I'm sure that President Obama and his wife have done their best to prepare their daughters for the idea that there are crazy people out there whose hatred for their father extends to them (although it's not a job I envy). But it's difficult to prepare for this, posted on the website (a site so offensive that I didn't link to it) of the Westboro "Baptist" Church, which has organized an anti-gay protest outside of Sidwell Friends, the school the Obama girls attend: "Quakers?! Are you frigging kidding me? You pretend to be all non-violent, and you allow the most bloody, deceitful, evil, murderous bastard and his shemale sidekick to place their satanic spawn within your four walls?"

It's hard to imagine any parents or teachers keeping their cool under these circumstances. That kind of of venom, directed at a pair of very young girls, sounds like the kind of crazy that sparked incidents like 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, and possibly the shooting at Fort Hood, the victims of which the President was remembering even as these protesters awaited their close-up.

But according to TPM LiveWire, the school refused to engage.

"We support the First Amendment here, so there was nothing we wanted to do about it," [a spokesman] said. "There was nothing they did other than offend those who didn't agree with their bigoted viewpoints."

Offend, indeed—I can't imagine anyone of any political stripe who wouldn't be offended by this attempt to terrorize a pair of grade-schoolers. But the school's response was measured and cool. Be offended, if you wish, but the best thing to do is just look away.

Tags: first amendment, Obama

Hot off the heels of a book deal, the curse word-laced Twitter feed "Shit My Dad Says," which, as you may have guessed, posts 140-character-long misanthropic insults spewed out by the author’s 73-year-old father, is being adapted into a sitcom for CBS. 29-year-old Maxim editor Justin Halpern first created the Twitter account in August after moving back into the parental abode and receiving unintentionally hilarious nuggets of pessimistic wisdom from his Dad like "Nobody is that important. They eat, shit, and screw, just like you. Maybe not shit like you, you got those stomach problems" and 'You don't know shit, and you're not shit. Don't take that the wrong way, that was meant to cheer you up." Lo and behold, the shameful act of moving back in with the parents as an adult was a career changer for Halpern.

The only thing surprising about the CBS deal is that someone’s actually making some money off of Twitter. Cantankerous old-man comedy is a tried and true formula (See: Grumpy Old Men, Frasier). Now the question is: Who’s going to play Halpern’s dad? Ideas? Keep in mind Ted Danson's all tied up with Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bored To Death. But where’s Martin Sheen these days?

Tags: CBS, justin halpern, shit my dad says, twitter

Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal today has a bracing piece about the almost surreal disconnection between what’s increasingly clear about the Ft. Hood killer, Maj. Nidal Hasan, and what officials and some commentators seem unable to acknowledge. As she writes: “It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.” She quotes Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. as saying, “"This terrible event would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty." As Mona Charen points out, the idea of a witch hunt is false and dangerous. Surely the general doesn't mean that in our quest for diversity in the military, we embrace fanatics in our midst. Rooting them out has to be to the benefit of the brave, patriot Muslims who serve. Ralph Peters makes the larger point that, “By protecting the fanatics, we betray the peaceful majority of our Muslim citizens, leaving them afraid to speak out, since the feds shield the fanatics in charge of their mosques and communities.”

According to a medical school classmate, Hasan repeatedly expressed seditious views and—in violation of his military oath—said, “I hold the Shariah, the Islamic Law, before the United States Constitution." Hasan had no problem loudly proclaiming his enemy is the United States. But for many it’s more comfortable to look away from his religious beliefs for an alternate theory of why he “snapped,” instead of saying our enemy is militant Islam. Rabinowitz ends chillingly: “It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11.”

Tags: ft hood, jihad, militant Islam, nidal hasan

As you may have read in yesterday’s New York Times, there’s a new online frock rental business called Rent the Runway that applies the mail-based Netflix business model to high-fashion clothing (it already exists for accessories at bagborroworsteal.com). Renttherunway.com works like this: You pay anywhere from $50 to $200 for temporary custodianship of an expensive designer frock (no, not actual haute couture, ladies, but there will be exclusives that aren't available in stores). A pouch containing the dress—actually two, to ensure fit—arrives. You keep the frock(s) for four days and mail them back in the same pouch they arrived in.

I immediately rolled my eyes. With $200, one can buy a cache of vintage or designer resale. Why don’t women just shop for what they can afford, seek out great vintage and resale if they crave labels or glitz, and quit the label worshipping? Or, if you can’t resist new merch, then just do what naughty girls have been doing forever: Shop, charge, wear, return.

But then, well, what woman hasn’t dreamed of walking down the street in a clingy Alaïa knit or prim Lanvin sheath? Or showing up to a party or important event looking well-heeled and chic? (Not that designer labels are the only way, but a great designer frock certainly makes it easier.) And is it even relevant to expect women to match their acquisitiveness and frock desire to specific brands or price points anymore? The whole matching of one's socio-economic bracket to a clutch of brands ended in the 1990s. And as far as my vintage-resale argument goes, lets face it: Most women don’t have the time or inclination for the secondhand marketplace, which may not require an abundance of cash, but it does require an abundance of another luxury: free time.

So I signed up. I’m awaiting my membership, which is currently limited due to trial phase stock levels. If Rent the Runway carries Alaïa—and oh God, I really hope they do—I'll be stalking my postman sometime soon.

Tags: bagborroworsteal.com, h&m, renttherunway.com, secondhand, vintage

Nobody cops to “political correctness” anymore; policing language is what the other guy does. The rest of us are just, you know, telling it like it is. But playing PC-policeman officer is a relatively peaceful and noninvasive way to nudge the culture in a particular direction, a form of persuasion in a democracy built on consensus. And according to the authors of a little study in the November issue of the Journal Sex Roles, switching from one form of speaking to another might shift your inner liberal just as quickly.

The study authors wanted to see whether languages that assign gender to nouns, like Spanish and French, might implicitly encourage “opposition or hostility to extending equal opportunity to women, especially in terms of work-related issues.” They gave a passage and a questionnaire to randomly assigned high-school students in high-level Spanish and French classes; some got the English version, some got the French or Spanish version. They also randomly assigned questionnaires to bilingual students, again distributing English to some and Spanish to others. They report that students who happened to receive the questionnaires printed in English were significantly less likely to express “sexist attitudes.”

I've no idea whether the finding is valid, but it manages to sound both obvious and absurd. Spanish is sexist? On the other hand, it would seem odd if the practice of assigning gender to every known object, in the context of nearly every expressed thought, failed to reverberate in some dark mindspace.

Tags: sexism

Here’s one for the Awkward and Wrong Hall of Fame: John, a (married) tech consultant at Cornell Business School accidentally forwarded his long, dirty-talking e-mail exchange with Lisa, another (married) business school employee to the entire school. It’s pretty painful, less because of the exposed adultery than the emoticons, exclamation points, and insistence that e-mails like “Yes, you CERTAINLY WOOD Baby!!!” are just about the funniest things ever. You’d think Cornellians (full disclosure: I was one) would be particularly careful with the send button, given the gaffe from a few years back when the admissions office sent acceptance e-mails to about 550 high schoolers who had actually been rejected. But clearly John, who told Lisa in an e-mail that she was “pushing buttons that are getting me WAY TOO FUCKING HORNY for being stuck at work!!!” was less than attentive with the button that matters: Send.

Have any of you ever had an e-mail thread like John and Lisa’s (although I reckon with a good deal fewer ALL CAPS WORDS and less overblown punctuation!!!!!!!!) get accidentally forwarded on to an uncomfortably wide audience? Send your story—and, if you dare, the e-mail chain—to doublex.slate@gmail.com.

Tags: adultery, awkward and wrong, cornell, e-mail