Sissy Nation: How America Became A Culture of Wimps And StoopitsSissy Nation: How America Became a Culture of Wimps and Stoopits (Virgin Books, on sale February 6) is one of the funniest books you will ever read -- if you aren't a sissy. Author John Strausbaugh, a contributor to the New York Times, unloads on every target that has infuriated him over the last fifty-six years of his existence: left-wing political correctness, right-wing religious fundamentalists, the obesity epidemic, the anorexia epidemic, the neutering of NASA and the death of brazen American individualism.

If you believe in anything whatsoever, Strausbaugh will probably offend you, but the fact that you are offended is his point. Jewcy interviewed Strausbaugh by e-mail. (Some of his answers are cut-and-pasted from the book, but we're too Sissy to ask him to paraphrase.)

The book seems like a primal scream, something that has been repressed for a very long time. How long has this rage festered inside of you?

Sissies repress. You calling me a Sissy? I've been ranting about our increasing Sissitude for years, but I didn't know that's what it was. It took time for me to realize that these separate rants were all reactions to mutually reinforcing aspects of one big trend. So I wrote Sissy Nation, my unified field theory of Sissitude.

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There was a time when a Fat Old Jew (FOJ) like Harvey Weinstein marrying a Skinny Young Gentile (SYG) like Georgina Chapman would have caused a perfect storm of cultural anxieties around sex, power, and religion. Today, it's just another small gossip item.

The nuptials of the conniving, overeating, materialistic Hollywood mogul – the flesh-and-blood quintessence of the kind of crudely drawn stereotypical Jewish male who equates acceptance into the broader American culture with the acquisition of a hot shiksa – passed without so much of a media peep. More interestingly, the Jewish chattering class (a wild generalization referring to my friends) barely found it worthy of cocktail prattle.

Beatles Wrong: Money Buys Love: Beauty and the beast Such a high-profile FOJ triumph would once have tweaked all sorts of anxieties. Some Jews would have worried what it meant for the future of the people; others would have been scared at what gentiles thought about it. Jewish and non-Jewish feminists alike would have been horrified at the way a prominent man was so shamelessly using power and wealth to win such a “yummy mummy,” to use a phrase wielded by Maureen Dowd.

Chattering away about this curiosity with my friends, editors at Jewcy, and others, I realized that none of them interpreted the union as a suppressed lust for inclusion, but instead that less psycho-dramatic, nonsectarian lust…for a hot piece of ass.

What’s interesting is how that particular lust is no longer the sole province of the male beast. The enfranchisement of males at the expense of females (particularly Jewish males and Jewish females) is coming to an end. Firmly ensconced in the middle and upper classes, our generation of Jewish women find power, and its application (sexual, or otherwise), far less problematic than their predecessors.

Hot Piece of Ass: She loves this gentleman for his mind

Unlike the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -- who came of age in the late 1960s in male-dominated universities and workplaces, and has become known for bemoaning a perceived return to 1950s courtship rituals -- our generation of women are achieving unlike any other. They’re used to female-dominated universities, and, soon, workplaces too. And with that equality, they’re becoming a bit beastly themselves.

Edith Wharton's single woman's ambivalence toward marriage has given way to fearless casual sex (with only a smidgen of ambivalence about getting herpes). Women are marrying later. They’re marrying twice, sometimes three times. And like Harvey, their second and third marriages are occurring from a place of greater social stability and financial prosperity.

That particular place – successful women of an advanced age reveling in their single-dom – has been fertile fodder for pop culture, with TV and film glorifying its wonderful lusty freedoms. There’s Sex and the City, The L Word, Cashmere Mafia, The Real Housewives of Orange Country, and on and on.

Get the Get: If at first you don't succeed... Being a “pig” no longer has a gender, or for that matter an age. It’s hard to condemn Weinstein for being shallow after watching A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila, in which 16 men and 16 women competing for the right to “love” Tequila, who is known mainly for having 2 million “friends” listed on MySpace.

Tila first entertains the men, interviewing some of them and making out with others. Then she does the same with the women. That’s the show. It might not have the novelistic complexity of The Wire, but it does prove you can be young, female, and utterly unaccomplished and still get a place at the trough.

Maybe I’m just a cynic. Maybe Harvey swoons over the way Georgina thinks. Maybe Georgina just loves portly men with prominent noses, liberal attitudes, and discerning taste in films. Maybe it’s not “love” Tila is looking for but love. Or maybe, when it comes to relationships and sex these days -- casual, matrimonial, queer, straight, and everything in between -- we’re all allowed to be pigs.

Orthodox Jews are allegedly intimidating female passengers on Israel's buses for not wearing burqas long dresses. Hashem Sends a Bolt of Lightning: Smite the Harlots, G-d!On some lines in religious neighborhoods, women must sit at the back of the bus or else risk getting drenched in spit. Now secularists are demanding that the Israeli government cease indulging these fundamentalist whims.

You know, when I'm on buses in Israel, my main concern is whether I will die in a horrific explosion, but I guess I can see how chicks dressed like hos is equally disconcerting. (Look at her elbow -- she totally puts out.)

My colleague Michael got to Matt Taibbi’s gushing Rolling Stone article about Barack Obama and the Glorious Dawn of a New Era of Restored Faith in the Political System before I did, but he didn’t point out what for me was the weirdest part of the essay.  In general, being a fan of misty-eyed optimism, I liked this piece, but can we talk about the metaphor Taibbi used for Hillary Clinton for a moment?

In particular, the Obama camp harps incessantly, without naming names, on the sense of entitlement that infects Hillary Clinton's campaign persona. Poor Hillary: While Obama glows like the chosen one, taking Kennedy-esque flight on the wings of destiny, next to him Hillary sometimes comes off like an angry drag queen, enraged that some other tramp has been allowed to "Danke Schoen" in her Las Vegas. Obama sees this and isn't above pointing at her Adam's apple. "I'm not running for president because I think this is somehow owed to me," Obama says.

This is what happens when a veteran insult-slinger tries to be nice: all that suppressed bile winds up coming to the surface in the form of childish misogyny.  An angry drag queen?  Really?  This is the first thing that pops into Taibbi’s head when he thinks about someone who’s pissed because they’re being challenged to something they believe is theirs by right?  And don’t even get me started on that Adam’s apple…

Michelle Malkin follows up her NRO tu quoque to the rap industry in the aftermath of Imusgate by posting lyrics and videos of the latest misogynistic chart-toppers:

The "song" is "This Is Why I'm Hot." It has topped the charts for the last 15 weeks. Here's a taste of the lyrics that young men and women are cranking up in their cars:

This is why I'm hot
Catch me on the block
Every other day
Another bitch another drop
16 bars, 24 pop
44 songs, nigga gimme what you got…

… We into big spinners
See my pimping never dragged
Find me wit' different women that you niggas never had
For those who say they know me know I'm focused on ma cream
Player you come between you'd better focus on the beam
I keep it so mean the way you see me lean
And when I say I'm hot my nigga dis is what I mean

Here's my qualm with choosing now as the best time to make a scandal of the latest platinum records: It's defensiveness masquerading as outrage. Malkin may clear her throat by saying that she has no love for Don Imus or anyone else who spouts vile, racist remarks, but why is the thoroughgoing nastiness of rap suddenly worth condemning all over again?  Because it must be demonstrated that angry, reactionary white men aren't the only ones with sloppy tongues. If Imus thought he'd get away with sounding like Ludacris, we have only Ludacris to blame...

This is conservatives' form of moral jujitsu at times of cultural combat, yet they never seem to land a palpable hit.  Now, Stanley Crouch hardly goes a week without pointing out how what he sees as neo-minstrelsy damages black identity in America and, agreed with or not, he's taken seriously as a public intellectual. Crouch requires no display of Jim Crow antics from an overrated shock jock to renew his license on commentary.

Moreover, Malkin's case suffers from a slight category problem. Had Imus referred only to "bitches and hos," it might have been seemly to immediately broach the subject of rap's degenerate influence on the wider discourse.  But Imus gave the game away by calling the Rutgers players "nappy-headed," which is no different than making allusions to flat noses, watermelon or fried chicken. Imus is someone with a history of thinking that indecency is coterminous with political incorrectness, so he deserved to be accorded no benefit of any doubt. Good for MSNBC for canning his television show. He should also lose his spot on the air.

But rather than take a perfect opportunity to ask why it is that radio remains a playground for such masters of verbal diarrhea, the Right's conversation automatically turns to how blacks have brought this upon themselves. This reeks of bad faith.

Jane Austen Not Hot Enough For This Guy: Charles McGrathThe article about Jane Austen in yesterday’s Week In Review -- “Pretty Words, Jane; Would That You Were, Too” (Better title: “She’s An Okay Writer, But Damn! She Was, Like, Not That Hot”) -- really took the idiot cake. But granted, I’m one of those nutty idealists who think that sexism (and racism and whatnot) are Not Allowed Anymore.

The gist: nobody knows what Austen looked like, and there’s speculation that she -- wait for it -- might not have been attractive. “What if,” Charlees McGrath muses, “she became a writer in part because she didn’t have the looks to land a husband”!? One of the only images thought to be trustworthy -- a sketch by Austen’s sister -- showcases “a rather plain woman on the wrong side of 30 in a spinsterish cap, with what may even be a hint of a scowl.” Dude, can you believe anyone would ever read a book by a woman on the wrong side of 30? If a chick has the temerity to age, the least she can do is smile, right?

Are the physical assets of a female literary icon really and truly worthy of discussion in the paper of record, in an article by no less than the editor of the Book Review?  What’s next? Is Michiko going to break it to us that Wordsworth might have had a small dick? No, of course not: we don’t necessarily demand hotness of our male geniunses.

Halfway through the piece, Mr. McGrath acknowledges that “as long as we have her books, does it matter, really, what Austen looked like?” And then he promptly resumes fretting about her fugliness, calling her a “sourpuss”.

Best of all is McGrath’s implication that he’s only retroactively concerned for her, since “Austen lived in an age when a woman’s physical attractiveness was, next to her fortune, her greatest asset.”

Oh, those quaint, bygone times! Riiiiight: just flip on over to the front page story about the ridiculous hoops young female overachievers feel compelled to jump through these days, wherein 17-year-old Kat Jiang (who got a perfect 2400 on her SATs, BTW!) observes: “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.” How heartwrenchingly en pointe, young Ms. Jiang.

Thank goodness for the antidote of this sensible op-ed, at least. (And yes, I know you gotta be a quicker response-draw on This Here Internets.)

Berlusconi: Publicly bitch slapped by his wife. Ouch.I don’t know if you guys have been following the whole scandal involving Israeli President Moshe Katsav, but it’s getting pretty hard to ignore. Apparently he’s been ordered to leave the Presidential residence, and forty Knesset members are trying to get impeachment proceedings started on the grounds that he forcibly undressed and assaulted women who worked for him.

Looks like he won’t be lonely in jail, because former Israeli Justice Minister, Haim Ramon, is being charged with kissing a young soldier against her will. The trials for both cases probably won’t be for awhile, but it’s pretty sad to see that the guy whose job it is to make nice and look pretty can’t keep his hands off his secretaries. And the guy who’s supposed to be a moral authority kisses young girls at random. So gross.

Sometimes I wish I lived in Italy, because in Italy, if you’re Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and you make inappropriate comments about other women around your wife, she bitches you out in a open letter published on the front page of a major daily newspaper.

Moshe Katsav: Is it me, or is he looking down that woman's shirt?A little except from the Washington Post article linked above: "In an act of venting pent-up exasperation, Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, took him to task in a letter on the front page of a major daily newspaper for openly ogling and commenting on starlets, and demanded a public apology for the 'damage to my dignity.'" Several hours later, she got one.

"Dear Veronica, here is my apology," wrote Berlusconi, 70, a man not easily humbled, blaming on pride his earlier failure to ask forgiveness. "I was reluctant in private, because I am playful but also proud. Challenged in public, the temptation to give in is strong. And I can't resist."

Lario, 50, a former actress, was objecting specifically to remarks the flamboyant media tycoon reportedly made to female admirers last week as he greeted a showbiz crowd at an Italian television awards ceremony. The remarks were, as quoted in her letter: "I'd follow you anywhere" and "If I weren't already married, I'd marry you.""

It’s funny to me that Lario seems to have bigger balls than Berlusconi. Mostly I just think it’s awesome. It wouldn’t work in the case of any of the women bringing charges against Katsav or Ramon, but it’s still a great strategy. You want to objectify me? Won’t be so fun when I splash on the front page of the Post, asshole!

So we’re 72 hours into the Jewcy beta test. Here are the highlights thus far:

Anna Kournikova was the tawdry starlet of Jewcy's first weekend in beta. On Saturday we posted a triptych of Ms. Kournikova taking an inquisitive look inside her bikini bottom, where—to her surprise and delight—she encountered a big spanking Jewcy shin. The image had hardly gone up before it incited a seat-ripping riot of negative feedback. Most of the frothiest criticism was delivered via e-mail and telephoneEstrogen: Not enough of it at Jewcy? (put it on the site, people! We can deal!). But on the Jewcy Feedback Wiki, Laurel Snyder diplomatically observed that the site was suffering from a “serious lack of estrogen.” An anonymous commenter followed up by stating that both she and “a bunch of female friends” agreed that the image was “gross” and that “no women will find that funny.”

Beta tester JJtown took off the gloves: 

I'm exhausted of hip Jewish content excluding women. Not only do you employ almost no female authors, you blazon your homepage with a blatantly sexist image of a major athlete in the hopes of looking ‘edgy.’ Tell me, Jewcy, what's interesting or edgy about Jewish creatives once again fashioning a literary boys club? Haven't we had enough of these over the centuries? I, for one, am sick of it. Take Anna's pudenda off your site and hire some female writers who are allowed to talk about more than their love lives. You're too smart for this shit.

Yikes!

Now Jewcy is quite willing to offend, when necessary, and we’ll have more to say about our alleged estrogen deficiency. But some of the Jewcy staff agree that the Kournikova image reflects something Jewcy is trying to get away from: empty provocation. If we’re going to offend, there should be substance to our offensiveness. Anna and her pudenda didn’t offer the substance. On SundThe art of Dave Choe: Beta testers say it rocks!ay, they came down.

Beyond Ms. Kournikova, your feedback has been largely positive. People think the site is aesthetically smashing. And SimpleLiquid expressed the consensus when he said “Dave Choe is a stud!” Dave, who is Jewcy’s founding art director, has made a legion of new fans among the Jewcy beta testers.

You’ve been similarly positive about Jewcy’s articles, though most of your comments have been of the "love the articles!" variety. A little too general. We suspect that people haven’t yet had the chance to really dig into the marrow of Jewcy's content.

Thanks for all your comments, and keep them coming! The more we hear from you, the better the site will be when we leave beta. The Jewcy Feedback Wiki is a fine place for comments, and if you find the wiki format a little confusing, you can create posts at the Jewcy Central Forum. And as always, you can leave comments to any piece of Jewcy content, including this one.