Sarah Kershaw: Manning the It's-Not-1954-Anymore Beat

Intrigued by Sarah Kershaw's "idiot-ass stupid-dumbfuck-balls article" about teen hugging (which we featured earlier today), Women Do! reader Jenna Scherer hit the NYT vault to see what else Kershaw had perpetrated lately. Looks like she's an expert in the field of People Defying Garbage Gender Stereotypes In Irritating Ways.

Somehow I missed her April 23 feature, "Mr. Moms (by Way of Fortune 500)." Is it as bad as I think it is, you ask? No! It's worse!

Even for the Times, this is pretty rich stuff. Dads who used to make more money than you now have to go to PTA meetings! Where they are hailed as saviors, apparently. Because everybody knows women can't do math. And who do you turn to when you can't do math? The guys who just got laid off from their fantastically highly-paid Wall Street finance jobs for DESTROYING THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.

The new prevalence of fathers around town is bittersweet for mothers, teachers and others. On the one hand, the PTA can use all the help it can get from men with financial expertise at a time when the proposed school budget is under enormous pressure. And women are happy to see stay-at-home husbands building closer relationships with their children. But one little-spoken effect is an uneasy feeling that these highly successful men are facing the pain and potential shame of being out of work.

Oh, the shaaaaaaaaaaame! Who knew being a regular person was so dirty?

Sarah Kershaw, we're onto you.

Words Of Wisdom

Here's a riddle for you: What is strong enough to ruin an entire generation of American men, yet so weak that I could cripple it simply by choosing to wear the wrong sort of shoes? The answer, of course, is feminism. If you believe what you read in the papers, that is.

This post, a savage takedown of Ad Age/Details writer Simon Dumenco's irritating how-can-I-be-a-man-when-you-keep-making-me-empty-the-diaper-pail schtick, is six months old (quelle horreur!), but the sagacity therein is as fresh as a pail of new milk. My favorite bit:

Here's the deal: men and women are dicks, men and women cheat and otherwise do the wrong thing, men and women succumb to everyday selfishness and resentment and feminism doesn't have a good goddamn to do with it.

What she said.