Of Crotch-Grabs, Pregnant Swans, Charlie Sheen and Lil Wayne: Editors’ Picks 2/27 – 3/4

Last weekend, celebrities gathered in Santa Monica, CA to celebrate the year’s best independent films at the Independent Spirit Awards. At Racialicious, Latoya Peterson analyzes the feminist implications of what happened when presenter Paul Rudd grabbed fellow presenter Eva Mendez’s breast, and then Rosario Dawson jumped on stage and grabbed Paul Rudd’s crotch.

After a week of postmortem, the consensus seems to be that this year’s Oscars were pretty weird. Amanda Hess has compiled the six weirdest gender moments of the awards show, which happen to have been some of the weirdest moments of all.

Speaking of Oscar postmortem, conservative radio host Michael Medved welcomed the always insightful Mike Huckabee on his conservative radio show this week, where they discussed, naturally, Natalie Portman’s acceptance speech. Medved to Huckabee:

She got up, she was very visibly pregnant, and it’s really a problem because she’s about seven months pregnant, it’s her first pregnancy, and she and the baby’s father aren’t married, and before two billion people, Natalie Portman says, ‘Oh I want to thank my love and he’s given me the most wonderful gift.’ He didn’t give her the most wonderful gift(*), which would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.

*A common misconception about “pro-life” folks is that they think unborn children are the greatest gift of all. Not true. They’re up there, of course, but jewelry is actually number one.

Huckabee responded with characteristically erudite analysis:

You know Michael, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.’ But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. … Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care.

Thousands of people turned out this past weekend at Walk for Choice events in 55 cities across the country and overseas to protest the recent vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to defund Planned Parenthood. The homemade signs reaffirmed what we already knew–that pro-choicers are super cool and clever. Check out some of the best ones here.

For the first time since the Kennedy administration, the White House released a report on women this week. At Jezebel, Anna Holmes lists the most interesting highlights from the new report.

Ever wonder what it’s like to be an abortion provider in a time and place where working at a clinic often means enduring relentless harassment and threats, at best, and at worst risking your life? Dolores tells you everything you ever wanted to know and more about life as a villified healthcare provider.

Reporting for The Nation, Ilyse Hogue suggests that while liberals don’t fully recognize the value of direct-service progressive organizations such as ACORN and Planned Parenthood, conservatives do–and that’s why they try to take them down.

Anna Holmes delivers a welcome feminist indictment of the media’s hypocrisy in dealing with long-time misogynist and chronic domestic abuser Charlie Sheen, the highest-paid actor in television in a New York Times op-ed.

Finally, a pair of incredible young girls have a few questions for Lil Wayne, in musical form (via Jessica Wakeman).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YBXCpbog88

Above: Paul Rudd, Eva Mendez and Rosario Dawson at the Independent Spirit Awards. Photo from YouTube video.


About

Annie is the Community Editor at The Nation and the former New Media Coordinator at Ms. magazine. She studied sociology and women's studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She's a big fan of birds, plants and things that are funny. Her animal totem is the bat.