It's a Sarah Haskins Christmas!

Sarah Haskins' new Target Women is funny as hell:

But even better is her interview yesterday on NPR's Talk of the Nation:

Girls and booze

A trip to Denver's Irish Snug bar last night revealed an interesting tidbit about women and drinking houses in the 19th century. According to a brief history on the bar's menu, the "snug" was originally conceived as a private room with frosted glass windows in Ireland's pubs. The beer was more expensive as a way to make patrons pay for their privacy. Among the snug's customers were police officers, adulterous lovers, priests, and women who defied societal code by drinking. Today, of course, women are welcome fixtures in most drinking houses as evidenced by the proliferation of "ladies' night" promotions. While the desegregation of bars has been a boon to society, it's too bad that we can't envision a snug-type pub where men and women can drink together in peace and respect. Instead, many bars have become the domain of "pick-up artists," carefully trained Tucker Max types intent on tricking women into their beds. -Naomi

Artificial virginity for women

The online sex shop Gigimo.com offers an artificial virginity hymen, which for a mere $29.90, allows women to "have your first night back anytime. Insert this artificial hymen into your vagina carefully. It will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate, it will ooze out a liquid that look like blood not too much but just the right amount [sic]. Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable."

NPR covered responses in Egpyt, where a double standard for men's and women's sexual purity prevails. Amy Mowafi, managing editor of EniGma, an Egyptian lifestyle magazine, summed up the core of the problem with artificial hymens. It's not that they grant women sexual liberty, but that "it makes it too easy for the woman to play by the rules of society instead of standing up and saying, 'No, you need to understand that I am a good person. And it should not all come down to this issue of a hymen.'" -Sara

On forgiving sex offenders

Renowned film director Roman Polanski's recent arrest for his 1977 rape of a 13-year-old girl has created quite a stir regarding when, and under what circumstances, sex crimes are punishable. Among the questions under discussion: If the victim wishes to drop charges ("Every time this case is brought to the attention of the court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case," she has said), should the case be dropped? When 30 years have passed, is the rapist still a danger, and punishment therefore not in order? Does Hollywood exempt itself from universal morality? Are there degrees of sex crimes that are worse than others? Has Polanski already suffered enough in his personal life?

That we have been asking these questions at all is ridiculous. Holding individuals accountable for violent crimes is non-negotiable. This case has illuminated a stomach-churning reality: an awful lot of people see rape as a not-so-violent crime, or not really a crime, or not really worth punishing. 

Hollywood has come overwhelmingly to Polanski's defense. This is nothing new, however, since the art world has a sickening tendency to forgive its heroes for violating moral codes that apply to the world at large. As W.H. Auden wrote in a 1939 poem:


Time... Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.


Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

But the passage of time does not make sex crimes any less damaging. Artists and other public figures do not deserve moral exemptions, whether it's revoking Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi's immunity from prosecution for fraud or holding Polanski accountable to a serious crime. Talk show host David Letterman has also been a gossip magnet lately after a series of affairs (all consensual, and with adults) was exposed, and as Maureen Dowd wrote last week, "Craig Ferguson, whose show is produced by Letterman, joked: 'If we are now holding late-night talk-show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I’m out.'"

Even though the severity of Polanski's crime is clear, Whoopi Goldberg said on The View, ""I know it wasn't rape-rape," presuming that a different set of moral and legal obligations exists in some personal worlds:



The willingless to pardon, in exchange for great art or for decades passed, is to condone. Goldberg's vague semantic distinctions tell us nothing, except that she is reluctant to see Polanski held accountable. -Sara