Hanna, you brought up the Gosselin affair. According to every tabloid in town, Jon Gosselin, costar of Jon & Kate Plus 8, has been cheating on his wife, Kate. The rumors, accusations, and carefully-worded statements are flying fast and furious. Today, Kate defended her husband on the Today Show, where Meredith Vieira read a written denial by a no-show Jon, and now one of the supposed mistress's exes has launched a website featuring stills from a sex tape that he claims to have made of himself with the Hester Prynne of the moment.

It's all sort of ugly—the mudslinging, the sleazy screencaps, the angry recriminations. Kate: "Jon's poor judgment and irresponsible behavior has also without a doubt caused some added tension and stress between the two of us." I'll bet. As if twins and sextuplets weren't enough. Now, this.

But the fact of the matter is that anyone who has spent any time watching the show knows its subplot is their marriage, and the majority of that relationship seems to consist of Kate treating her husband like something that got stuck on the bottom of her shoe, the property of which she cannot quite identify, eliciting a nonstop look of thinly-veiled disgust and disappointment. In fact, it's hard to think of moments in which this housewife is not humiliating, degrading, and emasculating her husband. On camera, no less. In one episode, she actually chastised him for breathing too loudly. There she is in the supermarket ripping him a new one for being a lousy spouse. There she is at the pumpkin patch shouting at him for being a substandard father. There she is telling him to stop mumbling like a fool. There she is explaining to the camera that she doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

As of late, much as been made of "naughty mommies." Why, they've even got their own twitter feed! (Sample question: "What is the Worst Thing You Have Ever Told Your Child ..." Sample answer: "I told my six year old that if he picked his nose one more time his brains would fall out, shame that he then immediately had a nose bleed, much panic in my house then.") It's all so cool. Bad mommies rule! That their fearless leader Dooce, aka Heather Armstrong, earns a purported $40,000 a month in the role of uber-naughty mommy only inspires the rest to be the baddest mommy in the blogosphere.

But what of their husbands? Those men who are regularly depicted by the same bad mommies as fools, as incompetents, as co-failing parents? Well, I guess Jon Gosselin has answered that question. When bad mommies, bolstered by their online sisters, become bad wives, it sucks, doesn't it?

Tags: adultery, Heather Armstrong, Jon & Kate Plus 8, motherhood, wives

We live in an environment where self-branding is a lifestyle choice and self-promotion is confused with achievement. Breaking through the 4th wall (when reality contestants talk to the camera) is not the same as actual contact between player and watcher, however, and does not substitute for honesty or intimacy. When the Octomom had her litter in January, Jess and Noreen wrote about the Gosselin and the Duggar families who became television commodities by inviting reality producers from the Discovery Channel into their reproduction-driven lives. Now I learn from Hanna's post that one reality celebrity husband, Jon Gosselin, has a secret life with a secret friend. I have to say, I can't really blame the guy. Maybe he just wanted some privacy?

I sometimes wonder about living our private life in public. Since my husband, my daughter, and I are each involved in different aspects of the media, at times when our home life is particularly surreal, I can imagine us inspiring a sitcom. But my family's imaginary TV series would be more like a small-cast version of the ABC series of 30 years ago, Eight is Enough. In that now-quaint series, the family of newspaper columnist and former CIA agent Tom Braden was fictionalized, their identity was disguised and the eight actual Braden children kept their relative obscurity.

Like Hanna, I cringe at the level of self-exposure necessary to tear down the 4th wall in the manner of that "family of renovators" featured in the New York Times article "Branding the Family." Bravo, the cable network that brings us Real Housewives of New York City and other urban locations, bets the exploited exploits of the Novogratzes, another multi-offspring family, will be riveting to audiences because, as the series executive producer told the Times, "audiences are craving authenticity." I doubt they'll get it watching Bravo. Real reality happens without cameras, inside the four walls of our own lives, fueled by truly unscripted, unedited, conversations. It is sometimes uncomfortable and usually, in our case at least, decidedly unphotogenic. Though, it may be exciting to imagine a life in front of an audience, genuine people tempted by reality-shattering reality cameras should follow the advice of fray poster ScrewJack2008, and run for their lives.

Tags: duggars, Gosselins, Real Housewives of New York City, Reality TV

Dahlia, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would surely agree with you that it's long past time to rub out the equation that a woman justice equals a second-rate one. To make the case for why she needs a female colleague (or colleagues), she took the unusual step of talking about a case that's just been argued and not yet decided—the one involving the strip search of 13-year-old Savanna Redding. You wrote vividly about Ginsburg's apparent distress at the clueless reactions of some of the men on the court at oral argument. This week Ginsburg said as much to Joan Biskupic of USA Today. "They have never been a 13-year-old girl," the justice said. "It's a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn't think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood."

Ginsburg also remembered being ignored by male lawyers at meetings in the 1960s and 1970s, only to have a man present repeat her point, and get a response. And incredibly, she feels the same way even now: "It can happen even in the conferences in the court. When I will say something—and I don't think I'm a confused speaker—and it isn't until somebody else says it that everyone will focus on the point." Biskupic writes: "It was a revealing observation from a justice who generally praises her male colleagues, some of whom are close friends." No kidding.

Ginsburg also directly addressed the question of what women bring to the bench, as women:

"You know the line that Sandra [Day O'Connor] and I keep repeating … that 'at the end of the day, a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same judgment'? But there are perceptions that we have because we are women. It's a subtle influence. We can be sensitive to things that are said in draft opinions that (male justices) are not aware can be offensive."

The differences between male and female justices, she said, are "seldom in the outcome." But then, she added, "it is sometimes in the outcome."

PS: Ann Althouse (U. Wisconsin law prof, blogger extraordinaire) discusses diversity on the court.

Tags: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, savanna redding, strip search, Supreme Court

Dayo, I think Richard Just's argument needs one more shade of subtlety. Conservatives do not generally say they are not anti-gay. They say some version of what Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has just replaced Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter as the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee said: "I don't think a person who acknowledges that they have gay tendencies is disqualified per se for the job."

The key phrase of this quote is "gay tendencies." Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, are OK with someone who has "gay tendencies." They do however have a problem with someone who acts on those gay tendencies. This is the new "enlightened" conservative stance, because it acknowledges that people are born gay, but still preserves the belief that "homosexual acts" are a sin. The Catholic Church takes a similar line, and Andrew Sullivan has written often and passionately about what's wrong with it.

I too look forward to a debate over a gay nominee, but not necessarily an openly gay one. The most interesting debate will happen over one of these is she or isn't she candidates Dahlia and I have discussed. Then the right will be in a serious bind. Technically, such a person will be living by the conservative rules, feeling one way but failing to act on it. But conservatives will surely be uncomfortable with such a person. So they will have to contort themselves to find new creative euphemisms to express their discomfort.

Tags: gay nominee, gay nominee to Supreme Court

Richard Just has a knockout post over at the New Republic adding another wrinkle to the discussions that have surrounded the naming of a Supreme Court justice to replace the retiring David Souter. If the president nominated an openly gay jurist, it’s easy to assume a confirmation firestorm of Roe v. Wade proportions, led by Bible-clutching protesters and the intolerant Senator Jeff Sessions on the Senate judiciary committee. But Just wonders whether it’s not only not damaging, but in fact beneficial to have an openly gay court nominee. It would, he reasons, naturally separate the wheat from the, um, haters:

[N]ominating a lesbian to the court would put conservatives in a politically awkward position. As the gay rights battle has come to center more and more on the specific question of marriage, conservatives have frequently insisted that they are not anti-gay, just opposed to gays getting married. Conservatives are attached to this distinction because they know that, without it, they end up looking like bigots. But if they decide to make an issue of a Supreme Court nominee's sexual orientation, they would effectively be conceding that this distinction was a lie. …

Given that most Americans are no longer comfortable with transparent homophobia (while conservatives still have the majority on same-sex marriage, liberals enjoy majorities on various other gay-rights questions, such as workplace discrimination), it would be a risky move for conservatives to toss aside their cherished distinction between anti-gay sentiment and anti-gay-marriage sentiment. So maybe they would think twice about raising sexual orientation during a confirmation battle. And if they decided to do it anyway, it could become one of those defining moments where the American political center gets a glimpse at the fundamental ugliness undergirding a particular crusade--and turns decisively in the other direction.

Ooh, snap. It’s not too often that bigots get a real, live hoisting on their own petard—but this court opening could be just such an opportunity. I really believe that a public political fight around whether conservatives are anti-gay or anti-gay marriage is one that the religious right would lose, definitively—and might do more to advance the cause of gay rights than the rolling boil of states that are legalizing such marriages. Maybe I've been watching too much of the NBA finals, but I would call this the political equivalent of a flying dunk in Tony Perkins' face. Who doesn't want to see that?

Of course, this all depends on Barack Obama, who has been fairly cowardly about gay rights, both on the trail and in office. (And, judging from those “leaders” like DC Councilman Marion Barry, who now claims spokesmanship for blacks on gay issues, the leadership vacuum is hurting the cause of justice.) Sure, there is a risk of flameout with any nomination, but if Obama really wanted to leapfrog past the current unsatisfying, incremental approach to gay rights, this is a great idea.

Tags: David Souter, jeff sessions, lesbian supreme court nominees, richard just, Roe Vs. Wade, the new republic

Emily, you are so right that Jeff Rosen’s unsupported whispers about Judge Sotomayor have become the conventional media wisdom in three short days. But more troubling still, he seems to have been arguing that female jurists are by definition “mediocre” for more than a decade! Here’s a piece he did for the New York Times in 1995, arguing that President Clinton’s “single-minded pursuit of diversity, combined with an eagerness to avoid controversy, has kept him from appointing the best available legal minds to the courts.” He then names the many, many white men passed over for federal judgeships and contends that liberal judges lack the intellectual firepower to challenge brilliant conservative jurists because “nearly 60 percent of the Clinton appointments have been minority members and women.” (Read: mediocre.) His single data point to illustrate that mediocrity: Instead of appointing a serious intellectual heavyweight to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a/k/a “The scholars Court”), Clinton tapped “Diane P. Wood, a little-known professor of antitrust law at the University of Chicago, who is currently an assistant to Deputy Attorney General Anne Bingaman.”

That same mediocre Diane Wood is not only on every shortlist for the Supreme Court today. She’s also widely regarded as one of the finest judges on the bench, to whom other brilliant judges turn for reviews of draft opinions. I don’t begrudge Rosen or other white men who feel they are always the bridesmaid. But the suggestion that a diverse bench must inevitably be a second-rate bench is really quite shocking, even 15 years later.

Tags: Diane Wood, diversity, Jeff Rosen

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Compared to what's bubbling up in the culture this morning, Elizabeth Edwards seems positively demure. This morning on the Today Show, Kate Gosselin, star of the one family reality circus, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, went on to flog her new book, Eight Little Faces, but also to talk about whether or not her husband, who was seen walking out of a bar with another woman, is having an affair. (The woman's brother said they've been seeing each other for three years; Jon made a very unconvincing denial on the show.) Kate says she really wants to "weather the storm" and "just focus on the kids." She said this with her usual sweet, wholesome expression. The whole exchange left me feeling not that she was opportunistic, but that she actually believed that going on the Today Show to talk about whether he was or wasn't having an affair was the best thing for her family.

So there really is no distinction anymore in the culture between an actual private life and a private life chronicled on weekly television. The Truman Show, which came out in 1998, would seem like a relic now in an age when it's impossible to believe that the star of a reality show would not be complicit in his own exposure, or that he would be troubled by it in any way. And Elizabeth Edwards, who was blogging about her son's untimely death in a car accident before there were bloggers, is a pioneer in understanding the collapse of these distinctions.

If we need more proof, read this story in today's New York Times home section called "Branding the Family" about the fabulous duo of decorators, Robert and Cortney Novogratz, who will have their own Bravo reality show in the fall. Given that they only have seven children and are much more fabulous looking than the Gosselins, there will surely be a storm to weather soon. So tune in...

Tags: Elizabeth Edwards, Kate Gosselin

Rebecca Traister has already expertly parsed Jeff Rosen's hasty, uncareful slamming of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for what it shows about how we—actually, white male legal pundits—talk about women who are up for huge jobs like the Supreme Court. Dahlia and Hanna dissect the put-down and the code words, too. At the National Journal, Stuart Taylor Jr., who also jumped on the anti-Sotomayor bandwagon, has had the grace to jump off, writing in an editor's note that he regrets being "unfair" to the Second Circuit judge, in particular by "citing anonymous claims that she has been 'masquerading as a moderate,' which I do not know to be true."

But it's too late to sheathe the claws. They've already produced this dreadful, not funny David Letterman parody of Sotomayor as a screechy gavel-banger. Is that Spanish she's speaking? But of course. The Washington Post Wednesday quoted "a lawyer who has been consulted on the Obama selection process" saying that Sotomayor may have to overcome a perception that she "doesn't play well with others." Today, a news story in the paper makes nice. Let's just hope that anonymous supposedly-consulted lawyer is wrong and the Obama administration doesn't care about the swirl of perceptions and is doing it's own reporting. There is an abundance of excellent women candidates, as Dahlia and Chris Wilson and I have been discovering as we begin to read up and write about them. Picking one of them isn't affirmative action, no matter what the white guys writing the columns say. (And no, Ben Wittes, I'm not crying for the excellent white men who aren't at the top of the list this time, and it's not just Democrats who take identity politics into account when they make Supreme Court selections—hello, Clarence Thomas, not to mention Harriet Miers.)

Tags: David Letterman, Rebecca Traister, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court