"'What Not to Wear' ended in 2013, but the co-hosts teamed up again for 'Wear Whatever the F You Want'...."

"Instead of rules, it focuses on channeling inner fashion desires. 'I may not think this is the best we could have done, but have I made you the happiest? Because that’s the goal, and that’s the shift between where we were and where we are now as a society,' Ms. London said...."

I'm reading "How Stacy London Spends Her Sundays/Ms. London, the former co-host of 'What Not to Wear,' goes shopping, of course. But she also has a latte with friends and spends time with her dog, Dora" (NYT).

Ha ha. "What Not to Wear" became what not to air so they changed their attitude from telling young women they were doing it all wrong and needed to listen to instruction to telling them they were inherently right and to go ahead and do anything they want.

But this article is just about what Stacy London does on a Sunday... and it's very much like what everyone else in this NYT series does on a Sunday.

From the Althouse archives: "I don't want anybody telling me what to do, so why would it entertain me to see some purported experts telling somebody else what to do?"

"Almost a decade after its première, 'Handmaid’s' retains its signature violence but has thoroughly exhausted its narrative premises...."

"Writing in the Reagan years, [novelist Margaret] Atwood imagined an authoritarianism of the repressive Christian variety. The sexual politics of our era’s conservatives are more prurient and boorish: the misogynists of Gilead say 'Blessed be the fruit'; ours say 'Grab ’em by the pussy.' Still, the sadism of the show’s fictional world finds ample comparisons in our own... In its early seasons, 'The Handmaid’s Tale' was criticized for what some saw as its self-indulgent scaremongering. The show, its detractors sneered, was trauma porn for middle-class women who wanted to see themselves as victims of the Trump age...."

Writes Moira Donegan, in "'The Handmaid’s Tale' Reflects the Exhaustion of Liberal Feminism/What’s most striking about the show, now in its final season, is not its hysteria but its lack of conviction" (The New Yorker).

"When Jen receives an accidental transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner (Marvel’s original Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo) she suddenly becomes She-Hulk."

"While Bruce’s Hulk is a cinder block of a man — or as Maslany put it, 'a roided-out gym maniac, to such a cartoonish degree' — Jen’s transformation, triggered by anger, looks different. Only some muscles bulge. Her breasts — not muscles! — bulge, too. Her waist whittles. Her hair straightens.... Maslany described She-Hulk’s bearing as heavier, less fidgety, more centered in the pelvis. 'The weight of She-Hulk brings her down into her loins in a different way,' she said. This might be the way a woman moved if she felt safe in the world, if she knew that no one could hurt her.... This new show suggests that a woman could be angry, and that the world would really like it.... 'She transforms into a hyper beautiful, hyper feminine version that might be more palatable in that anger,' Maslany marveled...."

From "As She-Hulk, Tatiana Maslany Is Beautiful When She’s Angry/The 'Orphan Black' actor described the giant, green protagonist of 'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law' as 'weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever'" (NYT).

Attorney at Law! So... a lawyer gets very very angry and sprouts extra-large breasts. It's just so embarrassingly dumb. The fantasy is that anger makes a woman especially attractive. I've never watched any Hulk shows or movies, so I'm just going to guess what Hulks — He-Hulks and She-Hulks get angry about: crime? Superhero stories are all about fighting crime, right? Anyway, I love this idea that when women become angrily powerful we become more centered in our "loins." 

I tried watching the trailer, but it was too hard to get a look at the transformation, so I'm not going to embed it. For some weird reason, the audio was "Happy Together" by The Turtles. That's the polar opposite of anger. The skies'll be blue.

Female privilege resisted.

Presidential daughter and daytime TV personality Jenna Bush Hager must have thought she was performing her role as a playful, delightful female as she invaded the personal space of the male TV personality Justin Sylvester during a cooking segment of the "Today" show:

 

I had never heard of Justin Sylvester, so everything written above this sentence is my reaction to that video, which I'd watched with the sound off. My question was: Is he married? I wondered if he was the sort of man who thinks about his wife and how she would feel if she saw another woman breasting into him and squirming.

But, researching, I quickly encounter Sylvester's own reaction to the reaction to that video and, while I don't know if he's bullshitting to preserve his access to women's daytime TV, I can see that protecting this imagined wife is not what was going on:

Is Sandra Lee sending "peace and loving healing" to Andrew Cuomo?

I'm reading "Andrew Cuomo ex Sandra Lee wishes ‘peace, healing’ after 2nd accuser steps forward" (NY Post):

“Sending everyone peace and loving healing regards from Malibu! The best sunsets ever thank God for the Ocean!” Lee posted on Instagram Saturday night, alongside a photo of a beach. 

The post was made hours after The New York Times revealed [accusations from] Cuomo’s 25-year-old former aide, Charlotte Bennet, is accusing the 63-year-old governor of asking her inappropriate personal questions at work... days after another former aide, Lindsey Boylan, publicly accused the governor of attempting to kiss her on the mouth at his New York City office in 2018....

I'd say Sandra Lee is keeping her distance. This is a woman I had never paid any attention to until I was looking up Cuomo's Wikipedia page yesterday. I can't remember exactly why, but I suddenly needed to know where he went to law school. The answer is Albany Law School. Isn't that interesting? 

I got to reading the "Personal Life" section. There was that marriage to the 7th child of Robert F. Kennedy. And then there was an 8-year relationship with Food Network host Sandra Lee. I was curious enough to click through to Lee's Wikipedia page, and that led me to some of the biggest laughs I've had all year. Lee has an approach to cooking that she calls "semi-homemade." In practice, this involves using lots of processed foods and combining them in ways so ludicrous that it kind of has to be a spoof.

"Joseph Goebbels didn’t die. He just got a job at Hallmark."

Joseph Goebbels didn’t die. He just got a job at Hallmark. https://t.co/oKKOyYxXa6

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 26, 2019

ADDED: The linked article at Salon is "Hallmark movies are fascist propaganda/Forget 'Triumph of the Will' — the most insidious authoritarian propaganda comes in the form of schmaltz" by Amanda Marcotte. Isn't this like what Jonah Goldberg did — from the right — in his book "Liberal Fascism"? Goldberg wrote:

For generations our primary vision of a dystopian future has been that of Orwell’s 1984. This was a fundamentally “masculine” nightmare of fascist brutality. But with the demise of the Soviet Union and the vanishing memory of the great twentieth-century fascist and communist dictatorships, the nightmare vision of 1984 is slowly fading away. In its place, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is emerging as the more prophetic book. As we unravel the human genome and master the ability to make people happy with televised entertainment and psychoactive drugs, politics is increasingly a vehicle for delivering prepackaged joy. America’s political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered....

The history of totalitarianism is the history of the quest to transcend the human condition and create a society where our deepest meaning and destiny are realized simply by virtue of the fact that we live in it. It cannot be done, and even if, as often in the case of liberal fascism, the effort is very careful to be humane and decent, it will still result in a kind of benign tyranny where some people get to impose their ideas of goodness and happiness on those who may not share them...

Make people happy with televised entertainment... sounds like the Hallmark channel. So let's read the Amanda Marcotte thing, published jollily on Christmas at Salon:

When most of us think about fascistically propagandistic movies, we think of the grotesque grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl's films celebrating the Third Reich... even in Nazi Germany, the majority of movies approved by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were escapist and feather-light, with a Hallmark movie-style emphasis on the importance of "normality."

There's plenty of reason that empty-headed kitsch fits neatly in the authoritarian worldview. It's storytelling that imitates the gestures of emotion without actually engaging with real feeling... Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world, which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive white nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.

Both Marcotte and Goldberg are afraid of oppressive government and think cheap televised entertainment is softening the people up to accept it.

"The concept is admittedly shallow and heteronormative, verging on dystopian."

"One of the greatest joys of my life is watching the British reality television program 'Love Island,' a daily show in which six men and six women are placed in a luxury island villa, filmed constantly and encouraged to fall in love. The couple that wins the heart of the United Kingdom wins 50,000 British pounds."

From "Marooned on ‘Love Island’/When a medical crisis asks a young woman to confront the messier aspects of love, she plunges into a reality TV version of romance" (NYT).

Obama "is in advanced negotiations with Netflix to produce a series of high-profile shows" that tell "inspirational stories."

The NYT reports. It sounds like — as Oprah transitions to presidential candidate — Obama is transitioning into Oprah-esque TV personality. Why not?! What else is he supposed to do? Write serious books? Who knows how much of his personal time he will put into his TV show, his books, his speeches?

“President and Mrs. Obama have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire,” Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to the former president, said Thursday. “Throughout their lives, they have lifted up stories of people whose efforts to make a difference are quietly changing the world for the better. As they consider their future personal plans, they continue to explore new ways to help others tell and share their stories.”

The most inspiring story Obama could tell is his own story, by living it, going forward, as an authentic and ethical person.

In one possible show idea, Mr. Obama could moderate conversations on topics that dominated his presidency — health care, voting rights, immigration, foreign policy, climate change — and that have continued to divide a polarized American electorate during President Trump’s time in office.

Another program could feature Mrs. Obama on topics, like nutrition, that she championed in the White House. The former president and first lady could also lend their brand — and their endorsement — to documentaries or fictional programming on Netflix that align with their beliefs and values....

Things that don't inspire me: Using the woman for the food segment.

The deal is evidence that Mr. Obama, who left the White House when he was just 55 years old, intends to remain engaged in the nation’s civic business, even as he has studiously avoided direct clashes with Mr. Trump about his concerted efforts to roll back Mr. Obama’s legacy. It is also a clear indication that the former president remains interested in the intersection of politics, technology and media.

A clear indication of what? How can you have a clear indication of something as fuzzy as "remain[ing] interested in the intersection of politics, technology and media." The indication I see is that he's making deals for money and what he's putting into the arrangement, other than his name, is a complete puzzle. And the name for the proposed product — if you'd dare to speak clearly — is: propaganda.

I don't give a damn if Netflix cranks out political propaganda, but for this historically monumental figure — Barack Obama — to take his still-young life and to sell it to the enterprise of cranking out political propaganda... ah, but I know you're about to slam me in the comments. I'm not as naive as you're about to tell me I am, because I know what you're going to say when you haven't said it yet.

Mr. Obama has long expressed concerns about how the flow of information — and misinformation — has the power to shape public opinion.... He has seethed privately and publicly, about what he says is the manipulation of news by conservative outlets and the fractured delivery of information in the internet age. 

The news is manipulated in all directions, including in this NYT piece about Obama's proposed entry into the manipulation game. The Obama Show will only be another manipulation, in the direction he prefers. The only question is whether his people can make it something that won't expose him as a propagandist and media concoction.

"CBS This Morning" may have fired Charlie Rose, but it used to revel in his sexual creepiness.

It's been a running joke on John Oliver's show for years:





Charlie Rose's "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King just happened to be a guest on Stephen Colbert's show last night. We're told she was already scheduled and, when the Rose story broke, she considered canceling, but Colbert's show is on CBS, and I assume I'm looking at CBS trying to extricate itself from the Charlie Rose story. And Gayle King isn't just committed to CBS, she's got her own reputation to keep clean. Watch the mind-numbing performance of Gayle King who plays dumb and cloyingly emotional:



1. In Colbert's introduction of King, he says she "delivers the hard news as co-anchor of 'CBS This Morning' and delivers the good news as the editor-at-large of O, the Oprah Magazine." Was "hard news" an intentional reference to Charlie Rose, whose penis is in the news? If innuendo was not intended, I believe it would have been noticed after it was written and edited out, so I say it was intended. Deniable, of course. Everything's deniable, like King's I-knew-nothing! routine.

2. Less than half-way through this clip, I was pausing and researching signs of lying. King is looking down and to her right (as if she had notes down there she needed to read) and scratching her cheek (at 2:02 (I've seen myself on video many times touching my cheek when I know I'm saying something that's has an element of deceit)). And look at her fist at 2:55.

3. "This is very difficult for me" — King's tactic is to make this a story of her emotional journey. Colbert plays a supporting role, with softball questions like: "Are you angry?" To which King answers: "I am a variety of emotions. There's certain some anger. There's some sadness. There's compassion. There's concern." It's so complex! "You can hold a variety of emotions around one particular incident."

4. At 3:52, she repositions and goes back to "what these women are going through." But what I want to know is what she knew and might have done to help "these women" before the news story broke and had an impact on her career. We have to start listening to women. King has been a professional in woman-oriented media for a long time. She didn't just recently get a clue about these issues. But the Colbert audience gives her a massive cheer (as she interlaces her fingers and works her hands back and forth).

5. Women will continue to speak up, King tells us in an impassioned tone, because "they're now being believed." She has to say "they," though she's a woman, because if she said "we," it would seem as though she had a story to tell.

6. King says that men need to "join the conversation." How? Men have to condemn sexual harassment and not make fine distinctions. They have to say that "it's all bad." So... not really a conversation. "All of it is really unacceptable." There's nothing to debate. Oh, but then she says, "By the same token, I want to be able to joke and laugh with friends without thinking I'm going to be called into human resources. But we all know the difference. What that is. We do." We do? Is it that talking is different and you can joke? But look at the most famous joke on the subject: "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the pussy, you can do anything." That has plainly been dumped into the all-of-it-is-really-unacceptable category. (No wonder Siri is telling me, "Ann, I don't really know any good jokes. None, in fact." It is the Era of That's Not Funny.") [AND: As Ignorance is Bliss asks in the comments: "So who put a pubic hair on my Coke?"]

And here's Gayle King talking about the Rose story with Norah O'Donnell on their show, "CBS This Morning" yesterday:



That's very stiff and stilted. The 2 women are scripted to say what's been decided as the correct way to save their show. It goes on and on, and I'm saying that after stopping the clip at 2:12. There's no way, no matter how much longer they talk — the clip goes on for another minute — they are not going to get to the topic I want to hear discussed: What did you know? If you didn't know, why didn't you know? What good are you in your women-helping-women role on morning TV if you didn't recognize the monster who sat next to you for 5 years?

"Some problems weren’t [Megyn Kelly's] fault..."

"... such as when a cameraman walked on-screen while Kelly was interviewing soccer player Carli Lloyd. The cameraman then could be audibly heard muttering an expletive, which wasn’t bleeped since the show is aired live. Other problems, though, fell entirely on Kelly’s shoulders. For instance, two days after a gunman killed 58 people and injured hundreds more in the Las Vegas mass shooting, she interrupted Tom Brokaw as the former 'NBC Nightly News' anchor spoke out against the NRA. Kelly spoke over Brokaw, saying 'Yep. Yep, got it. Gotta leave it at that, Tom. . . . We’re up against a hard break.'... Kelly is now reportedly having trouble booking celebrity guests, unlike the other blocs of 'Today,' according to Variety. 'I’m not booking anyone on her show,' one publicist, who requested not to be named, told the trade publication. 'I literally haven’t pitched anyone even from right out the gate. The buzz that is out there is so bad.'... [O]n many days, Kelly doesn’t have celebrities on her show at all, which is unusual for the 'Today' franchise. Instead, she often relies on lifestyle stories and pretaped features. One recent nearly five-and-a-half-minute segment, for example, followed Kelly and her real-life family as they went camping."

From "Megyn Kelly tries dancing for ratings as her ‘Today’ show continues to falter" in WaPo.

I posted the dreadful dancing clip yesterday, here.

If you want to see that expletive-muttering cameraman, here:

Megyn Kelly's camera man stepped into the frame and then said "shit." pic.twitter.com/zh5vaFPQGl

— Kate Aurthur (@KateAurthur) September 28, 2017

What a dismal slide for Kelly! Remember how high she was riding when she moderated that GOP debate? That was more than 2 years ago. She made a big leap that night, confronting Trump, and there was so much liberal hope for her when Trump went menstrual on her.

But Trump went on to win, and what use is she now? No use to celebrities, and now she can't get celebrities on her show, and what's a daytime talk show without celebrities? I don't watch daytime talk shows (or, really, night time talk shows). Because I can't stand the canned PR appearances celebrities do on TV these days. It used to be that celebrities might go on TV and be weird. I don't know — Marlon Brando, Bette Davis — I mean back in the day when we loved weirdness, real weirdness, not canned weirdness like Megyn Kelly pretending to find the beat to some overproduced pop music irresistible and just had to get up and dance....

Megyn Kelly's alcoholic metaphor promoting her new morning show.

"Hoda and Kathie Lee love wine. The ‘Today’ show is mostly coffee. I would say if you had to put a drink on my show, it would be a mimosa. There’s stuff that’s a little naughty. Stuff in there that’s good for you. Some stuff in there that’s fun and sweet. But... with some effervescence."

Explained Megyn Kelly, quoted in "Megyn Kelly Is Ready for Her Morning Closeup/The former Fox News host says her daily NBC morning show, which starts Monday, is one she was 'born to do.' Others aren’t so sure" (NYT).

(A mimosa is half orange juice, half champagne... usually bad orange juice and bad champagne, of course.)

IN THE COMMENTS: Rob said: "Given Trump's earlier comment, Kelly was loath to liken her program to a Bloody Mary."

"Fox News skews very male… I always tend to think of her as more of a guy’s girl than a girl’s girl… It’s extremely challenging, and I’m not sure Megyn’s personality really connects with women."

Said an unnamed "a veteran daytime television impresario," quoted in NBC Insiders: "‘Total Panic’ Over Megyn Kelly’s Morning Show/Megyn Kelly begins her 9 a.m. NBC show in four weeks’ time. NBC colleagues are nervous that the poor showing of her Sunday night current-affairs show will follow her to ‘Today,'" by Lloyd Grove at Daily Beast.

Other comments from people who are named in the article with names too boring for me to trouble you with:

“The Sunday show laid such an egg that any claims that she had automatic star power, to get people in the door to see what she was doing, have been disavowed."

"[T]he Today show is a different format with a very strong underlying brand... She should be able to excel there even if the Sunday show was perceived as compromised."

And back to the unnamed impresario:

"She has the safety net of being in the Today show cocoon.... She’s going to have to adapt to the live audience, she will have to be more entertaining, and that will be a learning curve for her. The ultimate question is whether she connects with women in daytime."

Women and men. Gender politics. Remember where this veering away from Fox began for Megyn, just a little over 2 years ago:

"It’s like Kelly [Ripa] has been betrayed all over again. Ryan [Seacrest] wasn’t her first choice, but she was convinced..."

"... by the [ABC] network that he would bring in a list guests and ratings.... Now she has found out that it is all about Idol and not really just about her!"

"Live! makes ABC a lot of money but it’s nothing compared to money that can be make in prime time.... She seems livid. Ryan knew all along what was going on, but once again, everyone kept her in the dark."

I'm glad to see that ABC is bringing back the Fox TV show "American Idol." Obviously, getting Ryan Seacrest — the one constant throughout the old series — was important, and it's interesting that he got the "Live!" job as part of a package deal. If Ripa was out of the loop and now feels betrayed and livid, she shouldn't let us see the pain. It just makes her look even weaker than she apparently was, and she's undercutting her own show and her network. But maybe this is part of a larger feminist issue about how the TV business is run — of a piece with all those complaints by women against Fox News that suddenly cascaded into the public view.

The name I looked for in the tributes to Mary Tyler Moore: Marlo Thomas.

When Mary Tyler Moore died, was she celebrated as a television first having something to do with feminism? You can't say "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" presented a new kind of woman without dealing with the earlier show, "That Girl":

That Girl is an American sitcom that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It starred Marlo Thomas as the title character Ann Marie, an aspiring (but only sporadically employed) actress, who moves from her hometown of Brewster, New York, to try to make it big in New York City. Ann has to take a number of offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various auditions and bit parts. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend Donald Hollinger, a writer for Newsview Magazine...

That Girl was one of the first sitcoms to focus on a single woman who was not a domestic or living with her parents. Some consider this show the forerunner of the highly successful The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and an early indication of the changing roles of American women in feminist-era America...

At the end of the 1969–1970 season, That Girl was still doing moderately well in the ratings, but after four years Thomas had grown tired of the series and wanted to move on. ABC convinced her to do one more year. In the beginning of the fifth season, Don and Ann became engaged, but they never actually married. The decision to leave the couple engaged at the end of the run was largely the idea of Thomas. She did not want to send a message to young women that marriage was the ultimate goal for them, and she worried that it would have undercut the somewhat feminist message of the show.

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" did not begin until 1970. Look how similar the opening credits are for the 2 shows:





When I first saw the MTM opening credits I wondered how could they get away with such a rip-off. Also, I think MTM was a throwback to the 1960s and actively old, not new at all. Now, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" turned out to be a great, great show, undoubtedly one of the best shows in the history of television. I just hate to see descriptions of it that give credit for being ahead of its time. It followed "That Girl."

Dr. Phil is disgusting. Is he trying to make it as obvious as possible?

Somebody should get help for him and make a show out of it.

ADDED: I think I've only watched Dr. Phil's show once. It was when Suzy Favor Hamilton was on. I didn't think much of what he was doing:

Phil never got around to asking SFH what treatment she's had or is having, and she looks so strange, that we had to wonder whether she's on any treatment at all. How could he not have asked? He's supposed to be Dr. Phil. Where's the doctor part? Isn't that atrocious set supposed to be kind of like a psychologist's office? And what's with the ominous music playing continually in the background? I had the feeling Dr. Phil was also purveying sex for daytime-TV-watching women who want porn with deniability.

"Sarah Palin Signs Deal to Preside Judge Judy-Style Over Her Own Reality TV Courtroom."

"Unlike the two famous TV judges, Palin does not have a juris doctor degree. But the source notes that the bestselling author has a variety of other qualities that make her perfectly suited to the job...."

Sure. Why not make up new ways to be a judge? This aligns nicely with the suggestions I've seen lately that the President ought to put a nonlawyer on the Supreme Court. Who trusts lawyers to make decisions? Branch out!

Oh, yeah, here it is. Glenn Reynolds said it: "Maybe it’s time to name a non-lawyer to the Supreme Court. There’s nothing in the Constitution that requires Supreme Court justices to be lawyers, and there are some pretty decent arguments as to why non-lawyers should be represented.... [L]aw is supposed to govern everyone’s actions, and everyone is supposed to understand it.... [T[here are hundreds of millions of Americans who aren’t lawyers, and surely some of them are smart enough to decide important questions...  Shouldn’t we open the court up to a little diversity?"

Questioning Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton about her story that bipolarism led her into work as a high-priced Las Vegas prostitute.

 Wisconsin State Journal aims some skepticism at her: "Are people accepting that your bipolar led to this hypersexuality?" She answers:

SFH: That’s the hard part for people to understand. How can that be a mental illness? And if I explain it like that, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but if I let people know that two months before that even happened, I was given the drug Zoloft and that brings on the hypersexuality, that particular anti-depressant. We all know that anti-depressants can do crazy things to people.

She doesn't absolve herself of responsibility:

SFH: No, I can’t say that the bipolar is to blame because I knew what I was doing. I can say that the Zoloft triggered the hypersexuality... I lost touch with reality in that I lost touch with being a mother, being a wife. None of that existed....

WSJ begins the interview by observing that SFH's book could be the new "50 Shades of Grey" and later asks if people are saying "there is too much sex in the book." That sounds skeptical of the mental-health angle, which, I'm sure, is useful in getting the author on daytime TV and giving cover to the kind of readers who don't like to think of themselves as consumers of porn. SFH says she was just trying "to show the destruction of the disease and the illness."

We watched her hour-long interview on Dr. Phil's show, which was quite bizarre. Here's a couple minutes of it, from the beginning:



Phil never got around to asking SFH what treatment she's had or is having, and she looks so strange, that we had to wonder whether she's on any treatment at all. How could he not have asked? He's supposed to be Dr. Phil. Where's the doctor part? Isn't that atrocious set supposed to be kind of like a psychologist's office? And what's with the ominous music playing continually in the background? I had the feeling Dr. Phil was also purveying sex for daytime-TV-watching women who want porn with deniability.

You can see even in that short clip that the interview was full of edits. Maybe they did ask her about her treatments and her progress and the answers weren't interesting or weren't believable. Stray extra questions: What's up with blurring the pages of Dr. Phil's folder of interview notes? Why is SFH, if she wants to come across as reformed and relatable, wearing her hair like that and why do her eyes glint so lasciviously every time she talks about sex?

ADDED: Here's the book, "Fast Girl," which seems to be doing quite well at Amazon. SFH has now moved from Madison, Wisconsin to L.A., and I'd be very surprised if this didn't end up as a movie. By the way, Meade and I met Suzy Favor Hamilton. Back before the scandal broke, we were walking around the Capitol Square at some festival or another, maybe "Cows on the Concourse," and she was involved in promoting a product — potatoes, I believe. We were just reading a poster, looking for bloggable things, and this man — a promoter of some kind (potato?) — insisted on introducing her to us. It was pretty awkward!

UPDATE: I've now read the book, and I opine on it here.

I've watched the trailer for the new Caitlin Jenner TV show, and I have 3 questions.

(Auto-playing video appears below, after the "more.")

1. "You start learning kinda all of the pressure women are under all the time about their appearance." That's your voice-over as you apply heavy makeup. Aren't you putting pressure on women to wear makeup? Whatever happened to the natural look? Well, one thing that happened is that the Kardashian family has been participating in pushing the extremely heavily made-up standard of feminine beauty. Why, if you purport to empathize with what women feel pressured to do are you becoming part of the pressure? How about some critique of excessive makeup? How about relieving the pressure?!

2. On finally getting a makeup professional — you say with a smile — "What a difference!" So because you have the time and money, you are able to get the heavy makeup look, and you are smirking at the viewer — presumably, a woman who is under all of that pressure, and really, by your lights, will probably never get it right. Are you pleased to be about to beat women at their game — a game you participate in defining — or do you actually empathize with women?

3. In the second half of the clip, you're talking and getting filmed while driving. You recently killed a woman by driving inattentively. Shouldn't you not film while driving?!

"Extreme Breastfeeding."

The name of a new reality show that will be on The Discovery Channel.

I learned about it from an article titled "Most Support This Mom’s Right to Breastfeed in Public. Then They Realize How Old the Kid Is…."

The child is 6. She's quoted saying: "Sometimes it tastes like candy canes... It tastes like lots of different things." And: "I might stop when I’m eight." And: "It’s my favourite thing to do when I’m not at school. More kids should, because it’s good for you."

It's good to protect and nurture your children. You can do that by breastfeeding them and you can do that by keeping them out of the media. I don't know how many months or years of breastfeeding are ideal, but I'm pretty sure that zero is the right answer to the question How many reality shows should a kid be on?

By the way, the 6-year-old child is named Aminah. I imagine that's pronounced "a mynah." A mynah bird is known as the most able mimic of all the talking birds. When a 6-year-old makes an assertion like "More kids should, because it’s good for you," I think it's a safe bet that she is mimicking an adult. In this case, there is a mother who seems to be seeking narcissistic satisfaction, which — who knows? — might taste like candy canes.

"Though American shows once dominated the East African television schedule..."

"... familiar themes like village-to-city migration and patriarchal Christian values have made the soap operas from the Philippines more attractive to the Ugandan audience."

“You need to make sure that there's some element of African kind of living, the life that we see everyday,” says Robert Semakula, a programmer for Bukedde TV, one of Uganda’s top stations that runs “Be Careful With My Heart”. Each year for the last three years, Mr. Semakula has sorted through a catalogue of shows from foreign media, and lately, Filipino soaps have made the pick....

Filipino soaps find an audience in Uganda because they adhere to a common formula, described by Graham, as a "Cinderella story, a young girl in the country who’s relatively innocent and looks after her relatives, and she’s immediately transported to a place of great corruption, a city or a rich family." Muwonge says these shows connect because they deal with poverty and other issues affecting Ugandans' everyday lives....

Uganda is notorious for its intolerance of gay people and has long had antigay laws. So when Filipino soap operas – which have recently begun to show positive portrayals of gay culture – show two men in a relationship, the station often cuts the scene or storyline.

“The audience won't understand that,” Semakula says.