The diary of Natascha Kampusch.

The Austrian girl held captive for 8 years, since the age of 10, kept a diary. Will she publish it? Imagine the rich offers she is hearing now and how strange it must be to have everyone lavishing attention on her after all these years of isolation. I wonder if, as she wrote those pages, she pictured a book that one day millions would read and if that made her feel she was not alone. The police officer who first interviewed her said she was amazed by her "intelligence, her vocabulary." Thinking of the girl's suffering, I feel heartened by the idea that she used her time -- deprived of schooling and stimulation -- to reach inside herself and discover a writer.

I knew the animals were laughing at us.

But I didn't know they were trying to get us to smile for the camera. (Via Metafilter.)

Friday night and the new "Real Time with Bill Maher."

Did you watch Episode 1 of the new season of "Real Time with Bill Maher" last night? I hope you didn't, because it was Friday night, and it would probably be good if you had something more exciting to do, though perhaps you had to work or participate in an argument or drink yourself into a stupor or rob a restaurant like Honey Bunny and Pumpkin:

Nobody ever robs restaurants. Bars, liquor stores, gas stations... you get your head blown off sticking up one of them. Restaurants on the other hand, you catch with their pants down. They're not expecting to get robbed. Not as expectant anyway.

But who am I to pry into your Friday night? I watched the show, mostly because I saw that Markos Moulitsas and Christopher Hitchens were going to be on -- and they're two characters I follow, more or less, not to the point where I think about what they'd do on a Friday night if they weren't doing "Real Time with Bill Maher." But they were there, Hitchens looking unusually healthy. Markos, perky as ever, with those big eyes and that turn-the-world-on-with-your smile.

Bill did his typical monologue, each joke beginning with the recitation of a recent news story and then swooping down for a low punchline. One punchline, about Mark John Karr -- he's so hilarious -- made me laugh, but I can't remember it this morning.

Then he interviewed Spike Lee, who was there -- on a video screen -- to promote his documentary "When the Levees Broke." But Lee wasn't into the promotion enough to pump any energy into the segment. Maher shifted from the subject of Lee's movies to the topic of a recent Bob Herbert column -- TimeSelect link -- and quoted the line "If white people were doing to black people what black people are doing to black people, there would be rioting from coast to coast." (The column was about Juan Williams's new book "Enough." And I wish the Times would make it available now for open linking.) Spike Lee acted like he couldn't understand what Herbert was talking about. Maher got stern and said he knew what it meant, and Lee murmured his way to the finish line.

Next up was Elvis Costello, who had something to promote, I think. And it was his birthday, which is such a less interesting fact than people seem to realize. We were supposed to care that he took time from his birthday -- like it matters when you've had 52 of them and when he was only on a video screen. For some reason, Maher went into a riff about how there's never been a whiff of scandal about Elvis Costello and his name is as pure as the driven snow or some such nonsense. Elvis opted neither to agree or disagree, and I made a mental note to Google later, because I thought there was something. Yeah. This:

In March 1979, Costello capped off this productive period in his extra-artistic life by getting himself into a scrap with Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame) and Bonnie Bramlett (a minor singer from the '60s) in a hotel bar in Ohio. Again motivated by an unclear principle, he did his best to offend them, finally resorting to a burst of profanity and bigotry, capped with the assertion that Ray Charles was a "blind, ignorant n*****."

There's no evidence that Costello was a racist -- he'd been active in Rock Against Racism before it was fashionable and was too smart in any event to let it show if he was -- but he was being as stupid, reckless and out of control as any of the broken-down '60s stars his energy, brains and invective were supposed to be an antidote for. In any event, Bramlett industriously publicized the exchange and Costello tried to explain and apologize. He took his lumps in a months-long transatlantic brouhaha; to this day some serious critics hold him in contempt.

In any event, Costello showed all signs of being more boring than Spike Lee so I muted the sound and finished the Friday crossword.

I unmuted when the panel came out. It was Christopher Hitchens, Senator Max Cleland, and Vali Nasr (a scholar who's written this book -- "The Shia Revival"). Maher framed a question about Iraq in terms of how finally, after all these years, even the idiots have figured out that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism. He cited a poll that showed only 1% of Brits thought it did. The other guests went along with the demonstration of how everybody knows this is true, and you, the HBO subscriber, were supposed to get the point that you're going to be an object of horrible mockery if you don't get in line. It was Hitchens's turn, and he called himself one of "the elite," because he was in that 1%, and proceeded to explain why. When the audience booed, he gave them the finger and said "F**k you." Then, when Maher tried to recentralize his point that everyone knows Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism and the audience cheered, Hitchens turned on the audience and abused them again. He abused Maher too, for leading the herd along and building himself up with their cheap support, and then he praised Maher for not letting Spike Lee wriggle out of the question he damned well understood. Hitchens knows how to do TV. [ADDED: Video!]

Maher had a comic bit set up where he had various products that you can't take on a plane anymore, like a bottle of "Jihad, Your Hair Smells Terrific" and "Behead and Shoulders." There were about ten of these things, and the funniest part of it really was how much it cracked up Senator Cleland. In case you're wondering if the format has changed, Maher also did his "New Rules" routine.

And somewhere in the middle of that, they video-screened Markos Moulitsas, who lacked any edge or ennui or signs of age or anything but the positive energy of a guy doing an interview for college admission. He believes in his blog project and it's all for the good, bringing people together, la, la, la. Maher has no material to make this interesting, so he resorts to a discussion of the word "blog." He doesn't like it. That's so 2004, Bill. Ending the interview, Maher says, "Goodbye, Carlos." Carlos. Come on. If it was Carlos, it would be The DailyLos. Ah, well, I'm sure Markos found a way to take a cloudy night and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.

"The idea is unlikely to appeal to traditionalists who believe dogs should be walked...."

Yeah. Really.

ADDED: The first comment is laugh-out-loud funny. And I'd just like to say that worse than not letting your dog walk is not letting your child walk. There are way too many children stuffed into strollers for the convenience of an adult and left with little to do but learn indolence and to grow fat.

Not seeing the new posts?

I know some readers come to the blog and don't see the new posts -- at least not unless they hit "reload." This happens to me too when I use Firefox. I can't think of anything I can do about it other than to let you know there are new posts here every day, so if you're not seeing them, hit reload.

UPDATE: I believe I've solved the problem, based on a clue given in the comments by P. Froward.

The economics of fat.

Are we fat because we're prosperous? I've been assuming the "obesity epidemic" -- hmmm, what if it were contagious? -- is mostly a result of affluence. It's easy to get food, and we can relax a lot physically. We don't have to exercise to get our food, and we have lots of time sitting around not only not exercising but in a good position to eat the food that's always available. It's totally normal, under the circumstances, to get fat. You have to fight nature to avoid getting fat. Anyway, that's my casual observation.

At the link, economist Darius Lakdawalla debates the question with public policy professor Carol Graham. A key issue is why poor people are fatter than rich people.

Graham: While it is extremely difficult to precisely isolate the effects of norms and expectations versus those of cheap food and sedentary lifestyles, it seems very plausible that differences in the former set of factors play some role in explaining differences in incidence. Our research suggests that stigma against obesity is much lower in some racial, socioeconomic, and professional groups than others, and that accords with the higher obesity rates among those groups. It also suggests that obese people are less likely to experience mobility into higher status professions where obesity is rarer....

Lakdawalla: [I]ncentives explain the variation between rich and poor at least as well as social norms. The seminal work of Michael Grossman, in 1972, argued that richer and more educated people have higher demands for health, because they stand to lose morein the way of lifetime income if they die young. Dr. Graham's examples make this point as well. For instance, she cites recent work by Jay Bhattacharya and Kate Bundorf that shows "discrimination against overweight and obese individuals is higher in higher status professions." In fact, Bhattacharya and Bundorf argue that people with health insurance face a larger wage penalty if they are obese, because their employers end up paying for their higher medical costs. They rely on incentives, not social norms, in explaining the phenomena they observe. Incentives also have several important practical advantages over social norms. Norms-based theories always involve a "chicken-and-egg" type problem. Are people fatter because it is more acceptable to be fat, or did it become more acceptable when more people got fat? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is often difficult to act on a theory of social norms, because policymakers can change incentives much more easily than social norms.

The 7th Circuit does not appreciate the State of Wisconsin's tone.

The Seventh Circuit has a new opinion today -- Toeller v. Wisconsin Department of Corrections (PDF) -- dealing with an issue we talked about at the time of the Alito hearings: whether the Family and Medical Leave Act is capable of abrogating sovereign immunity with respect to leave taken for self-care (as opposed to the care of others, which the Supreme Court dealt with in Hibbs). The question is the scope of Congress's power under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which is limited to remedying the violation of a Fourteenth Amendment right. The self-care provisions don't relate to sex discrimination the way the family care provisions do, which is the basis for distinguishing Hibbs. This isn't about whether the FMLA is constitutional, because it's supported by the commerce power, only about whether Congress can subject the states to suits by individuals for retrospective relief. Like then-Judge Alito, the court upholds state immunity.

But what's really notable is footnote 1, which follows a long paragraph summarizing the relevant Supreme Court cases:

These cases, taken as a whole, demonstrate that the Court has taken care to draw important, and sometimes subtle, constitutional lines in this area. Both for that reason, and for reasons requiring basic courtesy to the courts, we find much of the rhetoric in WDOC’s brief to be entirely out of line. It is not up to Attorney General Peggy A. Lautenschlager or Assistant Attorney General Richard B. Moriarty to accuse Justices of the Supreme Court of making “remarkably intransigent statements,” or to use a disrespectful tone in criticizing dissenting Justices merely for the fact that they wrote a dissent, or to opine about “polarizing declarations.” The tradition of writing dissenting opinions has existed in the United States Supreme Court since the beginning of the Republic, and every Justice on the Court avails himself or herself of that privilege when he or she deems it appropriate. Counsel’s brief is also less than helpful where it draws bizarre analogies to opinions about the current presence of American troops in Iraq, which has absolutely nothing to do with this case. We trust that the State of Wisconsin will adopt a more appropriate tone in future briefs filed with this court.

I haven't seen the brief, but that's really harsh!

Peg Lautenschlager, you should know, is running for reelection right now, with the primary on September 12th:

A WISC-TV poll showed incumbent Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager faces high unfavorable ratings but challengers have even higher "no opinion" ratings.

Thirty-four percent of those surveyed also have "no opinion" of Lautenschlager, despite her four years in office. Thirty-four percent view her as favorable, and 32 percent rate her as unfavorable. University of Wisconsin political science professor Charles Franklin believes the high negative rating is due to her drunken-driving conviction.

Lautenschlager faces a Democratic primary challenge from Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. And despite a reasonable showing in a crowded primary for governor four years ago, two-thirds of those surveyed have no opinion on the challenger.

The situation is even worse for the Republicans. Seventy-six percent of those polled don't know Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, and 89 percent don't know former U.S. Attorney J.B. Van Hollen.

The poll was sponsored by WISC-TV and conducted from Aug. 14 though 16 by the firm Research 2000. Six hundred likely voters were selected at random and questioned over the phone.

So we haven't been paying much attention, and now along comes this juicy nugget of a footnote.

Can you do much with this politically? I think you can. People normally don't have much to go on when they think about how the attorney general's work is done. Thus, they revert to interesting but not all that relevant material: the drunk driving conviction. And now here's a hot, pithy paragraph that is precisely about how she does her work representing the people of Wisconsin, and it comes from the 7th Circuit, whose opinion of her work couldn't be more important.

Let's see how effectively Lautenschlager's opponents exploit this -- as well they should!

IN THE COMMENTS: I love this one from J:

...I think your respect for and deference to the court is exponentially higher than that of the general public. Not being a lawyer myself, my understanding of your excerpt is that she basically said the court was full of it, and they're hitting back here.

"It is not up to Attorney General Peggy A. Lautenschlager or Assistant Attorney General Richard B. Moriarty to accuse Justices of the Supreme Court of making 'remarkably intransigent statements,' or to use a disrespectful tone in criticizing dissenting Justices merely for the fact that they wrote a dissent, or to opine about 'polarizing declarations.'"

Actually, anyone who wants to can do those things (watch ANY episode of "The O'Reilly Factor", f'rinstance). Yes, I recognize that it might be considered inappropriate in this context, and I have no problem at all with the court hitting back, but this "it's not up to", along with the final sentence -- "We trust that the State of Wisconsin will adopt a more appropriate tone in future briefs filed with this court" -- sound almost comically arrogant to me. The effect of bringing this up might be the opposite of what you expect.

Well, perhaps the court wasn't so much slamming the attorney general as signalling deference to the Supreme Court. And not just signalling, but hamming it up big time. In any case, if the judges are arrogant, the lawyer has to account for that in writing a brief. The 7th Circuit isn't an Al Pacino movie.

Mr. Kirkland you are out of order!

You're out of order! You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They're out of order! That man, that sick, crazy, depraved man, raped and beat that woman there, and he'd like to do it again! It's just a show! It's a show! It's "Let's Make A Deal"! "Let's Make A Deal"! Hey Frank, you wanna "Make A Deal"? I got an insane judge who likes to beat the shit out of women! Whaddya wanna gimme Frank, 3 weeks probation?

DAMMIT!

You, you sonofabitch, you! You're supposed to STAND for somethin'! You're supposed to protect people! But instead you rape and murder them! You killed McCullough! You killed him! Hold it! Hold it! I just completed my opening statement.

Brilliant! We love it! But we're not electing him attorney general.

JohnR did a nice job of finding the references in the brief (which you can read here):

Here are the context and the quotes referred to in footnote 1:

First: "intransigent statements." The Appellant is going on about what you can or can't rely on from a Supreme Court decision where, as in Hibbs, there are many viewpoints expressed by the Justices in what is called a "splintered opinion." In describing what the Appellant referred to as an "analytical abyss" involving Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence between Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens on the one hand, and the rest of the Court on the other, the Appellant said, " Indeed, Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens even refused to recognize the Seminole Tribe line of decisions as a legitimate subject of discussion, much less precedental. The depth and permanency of this gulf was openly declared through the remarkably intransigent statements made in Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents...." (Appellant's Brief at 17....)

Second: "polarizing declarations." The Appellant is continuing to discuss the divide in the Court over Kimel, and quoted Justice O'Connor in that case saying, "...dissenters' refusal to accept the validity and natural import of ... [cite omitted]... makes it difficult to engage in meaningful debate...." The brief gives some more details, and then says (page 18), "These polarizing declarations startled many seasoned Court watchers [cites omitted].

Third: Iraq. The brief (page 19): “Given those ‘steadfast’ positions [cite omitted], was there a detectable meeting of the minds between either Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter or Stevens on the one hand and Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor, on the other…? By analogy, if the current administration were to decide, sometime in 2006, to withdraw all American troops from Iraq, and that decision was supported by persons who were always unalterably opposed to the Iraq invasion, the administration and its opponents would hardly have reached a consensus on their rationales on how the United States should handle Iraq simply because both sides agreed with the ultimate result.”

My take, for what it is worth, is that this section of the brief should have been in some form of commentary rather than in something for a court. It is too gossipy and unlawyerly. At the same time, the writing is hardly offensive, and appears actually to be a fair description of the strength of the Justices’ opinions referred to, however inappropriate it may be to find this in a brief. I think the 7th Circuit’s footnote was an overreaction. Though I must say the Iraq thing was not the best analogy the State might have used.

I found another analogy, which I think is definitely the sort of thing that is going to make a real-world judge roll his or her eyes. In support of the assertion that the Justices in Hibbs had "two mutually exclusive analytical and philosophical cosmologies":

[N]ative American tribes and federal officials indisputably entererd into various treaties over many years, but each side unquestionably did so based on widely different cosmologies. [Citations omitted.] While treaties were the result, the divergent reasons each side entered those treaties would preclude any conclusion that there were controlling rationales that both sides actually adopted.

That's something you might expatiate about in a law school seminar, but it's not going to play with a judge who is likely to see that as embarrassingly pedantic and a waste of time. And it's weirdly political, suggesting that the writer wanted to take the time to air an irrelevant grievance. I'm thinking footnote 1 is the tip of an iceberg of ridicule that took place in chambers.

Midwestern weather nightmare never ends.

You may have noticed that the new BloggingHeads episode is called "Tornado Watch Edition." You can see me reacting to the insane Wisconsin weather. For a journalistic view of the weather we've been experiencing out here in the upper middle United States, read this.

That was yesterday. Today, I keep wanting to leave the house, and it will be looking like a nice day, then, 5 minutes later, it's all dark and vicious and the idea of leaving the house is lunacy. Then, it's a nice day again, and I start collecting myself to venture forth, and it goes all bad again.

Internet service deals.

Okay, picture this. You move to a new city, and you want to set up internet service in your apartment. The most reputable seeming service provider is outrageously expensive, and you go on-line and find a lot of alternatives, but some of them seem vaguely scammy. How would you home in on the right choice?

It's a new Bloggingheads, with me and Matthew Yglesias!

Here it is. Topics and times:

Sloppy cases make bad law (09:13)

Pluto gets the ax (04:48)

Have Democrats lost the stem cell issue? (04:56)

Racists on a plane... (11:02)

...and on reality TV (04:09)

Are beauty pagents worse than dolls? (05:37)

Madrassas in America (06:22)

Joe Lieberman becomes a Republican (05:31)

Why we love "Project Runway."

Entertainment Weekly has a big cover story on "Project Runway." I'm thinking you might need to subscribe to actually go to it. They try to puzzle out why the show is so great, why lots of people who weren't already interested in sewing or fashion love it so much. They come up with five reasons:

1. It never should have worked in the first place....

But the producers gave it a chance anyway on the condition it didn't end up being "people in black, talking about designing a gown with, you know, a birdcage and a clock woven into someone's Marie Antoinette wig."

2. It features the smartest, most creative challenges on TV....

3. The judges reward actual talent....

As the guy with the tattoo on his neck, Jeffrey Sebelia, puts it ''We're not eating cow's balls or having to survive in the jungle with one book of matches and a bottle of water.'' Exactly! Yeah, there's no career in "cow" ball eating. Aw, leave our darling tattoo boy alone! It's not that it's hard to tell a cow from a bull, but it's funny to act like you don't give a damn.

EW probes into the question whether the producers pick the winners and whether the choice has to do with the entertainment value of characters like Santino and Vincent. Nina Garcia assures us that she'd "mutiny" if the producers pushed her around.

4. The contestants aren't pathetic, fame-seeking narcissists.

Except the ones who are. The work is too hard and specialized to bring in lightweights.

5. Tim Gunn makes it work.

Of course, Tim Gunn. (Here's Project Rungay's tribute to him.) We like those other regulars too, though, don't we? Aren't you a Nina Garcia fan? And what about Heidi? I was asked if I liked her. I said I didn't know, but she was just such a part of the show -- like Ryan Seacrest on "American Idol" -- that I just don't like to think of the show without her. I want to hear her piercing voice to announce the next loser. It seems like it has to be.

Possible topic for the comments: personages on TV that you're not sure are all that good, but epitomize the show in some way that makes you completely attached to them.

Predicting "a favorable hearing" for argument against racial balancing in schools.

David Savage writes about the school integration case that's pending in the Supreme Court. Parents have challenged programs that take accound of race and exclude some white children in the pursuit of racial balance, and the administration has just filed its briefs siding with the parents:

[Solicitor General Paul] Clement urged the high court to resolve a lingering dispute over the meaning of the court's landmark decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. That 1954 ruling struck down racial segregation laws that prevailed in the South and parts of the Midwest and declared that segregated schools were "inherently unequal."...

"The promise of this court's landmark Brown (decision) was to 'effectuate a transition to a racially nondiscriminatory school system,' " he wrote. "The United States remains deeply committed to that objective. But once the effects of past de jure (legal) segregation have been remedied, the path forward does not involve new instances of de jure discrimination."

His argument is likely to get a favorable hearing from Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues.

"It's a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," Roberts commented in June when the court ruled on a voting rights dispute from Texas. The court majority said Texas had violated the Voting Rights Act by shifting Latino voters out of a congressional district where they were nearing a majority, but Roberts expressed his dismay with the law's focus on the race and ethnicity of the voters.

The voting rights case is different -- importantly so, I think -- because it saw federal law mandating what Roberts called a "sordid business" and overriding a choice made at the state level. In the racial balancing case, local government has chosen that "sordid business" for itself, and the question is whether federal law should override it. Other conservative values -- federalism and judicial restraint -- therefore come into play. It's not just conservative versus liberal here. There is a complexity to the conservative side of the argument that ought to be recognized.

Why do judges make it easier for their critics?

The NYT has an editorial about the controversy that has boiled up connecting Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to the ACLU, the party she summarily handed a victory to in ACLU v. NSA.

[I]t would have been prudent for her to disclose any activity that might conceivably raise questions about her ability to be impartial. Regrettably, it was left to a conservative group, Judicial Watch, to point out her role as a trustee to a foundation that had given grants to a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a plaintiff in the case....

Judge Taylor’s role at a grant-making foundation whose list of beneficiaries includes groups that regularly litigate in the courts is still disquieting — and, even worse, it is not all that unusual for a member of the judiciary. The most important lesson here may be the wisdom of re-examining the sort of outside activities that are appropriate for sitting federal judges.

I don't understand why judges don't steer clear of anything that can be used against them like this. Well, to dredge up yesterday's paper -- the one with my op-ed in it -- I don't understand why judges don't swaddle their opinions -- whether result-oriented or not -- in very professional, neutral-sounding verbiage. Why make it easier for your critics?

"We apologise for hiding part of a beautiful image of a mother-to-be."

Japanese censors back away from their initial view that a poster of naked, pregnant Britney Spears is "overly stimulating." You can't be attacking motherhood.

Will the breakthrough in stem cell research resolve the political dispute?

Here's news of an advance in stem cell research which threatens to destroy the political issue elaborately built on the old technology that required the destruction of an embryo. How inconvenient for politicians who face the fall election season who've made this their issue. I wonder if they can let it go, or if they'll find a way to say the problem remains.

On one side, you have social conservatives who are trying to point up their dedication to the pro-life set of values. On the other side, you have those who oppose pro-lifers and have -- quite sensibly -- seen a big opportunity to amass public support by emphasizing the very widespread interest in finding cures for various diseases.

Consider the Wisconsin governor's race between the Republican challenger Mark Green and Governor Jim Doyle. Doyle must be upset to see this new research reported now. Look at this article from a month ago:

If Gov. Jim Doyle and Democrats have their way, the biggest issue in the campaign against Republican Mark Green will be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

With the hope of attracting undecided voters and driving a wedge into Green's support, Doyle has launched a relentless effort to paint Green as an opponent of stem cell research, which is seen as holding the promise of treatments for a host of debilitating diseases....

In general, analysts see little risk for Doyle in pushing the issue, and potentially a high reward. Doyle already is unlikely to win the votes of those who oppose abortion - the same voters who raise the gravest concerns about embryonic stem cell research....

The Doyle campaign has created a steering committee of nationally known stem cell advocates, hired a full-time stem cell coordinator (an unheard of position for a campaign) and worked to build a network of people for whom the issue hits home.

Will Doyle let go of the issue now? Look how organized he is around the issue and how niftily it works for him. (It's certainly been working on me.) And he's got a special team of advisors on this issue. Don't you think they're brainstorming right now about how to keep the controversy going?

If they try to explain away the new research, they need to be careful not to ruin what is most appealing about their position: a strong support for science. If they overreach now, their position will look a lot more like political posturing than it did before, and, as that month-old article shows, it already was starting to look that way.

UPDATE: And the FDA just approved the over-the-counter "morning-after" pill. In other science news, less likely to affect elections, Pluto is so not a planet... despite all your affection.

What's worse, being boring or being a jerk?

Did you agree with the outcome tonight on "Project Runway"? I was going to do a very detailed post on tonight's show, like last week, but then my TiVo "season pass" failed to perceive that this was a "first run," and I only noticed about 20 minutes into the show when I sat down to watch. Then, during the critique part in the end, we got a tornado warning here in Madison, Wisconsin, which not only introduced a warning text crawl across the top of the screen, but also knocked out the audio. So I'll have to catch the full show later.

Anyway, it was fun to jump in and have to get the hang of what was happening -- the models were mothers or sisters of the designers, and nobody had his own mother/sister so there was a conflict of interest where each model had a motive to sandbag her designer. Angela's mom was not happy with Jeffrey -- the guy with a tattoo on his neck -- and Jeffrey was not disposed to put up with it. Angela's mom got all weepy and Angela got super-protective, and it was a bit of a scam. But Jeffrey stood his jerky ground and made what he thought was right, which was -- quite independently of Angela's mom's opinion -- crap. Very amusing!

But then in the end, it wasn't just Jeffrey with a problem. It was Robert, who had opted for the standard, desperate strategy for draping a fat woman: a huge poncho-like nonjacket. In red, the color she wanted. And the biggest problem is that Robert has been boring before. His boringness was the culmination of weeks of boredom. Of course, Jeffrey's jerkiness was nothing new, and this week was a real spike in his trend. But which tendency would you cut -- the boring or the jerky? I think they made the right choice.

But you might ask, did I make the right choice hanging around upstairs during a tornado warning, when I could have been holing up down in the basement?

UPDATE, on seeing the whole show: Well, I see they drew lots to choose the models (with last week's winner, Michael, getting the first pick). It was a little awful watching them pick, because it was so obvious that they were picking in order of weight. Michael immediately snagged the thinnest (and youngest) one. After each selection, it was more and more obvious that everyone was saying to the unchosen ones "You're fat!" Then those women had to work with the designer they had to know would have shunned them if they'd gotten an earlier choice.

But no one forced these women to go on the show. They had to know -- and I suspect the producers elaborately explained it to them -- that they would be seen as a special challenge and everyone would be inspecting them and talking about their size. But they might very well have reasoned it through and seen how they could help their son/brother. Since you couldn't pick your own family member, a difficult model would hurt a competitor the model had a interest in defeating.

Angela's mom seemed to know that. In the original consultation with Jeffrey -- who only had her as a model because he got last choice (no choice) -- Angela's mom told him two colors she liked. Shopping, he decided he needed a better color match and went with light blue, which upset her rather bizarrely. He dealt with it badly, and both the mom and Angela exploited his emotional weakness by acting all emotional, in a much warmer way, which made him look monstrous... just by chance. I love when Angela and her mom are behind the screen and Angela is all you have a right to say you're not happy.

Meanwhile, all the other designers displayed a nice bond with their models -- though Robert's distaste for his large-sized model showed when she wasn't around. So Jeffrey, you were outplayed. And you should see how much you were helped by your own mom, who -- by being nicely normal -- humanized you.