video Is anyone in the media not talking about Glenn Beck? It's clear we here at Mediaite certainly spend a lot of time doing so, but it would appear the rest of the world is catching up. Are they ever. Just take my morning media consumption as an example. (more...)

video Thanks to Senator Jim Bunning the nation -- particularly the 1.2 million Americans to lose unemployment benefits, 2,000 construction workers who've been furloughed, Medicare doctors who've had to cut 21% of their fees, and the 2 million Americans who've lost television access -- is becoming acquainted with the ins and outs of the dark side of the filibuster (as opposed to the Mr. Smith Goes To Washington side). Also, the ins and outs of the special Senate elevator. (more...)

Meanwhile, Gov. David Paterson of New York, who is mired in a controversy over a racetrack casino contract, demanded that The New York Times produce a list of all the things that are not going to be in a Paterson profile being prepared by the paper so people in Albany will stop speculating that there will be sex in it."

It's not really a secret around here that I am a big fan of New York Times op-ed columnist and author Gail Collins. Collins, whose witty and sharp columns often add a measure of levity to the Times op-ed pages -- particularly during last year's sometimes fraught campaign season -- has brought those same talents to her two books on the history of women in America. Her first, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines covered the lives of women from the Mayflower through to the end of the 1950's (and in the telling made me increasing grateful I was late enough to miss most of it). And she has just followed up with When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey Of American Women From 1960 To The Present, which picks up exactly where she left off and details the lives of women over the last fifty years. (more...)

video Our favorite book author Gail Collins stopped by to talk to (what felt like a nicely subdued) Stephen Colbert last night about her new book 'When Everything Changed.' According to Collins one of the major problems we face today is that "half the workforce is female now, and we still haven't figured out who's supposed to take care of the kids." Collins also recounts the story of the newlywed who arrived at New York traffic court in 1960 to pay her boss's parking ticket and was thrown out by the judge because she was wearing slacks. Yes that is a true story. For his part Colbert seems especially struck by the fact that in 1960 there were airline flights reserved exclusively for men...the only women on board were the stewardesses, who would bend over to light the passengers complimentary cigars. (more...)

Gail Collins' new book When Everything Changed, which we have written about in this space before, was released this week (buy here!) and the New York Times columnist has been making the media rounds this week. This morning she appeared on a large chunk of Morning Joe to discuss, among other things, the fact that former Vice President Dick Cheney is a "dweeb." (more...)

Who: Gloria Steinem and Farai Chideya, moderated by Gail Collins (New York Times) What: TimesTalks’ “Changes in Women’s Lives” Where: The Times Center When: October 13, 2009 Thumbs: Up (more...)

Last summer I randomly picked up NYT columnist Gail Collins' book America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines and immediately became engrossed. Friends (and seat companions) will attest to the fact that I talked about it non-stop for the better part of that summer. Women's roles had become a hot topic again thanks mostly to Hillary Clinton's presidential run, and later Sarah Palin's vice presidential one. Collin's enormously entertaining survey of women's lives over the past 400 years of American life seemed to strangely fit into to what was going on on the national political and cultural stage last year; a sort of primer to how we got from there to here. Here's what I wrote at the time: (more...)