The XX Factor

Only Caitlin Flanagan Could Make Mark Sanford Look Good

2009-07-02T21:18:00Z

A guest post from Linda Hirshman: With a cover story by working mother scourge Caitlin Flanagan, next week’s Time Magazine takes the occasion of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s staggeringly banal adultery to tell America that “Marriage Matters.” Why does marriage matter? Not of course because of the harm to the deer-in-the-headlights brigade—Silda Wall Spitzer, Jenny Sanford, etc. That would put Flanagan on the side of the adult females. placeAd2(commercialNode,'midarticleflex',false,'') Marriage...(read more)

Hello, Young Lovers

2009-07-02T20:42:00Z

Jessica, my husband and I have been married for 15 years. Last weekend, we drove from Maryland to New Jersey and during the many hours of crawling in traffic we wrote a rap song together about the Delaware Toll Plaza. We stay up too late talking to each other. We hold hands at the movies. Since we're in our fifties,sure we've talked about who's going to get to pull each other's plug—but eventually being able to do this honor is not why we're together. So do not despair that marriage is an enterprise...(read more)

The Rise of the Empty Nesters

2009-07-02T20:15:00Z

Speaking of being bummed out, I felt oddly blue after reading Mimi Swartz’s excellent piece in The Daily Beast about empty-nesters in the Obama administration. Swartz, who also writes for Double X about being an empty nester herself, talks about (and to) White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, and also offers up WH Social Secretary Desiree Rogers and First Lady Chief of Staff Susan Sher, among others, as collective proof that professional life isn't over for women—in some ways it's just beginning—when...(read more)

Questionable Dataset of the Day

2009-07-02T19:39:00Z

Yes, I understand that Internet surveys are hopeless, and yes, I understand that 448,000 lonely hearts do not a random sample make, but still I ask: What is the deal with this OK Cupid map of debauchery by state? ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .) Read More... -->...(read more)

Caitlin Flanagan's Defense of Marriage Bums Me Out

2009-07-02T18:54:00Z

It's been a rough couple of weeks for marriage. First, Sandra Tsing Loh came out swinging against the institution in the Atlantic (and we discussed it ad nauseam ), and simultaneously Mark Sanford and John Ensign and the Gosselins paraded their broken relationships in front of the nation. In Time , Caitlin Flanagan takes up for long-lasting unions in an essay called "Why Marriage Matters ." Flanagan's defense of marriage can be boiled down to: The reasons to get married are to raise children and...(read more)

Take a Coffee Break with Jimmy McNulty

2009-07-02T16:39:00Z

Carte Noire, a British coffee brand, has a new online video campaign directed smack at cubicle-dwelling, former English majors (i.e., me). Every week, a hottie actor of the Anglo persuasion reads a love scene from a new or classic novel. Here's Dominic West—Jimmy McNulty of The Wire —reading the scene from Pride and Prejudice in which Mr. Darcy declares his love for Elizabeth Bennet ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

A New Day for New Delhi's Gays

2009-07-02T14:02:00Z

Good news to wake up to: New Delhi's highest court has decriminalized homosexuality —for New Delhians, at least. The law overturns Section 377 of India's penal code, a colonial-era statute that prohibits "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal" ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Heath Ledger Profile Shows How Fame Can Destroy the Psyche

2009-07-02T13:38:00Z

Sara, you said that childhood stardom was such a destructive force for Michael Jackson , and you were right. But the current issue of Vanity Fair has a cover story on Heath Ledger that shows for a sensitive adult, stardom ain't all its cracked up to be, either. This isn't a new idea: That's why "the price of fame" is such a cliched phrase. But Peter Biskind's story of the Ledger demise is particularly heart-stomping, since Heath was so young, so talented, and being a movie star really did ruin every...(read more)

The Car Seat Taboo

2009-07-02T11:17:00Z

Palin is back among us not only as a God-loving runner (is that a strange shot with the flag , or what?) but also as a hard-charging mama bear. In Todd Purdham's Vanity Fair profile, which Dayo and Jess dissected earlier this week, are new tidbits about Troopergate, Palin's corrupt-seeming axing of Walt Monegan, who was Alaska's head of the Department of Public Safety. My favorite: Twelve days before he was fired, Monegan sent Palin an e-mail telling her that a state legislator had reported that...(read more)

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

2009-07-02T08:45:00Z

Emily , I agree with you that Jenny Sanford should stop talking to the media. When a husband describes his affair with another woman not as a regrettable indiscretion but as “a love story” and refers to said woman as his “soul mate” and to his wife as someone he’s trying to fall back in love with, does it not beg the question: Why is Jenny Sanford trying to save her marriage?... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Sarah Palin: A Woman of Many Rocks and Few Skills

2009-07-01T22:27:00Z

I too got a huge kick out of the Sarah Palin interview in Runner’s World , Jess. I’ll give her a break on the cheeseball factor, since I’ve found that it really is hard to talk about running without sounding totally boring and preachy. But you’re right, she was preaching more than the gospel of endurance. In addition to the “faith in God” line you called out , there was also her weird aside about calling on your rock ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Sarah Palin on God and her "Throbbing" Thighs

2009-07-01T21:29:00Z

Anyone who still thinks Sarah Palin isn't trying to use her enviable physique to her political advantage should read this Runner's World profile in which Palin says, "I knew my thighs were going to just throb."... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Jenny and Silda, Coming to a TV Near You

2009-07-01T20:23:00Z

The moment when the political wife stands (or doesn’t stand) on stage while her husband soberly confesses that he could not, try as he might, keep it in his pants, has proven time and time again to be a moment of high drama. This fall, it will also be the basis for a television show. Jezebel points to the trailer for CBS’s forthcoming The Good Wife , a drama starring Julianna Margulies (aka ER ’s Nurse Hathaway) as a mother whose politician husband (played by Chris Noth aka Mr. Big) has up and pulled...(read more)

Honey, Can I Please See My Mistress

2009-07-01T20:01:00Z

Hanna , perhaps the most enduring lesson of the Mark Sanford unraveling is that when your marriage falls apart, don't call in the AP reporters. I generally side with Ruth Marcus and have been pro-Jenny Sanford. But the danger in claiming the moral high ground is that the air starts to get thin, and the lack of oxygen makes you say stupid things ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Is Jenny Sanford a Model or a Disaster?

2009-07-01T16:23:00Z

The Op-Ed Divas have a showdown today about Jenny Sanford ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Waking Up in Honduras

2009-07-01T12:28:00Z

I don’t know that it gives me any special insight into the situation, but I was in Copan, Honduras, the night one head of state was replaced with another. The military had apparently cut the power and water supply, and walking to breakfast, a friend and I saw some armed soldiers jogging in the distance. But waking up in a Central American country and finding that the lights don’t work, the shower won’t turn on, and some armed men are lining up outside isn’t really cause for surprise. I thought nothing...(read more)

The Sarah Palin Saga: Why Doesn't She Get it?

2009-07-01T12:22:00Z

Like Jessica, I devoured Todd Purdum's blistering report in the current issue of Vanity Fair about Sarah Palin that draws on sniping from former John McCain aides, shrugging statements of disownment from acquaintances in Wasilla, and sorrowful head-shaking from the Republican intelligentsia. The wide-ranging “profile” of the woman who almost stood second in line to the presidency pre-empts the forthcoming book that netted the Alaskan governor seven figures. And, having undergone the saga of the 2008...(read more)

White Men and Asian "Babes"

2009-06-30T22:01:00Z

Over at Slate , Johann Hari has a fascinating essay on The East, the West, and Sex , the "strange new book"—Hari's words—by journalist Richard Bernstein, which details the centuries-old history of Western men seeking out a little strange in the East ... (Read more at DoubleX.com .)...(read more)

Sarah Palin's Uneasy Relationship with the Truth

2009-06-30T21:24:00Z

There are many things that I find deeply upsetting about Sarah Palin. But in the new Vanity Fair assessment of Palin 's current place in the political universe, the most disturbing thing Todd Purdum reveals is her inability to discern or care about the truth: At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to ... (Read more at DoubleX.com...(read more)

Julia Childs' Height Was Not a Handicap

2009-06-30T20:38:00Z

A guest post from Arianne Cohen , author of The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From On High . At every public appearance I make, someone raises his hand and says something like, “It’s much harder to be a tall woman than a tall man, right?” This point of view was echoed in the current issue of The New Yorker : A story about the director Nora Ephron opens with a quote about being tall from Meryl Streep, who is playing 6-foot-2 Julia Child in the forthcoming movie Julie & Julia . "I mean, it's...(read more)