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Lloyd Grove interviews conservative rabblerouser Michelle Malkin
for the Daily Beast and is surprised to find that she is "vulnerable"
and gets upset when she gets death threats from readers. I would
imagine that Malkin herself would object to the framing of this
article: She's an intentional provocateur who can dish it out as well
as she can take it. So why does Grove need to paint her as a delicate
widdle girl? ... (Read more in DoubleX.)
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Jess, Emily and Dayo, I saw Tina Brown's column on Hillary through a slightly different lens. Brown is writing The Clinton Chronicles, a book about Hillary and Bill, reportedly due out in 2010. The subject makes sense after Brown's terrific, dishy bio of Lady Di. The Clintons, after all, are our messy royalty. (The book deal was announced in January 2008, back when it must have seemed like Hillary would still be crowned our next Commander in Chief.)
Given this, Brown probably has some inside dope on what the Clintons are really thinking. She could be channeling Bill's thoughts about his wife. (Maybe The Big Dog is tired of being muzzled.) She could also be trying to raise Hillary's profile in advance of the book. Or, maybe Brown is just trying to do Hill a favor, by casting a little deserved limelight her way. (Read more in Double X.)
Photograph of Hillary Clinton by Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images.
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This week's column from Meghan McCain is my favorite thus far. While her previous installments were solidly naive, this week's manages to be that and hilarious. As it turns out, the senator's daughter is on Twitter, and guess who's following her Twitter feed? Karl Rove. And that gives Meghan the creeps!
"Karl Rove follows me on Twitter," McCain reveals. "That's creepy." Surely, Rove on Twitter is a creepy concept. Does he really have so little to do with his time these days that he feels compelled to send messages like these out into the void? "Joining Bill O'Reilly tonight," he tweets. Not exactly breaking news. But there's more. "Got to the airport with a lot of time to spare." Who says Rove's post-Bush career is not without thrills? My favorite is the one where he discloses he's getting his shoes shined. Fascinating.
So, what's the probs with Karl's tweets, Megs? Apparently, she finds them "disingenuous." Possibly even written by a ghost-twitterer, she ruminates! (I doubt it. Nobody could come across as dull and unself-aware as Rove-on-Rove.) Therefore, she concludes, it's time for folks like herself to "take Twitter back from the creepy people." Employing her usual writing style, in which she expresses some random thought and never really unpacks that random thought, it remains unclear exactly why she finds Rove following her "creepy." In all likelihood, it's another one of her attempts to set conservatives like herself, who find themselves attempting to blindly steer forward a floundering party, apart from the icky old guys like Rove. The problem is that she and Rove have more in common than she comprehends. After all, she's just a Karl Rove creep in sorority girl clothing.
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Meghan McCain. Bless her heart. From the side ponytail to the fake catfight, she had us all fooled. We thought she was a dingbat. In reality, she's clever like a fox. Writing a column for the Daily Beast? Everyone scratched their heads. She's so ... vapid. So ... devoid of ideas. Was there something we were missing? After her weak attempt to draw Ann Coulter into a "debate" that even Coulter wouldn't stoop to partake in, McCain has finally made her writerly mission clear. She's looking to get laid!
This week's installment reads like a masturbatory reverie in homage to (gasp!) our youngest (swoon!) congressman, Aaron Schock (insert "shocker" joke). Mr. Illinois is Mini-McCain's "GOP's House Hottie"! ZOMG, Megs, I am, like, so with you on this one! Frankly, the Schockster had me at that photo of him greased up by the pool, browner than fried pig fat, basking in the shade of a faceless young woman's hot pink ta-tas, but Meghan closed the deal with her 1,500-word essay on how he's, like, totally smart, and also supergreat, which is, like, superawesome for the GOP!!! Yay! Schock in 2012. Or whatever.
According to McCain, who only figured out who Schock is because those half-naked shots of him appeared on TMZ, Schock is, well, interesting. As she puts it: "Schock’s rapid rise to the national level is, if nothing else, interesting, especially given the serious soul-searching the Republican Party is experiencing." So, he's interesting because he's ... interesting? I am intrigued.
Apparently, McCain likes Schock because: a) he's young, and her dad was old and that was bad, so Schock being young is good, b) he's not a radical, just like Meghan!, which is good, because the Republican Party needs all the help it can get at this point, c) he totally understands the power of the Internet (see: half-naked photos), which can be bad, but which can also be good, or, as Schock opines of the American people with an eloquence that suggests McCain may have found her intellectual match: "They watch pop culture, but they are also voters." Obvs.
Clearly, I hadn't given Meghan McCain enough credit. It never occurred to me to use my platform here on The XX Factor to get laid by some guy in Congress. I'll have to work on that.
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While we're on the subject of teen sex, I thought I'd raise this post from Constantino Diaz-Duran at the Daily Beast. He describes the case of two 17-year-olds from Sheboygan, Wisc., who were arrested for having sex with their 14-year-old significant others. Same town, same age difference, same assistant district attorney. But one of the 17-year-olds was charged with a class C felony (maximum sentence: 40 years in prison), and the other was charged with a misdemeanor (maximum sentence: nine months in jail).
Why the disparity? In one case, it was a 17-year-old guy sleeping with his 14-year-old girlfriend; in the other, the sexes were reversed.
Diaz-Duran asks if the "boy was a victim of gender bias." Certainly it seems that his gender influenced the charge. But maybe that's as it should be. Yes, a 17-year-old female is capable of causing harm to an innocent 14-year-old with her sexuality, just as is her male counterpart. But men tend to be bigger, stronger, and have more parts that they can force into you. That's a crucial difference, and one that explains to some extent why rape laws would (and should) treat the sexes differently.
Gender discrimination aside, statutory rape laws do seem problematic. Obviously we should protect youngsters from the Humbert Humberts of the world. But what about teens whose sexual relations are totally consentual, like the case of Genarlow Wilson? (And yes, I do think teenagers are emotionally capable of coming to such mutual decisions.) In those situations, it seems like the statutory rape card is just a way for angry parents to convince themselves that their own child is pure by pinning the dirty sex act on someone else. And too often, those angry parents may be reacting to something other than actual predatory behavior, such as a boyfriend they don't approve of.
I'm curious, especially in the context of yesterday's discussion about the balance of raising kids who are safe but independent, how others—especially Emily B. and Dahlia—feel about statutory rape laws. Can't there be a better way of protecting against genuine predators without ensnaring teens engaged in consentual sex?
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Noreen, I share your obsession with all things Meghan McCain. And while I agree with you that being a Carrie Bradshaw also-ran perhaps is not the best career move for young Meg, I wonder what else she could be doing at this point that's more fulfilling. Since she interned at Newsweek, she is probably interested in a career in journalism, and as we all know, even entry level jobs in magazines are in short supply. Sadly, overshares on the Daily Beast may be her best bet. I found her first-person dating piece more compelling than most of the Bradshavian drivel that gets published. At least she has had a life experience (being the daughter of a failed presidential candidate) that's unique, unlike certain other young female Daily Beast contributors.
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The media adventures of Meghan McCain have become a bit of a hobbyhorse for me, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when four e-mails showed up in my inbox with a link to this Daily Beast article she wrote about the difficulties of dating in the wake of her father's failed presidential campaign. McCain's first article for the Tina Brown startup, a semi-reported piece on how poorly the GOP has adopted to technology, was a strong start and a subject upon which she has a certain purchase. Her second effort, an "exclusive" sit-down interview with, um, her mommy, had the whiff of seventh-grade civics project writ embarrassingly large, but I guess journalists might as well use the access they get, right? (Maybe she just interpreted the old chestnut "If your mother tells you she loves, you, check it out" as a story assignment.) But now she's turned to writing this "Looking for Mr. Far Right" column, wherein she moans that "One extreme fan of my mother's recently told me I could be ‘his Cindy.' And then asked me if I ever wore pearls because they probably would look as good on me as they do on my mother. No, I'm not kidding. Any guy that has a fetish for older women in pantsuits and large pearls obviously only finds my last name attractive about me."
Oh, Meghan. I feel for her, I really do. That's weird and terribly awkward, as I imagine much of her life must be. But still, writing about how your political dad kills your love life probably isn't the best way to distance yourself from that particular issue or establish an independent identity. It sure is a great way to get page views and stay in the spotlight, though.
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