We live in a post-feminist era

HAHAHAHAHAHA! I'd like to say this surprised me, but it doesn't, other than that he would say it so openly. Interior life? Personal agency? feh! You ladies just brighten up the room!

Failure of responsibility

A former journalist takes those colleagues to task for failing to cover climate change as the crisis it is.

In the face of this situation — as much as it pains me to say this — you are failing. Your so-called "objectivity," your bloodless impartiality, are nothing but a convenient excuse for what amounts to an inexcusable failure to tell the most urgent truth we've ever faced.

I sympathize that it's hard to create and sustain a sense of urgency -- crises like Katrina managed coverage for, what, a couple of months? -- but this is the lives of our kids, the future of our species, and time is running out. We *need* to get everybody scared and not take the focus off the issue for today's minor news; unfortunately, the business model of the press doesn't fit well with scaring and depressing everybody. Political leadership, anyone?

(via Medley)

Modern gladiators

I love football. I don't know if it's all the Thanksgiving afternoons with the family menfolk digesting turkey in front of the TV, or the effects of college football and its harmless rivalries, or the sense of a whole region rooting together for a common (pro) team, but somewhere I got the bug, really enjoy watching, and we have even gotten Speck interested in Sunday afternoon games.

But in recent years all the coverage of concussions has made me more and more uncomfortable with this pastime -- not just news of acute injuries, but recurrent patterns of low-level head trauma that add up to early Parkinson's, personality changes, and middle-age dementia (leaving their wives and girlfriends scrambling to hold things together). Many of these players are literally giving up the rest of their lives for these few years of glory (and some for pretty slim glory, as much of the damage accrues to unsung players like punt returners and linemen).

So I watch, and I cheer, but every time there's a really hard hit, or a man stays on the ground, or the replay shows that grim neck-snap, I feel my stomach turn a little, a pang of uncertainty about whether I should watch. The idea that any fans, however incensed, would actually cheer an injury leaves me totally floored. Am glad that this team-mate took his own fans (and the public) to task for that occasion, but honestly, are they meaningfully worse than those of us whose fanship supports the sport in general? I wish I felt more clean about it all.

Grimly apt

Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech isn't freely available in video form because of the choices of its legal owners (his family and Sony Entertainment). You'd think that they'd want everybody to watch it on MLK Day, what with the national holiday and all, but apparently keeping history alive costs $20, man.

(via Ezra Klein)

To hell in a handbasket

I apparently just read, seethe, and file the links away for some imaginary future date when I'll have lots of spare time to analyze, ponder, and blog. But that's not happenin'! So here's a record-breaking heap of links from the last three months, that pain me to varying degrees and/or foreshadow the end of the American experiment:

I. Politics

• Oh, What Did You Think Would Happen? -- Governor Christie renegs on a major political deal, unashamedly
  
  
• The First Amendment, Upside Down -- campaign finance *stifles* speech?!?
  
  
• Mysterious Firm Gives $1 Million To Pro-Romney Group, Closes Shop
  
  
• Why the Press Loves Jon Huntsman but Ignores Ron Paul -- The media is fascinated by protest candidates who critique their own parties, but it marginalizes those who attack the establishment [fascinating!!]
  
  
• Conservative pundits grapple with ‘anti-science’ charge, flail
  
  
• Wis. Official To DMV Employees: Don't Offer People Free Voter-ID Cards Unless They Ask (no reason to *encourage* civic participation by the poor!)
  
  
• When Ronald Reagan Was President, There Was A Soviet Union And A Cold War -- but now mindless conformity is all the GOP needs
  
  
• Dennis G. Jacobs: Case study in judicial pathology -- more turning the Constitution inside out in the name of Security...
  

II. Economy

• Social Security provides the majority of income for three-fifths of Americans age 65+, but hey! let's whack at it and keep those old folks scramblin'!
  
  
• Related: We know how to reduce poverty among seniors
  
  
• Bill Gross: Deficit reduction can — and should — wait -- even big Wall Streeters can see the obvious! why not our political leaders?
  
  
• British Economy, After Austerity, at Zero Growth in the Past Nine Months -- more evidence that our approach is a deadly one
  
  
• Public special ed employee has $0 paycheck after health insurance deductions -- ah, but the public sector is pampered!
  
  
• A rising hunger among children -- eventually a lack of money affects nutrition and these children's futures
  
  
• The Embarrassment of the Poverty Rate -- is that it gets higher as we throw up our hands
  
  
• The Price of Rural Life -- disproportionately dependent on national support
  
  
• Big oil companies make huge profits with taxpayer support but cut jobs anyway
  

III. Health Care

• How our two-tiered healthcare system hurts kids -- wait longer for appointments and care than identical symptoms with private insurance
  
  
• Perversity -- public health interests and the financial interest of hospitals are often at odds, showing why capitalism is unlikely to solve this one
  

IV. Other stuff

• All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup -- American workers getting squeezed from both ends
  
  
• Guilt Through Algorithmic Association -- when what people Google starts affecting your life or your safety (really scary!)
  
  
• Even married monogamous women are dirty sluts who deserve cancer now -- when a vaccine becomes a political football
  
  
• Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas -- when you hear that "when 10% hold an unshakeable belief" is the threshold, it makes more sense of the craziness that passes for Conventional Wisdom these days...
  
  
• Return of the Bug-Eyed Bachmann -- not so funny when you clue into the gender politics of such images -- more here.
  
  
• A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not "Crazy" -- more on how women's opinions and feelings get dismissed
  
  
• Finally, really pulling lemons out of the lemonade pitcher: Ugandans say they were beaten and forced from homes to make room for carbon credit forest. Of course...
  
  

Wake up and smell the crazy

I'm tired of the Republicans holding our country (and especially its poor and elderly) hostage to their every crazy economic whim, and I agree with Krugman that the fact that the commentariat seems to have just noticed the extremism doesn't mean that it's new.

A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.

Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.

I also agree with Krugman that this craziness has spread in large part because there has been no cost associated with it -- no outcry, no push-back, not even really much negotiation against it. Perhaps the uncrazy just dismissed such things, forgetting that repetition leads to establishment as truth. Anyway, am happy to see any amount of debunking and disgrace that can be mustered, but a little pessimistic that we can manage such before the ship of state hits one iceberg or another...

(via Eschaton)

Link dump: latest outrages edition

• Ohio Town Sees Public Job as Only Route to Middle Class -- too bad that their legislators are trying to gut that option too
  
  
• House Agriculture committee: Cut food assistance, but keep farm subsidies Sigh.
  
  
• Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes -- unreal.
  
  
• Republicans want 'In God We Trust' emblazoned on 9,000 federal buildings, cost could top $100m -- of course, see the two previous...
  
  
• Retired General: Republicans Making Nuclear Terrorism More Likely by cutting our programs to help countries like Russia get rid of heaps of nuclear materials
  
  
• Cuts Weren't Enough -- GOP plans to phase out Medicare, so they can stop being annoyed at how successful and popular it is
  
  
• The Death and Life of the Democratic Party -- the withering of unions has pushed the party into the arms of big business, leaving it torn about its principles; see also this cartoon. Sigh.
  
  
• Boehner’s Tough Spot Hides Democratic Ideological Giveaway -- more evidence that the Democrats no longer even see themselves as standing for something
  
  
• Epic irony: Mideast moves forward while America moves backward -- a grim compilation of the war on women's rights, in particular. Related: No justice on earth until there is justice for women -- seems an obvious point
  
  
• Obama administration curtails rights for terror suspects -- same as the old boss?? See also US military's "gratuitously harsh treatment" of Manning condemned by NYT, WaPo, LAT, ACLU and Clinton To Congress: Obama Would Ignore Your War Resolutions -- it all makes me want to cry.
  
  
• TOM THE DANCING BUG: U.S. Bombs U.S. Schools -- kind of sums up my frustrations with our involvement in Libya
  
  
• How a lie enters the political bloodstream -- important piece about how journalists set the terms of acceptable versus fringe debate

  What's key to understand about this model is that what ends up in the various spheres has very little to do with empirical or logical merit. These are not truth categories, they are categories of practice, shaped by social forces. In other words, they are deeply, intrinsically political, though "objective" reporters seem almost incapable of recognizing that they are engaging in political choices.

• Weak Job Market Forces Maine Legislator to Leave the State -- their legislature is part-time, so reps really "feel the pain" just like their constituents!
  
  
• Speaking of Maine, Maine Governor Orders Mural Depicting Labor History Removed From Labor Department -- these guys really take Orwell to heart!
  
  
• Who Screwed the Middle Class?

  A lot has happened over the past 30 years, but if you're looking for a single political sea change that's had the biggest impact on middle class wages—more important than union decline, more important than NAFTA, more important than the end of Glass-Steagall—it's the political consensus that underlies the Fed's reluctance to allow labor markets to stay tight enough to generate wage increases in the real economy. And it's something we're seeing all over again right now, as the DC chattering classes have almost unanimously decided that inflation is our real enemy right now, even though core inflation is running around 1% and unemployment is still near 9%.

• Beware the Vultures -- our policing of parents is making their lives almost unworkable.
  
  
• TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation -- some have shown 10 times more radiation release than we've been promised so often is harmless. But you can trust the TSA!!

Giant pre-vacation link-dump

Infuriating:

• The New Obama Budget (by Krugman)

  ...listening to the administration, you’d think that discretionary spending, not health care, is at the heart of our long-run deficit problems — and you’d also think that the job of rescuing the economy was done, with unemployment still at 9 percent.

  More on this, in a different form, here.
  
  
• Krugman: Republicans want to "eat America’s seed corn" -- along the same lines, Echidne: Eating the Seed Corn. Who Needs Education?
  
  
• Health insurers continue to drop children's coverage
  
  
• Journalists angry over the commission of journalism (fact-checking is upsetting!)
  
  
• Wisconsin Update: Trashing “the Hippies”
  
  
• Frustrated in Florida -- more overprotection of capable children/teens
  
  
• Schools often react poorly to student suicides, experts say -- in fact, the most common responses are precisely counterproductive!
  
  
• Military Personnel Say Pentagon Ignores Sexual Assaults, Harassment
  
  
• Today's Deep Thought -- restricted range of arguments about gender equality
  
  
• Toxic Chemicals and Where the Burden Should Be -- quit blaming moms and let's get some decent environmental regulation!

  But there is only so much time in the day - is my time really better spent researching which deodorants are least likely to cause developmental problems in potential future babies, or is it better spent advocating that the FDA and USDA and other acronyms stop letting poisons into our products in the first place?

• Alaska state rep refuses TSA grope of her mastectomy scars, drives home from Seattle -- and for those who think this is all accomplishing something, there's TSA airport body scan tests miss gun: report
  
  
• The undiscussed elephant in the room: poverty!
  
  
  1. It Takes a Village, Not a Tiger

     The parenting wars look like they are about children, but really they are only about each parent’s own child. That’s why they serve such a useful social function. Without them we might have to think about the frightening place America is becoming for ever more millions of kids. Who knows? We might even feel that we should do something about it.

  2. Class And Social Security

     A 30 percent cut in benefits would represent disaster for tens of millions of Americans, but a barely noticeable inconvenience for VSPs and everyone they know. A rise in the retirement age would be a vast hardship for people who do manual labor, but if anything a gift to VSPs, who don’t want to step aside in any case. And so on down the line.
     
     So going after Social Security is a way to seem tough and serious — but entirely at the expense of people you don’t know.

  3. The compensation-productivity gap

Fascinating:

• The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect
  
  
• An Interesting Study on Drug Use Prevention
  
  
• My big picture view of Wisconsin -- how people think wealth is distributed (versus how it is, how it should be)
  
  
• Why Do Protests Bring Down Regimes? neat!
  
  
• Quantum Mechanics vs. Relativity: It Depends on What "Understand" Means -- heck, they're both hard
  
  
• TEDxSF - Jill Vialet - 11/17/09 (video talk) -- how critical play is to children, and how amazingly they respond to even a pilot effort
  
  
• The Mad Men Account -- why is the series so appealing (and to whom)?
  
  
• SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist -- performing sound effects back into movies; amazing!
  

Cheerful:

• Can I Get An Amen? America doesn't run the world.
  
  
• Obama administration replaces controversial 'conscience' regulation for health-care workers -- do your job or find another one!
  
  
• Russ Feingold Launches Progressives United PAC -- aiming at the Citizens United decision, in particular
  
  
• Religious Coalition Tells The GOP That ‘The Budget Shouldn’t Be Balanced On the Backs Of The Poor’
  
  
• Mushroom and BalletBoy Go to the Park! kids need some independence!
  
  
• They Said Shut Up, but mombloggers continue to share everyday life with others working through it
  
  
• The Court would like to balance the scales -- time off, as long as you're excited about any kid you get!
  
  
• Jon Stewart Nails Fox News Hypocrisy On Teachers Vs. Wall Street Pay Levels
  
  
• Parov Stelar - Catgroove -- this guy can dance! great fun!
  
  
• What would Feynman do? -- long but hilarious skewering of stupid interview questions
  
  
• Today’s Silly Question -- what's cuter than a smiling piglet?!?
  
  
• And now for no apparent reason… Kittens… in… Bowls!
  
  

Link dump: the rant-inducing subset

With minimal comment, given how long a stretch these have been collected over...

• The Cost of the Castle Doctrine -- PA wants to be among the states who shoot neighborhood kids
  
  
• U.S. College Degrees by County (a map) -- another reflection of the cultural and economic divide
  
  
• Republican fiscal hawks avoid Appropriations Committee like the plague -- it's easier to criticize than to do
  
  
• Antibiotic impasse: Resistant to progress -- if you're not scared about this, you're in denial
  
  
• A few TSA-related bits:
  
  
  
  1. Molecular biologist on the dangers of pornoscanners -- the TSA isn't worried about your health
     
     
  2. TSA has no regular testing system for its pornoscanners -- but they want you to trust them
     
     
  3. You Are No Longer Free To Move About the Country -- airport security is just the first step
     
     
  4. How our "security" obsession costs us -- our national life, not just our safety
  
  
• Paul Begala For DNC Chairman

  You can be on the side of angels without having to be cautious, indecisive, and paranoid all the time. The angels actually want you to be scrappy and assertive.

• Our Meth House -- a couple's dream home turns out to be uninhabitable
  
  
• In a Sign of Foreclosure Flaws, Suits Claim Break-Ins by Banks -- the amount of outright theft seems to be increasing
  
  
• Poll: 92% of Young Afghan Men Don’t Know about 9/11 Attacks -- what can we possibly achieve over there?!
  
  
• Memo to the media: They’re called “obstructionists” -- the watchdogs are asleep...
  
  
• Media Pay Insufficient Attention To Unemployment While Obsessing Over Deficits, Taxes
  
  
• Top Democrat Identifies Another Threat To Social Security In Obama Tax Plan -- oh well....
  
  
• We Wouldn’t -- want to think about the atrocities now commonly committed in our names, that is
  
  
• White House order would normalize under Obama "indefinite detention" introduced under Bush -- why are Democrats frustrated with Obama, again?
  
  
• The Myth of Pink and Blue Brains

  In the past 15 years, claims about hardwired differences between boys and girls have propagated virally, with no genuine neuroscientific justification. In reality, culture, attitudes, and practices influence boy-girl academic gaps far more than prenatal testosterone does. The sooner teachers open their eyes to such influences, the sooner we can bring out the best in every child.

• The Different Costs of Motherhood -- it's a bigger blow at the top of the economic spectrum

Post-racial THIS!

We surely don't live in 1960 anymore, but those who argue that America is in a post-racial era are self-deluded (and probably speaking from a position of oblivious privilege). Here are just a couple of examples of the way in which racist bias permeates our culture and constrains the options of minority individuals:

1. Cupcakes With a Side of Racism!
   
   
2. Why Barack Won’t Get Angry

I look forward to a day when Otherness is not noteworthy, and when individual performance/behavior isn't appraised differently when given different racial or gender contexts. But that time has not yet come, and we've got some work to do.

So much frustration, so little time

That's right, it's time for a link dump from my Grumpy Tabs file...

• Is science hard to communicate to the public, or does our society devalue intelligence and expertise to the point that people don't even *want* to hear about scientific findings?

  The problem isn't scientists learning how to tell cool stories, which is a skill of great value in any society because humans relate and learn through stories, but that America has raised generations of people to make fun of anyone who cares about shit enough to learn something complicated and be passionately engaged with their work, and marginalize and ignore what they have to say.

• Social contract lying in ashes: what happens when we replace government protection of the common good (funded by -- gasp -- taxes) with privately paid services. Ludicrous versions of justice.
  
  
• Rafe calls this Everything wrong with America in one article -- how, among other things, private prison interests are driving Arizona's draconian immigration policies.
  
  
• Of course, Rafe left out the TSA:
  
  
  1. At increasing numbers of airports, you are now offered the choice between excessively detailed imaging and invasive pat-downs designed to make you stick with the imager, radiation or not. More on this stupidity here.
     
  2. In parallel with the Arizona case above, it turns out that these new machines were brought to bear more due to lobbying by manufacturers than because of any real belief that they'll make anybody safer.
     
  3. Despair, Inc., comes through with some pithy t-shirts to capture your travel experience, if this hasn't driven you from the air entirely.
  
  
• Here's a little bit on military censorship of photos taken in the Mideast and elsewhere.
  
  
• Speaking of the military, looks like the Democrats are throwing them overboard again, planning to abandon DADT in the lame-duck Congressional session.
  
  
• Here's a little reminder that we don't live in a postfeminist era -- the language we use to describe men and women, even when giving a positive review, differs enough to create significantly different outcomes.
  
  
• The Supreme Court may be poised to end class-action lawsuits, which would have a huge impact on the ability of average folks to protect themselves and the rest of us.
  
  
• And finally, from the Department of Brash Hyprocricy, a freshman Republican who railed against healthcare reform complains at a month's delay in getting his own government healthcare. Poooor baby!

Wow

I think I'd be pretty happy if somebody wrote a retrospective like this of any endeavor I got involved with, wrinkle-bomb and all. Congrats to Josh and Talking Points Memo for spawning a really engrossing and fact-driven media enterprise, and for keeping the blogger-like feel while going Big. Ten years is amazing, dude!

Frustrated and helpless

I used to find myself furious and worried about a lot of things under the Bush Administration, but now I find the areas of continuity with the Obama era even more worrisome, because they indicate institutionalization of a bunch of things that are terrible for our nation, economy, character. It's starting to get me down, and maybe unloading some tabs will help...

• La. Police Doing BP's Dirty Work -- hello? who's in charge here? does corporation trump Constitution??
  
  
• How many Americans are targeted for assassination? um, what? [head-desk]
  
  
• Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance -- chilling.
  
  
• Fixing The Ideology Problem in Our Political Press -- a great summary of the problem(s) and critical fixes.
  
  
• We need to restore economic growth -- a case study in how austerity during a recession is a terrible idea.
  
  
• When Greatness Slips Away -- a chipper, chipper summary of ways in which America is losing its way.
  

Idiots

Apparently the Washington Post "can't tell" Barak Obama from Malcolm X . . . Eesh

(via a BagNewsNotes tweet)

Friday link roundup

Infuriating

• British airways screws stranded passengers, offering a choice of nearly a month's delay or stratospheric prices for earlier flights.
  
  
• The Supreme Court is so old that even its youngest members don't really understand current technology, even though they're expected to make rulings about it.

Cheering

• Clever train doesn't stop at stations -- it picks up and leaves attachable subunits with arriving and departing passengers. Neat idea (see the video), and radically improves travel times.
  
  
• Arkansas adoption ban, passed by voters, found unconstitutional. Chip, chip...
  (via Alas, a Blog)
  
  
• The President apparently thinks that people should be able to have their loved ones visit them in the hospital and make their medical decisions. Gotta love a good "crazy socialist" who can put the power of Medicare/Medicaid behind some sane policy!
  

Interesting

• Rafe notes two ways to break news, only one of which actually leads to informing the public.
  
  
• The Civil War can be seen as a battle with three sides, the South, the North, and African-Americans.

  What you see, as the war goes on, is a gradual, and rather amazing, process by which blacks, free and enslaved, force the North to accept the cause of emancipation as their own. The logic of the war makes it unavoidable.

  A good example of a frame that changes the way you see a wide range of events, in illuminating ways. I recommend the whole thing.
  
  
• Washington, D.C., has to balance its desire to be a national monument against the benefits of becoming a modern liveable city...

  The monumentalist vision of Washington has choked nearly all urban life from the Mall and its environs. It has fashioned large sections of our city into pleasing vistas for tourists but has given the rest of us lifeless wastelands ... The monumental core should be the city's heart, not its parasite

  This issue arises in many different contexts, and in other cities as well.
  (via Atrios at Eschaton)
  

Our great post-feminist era

One cannot help but be happy that those in positions of power are so full of wisdom and open-mindedness. [mindless gnashing of teeth]

(via a Medley tweet)

Impatient for the DVD set!

Having been completely engrossed (and appropriately depressed) by The Wire, I'm already excited for David Simon's new series, Treme, which takes on the challenge of conjuring the complicated atmosphere and culture of New Orleans. We don't pay for fancy TV channels, so will wait for Netflix to get its hands on some DVDs (or maybe we'll just spring for the set ourselves).

Meantime, here's an episode of NPR's Fresh Air that combines description and interview to preview the show. Also, I immediately wondered how Harry Shearer would feel about it, since he's a native, an opinionista, and a man who's had a lot to say about the nation's inadequate handling of Katrina -- here's his first take. I can't wait to get a look for myself!

Tuesday round-up (= link-dump)

• A couple weeks old: Ohio Pastors File IRS Complaints Over C Street House. Weird Christian "frat house" set-up may be a taxable rent-subsidy.
  
  
• Don't Mess With Texas (Mortgages, That Is) -- they actually regulated mortgages and home equity loans, and thus avoided the worst disasters of the last couple of years. Maybe the rest of the country could learn something!
  
  
• On Flexing Your Rights. Or at Least Meagerly Trying to Hold on to Them. Advice on dealing with cops always recommends calm and courtesy -- good on a practical front, but seems to imply that the absence of meekness is an opening for aggression, as evidenced by the crazy story here of police tazing a pregnant woman on a routine traffic stop...
  
  
• When did the Senate become such a lonely, cynical place?

  "My father used to quote it: `The Senate allows you two years as a statesman, two years as a politician, and two years as a demagogue.' " He gave me a wistful look right then, and proceeded to say exactly what I’d been thinking. "And that’s actually changed. You’re now a demagogue the full six years."

  Hope we can find a way to salvage the institution.
  
  
• The Bias of Veteran Journalists

  The journalists at the press conference didn't have a bias as the term is normally used; that is, I didn't get the sense that they were inherently for or against the company or its product. They just appeared to think they knew the subject well enough, or had a set enough idea in their heads as to what this kind of story was about, that they pursued only the lines of questioning necessary to fill in the blanks of that presumed story line.

  If it's bad for product reviews, imagine what it does to ones ability to develop an understanding of the political landscape, policy, and the future of both!
  
  
• Robert Reich argues Why More Immigrants Are An Answer to the Coming Boomer Entitlement Mess. Not sure that his numbers game will convince the fundamentally xenophobic, but it's a good perspective for the rest of us.
  
  
• Think Before You Speak, a great video campaign to get kids out of the habit of using "so gay" as the ultimate put-down for things uncool. Worth watching all of the initial vids.
  [Someday, maybe we can take on the whole late-night talkshow host vocabulary, of calling people "pussy" and "douchebag" and the like, for similar reasons. But the urgency is almost certainly greater on this chosen front.]
  
  
• Just fun: Music video with a whole school as the instrument. Video and sound-mixing are a realm in which today's kids have a whole different fluency than do the middle-aged set, however computer savvy.
  
  
• Just mind-bending: This is not a spiral. Say, wha...?!

Pretty grim

...what counts for humor/rumination among Republicans. Rush doesn't deserve to be on the air, let alone a paragon of civic values (to those twisted enough to appreciate him). Grim stuff.

Speaking of movies...

...The Hathor Legacy has been having an interesting discussion about how the film industry actively keeps female characters off the screen. This starts as early as how screenwriters are trained:

According to Hollywood, if two women came on screen and started talking, the target male audience’s brain would glaze over and assume the women were talking about nail polish or shoes or something that didn't pertain to the story. Only if they heard the name of a man in the story would they tune back in. By having women talk to each other about something other than men, I was "losing the audience."

The blogger was totally frustrated by the ever-shifting excuses made, and eventually threw up her hands:

I concluded Hollywood was dominated by perpetual pre-adolescent boys making the movies they wanted to see, and using the "target audience" – a construct based on partial truths and twisted math – to perpetuate their own desires. Having never grown up, they still saw women the way Peter Pan saw Wendy: a fascinating Other to be captured, treasured and stuffed into a gilded cage.

However, she does explore a subsequent question, fascinating in an industry so driven by money: Why discriminate if it doesn’t profit? Her conclusion that it's mostly about ego and self-protection fits with stereotypes we have for film industry personalities, but that seems to indicate that things aren't going to change anytime soon... Sigh.