The rumor is that the famously profane White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is leaving office by the end of this week so that he can run for mayor of Chicago. The Washington Posts's "Reliable Source" column considers the fate of Rahm's wife, Amy Rule, and his young children, who uprooted their lives to join him in D.C. just a year ago. When Rahm first began as chief of staff in 2009, his family remained in Illinois, and he returned on weekends when he could. A few months later, Rule and the kids moved to D.C.—a move the Post describes as "reluctant"—and the three children were put in local private schools.

Now that Rahm is allegedly hankering for the mayor's seat, his family will likely have to pull up roots again and join him back in Illinois. It would be difficult for the fam to join him immediately, the Post points out, because the Emanuels rented out their Chicago home. I acknowledge that when one has signed on to be a political wife, this sort of disruption is part of the bargain: You must accept that sometimes the needs of the family will be subordinate to the needs of the political spouse. Still, this must not be an easy situation for Rahm's family.

Photograph of Rahm Emanuel by Mark Wilson for Getty Images.

Tags: amy rule, political spouses, Rahm Emanuel

Feminist avenger Gloria Allred broke new ground today in her crusade to keep 1970s feminism alive. Allred is the defender of the sexually harassed and abused, the better if the abuser happens to be famous. Her clients include at least two mistresses of Tiger Woods, and the girlfriends or wives of Charlie Sheen, Shaquille O’Neal, and Dodi Fayed.  At a press conference today she unveiled her latest victim, who fit the usual Allred profile: a maid she described as “exploited, disrespected, and humiliated.” Only this time the alleged exploiter was another woman, Meg Whitman, who is running as the Republican candidate for governor of California against Democrat Jerry Brown.

As expected, Allred described the allegations this morning as so “explosive” that they would sink the Whitman campaign. I allowed myself to imagine allegations that Meg Whitman had shoved her maid, as she once did to an eBay employee, or better yet, that the maid was pregnant with the children of one of Whitman’s incorrigible jerk-frat sons. But as always, Allred turns out to be about 80 percent hyperbole.

The concrete allegation is that Whitman knew that her maid, Nicky Diaz Santillan, was illegal, and received Social Security documents confirming that. Many political appointees—male and female—have been sunk over failure to pay taxes for or acknowledge that they had hired illegal help. The Whitman campaign has already released documents showing that Santillan lied about her status on her job application. And even if some Social Security documents were sent to the Whitman household, it would be hard to prove that Whitman received and processed them.

A weak legal case, except that the emotional undercurrents are catnip to Allred. Santillan described all kinds of interactions with her rich boss that would get Allred’s blood boiling. Ms. Whitman hired her to clean 16 hours a week but then asked her to do all kinds of errands that wound up taking more than 16 hours, but would not pay her for them.  Ms. Whitman failed to reimburse her for car mileage, or give her a proper leave when she got pregnant.

Then there was this emotional showdown, told by Santillan herself in a shaky, terrified voice, after a long hug and whispers of encouragement from Allred: In June of 2009 Santillan came to Whitman and asked her for help with her immigration status. “Ms. Whitman just laughed and turned her face to the side.” Whitman’s husband then entered the room and became livid. “I told you! I told you she was going to bring us problems,” Santillan recalled him saying. After promising to call her lawyer, Whitman than left a voice mail for Santillan saying, from now on you don’t know me and I don’t know you—you never have seen me and I never have seen you—do you understand me?”

Is some version of this story believable? Sure. Like millions of Californians—and Americans—Whitman and Santillan chose to preserve a mutual ignorance about her immigration status for nine years. By the time Santillan became desperate and chose to air it, Whitman was running for governor. Whitman does not seem the rich type inclined to go out of her way to be kind to her help. Whitman called her lawyer, who read her the riot act about what hiring illegal help can do to political candidates. Whitman panicked and turned mafia on her former employee, whom she expected to quietly disappear.

But does it sink her campaign? We already know that empathy is not Whitman’s strong suit. That said, her position on immigration is more decent than many in her party. She opposes the Arizona crackdown and a ballot measure to deny illegal immigrants state services. She does want more border enforcement and crackdowns on companies that hire illegals, but her position is not all that far from Jerry Brown’s. Last night, the two of them had an excellent debate in which it was clear that Whitman sees life the way a former CEO who has self-funded her campaign would: She believes in corporate tax cuts and is suspicious of social welfare and unions.

“I’m doing this because I know there are a lot of Megs out there who are mistreating the Nickys who work so hard for them,” Santillan said. My advice to Californians: Forget the specific allegations. But imagine this sentence of Nicky’s as part of a campaign commercial, outlining their two philosophies. If you are moved, then by all means, vote for Jerry Brown.

Photograph of Meg Whitman's former maid by Kevork Djansezian for Getty Images.

Tags: Gloria Allred, Meg Whitman, Meg Whitman and maid

Last week, in celebrating a win for gay adoption in Florida, I wrote that there were still 19,000 kids in foster care in that state seeking permanent homes. (Nationally, about one-quarter of the kids in foster care are legal orphans in need of adoption; for the rest, states still seek a return to parents or family members.) Another ruling striking down a ban on gay adoptions was a victory, I said, but a real victory will come when we stop arguing over who can and can't adopt those kids, and just start finding adoptive homes for them instead.

Damn if Focus on the Family hasn't managed the latter. According to the Wall Street Journal, its efforts in Colorado have "moved about 500 of the 800 kids in foster care into permanent homes over the course of less than two years." It's an effort they've expanded into six other states and that covers, at least in an informative and encouraging sense, the entire country. It's also an initiative ("Wait No More") into which they've sunk considerable funds. But foster adoption isn't presented as a religious mandate or an easy road, and there's no pretending that God is going to make it any easier. This is a practical, honest, and laudable effort to encourage people who are in a position to open their lives to a child to do so, and to support them in that endeavor. And it's working. The same WSJ article notes that "as more and more evangelical churches take up the cause of adoption on a large scale, their congregations have begun to look like the multiracial sea of faces that Christian leaders often talk about wanting." Yet foster adoption isn't handled lightly by the leaders of Focus or on its Web site.

It's hard not to have a little moment of seeing the organization as importing the seeds of its own destruction. With most foster kids coming from different races and backgrounds than those evangelical adoptive parents, how can the movement as a whole not begin to lose its fear of the "other"? And how many of those adoptive parents, after years of learning to raise children who are generally older and often troubled by specific issues in their past or just from the plain fact of having been moved from at least one family to another, will continue to accept Focus' opposition to adoption by gay and lesbian prospective parents willing to take on that same challenge?

But in spite of their good (and possibly subversive and eventually destructive) work in this area, Focus continues its bigoted advocacy, pushing for yet another appeal in support of the gay adoption ban in Florida and continuing lobbying efforts (often conducted by a separate legal organization, Focus on the Family Action) in opposition to gay marriage. In welcoming its efforts in helping foster children find homes, I'm doing something Focus itself refuses to manage: accepting that it's far, far better for a child in foster care to have a permanent family whose views I may find abhorrent than no permanent family at all.

Tags: adoption, adoption from foster care, focus on the family, foster adoption, foster care

Looking at the annual lists of LGBT characters on broadcast and cable TV compiled by GLAAD always brings on a fit of depression. On the broadcast side, just 10 of the 35 characters on the list are lesbians or bisexual women, and that includes two-dimensional Patti Bouvier and such key roles as Rules of Engagement’s Lesbian Surrogate—you know you’re minor when you don’t even get a proper name. I also couldn’t help noticing that all six of the bisexuals on the list were women—and at least a couple of them only seem to kiss women during sweeps.

But this year, my rage wasn’t only directed at the lack of lesbian visibility; I was also bummed because the list was seeded with spoilers. There are at least three queer characters whose gay identities haven’t yet been revealed on the shows.

I wasn’t surprised to learn about 90210’s Teddy Montgomery—the “shock” revelation that one of the buff LA high-schoolers was a ’mo was all over the TV media in the slow days of summer, and he does seem to have hooked up with a guy on Monday’s show. (Yeah, that’s a pretty significant clue, but the list has him gay, not bi, so the big reveal is still to come.) But Glee’s Sam? Hellcats’ Patty “the Wedge” Wedgerman? No indication whatsoever. Thanks for blowing the dramatic suspense, GLAAD!

One other observation. The three characters GLAAD outed are all athletes—Teddy’s the No. 1 ranked tennis player in California, Sam is McKinley High’s new quarterback, and the Wedge is on the cheerleading squad at Lancer College. Overcompensate much?

Photo of Trevor Donovan (Teddy in 90210) by Kevin Winter for Getty Images.

Tags: 90210, GLBT characters on television, Glee, hellcats

She-Ra: Princess of Power was the girlcentric spin-off of the hugely popular animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and the first DVD from the first season is being released this week. Upon her 1985 debut, the sword-wielding superheoine seemed to have it all, at least to my 8-year-old self: She-Ra fought evil, rode around on a unicorn with rainbow wings named Swiftwind, had a naturally pink-haired friend named Glimmer, and wore a white minidress with aplomb.

Rewatching the animated series, I realized that white minidress doesn’t age especially well. Though in retrospect She-Ra remains admirably independent—she opts to return to her home planet to lead a rebellion—the characterizations are broad. What little humor there is to be found seems purely unintentional, like the pink tent with a folded, hooded opening that Glimmer lives in that seems pretty vaginal. Perhaps it's a lot to ask that a cartoon series have snappy dialogue, but this is awfully stilted:

He-Man: I don’t understand this. You say you are my sister, but I never had a sister.

She-Ra: I know how you feel. I never dreamed I had a brother.

That bit of stellar repartee is from a scene in which He-Man—aka Prince Adam, defender of the planet Eternia—learns he was born a twin. His sister Adora was kidnapped at birth by the villain Hordak and taken to the planet Etheria, where she was brainwashed into working for his Evil Horde. Like any good heroic journey, she learns of her past and, through a magical Sword of Protection becomes the superhero She-Ra, joins the Great Rebellion, and commits to being, as her disco-inflected theme song suggests, the champion of light in a land where darkness rules.

Because there are so few kick-ass female cartoon protagonists in America, she’s definitely deserving of the DVD box set treatment, if only as a role model for young viewers (or, more likely, for those of us who watched her the first time around and have a soft spot for ’80s cartoon heroines). And while the full series is supposed to come out later this year complete with stickers, the first volume in the set seems hastily thrown together. Not only are there no special features, but the title is misspelled (“She-Ra: Princes of Power”) on the back cover. The series may be flawed, but She-Ra at least deserves a thorough copy edit.

Tags: cartoons, he-man, she-ra