I agree with you. If Salon held itself to the standards it holds others, it would be criticizing from a much stronger position.

Here's another example: the Tina Fey hypocrisy. When SNL and Alec Baldwin palled up to Sara Palin, Salon excoriated them, and blessed Fey for walking off the set. When it turned out Fey had already met Palin before the show and later on CNN had nothing but good things to say about Palin, emphasizing that Palin was "really nice," Salon ignored it. When Vanity Fair did a feature with women comediennes posing as sultry models, Salon criticized women for obligingly objectifying themselves. When Fey decided to play up the glamour and even did a solo photoshoot for Vanity Fair (she'd been in the former one; but hers was "straight" while the other had been a lampoon), Salon congratulated her for coming out of her shell and presenting herself as funny and sexy.

Salon, as far as I can tell, never examines its own blindspots, or reconsiders its position in light of them.

After that crappy piece in the New York Times, this article is particularly refreshing. Thank you for not trying to marginalize O'Connor's Catholicism, which I feel most literay analysts do (they they avert their gaze embarrassingly from O'Connor's Catholicism the way their predecessors did from Willa Cather's lesbianism). And what great comments on the (seeming) dualty between O'Connor and McCullers.

It's good to hear that O'Connor didn't think much of To Kill a Mockingbird. Now granted, in a country where The Old Man and the Sea is considered great literature, perhaps Harper Lee's novel is rightfully exalted as well. I mean if one marginal, rather false work is going to be raised to the pantheon, why not another? Harper Lee's novel is certainly well-written, well-crafted and appealing, with a good moral. But I don't think it's a work of genius or great insight by any means. Glad to know O'Connor didn't, either.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox about that. Sorry to hear she couldn't appreciate Tennessee Williams, one of the America's greatest playwrights.

You make persusive points about Brad Gooch's work, and the aid of his outsider perspective to his description of O'Connor's own outsider perspective. Is this the same Brad Gooch who wrote a gay/bisexual novel I read called Scary Kisses, back in the 80's? No reviewer has mentioned it, but how many authors can there be named Brad Gooch?

I missed your post earlier. But I should clarify that I'm not against objectification. I think it's an inborn human trait and that the reason for overwhelming presence of female objectification in history is that males have been allowed to acknowlege their desires, while women haven't...until recently. I think liberation of women is invariably going to lead to equal objectification of men.

Like Asehpe, my criticism with Salon is the hypocrisy. Any treatment of women as sexual objects, even comical, is treated as a cultural failure, while at the same time any treatment of men as sexual objects is greeted with cheers.

To clarify, I'm gay, and I don't remember any gay men complaining about their objectification, nor do I remeber any lesbians doing the same. Indeed, the only time objectification is criticized is when straight men do it to (presumably) straight women.

It seems obvious to me that anyone will objectify what they desire sexually, both in terms of bodies and personality types. I guess we can rail against this as dehumanizing, but it seems pretty typically human to me. I think it's fine, though of course I think we should be civilized and recognize that the people we like to eye for sexual gratification weren't actually put on the earth just to satisfy our sexual gratification. I've never assumed the men I see in gay porn "belong" to me, or that I should be able to have sex with any man I happen to find sexually attractive. That's something that gets negotiated between every couple, gay or straight.

I doubt it was. But obviously Rush is very powerful, and if he is attacked by a party member, that party member is sure to be censored...er, censured.

That isn't particularly surprising. Rush has saved the Republican party a couple of times. His rhetoric appeals to conservatives—and clearly a number of moderates, as well. When one looks at how he accomplished a Republican take-over of Congress in the 90's and a two-term presidency for W., that wasn't accpomplished solely by hard-core right-wingers. As long as he remains the galvanizing force for Republicans, he's going to be the most powerful member of the party.

My guess is that if the men had been naked, there would be no cries of "objectification," which seems to happen everytime women are involved. Even when the women are comics parodying the Vanity Fair look, much like these guy are. In fact, two staffers say that seeing Paul Rudd naked would be just yummy. Waiting to see the Salon male staffers writing comments about how eager they would be to see Angelina Jolie topless...

The weirdest part of this article:

Look, I've never been a fan of the Judd Apatow clan's brand of we-can-joke-about-being-gay-because-eww-we-totally-aren't hilarity, which seems to be on display here.

Huh? Other than Paul Rudd's pose, who's pretending to be gay? And isn't that a parody of the usual have-the-women-all-over-each-other fashion pose?

But who gets upset when you blame everything on men? Well...men hopefully.

Many people have brought up the question of the damage of hot sauce to the woman's body. He used the hot sauce to wash out the used condom, not as some sort of lubricant. And he didn't ask her to douche with it. The hot sauce was being applied surrpetitously, in the bathroom or something, when he was washing it out. It didn't come near her.