Shakesville

Implosion in 5…4…3…2…1…

Now McCain's media team has resigned.

Political ad-makers Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, veterans of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, on Monday emailed the new campaign manager -- lobbyist and longtime McCain adviser Rick Davis -- to say that they were quitting. The two men told friends they had considered leaving for days, as they hadn't been paid and the campaign's financial straits raised questions of when and how much they would be.

…Since Mr. McCain accepted the resignations of former campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver two weeks ago, and put Mr. Davis in charge, more than a dozen senior staffers have left [the campaign].

Ouch. And it gets even worse, as the Journal takes the opportunity to spill a little more salt in McCain's wounds, reminding readers that, yesterday, they reported that old friend and new campaign manager Davis was essentially ripping off the campaign by exploiting his place in it. According to the Journal, an internet company owned by Davis and his lobbying partner billed McCain's campaign more than $1 million. Then, Davis "arranged for the campaign to give its property-management business to a second new company started by a lobbyist-friend's client, Indian-casino developer Richard Fields. That move came despite the fact that Mr. McCain had become known as the Senate's biggest critic of scandals involving Indian casinos." (See Abramoff, Jack.) Both deals have been ended, but the campaign is in debt to both companies.

There have also been objections that "Davis and his firm lobbied for a Kremlin-backed Ukrainian Party that is opposed by the U.S. government and Mr. McCain." Lordy begordy!

It leaves one wondering why on earth McCain would keep this guy around as his campaign manager. And then comes this paragraph at the end of the story:

As these issues festered, Mr. McCain twice agreed to sideline Mr. Davis as CEO, last December and in April. But Mr. Davis continued to advise the senator informally, and was a frequent traveling companion and confidant of the senator's wife, Cindy. McCain supporters privately attribute Mr. Davis's reemergence at the head of the campaign to her influence.

Damn! That is one nasty hit piece on Johnny McCain, ending with a wink-wink nudge-nudge that his wife is schtooping his campaign manager, who himself is getting fat off the old man's campaign.

Once again, McCain finds his dirtiest opponents are on the same side of the aisle he is.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Quincy

Question of the Day

Okay, Shakers, this will be a slightly different QotD: the professor in me is taking over.

William Lobdell is the former religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and he has written a very thoughtful and heartfelt examination of his own spiritual journey as he covered the religion beat in Southern California. So go read the article -- we'll wait -- then come back and share with the class your thoughts on your own spiritual journey.

I'll start: I was raised nominally in the Episcopal Church but I became a convinced Quaker when I saw the evils of war as exemplified by the war in Vietnam and the intolerance of gays and lesbians in most mainline religious denominations. The Quakers aided me on my journey as a Conscientious Objector and welcomed me as a gay man to their meetings. I also have a close friend who is a monk in an Episcopalian order and he showed me a great deal about the contemplative side of spirituality. I also learned a great deal about faith in myself and tolerance of others when my partner went through AA and I participated in Al-Anon. And the journey continues.

So, have you been on a spiritual journey?

Quote of the Day

"Considering how often Governor Romney flip-flops, he'll be wearing a beret and eating baguettes on the Champs-Elysees next week."—Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer, responding to Mitt Romey's assertion that "Hillary Clinton [couldn't] get elected president of France with her platform. France is moving toward us."

[Thanks to Shaker Miranda.]

Caption This Photo

Well, at least he's not a Scientologist anymore...

Recommended Reading

An exceptionally interesting take on the "Baghdad Diarist" kerfuffle about which I wrote yesterday.

Public Nuisance

Jim Naugle, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, has recently provoked the ire of the gay community of that city by requesting $250,000 to construct a one-person public toilet with a door that automatically opens after fifteen minutes. This is in order to cut down on what he says is a very big problem: gays having sex in public parks.

Yeserday, Mayor Naugle apologized. Sort of.

At a news conference earlier Tuesday, which he announced with a press release that promised an apology, Naugle didn't say he was sorry for recent statements about the gay community -- including his suggestion that sex in public bathrooms is too common.

Instead, Naugle said what he regrets is "not being fully aware of the depth of the problem with sexual activity in parks and public places."

You'd think the recent events involving a Republican state senator in Titusville offering an undercover male cop $20 for a blow job would have brought it to his attention.

Mr. Naugle, who seems to forget that Fort Lauderdale is home to one of the largest gay communities in the country, seems to enjoy his fifteen minutes of gay-bashing fame. It's the kind of arrogance and narrowmindedness that tells you a lot more about the person and their issues than it does about their leadership and their political skills. (By the way, Mr. Naugle is a Democrat. It takes all kinds.) He finds an issue that is emotionally charged and blows it way the hell out of proportion. He makes it the Most Important Thing facing the city of Fort Lauderdale and gets a lot of face time in the paper and TV, gets the opposition into a frenzy, then sits back and enjoys the ruckus. It's not unlike the constitutional amendment against flag-burning; it's a non-starter but it's a great distraction: "Oh, look at the kitty!" Meanwhile, the really important issues molder away while the mayor holds yet another press conference about people getting blow jobs in a biffy. (It also raises the question about the continuing saga of the right-wingers' obsession with gay sex. What's up with that?)

That may be the way to get your name in the press -- and on blogs -- but it's not really the way to run a city, and it's a good thing Mr. Naugle has no plans to run for re-election in 2009. People like him who can't get their priorities straight should find another line of work. Like washroom attendant.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof under a slightly different title.

Fat Is Contagious!

I don't even have it in me to do a full-on rant about a new claim that obesity can be transmitted through social networks, which was apparently published in the New England Journal of Medicine today. Earlier, someone sent me a copy of the entire article -- which does not seem to be available on the NEJM website, but presumably will be at some point -- and these were my gut impressions:

1) Geographical distance did not decrease the risk of "social" obesity here. That point is made over and over. Which means they are claiming that by TALKING TO EACH OTHER -- not living with each other or eating together or exercising together -- people are making each other fat.

For this to be plausible, you need to accept a few things:

A) Geographically distant friends and relations spend enough time talking about their weight to produce this effect.

Does that seem even remotely realistic to you? When I call my far-away friends, fat or thin, I ask about their lives and families, not their bodies.

B) There is an identifiable set of behaviors that reliably leads to obesity, which can be discussed and encouraged over the phone or by written correspondence.

Presumably, they think that's eating too much and not exercising enough. Problem is, as we've discussed before, it's just as hard (i.e., near impossible) to make naturally thin people permanently fat as it is to make naturally fat people permanently thin. So even if people could talk their friends into chronically eating too much and exercising too little -- which, come on, people -- the results would almost certainly not last any longer than the results of the typical "successful" diet. Unless that person was already predisposed to being fat and started out below her natural set point -- maybe because of, um, dieting. Hmmm....

C) People are more likely to take one geographically distant friend's word for it that engaging in [undefined set of behaviors that ostensibly lead to obesity] will be more personally rewarding to them than conforming to the OVERWHELMING insistence from the larger culture and, most likely, their local environments (in which their bodies are actually seen and judged) that fat is bad and dieting is good.

Can anyone seriously believe all three of those things?

2) Obesity, according to this study, is more socially transmissible from one man to another than one woman to another.

Does this jibe with other research that suggests women are much more invested in social networks, more communicative with their friends about personal issues and, not for nuthin', more susceptible to mirroring their friends' eating behaviors when they do eat together?

3) If they're going to include siblings in their results, they REALLY better have completely ruled out any genetic component to fat, which they clearly haven't.

The fact that they would include people with genetic overlap in a study that purports to be all about social factors strikes me as utterly absurd -- I think it's more than fair to ask why they included that group at all. Because their results were statistically insignificant without it, perhaps?

4) As I understand it, spouses did not "affect" each other as strongly as even geographically distant friends.

This goes back to point 1. Are we really meant to believe that people in one of the most intimate possible relationships, who communicate daily, eat together, and share umpteen "lifestyle" factors, are less likely to "transmit" obesity to one another than friends who live on opposite coasts? What is it that makes you fat, then? If we believe it's diet and exercise, how is it conceivable that people who live together do not affect each other's diet and exercise habits as strongly as pals who rarely see each other? And regardless of what they're claiming the direct cause of obesity is here, do we really believe that people are more susceptible to the opinions of distant friends than their own spouses?

5) All of this is based on data from the Framingham Heart Study. (That link is to several excellent articles by Sandy Szwarc that reference this study.)

It's well worth mentioning that that study demonstrated, among other things, that there's no clear link between longevity and BMI, that among non-smokers, obesity was correlated with greater longevity, and that the largest single determinant of longevity was... drumroll... genes.

So basically, they took a study that showed obesity's no big deal and turned it into a study that shows obesity is CONTAGIOUS!!!

*headdesk*

6) They repeat yet again that obesity is increasing like crazy, it's out of control, blah dee blah. They don't cite the statistics, which are far less alarming than the myth that we're all blowing up like balloons. (One oft-neglected point: we're also getting taller.) The discussion of "Claim 1" in this paper (PDF) breaks down why they're freaking out over nothing (emphasis mine):

The claim that we are seeing an "epidemic" of overweight and obesity implies an exponential pattern of growth typical of epidemics. The available data do not support this claim. Instead, what we have seen, in the US, is a relatively modest rightward skewing of average weight on the distribution curve, with people of lower weights gaining little or no weight, and the majority of people gaining ~3-5 kg more than they did a generation ago. The average American's weight gain can be explained by 10 extra calories a day, or the equivalent of a Big Mac once every two months. Exercise equivalents would be a few minutes of walking every day. This is hardly the orgy of fast food binging and inactivity widely thought to be to blame for the supposed fat explosion.

While there has been significant weight gain among the heaviest individuals, the vast majority of people in the "overweight" and "obese" categories are now at weight levels that are only slightly higher than those they or their predecessors were maintaining a generation ago. In other words we are seeing subtle shifts, rather than an alarming epidemic. Biologist Jeffrey Friedman offers this analogy: "Imagine that the average IQ was 100, and that five percent of the population had an IQ of 140 and were considered to be geniuses. Now let's say education improves and the average IQ increases to 107 and 10% of the population has an IQ of >140. You could present the data in two ways. You could say that the average IQ is up 7 points or you could say that because of improved education the number of geniuses has doubled."

So the whole premise that justified this review of another study's data -- that we, as a country, are SO MUCH FATTER than we used to be -- is basically horseshit. There's that.

Finally, it sounds like what they're really afraid of is people telling their friends it's okay not to diet. If that's what's actually happening here? I hope it becomes a goddamned epidemic.

(Cross-posted to Shapely Prose.)

Bolten and Miers Contemptible

The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.

The 22-17 party-line vote — which would sanction the pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors — advanced the citation to the full House.

…Committee Chairman John Conyers said the panel had nothing to lose by advancing the citations because it could not allow presidential aides to flout Congress' authority. Republicans warned that a contempt citation would lose in federal court even if it got that far.

And the White House accused the Democrats of engaging in political theater.

Blah blah you know the rest.

Daddy Dobson Does SO Hate Harry Potter!

Recently I wrote a post about this article in the Washington Post (to which I can't link at the moment because it's at the other site), which discusses some conservative Christians' aversion to Harry Potter because of all the wicked, wicked devil magic. Originally, that article noted that Dr. James Dobson, lord of the Focus on the Family empire, was not anti-Potter, but it has now been updated with a correction: "This article incorrectly said that Christian parenting guru James Dobson has praised the Harry Potter book series. Dobson believes their focus is on the occult and therefore potentially dangerous, said a spokesman."

But just in case anyone was still confused, Daddy Dobson's even posted a statement on his website—Focus on the Family's Chairman responds to recent misinformation in the press—to clear the air about this dastardly misrepresentation of his hatred for Harry Potter.

In a story about Christians' views on the Harry Potter books and films, reporter Jacqueline Salmon wrote that "Christian parenting guru James Dobson has praised the Potter books."

This is the exact opposite of Dr. Dobson's opinion — in fact, he said a few years ago on his daily radio broadcast that "We have spoken out strongly against all of the Harry Potter products." His rationale for that statement: Magical characters — witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, poltergeists and so on — fill the Harry Potter stories, and given the trend toward witchcraft and New Age ideology in the larger culture, it's difficult to ignore the effects such stories (albeit imaginary) might have on young, impressionable minds.

Totally. Which is why my parents never should have let me read Curious George, so I wouldn't have gotten bitten by all those monkeys with whom I tried to be friends.

You'd think that would have settled the matter, but Daddy Dobson couldn't let the despicable slag who calls herself a journalist get off that easily! There was metaphorical public stoning to be done!

Ms. Salmon has not only acknowledged, but apologized for, the mistake and has promised the Post will correct it Friday. It seems she simply repeated misinformation that appeared in a less high-profile publication; she acknowledged she should have contacted us directly to make sure the assertion was true — and we appreciate her humility and professionalism in saying so.

Yeesh.

Yes, what an enormous mistake she made, since the all the Potter reviews on Focus on the Family's pop culture site PluggedIn point out the good things about the books and films (even as they condemn the witchcraft) under headings like "Positive Elements" ("Harry’s parents loved him unconditionally, even sacrificially. The message is clear about the effects of this kind of love.") or "Redemptive Elements" (Irony Alert: "Power hunger and absolute power are seen as corrupting. Some parents who chose to allow their teens to read Phoenix may use the story to explore such concepts as Nazism—Death Eaters believe in allowing only pure-blood wizards to live—and Democracy—the breakdown in balance of power is what allows Cornelius Fudge and Delores Umbridge to make a mess of things."). What kind of horrible journalist would construe that as "praise," huh?!

The WaPo should have told Focus on the Family to shove their demands for a correction up their collective ass. Instead, Dobson's played them like a piano—allowing him to make a big production about how he's been misrepresented while his pop culture site retains its much more reasonable reviews of books many of his followers expect him to outright condemn.

[H/T DD at TT.]

Rising Republican Star Pleads Guilty to Rape

(That's the appropriate headline, though the Cleveland Plain Dealer went with the gentler Michigan Young Republican pleads guilty in sex case—grumble.)

Michael Flory, a 32-year-old attorney from Jackson, Michigan once hailed by the Michigan Young Republicans' website as "one of the rising stars of GOP politics in America" who "has earned a great name for himself" doing things like giving a nationally televised speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, pleaded guilty to sexual battery yesterday.

The teary-eyed college student he overpowered in a downtown hotel room gasped and dabbed her eyes as Flory replied to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan's question, "Are you indeed guilty?"

"Sure - yeah," Flory said.

As eloquent as he is ethical, I see.

Since last summer's Young Republicans convention, where Flory escorted the young woman back to her hotel room after a party then "violently forced several sex acts upon" her as she slept, he's spent his time rallying his Republican troops to try to ruin his victim's reputation for having the temerity to report him.

She and some supporters lamented when the incident became public last winter that Flory and his followers within the Republican organization had been smearing her reputation in retaliation for accusing Flory of rape. [Assistant County Prosecutor Carol Skutnik] said she found that to be true.

"People were using every opportunity to try to trash her, on Web sites or whatever," the prosecutor said. "He's been running around telling everybody what a piece of trash she is, so she was very happy to see him plead guilty."

What a charmer!

So charming, in fact, that Skutnik may soon "present evidence of several 'other incidents of sexual misconduct' in which Flory took advantage of vulnerable young women."

Wonkette adds: "Oh, and obviously he was on the Young Leaders Committee or whatever for John McCain’s campaign." Wow. McCain sure knows how to pick 'em.

[Thanks to Blogenfreude for the heads-up via email.]

Give me Some Advice on Inclusive Language

All right, y'all, despite being an advice columnist, I've got a dilemma even I don't know how to solve. (Can you imagine?) But it's the kind of dilemma that Shakers will undoubtedly be able to help with -- and have probably been over a billion times before I ever got here -- so I humbly request your assistance.

When I'm talking about anonymous commenters, or anyone whose gender is unknown to me, I habitually default to "he or she," "s/he," etc. The more I become aware of how many people don't fit into either of those categories, however, the more I want to scrap that language for something more inclusive.

Here's the problem... I really, really hate "zie" and "zir." Don't ask me why; the words just bug me. And I figure this could mean one of two things:

1. I need to get the fuck over myself and use them anyway.
2. They're just words that bug me for no good reason, like "moist," and if there are acceptable alternatives, I can avoid using them in good conscience.

So, my two-part question for you is:

1. Are there acceptable alternatives?
2. Do I need to get the fuck over myself?

Stonewall-a-thon 2007

Gonzo's testimony yesterday was just completely absurd. He is a liar and a toadie who cannot be remotely trusted. This man fills the highest law enforcement job in the nation, and he can't even be relied upon to tell the truth in front of Congress. That Bush won't fire his ass should tell us everything we need to know about the president and his corrupt administration—and should itself be grounds for impeachment. I quite honestly cannot believe we continue to allow this band of mendacious miscreants to run our country.

Here are some highlights, the first one care of Josh Marshall, who introduces it thusly:

In this exchange Sen. Schumer (D) asks Gonzales who sent him and Andy Card to John Ashcroft's bedside. And Gonzales just refuses to answer. He keep repeating that they went "on behalf" of the president. But he won't say if the president sent them. He just won't answer.

Schumer notes the key point: Gonzales isn't even asserting any kind of privilege. He doesn't say he can't remember. He just won't answer.

Take a look ...

Unfuckingbelievable.

Josh's colleagues over at TPMmuckraker, Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel, compiled more video, and note that Gonzales "left the Senate having raised two lingering and mutually exclusive questions: whether the Bush administration has pursued a second secret, internally controversial intelligence program of dubious legality; or whether the attorney general of the United States lied under oath." Here's how it all went down:

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are concerned about Gonzo's assertion last year that there had been no internal dissent at the Justice Department (since undermined by James Comey's testimony about this incident with former AG John Ashcroft) about the administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program, aka the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. So, as Jeff mentioned yesterday, in response to questions about his, uh, inconsistent testimony, Gonzales "repeatedly suggested there's a different intelligence program, other than the TSP, that Justice Department officials found legally dubious in 2004. If Gonzales is telling the truth, he just disclosed the existence of a previously unknown intelligence program. If not, the embattled attorney general could be in some serious legal jeopardy."

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) battered Gonzales about the distinction between the TSP and the "other intelligence activities" Gonzales alleges existed. Schumer pointed out that in a June press conference, Gonzales confirmed that Comey was in fact talking about the "highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago" -- that is, the TSP. But Gonzales said at the hearing that shortly thereafter, he contacted Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen to retract the statement -- and then he stuck to his line about there being "other intelligence activities" that were at issue in March, 2004.

Then Arlen Specter (who is still a Republican, though you wouldn't know it if you were one of the dipshits who watches Fox News) went after Gonzo, bluntly telling him "I do not find your testimony credible."

And here's Feingold having a go at Gonzo:

Josh comments: "It's a genuinely sad day when you have the chief law enforcement officer of country remaining in office after he's been publicly and repeatedly shown to be a liar." To which I can only add, with a sigh, yeah.

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels

(This was yesterday's, but it wasn't up long
before we were hacked again, so I'm repeating it.)

Question of the Day

What is the most "out of character" thing you've done lately, either for good or ill?

Foreign Policy and Politics

They used to say that politics stopped at the water's edge, but that was certainly before Karl Rove got a job at the White House.

White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a "general political briefing" at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.

The briefings, mostly run by Rove's deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The documents show for the first time how the White House sought to ensure that even its appointees involved in foreign policy were kept attuned to the administration's election goals. Such briefings occurred semi-regularly over the past six years for staffers dealing with domestic policy, White House officials have previously acknowledged.

In one instance, State Department aides attended a White House meeting at which political officials examined the 55 most critical House races for 2002 and the media markets most critical to battleground states for President Bush's reelection fight in 2004, according to documents the department provided to the Senate committee.

So I guess it's just not enough to violate the Hatch Act through Lurita Doan and the General Services Administration; now they have to include the diplomatic corps.

Hey, if you're going to corrupt the government with political tactics, why stop at just the GSA? To quote the immortal ZAP Comix, "Be overt! Be animalistic! Go all the way!"

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

"In the News"

No shit.

I So Quit Smoking at the Right Time

Because it's only going to get harder and harder to find a comfy place to light up:

Illinois smokers are in for a cold winter.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed legislation Monday making Illinois the latest state to ban smoking in public places — including bars, restaurants and work places. The law goes into effect Jan. 1.

Cue the hyperbolic outrage:

"I feel like it's the Nazi regime coming in here, talking away all of our rights, said Tim Main, as he cleaned up Mike's Ten-Pin Lounge in Alton. "First they make it so you have to wear seat belts, and now they want to put a stop to smoking. What's next?"

Yeah, what's next?! Vegetables at restaurants?!

Okay, in all seriousness, the libertarian part of me totally gets the whole knee-jerk aversion to nanny-state shit like seatbelt laws and public smoking bans. But the former smoker in me remembers the hundreds of times I sucked down a cigarette, not because I was enjoying it, but because I was feeding an addiction, and thought, "I wish they'd just make these fucking things illegal."

And the current nonsmoker in me thinks of how I can do a huge, guffawing belly laugh now without coughing, and I can't reasonably say that discouraging people from smoking is a bad thing, even if it is their right. I just don't believe it.

Quote of the Day

"[James Bond is] an imperialist and he's a misogynist. He kills people and laughs and sips martinis and wisecracks about it. ... [Jason Bourne is] the opposite of James Bond."—Matt Damon, star of the Bourne series, the third installment of which, The Bourne Ultimatum, comes out August 3.

I thought the new Bond flick (which I enjoyed) was a huge improvement in the misogyny department, but the Bourne flicks do win that match-up hands down, which is only one of many reasons I adore them.

But forget about the movies for a moment... Can we talk about how much I fucking love Matt Damon for talking about misogyny and male action heroes?

(H/T to Mr. Shakes.)

Study: Obese Girls Are More Likely to Avoid Going to College

Reader Christine tipped me off to this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, with a special request that I get in there and debunk the fat prejudice going on in comments, or at least invite my readers to do so. Frankly, I waste enough energy dealing with my own ignorant trolls; I don't need to fight someone else's. But you are all cordially invited to go tell "Bill" to stick it where the sun don't shine.

I'm more interested in considering what this article might mean.

According to a study published in the July issue of the journal Sociology of Education, obese adolescent girls are half as likely to go to college as are non-obese girls, and those who attended a high school where obesity was uncommon were even less likely to enroll.

My first thought was that obesity is correlated with poverty -- but the article says obese boys are no less likely to go to college than non-obese ones. So this could, in fact, be more of a feminist issue, with poorer families scraping to send boys to college but not girls -- but I doubt that explains all of it. Or very much of it.

I think this is more telling:

The study, which tracked 11,000 teenagers, also found that obese teen girls were more likely to consider suicide, have negative self-images, and use alcohol and marijuana than their non-obese peers.

I'm sure that shocks exactly no one who's ever been a fat adolescent girl. But sadly, it's yet another parallel between being gay and being fat: being ostracized and ridiculed as an adolescent leads to higher instances of self-destructive behavior, depression, and even suicide. That's pretty much a no-brainer, but of course there are plenty of people like Bill to argue that being fat intrinsically equals being self-destructive, so these girls were lost causes to begin with, and fat prejudice has nothing to do with it. Yeah, that makes way more sense than the wacky notion that being treated like shit every day makes you hate yourself.

Note that girls who went to high schools where obesity was uncommon were even less likely to go to college. Statistically, it's likely that obesity being uncommon = wealthier district. Wealthier district, in my experience = more emphasis on college prep and more pressure to go to college. Yet fat girls in these districts bow out of college even more often than girls in presumably less wealthy districts. You suppose that could have anything to do with them getting the message even more strongly that they're unwanted outsiders who don't belong in an educational environment?

I haven't read the study yet, just this squib about it, but I have no reason to think the findings aren't true -- which kinda makes me want to barf. It takes a certain amount of self-confidence to leave home and go to college, and after surviving the snakepit of high school, not many adolescent fat girls are bursting with faith in their abilities and worth as human beings. And that's without getting into the practical reasons not to go: that those who don't commute will be forced to live closely -- possibly in the same room -- with fat-hating strangers instead of their families; that dining halls involve the opportunity for all sorts of strangers to observe your eating habits; that too many colleges have molded chair/desk combos that fat people can't fit into comfortably or at all; that too many professors, being part of this culture, will assume that fat students are stupid and lazy.

And until this culture figures out that low self-esteem is not the result of being fat, but of being fucking tortured for being fat, I can't say I have a lot of hope that this will change.