The XX Factor: What women really think.

Recession Entertainment: Watch Other People Buy Things

Via Flowing Data, I see that Zappos.com will now show you who is buying what from where in real time. Thus I can sit in front of my laptop, stare at pictures of shoes superimposed on a map of the United States, and make wild generalizations about regional fashion preferences based on isolated financial transactions. Rigorous preliminary research reveals that people in the Los Angeles area like cute strappy sandals.

She Can Do It!

I love this "We Can Do It!" T-shirt featuring Michelle Obama. The original star of J. Howard Miller's iconic poster has been widely misidentified as Rosie the Riveter; in fact, it was Geraldine Doyle. In any case, the first lady makes a suitable replacement as the 21st-century woman who has it all: brains, beauty, and brawn.

Forgetting Sarah Palin

Thank God our country now has bigger and better things to think about than calculating the precise degree of Sarah Palin’s venality, ignorance, and greed. Did she bilk the RNC of $150,000 in her shopping sprees, or was it tens of thousands more? (The paper trail will eventually emerge on that one, now that lawyers are descending on Alaska to confiscate the gladrags.) Is she so dim she doesn’t know Africa is a continent, or only so dim she can’t name a single newspaper or magazine she’s ever read? Did she violate ethics laws in pursuing the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, or did her petty, nepotistic despotism remain within perfectly legal bounds? Guess what: We no longer have to care! To paraphrase Jon Stewart talking about Karl Rove the other night: Sarah Palin can’t hurt me anymore.

Unless … can’t you see Palin emerging as the leader of a splinter hard-right group, possibly even a third party? A perverse part of me—the part that enjoyed this endless campaign’s operatic grotesquerie–sort of wishes she would run in ’12, because if she did manage to get the nomination (which, as Anne observes, good friggin’ luck), she would have to debate Barack Obama, which would make for one of the most entertaining spectacles American politics has ever seen.