Tuesday, April 08, 2008 - Posts
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Two things dominated my psyche yesterday: that excruciating Max Moseley video showing the famous son of Nazis engaging in some concentration camp orgy, and Steve Coll's The Bin Ladens, which I am currently reading. Coll's book is like an epic Russian novel you can't help but follow to its tragic end. The book is amazing for many reasons, and one is the way in which it describes Osama Bin Laden in terms of his lifelong search for a father figure to replace his own father, who died when he was young. Jacob Weisberg's book, "The Bush Tragedy," takes a similar approach, exploring Bush's personality as a reaction to his distant, waspish father. This triumvurate of seemingly unrelated psychological probings, plus an offhand comment from Tim Noah, led me to an insight about great men and the burdens they inherit through the paternal line: Osama's daddy complex led him to blow up the World Trade Center, and Bush's led him to launch the Iraq war. Compared to that, Moseley's method of working out his Oedipal issues seems pretty harmless.
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Reading about the current trial of civil rights leader James Bevel, I am experiencing the same conundrum I've always felt about Bill Clinton's piggish behavior toward his wife. Bevel was a companion of Martin Luther King and helped organize the Freedom Ride in 1960. Bevel's significant role in the movement, with his wife Diane Nash, was beautifully documented in Taylor Branch's biographies of Dr. King. But, according to trial testimony yesterday in rural Virginia, Bevel repeatedly sexually abused at least one of his nine daughters for many years. Bill Brubaker wrote in the Washington Post today, "The incest charge was prompted by a discussion some of his grown daughters had at a family reunion about experiences with their father when they were younger." The man was a hero but if the allegations are true, his personal acts are unforgivable. Apparently, at least one of his daughters finally agrees.
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Actually, Emily—didn't Hillary get the idea that it would be OK to complain about her hair from none other than Mike Kinsley himself? Last week, he pointed out (in his Slate column, of course) that male candidates can sleep a whole extra half-hour every night because they don't have to primp. The article was frighteningly similar to Hillary's comments several days later.
Not suggesting Hillary reads Kinsley every week (though who knows!), but I'd be pretty surprised if someone on her staff didn't notice that article. Although it's not Tuzla II (or even another Northern Ireland fib), there was something rather phony about Hillary's out-of-the-blue lament. Would it have occurred to her to complain in public about "the time it takes to get ready," unless an important (male) columnist had not suggested it first?
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While everyone has been busy analyzing the campaign of the first viable female presidential candidate and gossiping about rumors of a possible female vice presidential candidate; while we've got women running the House of Representatives and telling John McCain what to do about the economy, Yahoo has been cooking up a site that focuses on our interests: Yahoo for Chix. I mean, "Shine." And all I can say is, "Wow." I mean, "Ewww."
I admit, I read the occasional InStyle, if only to look at what clothes I'd buy if still in possession of my pre-childbearing waistline (slimmer) and budget (fatter). And I am, after all, writing from Slate's very own no-boys-allowed blog. But the problem with women's-only content is not the concept. It's the execution. And Shine comes off looking like all women care about is sex, shoes, and "surprisingly cute wall decals."
I don't come to women-focused media outlets necessarily looking for the latest on Iraq. And sure, I like sex, and I like shoes. But there's an enormous middle ground that sites like Shine don't make use of. Rising food prices affect every trip I make to the grocery store. The housing crisis has me worried about my home's value. How the hell did no one notice that hundreds of women and children were being treated like chattel in Texas? You can take almost any front-page story and cast it in a way that's meaningful to women.
But at least the site doesn't totally ignore the news of the world. There is a tiny area that links to news headlines, and it's called the "Cheat Sheet." In essence, "We know you are too dumb to care what's going on in the world, so here's some news to help you carry on a conversation with your husband when he tires of hearing you talk about Rob Lowe's nanny."
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