"I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes."

"You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical."

"Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson talks about sin and logic. The line before the one quoted above is more graphic (and I didn't want to put it in the post title): "It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus."

I note the ambiguity in what Robertson says about logic and sin. At first, I thought he meant that when he thinks about anatomy, the vagina makes more sense as a place to put a penis, if one has undertaken the reasoning task of determining the most desirable orifice. But there's nothing logical about that. There are unexamined premises: 1. that the penis be inserted somewhere, and 2. that the place should be the most desirable place. Even assuming those 2 premises, there's the obvious problem of the subjectivity of what is desirable, and Robertson admits that by saying "to me" and "I'm just thinking." In this interpretation, the word "logical" is effectively jocose.

Then, I saw an alternate meaning: The prefatory clause "But hey, sin" gives meaning to the repeated phrase "It's not logical." Sin is not logical. What impels us toward sin and what constitutes sin? These are not matters for logic. Perhaps we could reason logically about what sin is, but Robertson's approach is to accept the traditional Christian beliefs and this faith is not acquired through logic. In this interpretation, there's no logic in defining sin, and, too, there's no logic in a person's feelings that draw him into doing things that fit that definition of sin.

Of course, Robertson is getting criticism for these remarks, which are called "anti-gay," but he's rejecting all of what is traditionally understood in the Christian religion as sin, including adultery and fornication. In the process, he talks about his own natural sexual orientation and seems perhaps to concede that it's easy for him to avoid one sin that he knows other people feel drawn toward. But overall, his effort is to call people into traditional religion and to save them from what he believes is sin. Myself, I support gay rights, but I do not like the simple portrayal of traditional religionists as mean or bigoted (even though I do understand that it may be the most effective way to defeat them politically).

"It seems the woman who falsely claimed she received an anti-gay 'tip' from two patrons..."

"... never donated the money she received from supporters to help wounded vets like she promised."

Liars lie.

In other news, Bill Clinton doodled a penis.

"On Sunday the protest artist Petr Pavlensky sat naked on Red Square and drove a nail through his scrotum and into the pavement."

"Pavlensky had staged disturbing protests before."

In July of last year, he sewed his mouth shut and stood outside a cathedral in St. Petersburg in a show of solidarity with the jailed art collective Pussy Riot. In May he had himself wrapped, naked, in a cocoon of barbed wire and placed on the steps of the St. Petersburg legislature. He lay immobile while the police hunted for a pair of garden shears, severed the wire and then struggled to avoid being cut themselves. That time Pavlensky was protesting a series of restrictions on freedom of speech and of assembly....

Each of these actions required the police to deal with Pavlensky’s body — something Russian law enforcement officials almost never have to do, even though they routinely mangle, maim and kill protesters, convicts and perceived violators of rules and laws.

I'm having trouble reading Ana Marie Cox's "Dear Senate women: grow up and don't pass Hillary Clinton 'secret notes.'"

I don't know. Maybe it's because she's writing in The Guardian now. This could be some British way of writing that just can't make it into my American mind. Anyway, Cox — going on about a letter 17 female Senators wrote to Hillary Clinton urging her to run for President — is working with the premise that "male representatives are boys and women are the grown-ups." That premise is not the part I'm having trouble with. I understand it. I understand it as: Feminism-as-sexism is funny; come on, give us a little room to get in some harmless girly slaps after all the millennia of suffering.

But let's move on. Cox writes:

No one in the media has seen the letter, so I guess it's possible that it contains some kind of burn-book-level intel: Jeff Session (Alabama Republican senator) is a grotsy little byotch, Lindsay Graham (South Carolina Republican senator) made out with a hot dog, Ted Cruz (Tea Party Texan) is almost too conservative to be anything but a robot. 

"Grotsy" isn't even in Urban Dictionary, but I understand it. It's like "grotty," which was understandable as a variation of grotesque when the British comedian George Harrison said it in "Hard Day's Night." Grotsy is as understandable as ugsly.

(Maybe the "s" absconded from "Sessions," which she has as "Session.") [ADDED: Commenters say it should be "grotsky," and the phrase "grotsky little byotch" is from "Mean Girls."]

I understand the rest of those insults and why it's funny to just make up insults about Republicans to pad out a column and why — when you're talking about Republicans — it's okay to apply the mustard of homophobia. That's all well within the rules of American political humor.

Cox concedes that it's completely boring that a bunch of female Democrats support a Hillary candidacy. So what's to talk about? The fact that it was secret. A letter with nothing interesting to say was nevertheless written and revealed to have been written but we still can't see the text even though the text is presumably uninteresting. Well, there's your reason right there for not revealing the text. It's thuddingly dull. Cox says:

There's not much reason to make your support for something political private....

Which is why the existence of the letter and its gist was revealed. Cox concedes this as well: The secrecy label was "less about keeping the support in the note secret than making the support note-worthy." I won't get tripped up by that hyphen. That must be how they write "noteworthy" in the U.K.

So the letter functioned, dully, to give a teensy bounce to the Hillary for President beachball that no one feels like playing with right now. So what's to say? Here's where we get to the part of Cox's column that I found so hard to read:

Hillary... knows a thing or two about "inevitability", and what she knows is not likely to make her more excited to suffer through a fourth presidential campaign (I think we can safely say what she went through during Bill's campaigns counts as suffering). 

What? Hillary doesn't want to run? Excited to suffer? The meaning of suffering? There's just enough of a frisson of masochism in that to make me notice the absence of sex, which sets me off for this:

One of the maddening things about covering the Clintons is Bill's love of the dramatic reveal, the tension-filled lead-up...

Now you've got me thinking about the time "Bill Clinton Finally Just Show[ed] America His Penis."

Excuse the expression: back to Cox:

Bill Clinton is called the "The Big Dog", but he's really a tomcat (in more ways than one) – he likes to toy with his victims. He likes to play hard-to-get, though in the ends, he's almost always gotten. 

In the ends.... More Brit-talk? Does that mean the same as "in the end." The ends? Is that like the way there's an "s" on "buttocks"? (Is it the "s" that absconded from "Sessions"?)

I don't know what I'm supposed to think about here. Bill Clinton likes to play hard to get? That's not how Juanita Broaddrick describes it.

Based on that, journalists have determinedly disregarded any indication that Hillary's ambivalence is genuine. 

But Hillary is not Bill. Games are for boys; I don't think this is a game for her.

All right. I've settled down. I guess there was no call to think about sex. No sex, please, we're British. Cox was just trying to say that Bill Clinton is good at toying with us politically, so if he were to act ambivalent, it would be theater. Is Cox saying that because Hillary isn't good at that kind of theater, somehow she might actually be sincere in her ambivalence? Most of us are just ignoring the lady's coyness. We already know what she wants. If she can't do coyness as prettily as Bill, that's a reason not to look at the insipid show.

Maybe Cox is just saying the thing that is too boring to write about: We already know that Hillary is running for President. And: Just say it! Cox gets back to her feminism-as-sexism with that last line, which is trying so hard to be a zinger: "Games are for boys; I don't think this is a game for her." Games — plural — are for boys, and this particular game — the teasing roll-out of a candidacy — is not for her. If games are for boys and Hillary is not a boy, then no games are for her. To specify that one game is not for her is to imply that she is a boy. I'm just talking about logic here, not saying that's where Cox meant to go.

Cox apparently meant to end where she began: The premise that female politicians are the adults. But the evidence is that the females have acted like children, so what are you going to do? Cox tells them to stop acting like men, because men are childish. But they're all childish! They're all acting like politicians! Cox should only be able to say wouldn't it be nice if only the males behaved like children, and then you could say the males are children and the females are grown-ups?

Really, all you can say is that they're all politicians, acting like politicians, and some are better at playing politics than others, and — clearly! — Bill is better than Hillary. Therefore: Hillary should keep it simple. Noted. In my note-book of things that are just barely note-worthy.

"Why is your logo a pair of Y Fronts?"

"I had never heard of Y-Fronts, so I wrote it off and scrolled right past. But they kept coming…"

I got there from here: "A data company turns an unusual branding issue into a case study: does its logo looks like a pair of men’s underpants?"

ADDED: What's worse making your logo accidentally look like men's underpants? Making it accidentally look like the contents of men's underpants. I first blogged that link back in 2005, when we laughed until we cried.

"Judging from this 'mission' statement, the problem that Tina Gong’s cartoon vagina is supposed to solve is not that women can’t find their genitalia..."

"... but the 'cultural stigma' that makes them feel bad about … doing whatever it is they do with it, as often as Tina Gong does it, which seems to be pretty much all the time."

Writes Robert Stacy McCain, displaying an image that I'm not going to copy here because to my eye, it depicts the female genitalia as a baby. I think it's safe to click over there, but my answer to McCain's wondering how women can be supposed to be so dumb is that this is aimed at children and seems to proceed on the theory that little girls need to learn to play with themselves by perceiving their genitals as baby dolls.

McCain links to Daisy Buchanan at The Guardian, who says it "feels patronising."

Any woman gamely negotiating her neglected areas is probably going to be put off by the colour scheme, which features more pink than a Paris Hilton perfume launch. Similarly, there's something strange and infantilising about the cartoon instructions.

The simple answer is: It's aimed at children. This is what — back in 1994 — people were afraid the Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was talking about when she said "I think that [masturbation] is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught" to young people. What we are looking at now are the teaching materials.

Even if this wasn't aimed at children, I would still object to a cartoon that turns the vagina into a baby. It's sexualizing babies! Talk about a cultural stigma that makes you feel bad about it.

"Why Are Guys Afraid to Wear Speedos?"

"American men need to get over their Freudian fear of showing off their junk."

The title and subtitle to a Slate article about men's bathing suits.

Random sentence: "My interest is not entirely sordid. My primary motivation is, in fact, safety."

"Trunk."

The word "trunk" has come up — by chance — in 2 posts today.

1. "The plus-size 'bikini'": "Note that the caption refers to the bottoms as 'trunks,' a word that strikes me as way too masculine (perhaps because I associate it with elephant appendages)."

2. "'The Giving Tree' — 'Remember that book...": "In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, and eating her apples. However, as time passes the tree becomes mean, jealous, and stingy...."

When things like that happen around here, it's de rigueur to consult the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary. The first meaning, going back to 1490, is "The main part of something as distinguished from its appendages," which explains how we talk about trees.

1490   Caxton tr. Eneydos iv. 17   Eneas..hewe the troncke of a tree oute of the whiche yssued bloode.

That leads to a figurative use, for example:

a1616   Shakespeare Measure for Measure (1623) iii. i. 70   You consenting too't, Would barke your honor from that trunke you beare, And leaue you naked.

The second meaning is: "The human body, or that of an animal, without the head, or esp. without the head and limbs, or considered apart from these..."

a1616   Shakespeare Henry VI, Pt. 2 (1623) iv. ix. 84   There [will I] cut off thy most vngracious head;..Leauing thy trunke for Crowes to feed vpon.

So how do we get to the elephant's trunk, which seems to have it backwards, with the word referring to the appendage and not the main part? And what about those swimming trunks? There's the "trunk" that is a large piece of luggage, and I see that usage seems to have come from the fact that trunks were once made out of tree trunks. Another word for that sort of trunk is "chest," which seems to take us back to the human torso sort of trunk. A puzzle!

Anyway, the elephant's trunk is the 15th meaning for "trunk," and there's no explanation for why the appendage gets the word that originally meant the main part.

1589   R. Baker in R. Hakluyt Princ. Navigations i. 138   The Elephant..With water fils his troonke right hie and blowes it on the rest.
1613   S. Purchas Pilgrimage 816   There was another strange creature in Nicaragua..like a blacke Hogge, with..a short truncke or snowt like an Elephant....

And we need to scroll down to meaning #17 to get to the pants category, first with "trunk-hose," and then "trunks" to mean "Short breeches of silk or other thin material; in theatrical use, often worn over tights...."

1836   Dickens Pickwick Papers (1837) xv. 152   The appearance of Mr. Snodgrass in blue satin trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes, and Grecian helmet.

And finally, "orig. U.S. Short tight-fitting drawers worn by swimmers and athletes."

1883   Pall Mall Gaz. 26 July 7/1   Captain Webb attempted his perilous feat of swimming the Niagara Rapids... He wore a pair of silk trunks....
1894   Ralph in Harper's Mag. Aug. 341   Nude bathing will not be permitted... The use of tights or ‘trunks’ will not be allowed.

With little help from the OED, I'm going to leap to the supposition that meaning #17 is an example of metonymy — where a word referring to one thing is used to refer to a related thing, like "dish" for the food on the dish. The trunk is in the garment and the garment gets called by the thing it contains. That wouldn't explain why we say "trunks" in the plural, which is like "pants," which we can easily tell is plural because pants have 2 legs. (Calling pant legs "legs" is clearly metonymy.) Oddly, trunks, unlike pants, lack legs, but I think if we go back to the first #17 usage and see "trunk-hose," we get a clue for where "trunks," plural, came from. It was a one-piece garment, the tights, and the term got transferred to those puffy panties that covered up the dancer's bulges...



... until they didn't....



As for the elephant's trunk, the 15th meaning of "trunk," I'm thinking the word for the main part became the word for the appendage as way to express the awesome size of the appendage. It might have been a comical figure of speech at one time, the way a man's very large phallus might be called his "third leg."

As they say on "Project Runway"...

... too much tootie.

"You have no idea what people will do to themselves," said a veteran ER nurse...

... quoted in Mary Roach's "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal."

“Forget to remove the potato that you used as a pessary until you noticed a vine sprouting between your legs? Decided to do your own nose job at the bathroom mirror and replace the cartilage with a leftover piece from last night’s chicken dinner? You have no idea.”

Weiner's in.

Whip out your phallic jokes.

Drudgetaposition of the Day.

Links:

Drudge.

"LARRY PAGE: Here’s What’s Wrong With My Voice."

"Rod Stewart: Steroid 'addiction' shrank my manhood!" ("The steroids will take down the swelling in any membrane — including your k--b-- — and it’s what you do when you’re in a bit of a pinch and need to do a show and you can’t sing.")

AND: Meade read this and asked "What's 'k--b--'?" I said, "All I could think of was 'kielbasa,' but why couldn't you print it?"

I google the phrase "The steroids will take down the swelling in any membrane" to find a website that will print the unfit-to-print word. "Knob!"

What's with the dashes before and after the "b"? Damned editors. If I have to guess the word, get the dashes right. Knob. The Daily News — which is what Drudge linked — must have gotten it from The Daily Mail, which wrote "k**b," getting the asterisks in the right place... and displaying what must be the British decorousness about a word that seems more funny than dirty to an American... at least to this American. The Daily News probably just didn't know what the word was supposed to be.

There's no "upper limit on penis size" but "'the most attractive penis size' appeared to fall outside the range used in the study..."

"... which was designed to capture 95% of the variability women would encounter. So although attractiveness beyond the 3 in. continued to increase in a linear fashion, it did so at a slower rate."

3 inches refers to incremental enlargements over a baseline that is never stated, so it's a tad hard to understand what this projected ideal actually is. The women in the study looked at "life-size video clips of computer-generated images of naked men who varied in height, body shape and flaccid penis size, but not in other qualities like facial attractiveness and hair."

Personally, I find computer-generated images very creepy, and I'd hate to be asked to take looking at naked CGI men with larger and larger penises seriously as a "science" experiment. Stuck down at the bottom of the article — which appears in Time magazine — is this: "height was as important as endowment in a male’s attractiveness, while wider shoulders and narrow hips was more important than both combined." In other words, after much obtuse blah blah blah about the importance of penis size and height, we're told that in fact wide shoulders and narrow hips are more important.

What a poorly written article!

At the UW-Madison: Who pounded on the window and made a lewd gesture during a performance of "The Vagina Monologues"?

"Actors in the play asked for a public apology from a sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, whose members were filing out of a bus and in the area near the Brink Lounge, 701 E. Washington Ave., when the disturbance occurred."

“It came at the absolute worst moment, when women were putting themselves out there and telling stories of real pain and violence,” said Aliza Feder, a UW-Madison senior theater major who was part of the cast.

It’s not clear that the people who disturbed the play are part of the sorority, said Kevin Helmkamp, associate dean of students.

Sorority! Is there a rift in the enormous sisterhood of women?

It’s also unclear whether they knew it was a performance of “The Vagina Monologues,” the popular play by Eve Ensler about women’s empowerment.

Well, then I guess it was also unclear — if they did know it was a performance of "The Vagina Monologues" — whether their pounding and gesturing expressed their objection to the message of empowering women, their wild enthusiasm about vaginas, a thoroughly justified aesthetic opinion that the play is bad, an alert to the audience members that it's not the 90s anymore and it's time to come out and have some fun, or maybe it was a protest against the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, in which a woman recalls memories of traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood and a self-described 'positive healing' sexual experience in her adolescent years with an older woman," in which case it was unclear whether they knew if the line "If it was rape, it was a good rape" was censored from the play in this particular performance.

The show was held in the basement of Brink Lounge. Near the end, a bus parked on East Washington Avenue let out members of the sorority for their spring formal to be held in a basement lounge adjacent to the theater space. A large window forms part of the back wall of the theater fronting East Washington Avenue. 

The majority of sorority members walked by without incident, Feder said. One woman allegedly starting pounding on the window as the scripted portion of the play was concluding, she said. After a brief lull, other young men and women joined, with most pounding on the window and one woman briefly lifting up her skirt, she said.

I'm guessing wild enthusiasm about vaginas.

"'Yoni Ki Baat,' loosely translated as 'Talk of the Vagina,' is a nationwide theatre ensemble..."

"... dedicated to creating a space in which womyn of color can express their own views on sexuality and their bodies - topics which are traditionally kept 'hush-hush' in many of our cultures and communities.... YKB also aims to end the silencing of violence against womyn, especially in diasporic cultures around the world."

Email inviting me to a (free) theatrical performance which will take place at Madison's glitzy Overture Center.

We are proud to present UW-Madison's fifth production of YONI KI BAAT, also known as the womyn of color Vagina Monologues. We will be performing the narratives and stories of womyn in the diaspora, some of which have been written by the performers themselves.

The yoni (Sanskrit word for "vagina") has long been held sacred in Hindu mythology, but through years of patriarchy and colonialism, it has rarely been allowed to speak its mind. In 2003, South Asian Sisters, a collective of progressive desi womyn, decided that the yoni needed a chance to get on stage and tell its side of the story. Thus, "Yoni ki Baat" (YKB) was born.

Thanks for defining "yoni," but what about "diaspora"? The OED (which I can't link, unfortunately) gives only one meaning of "diaspora," and it relates to the Jewish people:

The Dispersion; i.e. (among the Hellenistic Jews) the whole body of Jews living dispersed among the Gentiles after the Captivity (John vii. 35); (among the early Jewish Christians) the body of Jewish Christians outside of Palestine (Jas. i. 1, 1 Pet. i. 1). Hence transf.: see quots.

(Originating in Deut. xxviii. 25 (Septuagint), ἔση διασπορὰ ἐν πάσαις βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς, thou shalt be a diaspora (or dispersion) in all kingdoms of the earth.)

1876   C. M. Davies Unorthodox London 153   [The Moravian body's] extensive diaspora work (as it is termed) of evangelizing among the National Protestant Churches on the continent.
1881   tr. Wellhausen in Encycl. Brit. XIII. 420/1 at Israel,   As a consequence of the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the conditions of the whole East, the Jewish dispersion (diaspora) began vigorously to spread.
1885   Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 760 at Philo,   The development of Judaism in the diaspora differed in important points from that in Palestine.
1889   Edinb. Rev. No. 345. 66   The mental horizon of the Jews of the Diaspora was being enlarged.

I am no fan of the talking genitalia theater genre, but I'm very interested in word choice and the appropriation and repurposing of one culture's highly serious words by another culture.

"Sometimes by nature, the Church has got to be out of touch with concerns, because we’re always supposed to be thinking of the beyond, the eternal, the changeless..."

"Our major challenge is to continue in a credible way to present the eternal concerns to people in a timeless attractive way. And sometimes there is a disconnect – between what they’re going through and what Jesus and his Church is teaching.  And that’s a challenge for us."

So said Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He was talking to the less-than-eternal and somewhat attractive George Stephanopoulos, who naturally asked him about same-sex marriage. The answer:

“Well, the first thing I’d say to them is, ‘I love you, too.  And God loves you.  And you are made in God’s image and likeness.  And – and we – we want your happiness.  But – and you’re entitled to friendship.’  But we also know that God has told us that the way to happiness, that – especially when it comes to sexual love – that is intended only for a man and woman in marriage, where children can come about naturally,” Dolan said. “We got to be – we got to do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people.  And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that.  We try our darndest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody.”

I wonder if a solution could be for the government to recognize same-sex marriages, so that gay people aren't deprived of any of the legal rights, and the religious people who think God has proscribed gay sex could simply view these gay couples as friends and stop thinking about what they might be doing sexually. Even if you think gay sex is a sin, isn't it also sinful to put time and effort into thinking about what sins other people are committing? Even where you don't think sex is a sin — for example, where a married man and woman engage in fully loving sexual intercourse — isn't it wrong to pry into another couple's sexual interaction? Why not back off and concentrate on doing your darndest to make sure you're not anti-anybody?

ADDED: Remember that Jesus said:

"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

And if that log is other men's cocks, really, get it out of your eye. You look ridiculous.

Taking the high road.

"It is ridiculous and not really funny at all. I’d appreciate you taking the high road and not resorting to something childish like this that’s been blogged about 1,000 times."

ADDED: The linked article prompted me to research the history of the term "to go commando." The Oxford English Dictionary traces it to 1974:

slang (orig. U.S.). to go commando  : to wear no underpants (beneath one's clothing).

The origin of this use is obscure; the allusion appears to be to commandos' reputation for action, toughness, or resourcefulness rather than to any specific practice.

1974   Current U.N.C. Slang (Univ. N. Carolina, Chapel Hill) (typescript) Spring,   Go commando, to be without underwear.
1985   Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 22 Jan. c,   Colored briefs are ‘sleazy’ and going without underwear (‘going commando’, as they say on campus) is simply gross.
2001   Guardian 7 June ii. 8/2   Thank goodness he wasn't wearing a pair of sagging Y-fronts or, much worse, a thong. Thank goodness he wasn't going commando.
2004   J. Evanovich Ten Big Ones 186   Unless Ranger kept his underwear in his safe, it appeared that he went commando.

"The 9 Most Outraged FCC Complaints About Beyoncé At The Super Bowl."

"Remember when she 'showed her vaginal area' and 'simulated sex for 13 minutes'? These people do, and they are FURIOUS."

"Crotches kill."

A Canadian ad advising drivers not to text while driving.

"It’s pretty racy for a Government of Alberta ad, but sex does sell and it did get people’s attention," Edmonton radio personality Rick Lee tells CTV News. "It’s good to see the Government of Alberta is taking the step to connect with younger listeners, and listeners in general, and taking the racy approach is a good way to do it I think."

Oh, Canada.

"Were the Oscars always this sexist, or are we spoiled by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's Golden Globes?"

"Host Seth MacFarlane has been leaning on sexist punchlines all night, and people are noticing. Here are the transcripts, so you can calibrate your outrage and/or eye rolls accordingly...."

That's Maureen O'Connor at The Atlantic. Maybe she's just looking for traffic or a neat framework for presenting some of the jokes from last night's big show, but how can you judge how sexist the jokes are when only the jokes about women are taken out of context? What was said about men?

I know there was a big song-and-dance number naming lots of actresses and the movies where they bared their breasts, but what was said about male nakedness? All of those women chose to display their boobs — to use the word in the song lyrics (which you can read at the link above (video here)) — and they got whatever admiration or career advancement they got. Having taken the advantages offered — perhaps including ousting some other actress with more modesty or less impressive attributes — they're not immune from jokes at their expense.

We make fun of men all the time. It would be sexist to have a rule that you can only make fun of men. So, were there jokes about male genitalia? But male actors don't normally go waggling their willies around in big Hollywood pictures, so it's hard to say what the parallelism would be for "I Saw Your Boobs." (It looks funny to write "male actors," but "actors" is used these days for both sexes. Maybe we could use "mactors" or — I know, it's taken — "malefactors.")

Now, it might have been impolite or in bad taste to call out the names of actresses who were there, proudly seated at this ritual of self-celebration, and to sing out "I saw your boobs" at particular individuals, right when they wanted everyone to think they were such goddesses, in their lovely ball gowns, which were quite possibly designed to make a special show of the very boobage that the song was about.

But that's not the topic of sexism. That's the topic of whether you want the Oscars host to display respect and reverence to the assembled dignitaries or would you rather have some broad comedy that might appeal to the big TV audience? It's a question of taste and a desire to maximize the size of the audience, which was the same question that led to the baring of the boobs in the first place.

ADDED:  I don't really think Maureen O'Connor cares about sexism one way or the other. If she really thought McFarlane's jokes deserved condemnation, she wouldn't have written "are we spoiled by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's Golden Globes?" — which is also a joke about boobs. I'd condemn that joke for being so stale.

Who was the first person to equate "Golden Globes" and actresses' breasts? The Golden Globes were first presented in January 1944, so I'm betting the joke goes back to 1943. We needed some sexy laughs back in 1943. I'll bet just about anything you might say about breasts was either sexy or funny or both back in 1943. But today? It's hard to say something new. Maureen O'Connor doesn't seem to know how to say something new. McFarlane did. Gasping about how that might have been sexist is really incredibly dull. One thing that actually makes some people sexist is the unwillingness of (some!) women to laugh at themselves. Come on. Laugh at women. Laugh at men. We all deserve it.