The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Obama’s speech at the United Nations describing his dream of a nuclear-free world helped clinch his Nobel Peace prize. Many have observed that while Obama’s words and sentiments are noble, the accomplishments that go along with earning a Nobel are lacking. However, I find his dream itself disturbing. The Journal earlier reported that Obama’s U.N. speech infuriated French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who wanted Obama to use the forum of the U.N. to expose the fact that the West knew of another Iranian uranium-enrichment facility. Obama refused, saving the news for the ecomonic summit in Pittsburgh because he didn’t want to have to rewrite his world-without-nukes speech. Why would the president of the United States gas on about fantasies that are being proven ridiculous and even potentially dangerous?

Nuclear nonproliferation is a necessary and admirable goal. However, since we cannot unlearn our nuclear knowledge, I want the United States, France, and yes, Israel, to have these deterrent and defensive weapons, rather than leave their possession to rogue and genocidally-inclined states such as Iran and North Korea. (Yes, I know, we wouldn't get rid of our nukes until we know all the bad guys have gotten rid of theirs. In other words, it's not going to happen, so why make this a goal?) I hope at his Nobel acceptance speech, Obama takes the opportunity to talk about what Sarkozy, in his U.N. rejoinder to Obama’s dream, described as the job of a politician, “[T]he present comes before the future, and the present includes two major nuclear crises [ Iran and North Korea]. We live in the real world, not in a virtual one.”

Tags: Nobel Peace Prize, nuclear weapons, Obama

With the announcement this morning that Indiana University's Elinor Ostrom had won the Nobel Prize in Economics—the first women to do so in the prize's 40-year-history—the tally of 2009 women laureates rises to five. Since the program began in 1901, only 40 women total have won Nobels. Ostrom doesn't cut quite as striking a figure as DoubleX's new office style icon, Herta Mueller, but this photo fills my Monday-deadened heart with happiness.

Tags: elinor ostrom, herta mueller, Nobel Prize

He loves Jewish girls! Can you believe it? His girlfriend Hailey is half-Jewish (although must be more like 1/4 with a name like Hailey) and has apparently put him through crash-course Hebrew School: He loves challah, Zabar's and has already figured out that bacon, egg, and cheese is a no-no with Hailey's mom. He's onto Yom Kippur and the phenomenon that is the Jewish lawyer. And his new guru: Rabbi Shmuley. I have already expressed my deep admiration for the man for his Biblical prophet skills, but this? It's too much.

Tags: Jon and Kate, jon gosselin, Jon Gosselin and Hailey, Jon Gosselin and Jewish girl

Jessica, your observation about the probation officer's report highlights the fatal flaw in Michael Cieply's argument: Polanski's case was more about 70s attitudes about forcible rape than about 70s attitudes towards sex with teenage girls. What Cieply discovers in investigating the soft hand the media and law enforcement took with Polanski is that rape wasn't taken seriously as a crime in the '70s, at least if the rapist knew his victim. That's what all those feminists taking back the night were protesting!

There might be a case to be made that sex with minors has become more of a cultural taboo now than in the '70s, but you can't make that case using the Polanski rape as evidence. Polanski's case could be used as a textbook example of the excuse-making and crime-minimizing that follows when a man rapes a social inferior, just as surely as wet sidewalks follow the rain. The victim had had sex before, making her a dirty slut who had it coming? Check. The man's too rich and powerful to be taken down by some wee woman who can't just get over it? Check. The only thing her minor status adds to the usual litany of excuses is that the victim's mother allowed Polanski to supervise, which apologists imply means she handed her over to be raped. Call it the Babysitting Exception, if you will.

Using the fact that Polanski pled down to a much smaller charge as evidence that things have changed dramatically doesn't match up much to reality. Unfortunately, defense attorneys can use the "we'll shame the victim" leverage to get severely reduced sentences from prosecutors who don't have the stomach to put the victim through a process some describe as like being raped all over again. Polanski probably would be able to plead down to a minor charge ifthe incident occured today, for the same reason. What he pled down to doesn't tell us much about the culture at large, but the excuses made for what he really did tell us a whole lot about how the culture then and now views forcible rape.

Tags: Rape, roman polanski

The New York Times quotes extensively from the September 1977 probation officer's report about Roman Polanski. The report is appallingly sympathetic towards Polanski, describing his rape of Samantha Gailey as "spontaneous and an exercise of poor judgment by the defendant." The report, by acting probation officer Kenneth F. Fare, says that Roman Polanski was not a pedophile, and places the some of the blame back on Gailey and her mom: "There was some indication that circumstances were provocative, that there was some permissiveness by the mother."

But the most upsetting part of the report is the part that excuses Polanski's behavior because he's a creative genius and an immigrant:

Possibly not since Renaissance Italy has there been such a gathering of creative minds in one locale as there has been in Los Angeles County during the past half century. While enriching the community with their presence, they have brought with them the manners and mores of their native lands which in rare instances have been at variance with those of their adoptive land.

I don't think Gailey felt particularly "enriched" by Polanski's manners and mores. Unfortunately, even the cops in L.A. were blinded by Polanski's charm and celebrity entitlement.

Tags: Rape, roman polanski, roman polanski probation officer report, samantha gailey, samantha geimer, statutory rape

I disregarded the bad reviews and saw Couples Retreat this weekend, mostly because I have a sort of inexplicable faith in the comedy prowess of Vince Vaughn. As expected, it didn’t offer much beyond the Hollywood-happy obvious for the coupled characters who take to a relationship-building resort for a week of joint therapy, yoga, and quasi-illogical trust-building activities (you’ve seen the stripping-down scene on the beach in the preview, right?) to work on their endangered marriages. In fact, the only thing that did prove surprising about Couples Retreat was the terribly boring, compulsory brand of monogamy the movie offered up at the end.

Throughout the movie there are a bunch of bizarrely conservative mini-dilemmas that seemed more apt for an episode of Degrassi—in the sauna the men discuss whether thinking of other women during sex is cheating (the answer: a tentative yes) and later, the women scold Kristin Davis for flirting with the yoga instructor despite the fact her husband openly salivates over a young single dancer in front of his wife and their friends (double standard much?)—but the real kicker is the end, when a newly self-realized Kristin Bell storms off angrily and the other women follow her to the throbbing dance beats and seizure-inducing lights of the singles' island. See, there are two islands at the resort—the couples' island (Eden West) and the raging, 24-hour-party-sluts island (Eden East). And it’s only by visiting the other side, full of bikini- and Speedo-clad hedonists, that the married folk can come to appreciate their not-so-great unions.

Related question: Do you want to avoid eating at Applebee’s alone? Seriously. (And also, spoiler alert!) This is what Jon Favreau asks himself when the men reach the party island and he sees his wife dancing it up with a Fabioesque twentysomething. Keep in mind the two haven’t said a word to each other the entire vacation and are ready to divorce as soon as their daughter goes off to college, but one desperately frightening idea changes all of that: eating at a chain restaurant alone. Favreau confronts her, they fight, confess to cheating on each other, confess to hating each another, and then he says: “I don’t want to eat at Applebee’s alone.” Davis replies: “I don’t either.” Thus their marriage is saved. They’re not, how do you say ...  happy, exactly, but God, isn’t better to be an unhappily married person than one of these desperate dancing people out searching for the first offer that comes their way? And that's the slightly depressing conclusion of Couples Retreat: Take what you have. Being alone is worse.

Tags: Couples Retreat, Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, monogamy