And her wrists were bound, and she was gagged with duct tape.

I’m not surprised. But to be fair, my dad isn’t that far gone. (He has his issues, but he’s not particularly sexist.) I asked him in more general terms about how he felt about what Trump said about women, because it so obviously isn’t the way he talks about *anybody,* and he said a lot of it was made up or blown out…

Speaking of the question of why Trump doesn’t prepare, my most enlightening look at Trump voters this week came when my Republican father sent me a Peggy Noonan column about how voters needed to be better informed and not just rely on tabloid and surface-level coverage.

Madeleine, you have my heart for acknowledging what a tremendous jerkface Luke Danes is. Sure, he and Lorelai have chemistry, but Lauren Graham strikes me as the kind of actress who could have chemistry with a tree stump if the script called for it. Luke is unnecessarily rude to people just trying to live their lives,…

It shows which is, but knowing it’s closer without knowing which direction it’s in doesn’t help much. I guess if you had unlimited time and an area with no buildings or roads in the way you could walk in circles until you narrowed it down, but that’s not the norm.

I almost feel like I can’t really judge her the way I would another woman the same age? She spent almost a decade of her life in jail in a foreign country for a murder she didn’t commit, with the tabloids screaming about how she was some kinky, slutty, sociopath. That’s gonna make you seem a little weird.

I like you too.

Eh, I wouldn’t call five minutes texting enough to let me speak with authority. But if I know I don’t know something and it’s easy to check, I’d rather not make more of a fool of myself than necessary.

Can we not with the “fucking stupid”? Thanks.

I talked to an artist friend and she said people do actually put stuff like this in portfolios, which I had no idea about. So you have a good point. I still feel like Demi’s comment was unnecessary, but I take your point that she probably wasn’t being intentionally rude.

See, I wouldn’t have taken his comment about her not being his ideal mermaid as being an insult to her body type so much as a fact. Like, if I say I couldn’t picture Daniel Radcliffe as Thor, I’m not insulting Daniel Radcliffe — I’m just noticing that he’s got a smaller frame than your average superhero. But that kind…

Exactly. I can see getting legitimately upset if a drawing is pornographic or violent. (And I’m sure that kind of stuff about Demi is out there.) But somebody gets the boobs the wrong size on a very nice drawing of you as a mermaid? Meh. Girl needs to find something better to worry about.

I’m sorry, your point confuses me. People draw other people all the time. Sometimes the drawings are realistic, sometimes they aren’t. I don’t understand how it’s gross unless you consider it gross any time somebody draws someone else and is less than photorealistic.

I would disagree. I think “it’s not my body” is a bitchy thing to point out when it’s so easy to be gracious. (No shit the drawing’s not a perfect depiction; it’s a freaking mermaid.) It’s different from the Winslet magazine example you gave because a magazine is a professional production, where fanart is, well,…

They’re not my style, but they’re definitely cute shoes.

Exactly. I’ve seen a lot of celebrities be gracious about a lot of iffy fanart, because even if it’s bad there’s no need to tear down something done out of love. The mermaid picture is actually really good for the kind of thing it is.

Sarah Palin is indeed not wrong. And in case anybody else is curious, Hillary Clinton had the sense to wear one-inch kitten heels for the debate last week. But I guess that wouldn’t have fit Palin’s brand.

Did anybody else see the Demi Lovato mermaid fanart story? She just seems like a seriously awful person. I understand she’s strugged with body-image issues and an eating disorder, but so have a lot of people. It doesn’t give her carte blanche to attack everybody else.

I just don’t understand why so many people think sexism was behind the publication of Ferrante’s real name. Steven King was outed as Richard Bachman, after all. And while JD Salinger and Thomas Pynchon aren’t pseudonyms, those authors were repeatedly investigated even after they made it absolutely clear they wanted no…

Hey, if she did it in part to get back at him for doing it to Kylie, full points to her. (I only know what’s going on with these people from Dirtbag, but the whole “planning a baby shower without talking to the mom” thing was SO bizarre that I assumed the story we heard had gotten twisted somewhere along the way.)