A certain name has been redacted so as not to perpetuate a cycle that should have ended long ago.
There's always one. One formative relationship from your past that will forever occupy that special place in your heart and even after you marry, you'd still drop everything if they called.
Which brings us to what has truly become the most extraordinary love story of the 21st century, the media and [redacted]. It was love at first sight when [redacted] first appeared on the world stage in the summer of 2008. But oh, how quickly true love can sour and turn into the self-abasingly abusive relationship that we see today, one which may well have reached its nadir last weekend when [redacted] trailed her emails under the collective nose of the international press, like a flirtatious Victorian belle dropping a handkerchief in front of a young swain at a village ball.
And lo, didn't the lovestruck media come a-dashing, scaling continents to clutch these thrilling treasures to its bosom."We can really see the beginning of her suspicion of the media when she got the VP nomination," said one hapless MSNBC reporter on Saturday, as though that were surprising, let alone scandalous, as he tried to justify his weekend in Alaska. Um, well, she used the word "flipping" in her emails. Will that do?
It didn't have to be like this, media! The clean break was there for the taking when [redacted]'s star waned after her "blood libel" debacle – heck, even her best friend, Fox News, seemed to be distancing itself. But like the lovestruck puppy you are, you just had to come back for more when you saw her number flash up on your mobile.
Her Paul Revere flub was like the make-up sex that convinces you things will now be as good as they were before – but they never are, are they?
By following her silly bus trip through last week and now jumping all over her emails, the media has ensured that she will continue to get enormous contracts from rightwing TV channels and public speaking events because she is, clearly, a news agenda setter. And that is because the news covers her. Because she's a news agenda setter. She's like an Escher drawing without the skill.
Oh media, there are other fish in the rightwing sea! Heck, there's Michele Bachmann – just as extreme, just as shaky on facts and just as female, but with the added benefits of being an actual presidential nominee, and actual politician, come to that.
But for such a cynical industry, the media are remarkably romantic when it comes to [redacted]. She was the first, you see, and some just can't forget that thrilling sensation when she first appeared, her every public mistake giving orgasmic pleasure.
[Redacted] won't run for president. Why would she? This weekend she proved that she will always win the media, and that's the only campaign that matters to her.
Media, you need to break up with her now. This is a bad relationship and the only person who's getting satisfaction is [redacted]. There's nothing there any more. Get some therapy and move on.
The Smurfette effect
Since its US release last week, much has been written about the sweetly entertaining if not quite awe-inspiring summer blockbuster Super 8. There has been geekish hand-rubbing over the dream team pairing of JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg as the film's writer/director and producer respectively; there have been appreciative comments from nostalgic film critics, revelling in the movie's obsessive recreation of the 1970s.
But what has not to my knowledge been discussed yet is how Super 8 is a perfect example of the Smurfette Principle. This fantastic term was coined by Katha Pollitt in an article she wrote for the New York Times in 1991 for when a movie, TV show or novel features just one female character among a group of male characters. This set-up is generally the standard, except if the film, TV show or novel is aimed specifically at girls or women. Thus, wrote Pollitt, "Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types . . . Girls exist only in relation to boys."
Pollitt noticed this when she was searching for strong female characters to introduce to her young daughter and so her original piece focused specifically on TV shows and books for children and her examples included Winnie the Pooh (Kanga) and Muppet Babies (Miss Piggy). But it's just as common in the adult world. The excellent blog feministfrequency.com recently pointed out that Ellen Page gets "Smurfette'd" in Inception; Jon Stewart has been repeatedly criticised for the paucity of female correspondents on The Daily Show, compared with the slew of male ones, and the 2009 Star Trek film featured only one female character, Uhura, a film that just happened to be directed by . . . JJ Abrams.
Super 8 is a particularly grievous example of this trope. Alice, played by the disarmingly good Elle Fanning, is the lone girl in a group of boys and her role is (semi-spoiler alert) to be a love interest and to be rescued.
Abrams, somewhat unwisely, makes many homages to ET in Super 8, but at least in ET little Drew Barrymore got to play a real part in the film and have her own scenes. Super 8 may have flashier special effects, but in this regard, it's decades behind its honoured antecedent.
