Mad Men star and universally acknowledged dreamboat Jon Hamm hosted Saturday Night Live last night for the second time in two years. No wonder they brought him back so soon: It was one of the best episodes all season. And the writers made ample use of his strapping bod—Hamm appeared shirtless in more than one sketch. When fellow Mad Men star January Jones tanked spectacularly on SNL in November, some blamed the SNL scribes who couldn't figure out how to use Jones in a way that didn't objectify her. The perpetually naked and gyrating Jon Hamm shows that the fault for Jones' SNL performance remains with January, as Hamm was hilarious perfection.

In the better of the two Don Draper-in-skivvies sketches, Hamm plays newly elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (who is also known for his public semi-nudity). Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Robert Byrd can't help but fantasize about the comely new kid. Clip is below.

Tags: jon hamm, objectification, snl

“Eliza Fay is a work of art,” E.M. Forster wrote in his introductory notes to Fay’s Original Letters From India. It’s hard to disagree.  Most of the letters in this recently re-released volume recount Fay’s first voyage to India in 1779, when she was a 23-year-old bride traveling with her husband to his new post in Calcutta. The letters reveal, in the form of a young, middle-class Englishwoman, one of the braver broads ever to traipse across Europe and Northern Africa.  She keeps her cool when a mule carries her inches from a precipice and survives 15 weeks’ imprisonment by an Indian warlord, all under the “protection” of men who, in her personal opinion, are handling the situation all wrong. And when her husband turns out to be a hotheaded cad, she doesn’t think twice about divorcing him, even though doing so will hurt her financially and socially.

The early letters captivate with their enthusiasm—much Eliza Fay encounters is “stupendous”—their total honesty, and a dose of age-appropriate frivolity. From Paris, she notes that Queen Marie Antoinette is certainly gorgeous, but behaved a little below her station at the fireworks show. Fay pronounces Martin Luther, or at least his portrait, disappointingly “homely.” She apologizes only half-heartedly for her occasional schadenfreude—wouldn’t you be the littlest bit pleased when backstabbing traveling companions who thought themselves safe got captured, too?

The letters from several subsequent trips to India are more polished but not as stupendous as the first ones. Maybe that’s because Fay was writing these with publication in mind, and the self-censorship she had avoided kicked in. Perhaps the dissolution of her marriage, “the strongest tie the human heart can form for itself,” muted her joy. Still, Fay’s epistles reveal what an important space the letter was in the 18th century for intelligent, articulate women writers with no other genre available to them. Fay claimed her right to tell her own pretty thrilling story. She writes, “This story must be told in my own way, or not at all.”

Tags: book of the week, DoubleX Book of the Week, E.M. Forster, Eliza Fay

In partnership with the Washington Post Magazine, we'll debate a new question each week and invite you to join in. This week: Research suggests that a “nerdy” environment—one that includes Star Wars paraphernalia, computer games, and junk food—can turn women off from careers in computer science. What sort of factors would you say make a work environment unattractive or unwelcoming to women?

Hanna Rosin: At DoubleX, we insist on pink wallpaper and pictures of Gloria Steinem. Just kidding. Not to sound unsympathetic, but it seems to me that Darth Vader and Doritos are a vast improvement over pinups and boob jokes. Maybe we can mandate that offices full of developers have a Wii, so that gaming remains strictly gender-neutral.

Dahlia Lithwick: Star Wars paraphernalia, computer games, and junk food—you've just described every room in my house.

KJ Dell'Antonia: I think this "nerdy environment" thing is just another way to say that women perceive computer science as a male field. Some women love to polish up their lightsabers and charge right into that; others don't, and all the Barbie computer games in the world aren't going to change that. Programs that encourage women to enter a field, scholarships, schools seeking out female students—those are the things that put women into classrooms and later, into those work environments. That's when we bring in the pink wallpaper. With pictures of Gloria—and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of course.

Ellen Tarlin: Yes, I'd have to say the main thing that makes work environments unfriendly to women is people who work there who are unfriendly to women or who exclude them either intentionally or unintentionally. Plenty of women like Star Wars, computer games, and junk food and don't need to work in offices that look like the pages of Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Tags: computer science, nerds, Star Wars, women in the workplace

I agree, Dahlia. Despite the media's attempt to paint Alito as some kind of fist-pumping judicial tea bagger, his mildly indecorous headshake was hardly the “partisan sideshow” some liberal bloggers have made it out to be. The problem is not that the court has morphed into some kind of political monster over the last decade, it's that, in the age of 24-hour news and juicy tell-all memoirs from government officials, the patina of impartiality has begun to wear off. No wonder the Supremes don't want cameras in the courtroom.

More than anything else, this incident reflects the personal rancor that persists between Obama and the newest conservative justices. Alito and Roberts, both Bush nominees, faced substantial opposition from Senate Democrats during their confirmation hearings. Toeing the party line, then-Senator Obama voted against Roberts' promotion to the Supreme Court and joined the effort to filibuster against Alito's confirmation. For the junior justice, these wounds are still fresh. It was reported last year that Alito boycotted a casual meet-and-greet with the new president and crosses to the far side of the street whenever he walks on Capitol Hill.

So what's to be done about this? If Obama can spare a sudsy summer afternoon for a dialogue on race, surely he can demonstrate true due deference to his colleagues in the third branch and make an earnest bid at détente. I propose that Obama sit down with the conservative justices over a few glasses of wine, or, better yet, engage them in a rousing game of hoops on the highest court in the land. And let them win this time.

Tags: citizens united, Justice Alito, law, Obama, Supreme Court

This looks like a really bad idea: The Chicago Tribune reports that in Indiana, two 12- and 13-year-old middle schoolers caught in class sending nude photos of themselves to each other via cell phone have been charged with child exploitation and possession of child pornography. This is not what these statutes should be used for. They were written to protect children, not club them over the head. I thought that law enforcement was moving away from such misguided heavy handedness. What gives?

Tags: sexting

The NYT's Room for Debate blog offers four experts joining the conversation about the Kaiser Foundation's "Wired Kids" findings—although it's scarcely a debate, since every expert is united in calls to balance screen time and social media with real-world activity. What no one's yet noted is that teenagers themselves share this concern. Teenagers love to analyze themselves, to compare themselves with their peers, and they get that this is what makes them different from their parents (even though you're right, Emily,  we're all plugged in).

In December, I listened to our local NPR station conduct a "Socrates Exchange" on the topic "Has technology helped or hurt us?" at a New Hampshire high school. The kids were reasonably united (and filled with youthful idealism) in a sort of limited anti-tech camp. Constant texting "leaves you always alone and isolated while kind of being connected at the same time," commented one. Another says he likes the entertainment and connection but remembers that these are "wants not needs." And those are just the online commenters—kids speaking on the air were often vehement in their conviction that "all the other kids" were way too addicted to their gadgets. Of course, none of them offered to hand their smartphones over for a week. Still, I think there's little risk that "Generation M2" will arrive at some constantly connected utopia (or dystopia) without the usual degree of American introspection on the subject. Not that parents shouldn't set limits and get involved, but having a conversation about why limits and balance matter might get more teens talking about this among themselves. Maybe even face-to-face.

Tags: kids today

I agree with Jess that one pro-life commercial during the Super Bowl isn't going to have much affect on anyone's worldview—but I am glad to know it's coming. Commercials are always a problem when you watch sports with kids. We inevitably end up turning off the World Series to deal with the results of a commercial for a Halloween-themed episode of CSI, or soothing a preschooler distraught by pick-up trucks being driven into flaming buildings (a surprisingly common theme). I resent it. Do the networks not want to raise up a new generation of fans? I've long since accepted it, though. The WSJ did the math, and the average NFL game offers about an hour of commercials and just 11 minutes of football. In other words, the Colts and Saints may be playing, but the beer and the pick-up trucks win the game.

Generally, judicious use of the DVR is the answer, but that won't fly at a Super Bowl party where half the crowd is watching for the over-the-top ads. Even better, in the course of teaching my oldest son (an 8-year-old newly annointed Saints fan) to interpret and deal with commercials, I've inadvertently taught him a little game called "guess what they're advertising." The harder it is to guess, the more intently he watches (oops). Which means that when Pam Tebow starts telling her story, he's likely to tune in to try to figure out if she's going to start hawking minivans or corn chips.

I could send him out for popcorn, or spend the evening with my hand poised over the remote, but that's not really my style. We've gone over the facts of life any number of times, and although a football game may not be the ideal moment to define abortion, I'll probably just roll with it. (Countless women in an endless series of restrooms have enjoyed my monthly explanations of menstruation to various accompanying children.) But CBS might have wanted to consider that forcing me to put down my nachos and pick up my politics mid-Super Bowl isn't exactly going to put me in the mood to buy a truck. Although I guess it might make me want another beer.

J.D. Salinger has just died. One of the few portraits we have of him after he withdrew from public life and the written word and retreated to a compound in New Hampshire was the memoir by Joyce Maynard, published decades after the fact, of a months-long affair with him when she was 18 years old. The Salinger in her portrait was a sexually weird, health-obsessed crank. (Maynard also thinks he may have a couple of unpublished novels squirreled away somewhere.) Maynard was roundly excoriated for having violated Salinger’s privacy and exploiting their long-ago affair for financial gain. I agree with Hanna that there is much to excoriate about Joyce Maynard, but I always felt that she was entitled to write about her own life. Salinger contacted her after he saw her a photograph of her winsome teenage face on the cover of the New York Times Magazine illustrating probably her most famous story about herself. He was 35 years older than she—old enough to understand that when you have an affair with a writer, you may be dealing away your privacy.

Tags: j.d. Salinger; joyce maynard

I agree with nearly everyone that Obama’s speech was way too long—like 30 minutes worth. But I wish he’d had time for a couple more sentences when he got to Iran. In his perfunctory remarks about Iran, he said if the country doesn't curb its nuclear ambitions, it will find itself facing unnamed “consequences.” Obama has mostly seemed flummoxed by the brave Iranian demonstrators fighting in the streets—and dying—as they seek democracy and a new government. I wish Obama had used last night’s platform to say to them and the world that we stand with them, that a government that kills its own children has no legitimacy and will not last.

Tags: iran, Obama speech, SOTU

I can't tell if Julie Scelfo's New York Times piece on the oh-so-eligible John Bowe is supposed to be a moving snapshot of modern romantic struggles, a book plug, or a 1,500-word personal ad.

Now that the world knows the marvelous fortysomething freelance journalist can cook (pork with crushed sweet peppers), clean (no dust or hair in the bathroom!), and collect art (amateur flower paintings), Mr. Bowe will surely be deluged by friend requests from lonely New Yorkers who believe they've stumbled upon their soul mate in the Style section. But the ladies may be too late. Ms. Scelfo admits that some of her interviews were conducted during "several late-night phone calls when Mr. Bowe seemed less guarded." And don't accuse me of reading too much into this. There is no need to read between the lines when the piece includes lines like, "There is little to suggest that Mr. Bowe... isn't the last great catch."

So, if you were thinking about tracking down Mr. Bowe and demanding to have his babies (you already know he'll "be the happiest person on this planet" when he has kids), forget it. He's got a lady friend who admires well-groomed, well-traveled, anti-establishment types—and she already has his number.

Tags: john bowe, julie scelfo