The XX Factor: What women really think.

Fashion Statement

Willa, I tried clicking through that Costume Institute Gala slide show, and got ... bored. You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that I am no one's idea of fashionable. There are many reasons I live up here in the land of the bluestockings. Among them: Here, I can get away with dressing in a combination of Goodwill, Gap, and Ann Taylor (that last saved for my high-end items: black pants).

But flipping through the frippery did make me think of a film event I attended this winter at Brandeis, featuring Alan Alda and Kate Beckinsale—who, you will also not be shocked to know, is the opposite of my type. (Cf: Rachel Maddow.) It drove me crazy how Beckinsale kept wriggling in her seat, showing off her death-defying heels, legs, and all-but-exposed breasts from first one angle and then another. We've got the point, I texted dryly to my prosecutor. She should sit still now and let my hero Alan Alda speak. My gal texted right back, "Your job is being smart. Her job is being beautiful. Let her do her job."

The U.S. "Teabagging" Party?

I love the fact that the word teabagging has dipped its way into the cable news lexicon. For those of you who are fortunate enough not to know the original meaning of teabagging, you won't find it in a regular dictionary, and I will not retype it here, but if you are curious, you can find several definitions at UrbanDictionary.com. Be forewarned: Make sure you are not eating or drinking when you read it.

The term fell into our mouths more than a month ago, when the Republicans decided they were going to protest Obama's tax policies by symbolically re-enacting events from the Boston Tea Party. Now there are several planned protests taking place across the country, and to report on them, newscasters, commentators, and cable show hosts have been forced to take in this mouthful of a word.

I've heard it from Jon Stewart, David Shuster (sitting in for Keith Olbermann), and a poor blushing Rachel Maddow.

Of course, this is how our language evolves, and in this case, how an "unacceptable" word becomes an "acceptable" one. But, in the meantime, we are allowed to giggle a little, aren't we?

And it gave me an idea. The Republican Party, which has been foundering since even before the election of President Barack Obama as it struggles to find new leadership, new direction, new ideas, a new identity, and new members, should maybe start with a new nickname. The could easily shed the "Party of No" label if they began to refer to themselves as "the U.S. Teabagging Party." Catchy, right? Sounds like a ball to me.

XX Factor's Political SAT

Some of the other "XX Factor" women and I took that interactive quiz Abby mentioned from the Center for American Progress in order to find out how progressive we are. Turns out, we are quite the bunch of liberals. (I know: shocker). Twelve of us took the quiz, and on a scale of 0 to 400 (0 is the least progressive; 400 is the most progressive), we came out with an average score of 245. To put that in context, the mean score for liberal Democrats is 247 and 160.6 for conservative Republicans. Our median is somewhere in the mid-290s; our high is 313, and our low is 112.

Abby, I don't know what Meghan McCain's score on the progressiveness scale would be, but here's an interesting tidbit on Ms. McCain from Think Progress. Apparently this morning on Fox and Friends, Meghan said that she thought the earmarks in the spending bill were "disappointing and scary" while she found the prospect of a second stimulus package nonsensical. This is in direct contrast to what Meghan said last night on The Rachel Maddow Show (bold from Think Progress):

McCAIN: Spending freeze? You know, econ—economic things, I said this last night on Hannity, I said is my—I didn’t even take econ in college. I don’t completely understand it so I’d hate to make a comment one way or the other. That’s—truly of all the things—I keep reading and I just don’t understand it.

She seems to understand it just fine when she's criticizing Democrats! 

Meghan McCain: I'm a Barbie Girl, in a Republican World

Thanks, Jessica, for the YouTube clip of Meghan McCain on Maddow's show last night. Now can I have my IQ points back? From start to finish, it's a profile in Republican idiocy, from mini McCain offering herself up as some type of towheaded neo-poster girl for the right to her faltering faux-platform that consists solely of her picking a fight with Ann Coulter. That's like picking a fight with Hitler. I mean: What? Are we supposed to be impressed she doesn't like the She-Devil? McCain takes Republicans to task for being too extreme and offers her idea of an alternative: "Be more moderate and reach out to people." That's. So. Deep. What's delightful is to see her paired with such a brilliant interviewer. Every word that comes out of Maddow's mouth only serves to make the New Poster Child of the Republican Party appear even stupider. What's a tougher call is that McCain and her commentaries are so insipid, her presence begs for the question: Who's worse? Meghan McCain or Ann Coulter? Tough call, in my opinion. At least Coulter has a brain. What she does with it is the problem.

Meghan McCain on Maddow: Delightful or Disaster?

Speaking of Facebook, or at least the Facebook generation, Meghan McCain was on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, ostensibly to discuss her burgeoning feud with Ann Coulter. For those of you who missed it, Meghan McCain wrote an article for the Daily Beast called "My Beef With Ann Coulter." Her "beef" is that Ann Coulter "perpetuates negative stereotypes" of Republicans. Not exactly a revolutionary screed, as others have pointed out. 

Meghan is trying valiantly to revive the image of the Republican Party, but like Bristol Palin before her, Meghan doesn't exactly have the political chops to do so. She freely admits that she doesn't really understand the financial crisis. What I don't understand is why the Republican Party can't find a smart young woman to represent their movement who does understand the recession. Perhaps someone without a political legacy! Anyway, John Cook at Gawker says that Meghan "made a fool of herself." While I think she was short on substance, I don't think Meghan looks like a fool. She's incredibly poised and camera-ready, and compared to Bristol she sounds like a rocket scientist. But, again: The bar is pretty low. Watch the clip below and tell me what you think.

As Butch as She Wants To Be

A guest post from Slate intern Margaret Johnson:  

"After Maddow,” Michael Calderone’s post on Politico this morning, talks about a new program being developed for the MSNBC time slot following Rachel Maddow’s hugely successful 9 p.m. show, but the headline got me thinking about where we are as a culture “after Maddow.” In other words, how has Maddow changed the way lesbians are portrayed on TV?

Every night she enters homes no lesbian has before, and does so as a self-described "butch dyke," albeit with a slight coating of eye shadow and lip gloss to help the medicine go down. On the one hand the mere existence of her show indicates a continuing trend toward putting women on camera who aren’t what Maddow once called "Barbie girls," and that’s awesome. But there’s also a strong possibility that Maddow’s adoring viewers will think she is what all lesbians look like, or at least the smart, successful ones. Through no fault of Maddow’s, other than the visibility her talent and success have brought her, she is perpetuating the idea there’s no such thing as an out lesbian who looks more, well, like a girl.

Sure, the L Word has provided a counter-image, but an extreme one—you’ll never find that many smokin’ hot femme lesbians in one community (if you do, tell me where). There’s also a counterpoint in the simultaneously lovely and badass Portia de Rossi. She played a feminine lesbian acupuncturist opposite Joely Richardson on Nip/Tuck’s 2007-08 season and also appears regularly in the home movies her wife Ellen Degeneres airs on her show, which I admit to finding totally awww-inducing. Still, I wonder how long it will be after and because of Maddow before we see more out female journalists on television, especially any as feminine as Maddow chooses not to be.

RU Ready? That Depends: How Voting Is Like Dating

Just a year ago, the burning questions before us were whether we as a nation were ready to elect a black president, and whether we were ready for a woman in the White House. And in a sense, what we learned since then was yes and yes. Because even though Hillary Clinton didn't win the election, her supporters so clearly saw her gender as a plus that it would be hard to argue that she would have won had she been a man.

But in a larger sense, I think what we learned is that these weren't ever the right questions, because it's only when the right person shows up, at the right time, that we're ever ready to elect him or her. Just like that's when we're ready to marry. (And yes, I do see everything relationally; you were expecting maybe a sports analogy?) You know that guy you dated for 8 years who just wasn't ready to commit -- until three minutes after you broke up? On paper, Americans were never going to be ready for a Democrat without a hint of a southern accent whose middle name was Hussein. But then we met him, got to know him, and found to our own surprise that we felt differently; it was a go after all.

That's how it will happen with a woman, and an Indian-American, and any other person of hyphenated heritage. (Maybe someday, we will even fall for one of those Godless Americans Elizabeth Dole referred to in her final campaign ad.) We prefer to look at candidates as the sum of their policy priorities; to do otherwise would be to suggest that voters are what Rachel Maddow would call ‘post-rational.' But voting for president is a decision of the heart as much as the head - a reality that Republicans seized on long ago, and that Democrats - or one Democrat, anyway -- now seem to understand, too.

Maddow About You

So a little over a month ago in this space, a few of us wished Rachel Maddow luck with her new MSNBC nightly talk show. And boy, has she had luck, or made her own. Today’s NYT reports that in the 25 days her show has been on the air, it’s doubled viewership in that 9 p.m. time slot. She’s keeping 90 percent of Keith Olbermann’s audience from the previous slot—and he has the second-biggest audience in cable news.

Speaking for myself, I can say that in the few weeks it’s been on the air, Maddow’s show has quietly become a staple of my unwholesomely large media diet. I put my kid to bed, make dinner, and watch Rachel Maddow (or at least have her on in the background while surfing the Web for more political news. Like an addict knowing I’ll be forced into rehab come Nov. 4, I’ve just given in at this point.) Her show still has some kinks to work out. It’s too indebted to airheaded cable-news conventions like the spin-doctor interview (who cares what paid campaign flacks have to say on either side?) and the dreaded celebrity-gossip “expert” (both Olbermann and Matthews regularly host these types, and both visibly recoil from them. Just kill the segment!). But as Maddow settles in, she’s quickly evolving into the liveliest voice of the left-leaning media, as well as the only major cable-news host who doesn't seem constantly on the brink of an apoplectic fit.

I think I’m not alone in Maddow love. Profiles of her are appearing everywhere, like this interview with GQ, in which she cheerfully identifies herself as “a big lesbian who looks like a man,” and this "Domains" piece from the last NYT Sunday magazine. I usually hate “Domains”—a weekly feature about the living space of a famous person that seems designed to incite lifestyle envy among readers—but I genuinely wanted to pull a chair up to Maddow’s kitchen table in Northampton, Mass., right next to the reflector-holding garden squirrel, and have old-school mixed drinks with her and her girlfriend. And mind you, I’m straight (though seeing RM in her cute civilian duds on The Tonight Show, I sort of wonder why …).

Gay for Rachel

The End of the Snarly Barbie?

Props to Rachel Maddow for scoring her own primetime show. And props to MSNBC for recognizing and rewarding monster talent. Maddow is whip-smart, funny, original, and living proof that women needn't spit and hiss to succeed on TV. May the road rise up to meet her.