It’s not a good week for Alpha Kappa Alpha. For starters, the group’s national president, Barbara McKinzie, may be forced out following allegations that, among other “financial misdeeds,” she “used the organization’s money to commission a $900,000 ‘living legacy wax figure’ of herself," as reported in the Washington Business Journal.

And then there was the New York Times Magazine cover story on Valerie Jarrett this weekend, which opened with an anecdote from the campaign trail, in which Jarrett wielded her trusted-advisor power to convince Barack Obama to go to an Alpha Kappa Alpha event—an event he desperately didn’t want to attend. As Robert Draper reports, Obama’s response to the request that he make an appearance at the African-American sorority’s Pink Ice Ball was: “I’ve been to sorority events before ... We’re not gonna change anybody’s mind.’” After which he “snapped”: “I’m not going to any sorority event.” And “barked”: “I told Anton I’m not going to any Pink Ice Ball!”

As I made my way through the piece, I couldn’t get that lede out of my head. Why was Obama so against going to the sorority event, and what did he mean that he wouldn’t change anybody’s mind? Is Alpha Kappa Alpha notoriously conservative, or aggressively pro-Hillary?

Not at all. As my colleague with friends in the sorority put it, “If you can find a Republican at the Pink Ice Ball, I'll clean your bathroom with a toothbrush.” And Megan Taylor, who was an undergrad member of the Theta Zeta chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, confirms that the sorority as a whole is very pro-Democrat, and pro-Obama. She says they released Obama T-shirts and signs with their signature green and pink colors to the entire organization (which requires approval at the national level), and inducted Michelle as an honorary member. Like me, Megan couldn’t make sense of that “We’re not gonna change anybody’s mind” line. Does it make sense to anyone else?

Tags: alpha kappa alpha, Barack Obama, new york times

There was a hugely fascinating article in this weekend's New York Times about a Japanese social phenomenon that needs to be read to be believed: A growing community of men are happily in love with 2-D animated characters. It’s like Lars and The Real Girl, but instead of being in love with anatomically correct dolls, these men are in love with pillows, decorated with the image of an (often pre-pubescent) anime character. Apparently, it’s socially acceptable. There’s a word for this predilection (moe) and, according to the story, most men deeply involved with anime and magna culture can put themselves on a 1-10 scale of moe-ness, with one being totally into real women, 10 being totally into animated ones. The "guru" of the “2-D Love Movement” was even booed for confessing to watching 3-D porn.

If you doubted there was some psychological benefit to getting laid at a young age (either thanks to pre-marital sex or an early marriage), consider the fact that this phenomenon is “attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. More than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex.” And thus, they turn to pillows.

And yet as unhealthy and strange as this whole being in love with objects thing seems to be, there’s so much interesting stuff at play here: The movement's leading proponent defends his choice as one that takes a stand against "romantic capitalism.” He believes that: "romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money.” Which, you know, there’s something to, if not quite enough to make most of us fall in love with inanimate objects.

Other things I wonder: Can you really fall in love with a pillow? How does this relate/compare to self-identifying as asexual? Is it really better than just being lonely?

Tags: 2-D, Anime, Japan, Otaku

Manohla Dargis had a beautifully salty takedown of the new Katherine Heigl romantic comedy, The Ugly Truth, on Friday. She lambastes the writers, all women, for thinking up "this junk" in the first place, but adds that it's not surprising, because "One of the lessons of 'The Ugly Truth' beyond the obvious one that a desirable, desiring woman can never, ever, be happily single and sexual in modern Hollywood—is that holding to your hard-won ideals is of no consequence, at least when there’s a guy to be hooked."

What's also not surprising is that the movie made a projected $27 million this weekend. It's the third largest-opening romantic comedy of the year, and its success makes me wonder: Why do women keep shelling out to see this junk? The movie was universally panned. Katherine Heigl is one of the most disliked actresses in the blogosphere. From the trailers, it was obvious that the movie plays on the most outmoded stereotypes (she's a priss, he's a pig, he teaches her how to have fun!).

I know why I shell out $10+ to see this crap in the theaters occassionally: because I enjoy a good hate-watch. But are there other reasonable explanations as to why women are seeing these shoddy, insulting rom-coms in droves?

Photograph of Gerard Butler and Katerine Heigl in The Ugly Truth courtesy of Lakeshore Entertainment.

Tags: katherine heigl, manhola dargis, the ugly truth

The U.K.'s Daily Mail has a photo of Madonna that really must be seen to be believed. It's hard to know what to feel about Madge's muscle-y arms, in all their ropy glory. Scared? Sad? Personally inadequate? Slightly ashamed for pointing and staring at a fellow woman's unconventional body? All of the above, I guess.

Perhaps she's preparing for the lead role in a gender-bending biopic about Iggy Pop?

(Via BuzzFeed.)

Photograph of Madonna by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images.

Tags: arms, madonna, muscles

My grammar-sensitive family is in a tizzy over the “On Language” column from this weekend’s New York Times Magazine on the absence of a gender-neutral singular pronoun, a source of copy editing agony that has most recently surfaced on Twitter. In truth, the 140-character limit of the Twitterverse adds very little to an issue that word nerds have long struggled with: the sentence contortions of someone trying to avoid misusing “they” or relying on the gendered “he.” Who among us hasn’t tried at some point alternating his pronouns between “he” and “she,” or scratched her head over whether he/she or s/he looks less belabored?

Authors Patricia T. O’Connor and Stewart Kellerman (Safire’s on vacation) bring some interesting historical tidbits to the discussion. (Feel free to disregard their Twitter quotes, though. Nothing but an attempt to make a stodgy topic feel 2.0.) In a difficult tidbit for Strunk and White enthusiasts to digest, they say that “they” was actually accepted as a singular pronoun (as in “Everybody should lower their voices”) going back as far as Chaucer. The person who suggested subbing in “he” as the default singular pronoun was actually a woman: Anne Fischer, a feminist entrepreneur and grammarian who, like me, just couldn’t stomach the plural “they” being forced into the role of epicene.

I’m curious where others stand on this debate. Any chance of hu or shhe taking off, or are they doomed to an Esperanto-like fate? Should grammar snobs suck it up and agree to use “they” in place of he/she—a suggestion that horrifies my mother, who wrote in an e-mail that she found it “most distressing, to think that even English language mavens are starting to approve of this corruption.” My cousin added that “if this history checks out, we might have some serious pet peeve revisions to do as a family.” (We already lost the battle on another family-wide pet peeve, “nauseous,” which formerly meant only inspiring nausea—grounds for a good, admittedly snooty, chuckle when people mistakenly described themselves as such.)

Personally, I’m with Fischer, and would rather agree to treat “he” as gender-free. When I’ve tried to stray from that, I encounter the awkward dance of dodging gender stereotypes: If my attempt to alternate leaves me with “Every doctor should wash his hands” and “The teacher should respect her students,” do I pull a pronoun switcheroo lest I accidentally imply that being a doctor is a man’s job and a teacher a woman’s?

Tags: gender, grammar, new york times, on language

I've never felt particular kinship for Nancy Pelosi. She has the shellacked visage of a long-time politician, and she has said enough tone-deaf things over the years to make me wince over the San Francisco liberal stereotype. But I like Pelosi better for her laughing statement to Politico that she doesn't actually care about being liked. Pelosi made a distinction between being the object of voters' affection, and being trusted. From Glenn Thrush's story this morning:

“I don’t know about ‘trust’—I think I’m trusted,” she said. “I certainly want to be trusted. I’m not particularly concerned if I’m liked.”

Hard-bitten, no-nonsense, just get the job done, insert your political cliche here. Maybe Pelosi even calculated that saying she doesn't care about being liked will make people like her more. But that doesn't spoil it for me. In this moment when the Speaker of the House is vowing anew to wring a healthcare deal from Congress, and will undoubtedly add to her list of enemies in the process, I'm glad she's showing no qualms about the consequences of acting ruthless. In her piece for Double X about why corporate women become whistleblowers, Moe Tkacik writes that "women managers have displayed a peculiar knack for looking out for the long-term." If we're lucky, Pelosi is operating on a similar instinct.

Photograph of Nancy Pelosi by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images.

Tags: healthcare legislation, Nancy Pelosi