Tyra Banks announced today that the current season of her talk show will be her last. She wants to produce movies, she tells People.com. To any student of Tyraology this seems like an idiotic plan. Her talk show is currently the most succesful part of her media empire. Her other main gig—as host and creator of America's Next Top Model—is on the decline, as ratings were down 10 percent in the most recent cycle and the show is no longer as culturally relevant as it was just a few years ago. Despite the fact that Tyra is a lunatic and an egomaniac, her show has a sort of bizarre appeal, and millions of young women look up to her as a role model. Her major assest is her own persona, so why would she bury it by producing movies meant to bring "positive images of women to the big screen"?

My old Jezebel colleague Tracie thinks that Tyra is ditching her talk show because Oprah's ditching her talk show, and Ty Ty's business model is all about following in the footsteps of Oprah. But, if Tyra—who is many things, among them shrewd—thought about it for a second, she wouldn't follow the big O down this primrose path. Oprah's movies have not been particularly succesful, because Oprah's appeal, like Tyra's appeal, is herself. So even if Oprah is in the movies she produces, like the flop Beloved, no one wants to see them, because they don't want to see Oprah playing a fictional character. Even though Oprah can get scads of women to buy scented candles, she can't entice them to see her films. Tyra should take note of this and continue her talk show. Because there are lots of people who can produce mediocre films, but who else is going to ask primordial dwarves to breakdance?

Photograph of Tyra Banks by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Tags: Oprah, the tyra banks show, tyra banks

A New Year’s resolution for Michelle Obama: get those favorability ratings up! In December they were down to 55 percent, from 62 percent in the month before. She is now below Hillary’s average, and well below Laura Bush’s, who kept up a steady 71 percent and higher throughout her husband’s presidency. What’s going on? Is it her kind words for health care reform? Her racy hula-hooping? Her admission to Oprah that as a girl, she had no idea how to set up a doll house and hated her EZ Bake Oven?

The easy take would be that the nation has merely been holding in reserve this old suspicion of Michelle Obama, this vaguely racist idea that she is at heart an angry white-hating radical. And I think there’s some truth to that, but there is also a gentler way of interpreting it. It’s possible that deep down, the nation is not buying this Jackie O. performance she’s been putting on, and maybe that’s a good thing.

If a first lady’s rating stays steadily high—Laura Bush—it’s a sign that no one takes her seriously. She’s like a puppy, or a bland historical film—a repository of the nation’s need to love the higher office, even when it hates the official in it. Popularity ratings fluctuate when people connect the first lady to her husband’s policies, when they suspect that, late at night, he shows her the briefs. This is why Hillary suffered, and it’s probably why Michelle will suffer some too. In the Oprah Christmas interview she seemed to fluctuate between stiffly bland and honestly gruff, as if the two sides of her are finally starting to war. (Secretly, I miss the gruff Michelle.)

Photograph of Michelle Obama by Kris Connor/Getty Images.

Tags: Michelle Obama and Christmas, Michelle Obama and Oprah, Michelle Obama popularity rating

Amanda, it’s funny: My first thought when I saw the JFK photo wasn’t a parallel to other politicians, but to Tiger Woods. As in, given the attention that the Woods’ scandal created, perhaps if we’d had TMZ back in the 1950s then JFK wouldn’t have been president. But since you brought it up, do you really think that Republicans are such horrible people that the politicians get away with being hideous spouses and their followers keep voting for them anyhow? And that Democrats have some moral high ground here?

If my years of following politics have taught me anything, it’s that our representatives might have differing opinions on taxes and spending and foreign policy but other than that they are more alike than different. They can lie and cheat and bend rules equally well: For every Duke Cunningham, there’s a William Jefferson. And being a bad husband (or wife) doesn’t seem to be a particularly red or blue trait. If it was a sin for John McCain to leave his crippled wife for a younger woman back in the ‘70s, it was a sin for John Edwards to cheat on his terminally ill wife with Rielle Hunter in 2007. (We could swap names all day. Fortunately, this blog post from Newsweek’s Gaggle blog spares us from having to do that. And it looks like we’re about even.)

If anything, I think GOP voters might be less forgiving off their politicians’ scandals. Sure, Sen. David Vitter is still going strong despite his links to the D.C. madam a few years ago. But John Ensign and Mark Sanford were both touted as possible presidential candidates before their affairs were discovered and now, even though both are still in office, their chances for 2012 are nil.

You should actually thank the GOP for being so hard on its scandal-ridden politicians. Back in 2004, the party distanced itself from Jack Ryan after the Chicago Tribune nosed around in court documents related to a custody agreement and revealed that he had wanted to have kinky sex with his own wife. At the time, Ryan, as CNN put it, was “locked in a tight race” for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois that went to … Barack Obama.

*Update, December 28, 2009: TMZ is now reporting that the photo was not of JFK. It was from a 1967 issue of Playboy.

Photograph of Bill Clinton by Tim Sloan/Getty Images.

Tags: JFK photo, John Edwards, John Ensign, mark sanford, sex scandals

All that is good and semi-functional about American public life is conveniently contained in this 800-word story out of Springfield. A group of atheists obtain a permit from the State Capitol and post a godless sign somewhere in the vicinity of a nativity scene, Festivus pole, and Christmas tree. An enraged citizen who happens to be running for comptroller storms into the Capitol and tries to turn the sign around, at which point he is escorted from the building.  “It doesn’t matter how we feel about the message on display,” Illinois Secretary of State's office spokesman Henry Haupt says in his best fourth-grade-social-studies voice, “Our obligation is to protect the property within the state Capitol building, and we would do the same for any other display."

"At the time of the winter solstice,” reads the biblically verbose but undeniably forthright sign, “let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

Following his state-imposed Time Out from the Capitol building, would-be-comptroller William Kelly protests: It’s hate speech!  It’s right next to the (pagan) Christmas tree! “Any family and any child would run up to that tree with a smile on their face, and they would immediately see that sign.” Also, it’s “mocking religion.”

We believe, rejoins the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (check out their atheists-in-foxholes monument and accompanying occasional poem), “that the nativity scene is mocking humanity. But notice that we are not defacing or stealing nativity scenes because we disagree with their speech."

The sign is still up. As of Christmas Eve, the overzealous aspiring comptroller was allowed back into the building to glory in the state-provided pseudo-Christian decor. And so the displays remain unmolested, God has yet to smite the Capitol building, and if the lion doesn’t quite lay down with the lamb, the angel-hating heathens and think-of-the-children Christians tolerate one another’s semiotic fervor. Happy New Year, America.

Photograph of state capitol building by Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: Atheism, Chicago, Religion

Janet Napolitano, head of Homeland Security, thinks that the attemped Christmas bombing of a flight bound for Detroit showed that, “The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” words echoed by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. So the billions we pour into airline security and the hours of shuffling through lines millions of us are forced to endure is supposed to allow Islamist fanatics onto planes to blow them up? Does she mean that the system relies on the incompetence of the terrorists to keep us safe? Surely we’ve all shaken our heads at the endless patdowns we’ve witnessed of elderly people in wheelchairs. But who knew harassing the elderly was the point of our security system, and not just a demonstration that we don’t want to acknowledge that certain people have a greater propensity than others to want to be mass murderers.

The father of the would-be bomber notified the American embassy that his son, Umar Abdulmutallab, had become radicalized and had possibly traveled to Yemen for terrorist training. So his name was put on a meaningless list, because Abdulmutallab bought a ticket—in cash!—and boarded a transcontinental flight to the U.S. without checking any luggage. In her maiden speech to Congress Napolitano did not use the word “terrorism” but instead said she was concerned about “man-caused disasters,” as if hoping that by not calling Islamist killers mean names they will decide to act nice. It was sheer luck, and fast action by other passengers, that kept a planeful of people from exploding on Christmas. And if the officials charged with overseeing our national security can’t see that, that is a man-caused disaster.

Photograph of airport security by Digital Vision/Getty Images.

Tags: airline security, Christmas bomber, Islamic terrorists, Janet Napolitano, Terrorism

The skeptic in me wants to roll my eyes at this revelation that a picture was released showing JFK on a boat full of naked women. And not because a gossip website released it---gossip magazines and websites, if studied scientifically, probably have the same accuracy rate as serious news organizations.  It's because the story sends up all the red flags for B.S.  The photo was taken at a distance, it's crinkled, and it's impossible to tell whether the man in the picture is JFK or someone who just has similar bone structure.  The story of how this came to be also lacks details that could create a chain of evidence.  TMZ doesn't say who took it, nor do they name the guy who ended up with it, or explain how he got a hold of it.  Anyone in their right mind should be scoffing.

All that said, should better evidence to demonstrate that this is JFK in the picture surface, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.  Whether it's real or not, the picture creates the opportunity to remember what a huge cad JFK was, and also how much being a huge cad was normalized in the anti-feminist backlash period of the 50s and early 60s.  The story of the cruise that JFK definitely was on when this picture was supposedly taken is traumatic just to read:

The trio reportedly entertained a number of women on the yacht. Jackie Kennedy was pregnant at the time and was rushed to the hospital while JFK was on the boat. Doctors performed an emergency C-section, but the infant was stillborn.

Makes Don Draper look like an upstanding guy, because at least he bothered to show up when his wife delivered children he had a hand in creating.

The whole thing puts into question whether or not this photo really would have been the end of JFK's presidential hopes.  If so, it's because of the sex, because obviously the voters were willing to look the other way when it came to the outrageous neglect of basic husbandly duties.  Nowadays, a politician can only get away with that sort of thing if he's a Republican.

Photograph by National Archives/Getty Images.

Tags: anti-feminist backlash, JFK, sex scandals

Anyone who has been following stories of sexual assault in the military over the past several years will not be surprised by today's front-page New York Times story, pegged to a new Pentagon task force report, about how difficult life becomes for women who have been raped in war zones. Though the rate of sexual assault and harassment appears to be similar to the rate for civilians in the United States, the situation is more desperate, since women in the military can't get away from their attackers. In addition, female soldiers who have been assaulted are afraid to report their crimes because they fear being punished by higher-ups for making trouble in such a high-stress environment. As Capt. Margaret H. White, who was raped in Iraq, explains, "You’re in the middle of a war zone...So [sexual assault is] kind of like that one little thing is nothing compared with ‘There is an I.E.D. that went off in this convoy today and three people were injured.'"

The Army is trying to improve things for women who have been sexually assaulted or harassed—bases now have rape kits, and the Pentagon has rewritten the rules about rape reporting, treatment and prosecution on Army bases. But according to the Times, "The military’s efforts, however well intentioned, are often undermined by commanders who are skeptical or even conflicted, suspicious of accusations and fearful that reports of abuse reflect badly on their commands."

Last year, the Wall Street Journal had an article that said many of the same things as today's Times report—that the military is talking a big game, but the aftermath is as bad as ever for women in the armed forces who are sexually assaulted. If the comments to the Times article are any indication, there needs to be a major military attitude shift before things really change for women who have been raped. The commenters mostly blame Capt. White for her harassment and abuse, because she had a relationship with her abuser prior to the rape, even though he was married.

Other commenters are former soldiers who say that rape must not be a problem because they didn't personally know anyone who was raped. Says commenter "David," from Ft. Bragg, who says he is a Sargeant in the Army, "The few women I have seen in my unit have all been promoted faster for fraternizing and frolicking with male superiors. And I have a hard time believing that a captain cannot or would not be able to come forward and not be taken seriously." Until soldiers like David realize it rape is a problem for female soldiers, the situation will likely continue to be terrible for women like Capt. White.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Tags: Rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, women in the military