a much more profound way than his characters of colour will ever acheive). But at the end of the day, what is so outsider about Wes? He’s an extremely succesful, wealthy, white dude. That’s not to say that rich white dudes can’t ever feel alienated. But to position yourself as an outsider, while making art that ensures that people of colour are truly outside, is obscenely fake...

Also, Unbearable Whiteness by Jonah Weiner at Slate, via Racialicious.

...The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson's latest movie, showcases an obnoxious element of Anderson that is rarely discussed: the clumsy, discomfiting way he stages interactions between white protagonists—typically upper-class elites—and nonwhite foils—typically working class and poor. The plot concerns three brothers, Francis, Peter, and Jack Whitman (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) who set out on a "spiritual journey" across India by rail...

...[For] a director as willfully idiosyncratic as Anderson, it's surprising how many white-doofuses-seeking-redemption-in-the-brown-skinned-world clichés Darjeeling Limited inhabits...

After a series of pratfalls, the brothers throw up their hands, deciding to go their separate ways. (What follows is no movie-ruining giveaway, but I should insert a SPOILER ALERT, just in case.) As they walk alongside a canal, they see three adolescent Indian brothers attempting to cross it on a raft attached to a system of ropes and pulleys. A pulley snaps, and the boys are flung into the raging currents. Francis, Peter, and Jack dive in—one set of flailing brothers trying to save another—but one of the adolescents is killed. They're invited to the child's rural village for his funeral (which Anderson cannot resist presenting in slow motion and setting to a Kinks song), where the Whitman clan realize that they need to stick together and see out the rest of their journey. Turns out that a dead Indian boy was all the brothers were missing.

This isn't just heavy-handed, it's offensive. In a grisly little bit of developing-world outsourcing, the child does the bothersome work of dying so that the American heroes won't have to die spiritually...

The comments that follow the Slate article are depressing, but not surprising. God forbid someone point out that racism isn't confined to nooses, burning crosses and pointy hats.

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If you saw last week's episode of Gossip Girl, here's an article you might enjoy: At the elite colleges - dim white kids, by Peter Schmidt at The Boston Globe, via Racialicious. Emphases mine, for those of you who like to skim.

Surf the websites of [selective colleges] and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are.

What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards...

Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.

A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list. Applicants who stood no chance of gaining admission without connections are only the most blatant beneficiaries of such admissions preferences. Except perhaps at the very summit of the applicant pile - that lofty place occupied by young people too brilliant for anyone in their right mind to turn down - colleges routinely favor those who have connections over those who don't. While some applicants gain admission by legitimately beating out their peers, many others get into exclusive colleges the same way people get into trendy night clubs, by knowing the management or flashing cash at the person manning the velvet rope.

Leaders at many selective colleges say they have no choice but to instruct their admissions offices to reward those who financially support their institutions, because keeping donors happy is the only way they can keep the place afloat. They also say that the money they take in through such admissions preferences helps them provide financial aid to students in need.

But many of the colleges granting such preferences are already well-financed, with huge endowments. And, in many cases, little of the money they take in goes toward serving the less-advantaged.

Did someone say Duke? Duke apologizes to lacrosse players, by Aaron Beard, AP, via The Buffalo News and Racialicious.

What a country!

Must I give up The Office, too?

Or should I wait for Daily Show levels of offensiveness? FYI, Office writers, I haven't forgotten "A Benihana Christmas."

I've been reading the TWoP forums, and perusing the blogs on the interwebs. So far, most of the opinions about last night's Season 3 finale, "The Job," have been in the vein of, "I love The Office," "This is the best show ever!" and "Wow, I did not see that ending coming."

I didn't see the ending at all, because I went to sleep after Jim asked Pam on a date, but before the credits rolled. So I missed whatever Ryan said.

My problems with this episode were twofold.

1. It was too long. A lot of the scenes, especially the ones with Pam talking to the camera about how much she luvs Jim, were just filler. The show would have been more powerful in 22-minute form. Even in a Super sized form, it would have felt less drawn out than in those 44-minutes.

2. The writers are punishing the strongest woman on the show.

As erendiradali posted on the TWoP Office forums:

...There was way too much misgogyny [sic] in this episode--heck, in this season, what with having the strong, assertive role of Jan turn into a total psycho, self-destructive, semi-abusive fake-boobed weirdo. I am not sure if I will be watching next season because of this. Misgogyny [sic] is not funny. It's just pathetic.

How did Jan go from a competent executive to a raving loon in one season? I really don't get the transformation. Yes, Jan's meltdown in David's office was amusing, as were Karen's reactions to it. But the character assassination was revolting. The part that most disgusted me was Michael squeezing her new boobs in his office. And then the overall fact that she underwent an unnecessary surgical procedure to win back her lame boyfriend. A procedure that made her crazy from the painkillers. A procedure that probably eliminated any pleasure she used to get from her chest by deadening the nerves in that area. She got two bags of saline inserted into her chest in an attempt to please a man that was already dumber and less attractive than she was. Now she's supposedly going to be Michael's de-facto housewife? Does she have no marketable skills other than managing a failing paper supply company and having sex with Michael?

Yet another uppity career woman getting put in her place by a mostly male writing staff. It also exemplifies this problem, via Defamer: Hollywood Diversity Shocker: White Guys Still Doing All The Writing. Read the comments under the Defamer article for some bitter chuckles.

In other news, with Ryan finally escaping that dysfunctional relationship, I hope Kelly finds a new cute guy to date. Any suggestions for which actor should play her new beaten-down paramour? The CW has got a lot of people looking for work.

That network is such joke. Cancelling Veronica Mars, and renewing The Pussycat Dolls? That's a commitment to quality, Dawn Ostroff. Oh, and thanks for informing us that "nerds are really in right now, especially with the young set." I guess someone just got their Best Special Edition Ever! DVD of Napoleon Dynamite. Even the geezers at CBS are like, "Welcome to 2004, Dawn. At least we have actual kids in our programming. How old is Chad Michael Murray again?" Josh Schwartz better not ruin Gossip Girl. Ironically, the girl playing Jenny Humphrey, whose leading characteristic in the books is her topheaviness, has no boobs on the TV version. Weird.