Over at one of my all-time favorite blogs ever in life Shakesville, Arkades is writing a series about gender and sexual identity, and all that good stuff. While the whole thing is wonderful, I just wanted to highlight this paragraph:

Oh, and a big fuck-you-very-much to the advertising wizards who turned every holiday season into a constant reminder of how I didn’t fit in. “Sports Illustrated – the perfect gift for every man!” Every man? Hardly. Though I suppose that “every man who likes sports and boobies” must have seemed redundant to their copywriters.

Agreed. And honestly, I’m a sports fan myself (yes, SI editors, me, a girl, likes sports). However, I prefer ESPN: The Magazine and the occasional Sporting News. I don’t need tons of boobies flashed all over my sports news to get the info. But more coverage of women in sports would be nice. Real Sports on HBO is one of my favorite shows on television, and each episode has at least — at LEAST — one female athlete or executive.

Honestly, some of us were a little sick of Michael Phelps’ face before he even got home from Beijing with his bajillion gold medals, right? I give him mad props for being an amazing athlete, but why the HELL did he host SNL? It was more of a disaster than other episodes with actual actors.

Anyway, when he got busted for smoking pot, some people pretended to be outraged for a week, but then no one really cared. Now Phelps is allegedly having threesomes with strippers.

[Some stripper] says she met Phelps at a Baltimore strip club last November. While Phelps allegedly “was kind of mean and cocky to some of the girls,” he took to [her] and invited her and a couple other girls back to his apartment. And that’s when he lost his threeway virginity.

Yeah, this is me, not really caring. Is that bad?

Dear Lil Rounds

Firstly, I don’t want to admit to the world that I actually devote hours each week to watching American Idol, but you leave me no choice. I was duped — my boyfriend loves it, and I love skill-based reality television, so I tolerate it.

When you auditioned, and with your first few weeks, I instantly fell in love. You sound like some of my favorite singers, Mary J. Blige and Alicia Keys. I love them, and I love your voice, when you sing those songs. And your family is just freaking adorable.

However, in order to do well on Idol for the past couple of years, it takes more than just being a decent Karaoke singer. As odd-judge-out Kara DioGuardi has said, especially to you, you should have shown that on top of your singing chops, you have to exhibit artistry.

Translation: You shouldn’t have sang songs from black artists. Or Celine Dion, because she’s lame and boring. Everyone expects you to do that.

So, like Adam Lambert, and Allison Iraheta, and some of those other people I don’t really care about, you should have done something out of the ordinary. But you really didn’t.

And honestly, as a fellow lady of blackness, I felt for you, and I know you should just be out there, singing whatever you want to sing. Whatever suits you, just go freaking sing it and be happy. But I understand the flip side — and I appreciate singers who have a greater realm of artistry than just what they appear they’re good at.

I don’t know your life story. Perhaps you’ve had no formal musical training, so you might not be fully aware of how to actually change the full arrangement of a song, as opposed to singing a few notes differently. For example, let’s take songs from the year you and I were both born, 1984. A wonderful year. You sang “What’s Love Got To Do With It” by Tina Turner. While I love that song, and I love Tina, here’s a bunch of songs you could have twisted into your own style, that were the tops in 1984:

1. When Doves Cry, Prince
5. Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now), Phil Collins
13. Let’s Hear It For The Boy, Deniece Williams
15. Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Cyndi Lauper
17. Time After Time, Cyndi Lauper
23. Hold Me Now, Thompson Twins
33. I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Elton John
35. Borderline, Madonna
38. Here Comes The Rain Again, Eurythmics
39. Uptown Girl, Billy Joel
57. Love Is A Battlefield, Pat Benatar
64. If This Is It, Huey Lewis and The News

You couldda made those your own, Lil! You couldda!

Anyway, good luck in your career. And also, your butt is fabulous, despite your Vote for the Worst caricature.

Love,

Michelle

I was fortunate enough to get a press ticket to tonight’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation 20th annual Media Awards at Nokia Live. Personally I hate awards shows, but I’ll get free food, and possibly meet famous gay and gay-adjacent folks like T.R. Knight, and Kathy Griffin (yay!). And it’s all in the name of gayness, so it can’t possibly be too bad. My goal is also to get a photo with Nichelle Nichols by the end of the night. I’m not a schmoozing, falling-all-over-celebrities type of person. I’m a boring, wonky news lady, but I’m gonna have to get my schmooze on just this once. Let’s see what happens…

Coverage starts tonight around 7 p.m. PST — maybe a little earlier if I can get to my seat on time.

Back in November, the American auto maker CEOs came to Washington, pleading for a little more cash to keep the American auto industry afloat. OMG, remember when they showed up in separate private jets?! And remember how the American automobile has been more-or-less tanking since the Japanese came and showed us how to make efficient cars 35 years ago?! And to retaliate they were all like, “We’re going to build Hummers because Americans are dumb enough to buy them LOLzies!!” And of course, there’s still this hilariously bad AIG/ banking institution bailout system going on, where we keep throwing cash at an elephant-sized bleeding wound as though the cash was a gigantic wad of bactine-soaked bandages.

So, we bailed them out. All of ‘em. At first, it seemed like a good idea. I mean between the big three alone — Ford, GM, and Chrysler — there are hundreds of thousands workers. Same thing with these gigantic banks, like my favorite former bank, the sunny, giddy Washington Mutual that is now boring, dumb Chase.

But the more I look back on this, the more I see a lost opportunity.

It’s an unavoidable fact — as much as conservatives like to think we’re becoming a nation of socialists, we’re still very much a capitalistic society. Obviously, because this mess would be quite different if we weren’t a capitalist society.

So, to avoid forcing “socialism,” bolster small businesses, encourage innovation, and even allow more people to further their education, the federal government could have let these businesses go under — but with a safety net.

The main concern of these businesses failing was the workers involved. Had we allowed these companies to continue on their paths, let’s say half of them probably would have actually gone out of business. Millions of jobs would have been lost if a few of the national banks and two of the auto companies went out of business. What we could have done with the $700 billion in TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) funding was give it to the people who would have been directly affected by their employers’ going under.

• Workers for one of these banks or car companies — say, those aged 55 or older — could have been given money to contribute to their pension/401K/IRA/whatever, and relieved of any retirement fund penalties so they could just retire early. For others without retirement funds, this might just mean an eleveate social security check.
• Others would get loans or grants in order to start new businesses. There should probably be some stipulations and incentives. Perhaps they have to employ a minimum number of workers to get a grant versus a loan. Maybe if they establish their business in an area in need of development (Detroit, parts of Ohio, Washington D.C., etc.), they get a tax credit.
• People who want to change careers, or advance their learnin’ would get an education subsidy and help attaining low-interest loans. For some that could mean trade school, and for others that could mean getting an MBA. In either case, this would be a great kick-off to Obama’s plan to up the education ante in this country (which is ranked way behind a LOT of other Western countries).
• Everyone else could get like 6 months salary and health insurance for them and their families for a year. Hopefully that’s enough time to help them get on their feet and find something new. Very idyllic, I know.
• And on top of all that, we’re going to need a lot of government employees and contractors to get all the projects in gear that we want to do. It’s all very New Deal.

Clearly, I’m no economist. I’m not an expert in any of this kind of stuff. And this is all a bit too late. We’ve already spent or allocated most of the TARP funding, so I doubt the feds can just come up with more money to even execute a plan like this. I know that this plan is outlined very simply, but as I mentioned earlier, this would be part bailout, and part social experiment. Especially because a lot of these people will be in concentrated areas, this plan could act like a test sample for other more progressive programs and policy.

Thoughts?