Via reader AS, Newsweek's Julia Baird on the dearth of female characters in "family" films:
It was startling to discover that a new study has found that there is only one female character to every three male characters in family movies. Even creepier is the fact that many of the female characters are scantily clad, and hot (the Little Mermaid wasn’t always depicted popping out of a tiny bikini top).
This study, undertaken by Stacy Smith and Marc Choueiti at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, analyzed 122 family films (rated G, PG, and PG-13), including 50 top-grossing ones, between 2006 and 2009 and found that only 29.2 percent of characters were female. And one in four female characters was depicted in “sexy, tight, or alluring attire,” compared with one in 25 male characters. The female characters were also more likely than men to be beautiful, and one in five were “portrayed with some exposed skin between the mid-chest and upper thigh regions.” Because you wouldn’t want to take on the world without baring your midriff—girl power!
I'd also like to see a study of the MPAA ratings board, perhaps to understand why films with strong central female characters seem to earn R ratings more than PG-13. Possibly the MPAA are a bunch of old men? Or teenage boys? Is there any way to tell, really?
The looks on the opposition's faces are well worth the price of admission:
Yeah, it's just not as exciting as previous residencies, but it's seriously more work.
Fortunately, I still have time to read gems like this:
Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center may be charged $200,000 by the city of Gainesville, Florida, for security costs incurred by the canceled Koran-burning originally planned for September 11.
Jones' announcement of "International Burn-A-Koran" day resulted in some violent protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and threats against Americans. In response, Gainesville upped its security. According to The Associated Press: "Police Maj. Rick Hanna said more than 200 officers were on duty last weekend patrolling the church, the University of Florida football game and "soft targets" like the mall. Another 160 sheriff's deputies were also working because of the planned protest at Dove World Outreach Center."
Though Jones didn't go through with the protest, city officials say they want Jones to foot the bill for the security anyway.
To the tune of "Personality," everyone sing: "'Cause he makes...externalities...de de do do..."
Speaking of economics, here's a brief lesson for people who want the millionaire tax cut to continue:
From Dan Savage the week before last:
Is everyone in the Republican Party a closeted homosexual?
—Ken Mehlman's Out Now
Everyone except Ken Mehlman and Ben Quayle.
Of course, this simply isn't true. Other Republican leaders have come out as well.
Josh Marshall: "Who could have predicted that an orchestrated campaign anti-Muslim hate speech on the part of many of the country's most prominent politicians and the country's biggest news network could have led to this unfortunate situation in Florida?"
Indeed.
The Economist has picked up on Daley's departure:
After Mr Daley privatised the city’s parking meters, drivers filled coin slots with glue and docile aldermen briefly located their spines. Last year Mr Daley struggled to close a budget gap. This summer just 31% of Chicagoans thought he should seek re-election.
So who will succeed Mr Daley? The most promising contender may be Mr Emanuel. Whoever the replacement, he is unlikely to bring the dramatic changes that characterised the Daley era. But a new leader is overdue. “Simply put,” Mr Daley said, “it’s time.”
And the Guardian:
Speculation in Chicago and Washington DC quickly turned to [President Obama's chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel, who has long made public his interest in the job – while the timing could not be better from the White House's point of view. With a crushing defeat in the US midterm elections looming, the need for Obama to reshuffle his senior staff after November was growing.
Emanuel refused to comment on the speculation, saying in a statement: "While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for re-election, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago."
Note that Emanuel was my Congressman until being named Obama's chief of staff in November 2008, and he maintains a permanent residence in the city.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley will not run for re-election next spring:
Daley's public approval rating had dipped recently, with a Tribune poll earlier this summer showing that more than half of Chicago voters said they don't want to see him re-elected.
The poll found only 37 percent of city voters approve of the job Daley is doing as mayor, compared with 47 percent who disapprove. Moreover, a record-low 31 percent said they want to see Daley re-elected, compared with 53 percent who don't want him to win another term.
The mayor's administration has been buffeted by a spate of summer violence, a weak economy and a high-profile failure to land the 2016 Olympics. Dissatisfaction abounds, the survey found, over Daley's handling of the crime problem, his efforts to rein in government corruption and his backing of a controversial long-term parking meter system lease.
This isn't a big surprise, as President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has hinted he wants the job—which he would never do without knowing for sure Daley was stepping down.
(Morton's Steakhouse, the best in Chicago, has portraits of the city's mayors going back to Daley's father.)
Paul Krugman noticed this poll from 1938, in which most Americans got completely wrong what the U.S. needed to get out of the depression:
Do you think government spending should be increased to help get business out of its present slump?
Gallup Poll, Mar, 1938
37% Yes
63% No
Of course, it was massive government spending from 1942 to 1945 that actually ended the Great Depression.
I'm always so pleased at the way Americans want everything for free, and how bad we are at doing the basic math of transport costs, especially when a British newspaper reports on the total collapse of New York railroads today:
The fire at [the Long Island Railroad] Jamaica [station] was out, but the LIRR was still running well below capacity when an electrical problem in Maryland shut down power to trains up and down the Northeast corridor. Commuters in Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington (Delaware), and throughout New Jersey were affected by the outage, which hit at the height of rush hour.
As the New York Times and the Infrastructurist both note, this is yet another example of how America's outdated and fragile infrastructure continues to cause problems—especially in the Northeast corridor. The solution is simple: if Americans want better infrastructure, they have to invest the money to pay for it.
Oy. Trains are worth more than we pay for them, people. Get your heads out of your asses and your asses out of your cars.
More data for my analysis:
We're in the thick of what one sociologist calls "the changing timetable for adulthood." Sociologists traditionally define the "transition to adulthood" as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early '70s.
The whole idea of milestones, of course, is something of an anachronism; it implies a lockstep march toward adulthood that is rare these days. Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace. ...
Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? ... To some, what we're seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to.
I'm trying to work up a theory about people born after 1980, which seems to be the cut-off for a host of behaviors and attitudes that are alien to me and my contemporaries. I'm not sure how on-point this article is, but I'm thinking about it.