I’ve been mum on a lot of the big political victories by women endorsed by the Tea Party because, frankly, I’m not quite sure what to make of some of them.  On the one hand, I’m thrilled that more conservative women are running for office and at least winning nominations. On the other hand … Sharron Angle? Really?  I don’t like Social Security, either, but I really don’t think it requires a “Second Amendment solution.”

And now we have Christine O’Donnell, the upstart GOP nominee for Delaware Senate. I’m more amused by than worried about her views on masturbation, because, well, I can’t imagine any legislation tied to THAT coming up on the House floor. (Let us all hope.) But one comment she made that actually relates to how she would perfrom as a senator is remarkably odd.

According to this story in the Los Angeles Times, O’Donnell said at a candidates’ forum that if she is elected to Senate, “the litmus test by which I cast my vote for every piece of legislation that comes across my desk will be whether or not it's constitutional," she said.

So, is she going to vote for a bunch of Democratic-sponsored spending bills? And Obama judicial nominees? Or is she going to find everything she dislikes, however mundane, to be unconstitutional?

Photograph by Mark Wilson for Getty Images.

Tags: 2010 midterms, christine o'donnell, GOP women, tea party

Esquire magazine went all fivethirtyeight on us in its October issue, conducting a comprehensive survey of the social, political, and cultural attitudes of 20- and 50-year old men. While many of the findings were fairly obvious—20-year-old guys are more likely than their fathers to fantasize about Megan Fox over Halle Berry—the survey did reveal an alarming trend among young men. The 20-year-old cohort was nearly twice as likely as the older group to feel uncomfortable earning less money than their wives or girlfriends. With recent evidence suggesting that young childless women out-earn their boyfriends, many of these men can expect a bit of discomfort in the coming years.

As women have made greater strides toward equality, we have assumed that men would eventually come along with us for the ride, that over time, sustained progress would breed increasing social acceptance of high-earning, empowered women. So what’s going on here?

One explanation is that this attitudinal shift is simply part of the wider, well-documented trend toward greater social conservatism among young adults. Supporting this theory, the Esquire survey also found that the younger men were three times more likely than the 50-year-olds to believe that divorce is never an option and were more likely to oppose abortion and prefer a stay-at-home wife.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that there has been no shift at all. Perhaps the younger men, full of youthful optimism and bravado, just assume that they’ll be top earners much in the same way that contemporary young women might. The perceived discomfort may be with the idea of individual failure rather a reflection of wounded patriarchal pride. Indeed, the survey also revealed that 20-year-olds were much more likely to project greater peak earnings than their older counterparts. Perhaps the young cohort’s greater discomfort with lower wages is less a generational shift in values than the beginning point of a gradual, lifelong adjustment to realistic expectations.

Photograph by Ethan Miller for Getty Images.

Tags: esquire, gender pay gap, social conservatism, young men

Do we really believe that the old, frank, loose, outspoken Michelle Obama came out of hiding for a moment—that the U.S. first lady, during a visit from her French counterpart earlier this year, let down her guard in a conversation with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and dished that her life in the White House is "hell" and she "can't stand it"? As asserted in a new book that Bruni may or may not have authorized? A book with the puzzling title Carla and the Ambitious?

I dunno—Michelle Obama is awfully disciplined, and she has held her tongue and avoided bloopers for, like, two or three years now. Her own press secretary has denied that she said such a thing, and so, now, has the French embassy. It's sort of hard to believe that a person as tough-minded and savvy as Michelle Obama would confide in a frenemy like the French first lady, who—another, even more unauthorized book asserts—views Mrs. Obama as an international rival in the realms of style and sexiness. Or maybe the American first lady did make that remark but, as is her wont, was actually kidding. Or maybe she was using her college French, which she always complained was badly taught at Princeton, and was saying something like L'enfer, c'est les autres in an effort to discuss existential philosophy with the Gallic chanteuse, but was misunderstood as saying L'enfer, c'est le White House. Or maybe it just spilled out! L'enfer, l'enfer, ma vie est un enfer! Perhaps she just went ahead blurted it, and Bruni patted her shoulder while secretly envying her shoes.

It's probably not true that she did say it, but at the same time, it's easy to believe she feels that way. What would be pleasant about her job? Just now? Raising children in the spotlight, dealing with a possibly demoralized husband, walking the dog, making speeches, smiling, unable to pursue her own career, being careful. During the campaign, she was constantly warning the American electorate that they needed to adopt a more realistic, less hagiographic view of her husband; she defended her cracks about his messy household habits by explaining that she was only trying to get people to ratchet down their expectations, to acknowledge that Barack Obama is a human being, because if they thought he walked on water, and it eventually emerged that he did not, they would be extra disappointed. It can't be fun for her, now, to go around thinking to herself: I told you so. So I don't believe she used those words in addressing her glamorous but perhaps less than discreet European colleague, but then again, I sort of do.

Photograph of Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy by Sean Gallup for Getty Images.

Tags: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Michelle Obama

Danielle Evans has an impressive ear for the emotional rhythms of teenage girls and twentysomething women. In the first story, "Virgins," from Evans's debut collection of short fiction, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, the narrator describes her relationship with her best friend: "Me and Jasmine always shared everything, and after I showered I went through Jasmine's closet like I would have gone through mine, looking for something to wear out later," says Erica, a working-class girl from Mount Vernon, N.Y. But that sharing has become difficult in the past year, as Jasmine looks at Erica and tells her bluntly, "Look at you, stretching out my jeans wit your big old ass." Erica says that Jasmine is just jealous of her ass, and that Jasmine "was small but all the meat she had on her was settled in her tummy, which was a cute little puff now but would be a gut someday if she ever got fat."

In this brief exchange, Evans has captured that intoxicating adolescent combination of extreme closeness, jealousy, and continuous comparison. And as the story's title implies, Erica's relationship with Jasmine deeply influences her sexual choices. "Virgins," like the other stories in the collection, explores racial and sexual politics—topics that could veer into melodrama but don't here. In fact, Evans is sometimes too restrained, like in the story "Harvest," about a woman whose white suitemate at Columbia sells her eggs to make money. As Entertainment Weekly put it, these few wrong notes have an "overly workshopped" feel to them. Even with these minor missteps, Evans's voice is well-developed, and the stories are consistently engaging and surprising; a highly recommended read for this fall.

Tags: before you suffocate your own fool self, book of the week, danielle evans

—The Institute for American Values is starting a battle against single women and lesbians seeking sperm donors by supporting laws that treat donor conception like adoption—as an institution, rather than a market. [Newsweek]

—Fringe Tea Party  candidates like Christine O'Donnell may actually help democrats take over the senate come November. [Gawker]

—A group of educators is embracing the educational values of videogames. A school called Quest to Learn has an entire curriculum made up of technology-based instruction for students. [New York Times]

—The sexual discrimination lawsuit against Goldman Sachs that went public yesterday includes more than just accusations of favoritism towards males or pay discimination: One of the complaints alleges a work-related event... at a strip club. [Salon]

—Real Houseweives of DC star Cat Ommanney claims that her co-star Michaele Salahi, of White House party crashing fame, is lying about having Multiple Sclerosis. [Gawker]

—Does Christine O'Donnell have her mother on her campaign payroll?  Check out these documents that seem to show she does. [Daily Beast]

Photograph by Mohammed Abed for Getty Images.

Tags: christine o'donnell, Goldman Sachs, Real Housewives of DC, sperm donation, tea party, videogame education

Evangelicals churn out teen Bibles and hip-hop Bibles to reach out to new audiences in their own vernacular. But the Jews like to keep it, well, biblical. In the new prayer book for Yom Kippur, which begins tonight, conservative rabbis have excised the word "awesome." Said Rabbi Edward Feld, who headed the rewrite committee: "If you say God is awesome you are immediately in the street language, rather than the inspiring language."

Who said Hebrew school wasn't fun?

In more progressive news, to keep up with the fact that rabbinical schools are now majority female, they've added Hannah and Miriam to the prayer book list of models of righteous heroines. Awesome.

Tags: new jewish prayer book, Yom Kippur

If Christine O'Donnell has confounded some observers with her troubled financial history, her overstatements about her education level, her doubts about evolution, her concerns about satanic worship, and her efforts to stop people from masturbating, her sister may well prove nearly as interesting. We are learning now about Jennie, a “spiritual psychologist, actor, meditation teacher,” and “doctor of metaphysical universe studies,” who is reportedly gay and has also reportedly helped campaign for her sister, the new Republican nominee for senator from Delaware. David Corn and Suzy Khimm have done some poking into Jennie O’Donnell’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages and find that her “likes” include the National Center for Lesbian Rights and that she considers herself a “conservative liberal.” Most recently, they report, Jennie posted the following message to her Facebook page:

“to all my friends and family..thank you for your great wishes […] and support of my sister,no matter what lies were made up about her...oh.. p.s. haave you heard the latest? she's homophobic... gotta laugh”

Here are a few things Christine O’Donnell has said on the issue of homosexuality: She has said that gays get away with “lasciviousness” and “perversion.” She has said that a “disproportionate” amount of money goes into AIDS treatment and prevention and characterized AIDS as the result of a “lifestyle which brings about this disease.” She distanced herself from a Web ad (by a firm she’d previously employed) that suggested her primary opponent Mike Castle might be gay -- by saying such stick-in-your-brain things as “I never said that Mike Castle was gay.” She also called Castle “unmanly.” She once, according to a Web archive of a photo gallery, lead a press conference protesting the nomination of openly gay James Hormel to be an ambassador, based on concerns about his “ties to the pedophile rights movement.” She once, also according to Web archives, lumped homosexuality in with pedophilia and eating disorders, and suggested that the fact that the word “gay” means both homosexual and “joyful,” suggests a Hitler-like “plan” to “engineer” the English language.

What is homophobia, again?

Photograph by Mark Wilson for Getty Images.

Tags: christine o'donnell, delaware, lesbian, mike castle, republican

How incredibly dispiriting that the poverty rate has hit a 15-year high in the middle of the Obama presidency. A friend of mine who is a 27-year-old single mom just got laid off from her job with the city of Bridgeport, Conn. Her salary put her one notch above the poverty line, but this is her second layoff in two years. The first one lasted 10 months, so she has almost used up her eligibility for unemployment benefits. None of this has anything to do with her job performance. The Bridgeport layoffs are part of an effort to close the city's $8 million budget hole.  Honestly, I don't know enough about Bridgeport's finances to know if the city has been profligate, or the union unreasonable, or what. But this seems so wrongheaded—putting municipal employees out of work as the country fights off a double-dip recession. Where are those stimulus funds? Watching my friend struggle to raise her sweet boy and stay in college, after more than three years of night school, really brings home what this crappy economy means. If anyone knows of a job opening in southern Connecticut for a smart, reliable, diligent office administrator, please write to me here or on my Facebook page.

Photograph by Tom Pettington for Getty Images.

Tags: 15-year high in the poverty rate, layoffs