An insane editorial in The New York Post today posits that Mad Men “takes Sally Draper‘s sexual story too far.” (I realize that it might be redundant to call an editorial in the Post insane, but oh well.) It’s clearly some trollsome bullshit, but let’s take a look at what crack TV critic Linda Stasi has to say.
She starts out by saying that the show is doing irreparable harm to Kiernan Shipka, the actress who plays Sally:
Maybe the parents of the 12-year-old actress who plays Sally, Kiernan Shipka, are too caught up in the glamour of the show to stop the harm it has caused their child — harm that is being played out before the country.
She then backs up her statement with evidence completely changes the subject, saying that the things Matthew Weiner has done to the fictitious character of Sally Draper are “child exploitation”:
“Take little Sally’s scene this past Sunday night.
In it, she snuck [sic.] out of her dad’s apartment to meet creepy Glen (played by Weiner’s son, Marten Weiner) at the Museum of Natural History.
When she gets stomach pains she runs to the bathroom, where she pulls up her dress, pulls down her underpants, squats on the toilet and there, in close-up yet, they show her little-girl, white cotton underpants soiled with her first menstrual blood.
Excuse me? That is a violation of a child’s private moment that no man, let alone an entire nation, should see.
But, like other equally inappropriate and gratuitous scenes involving Sally, it did not even move the episode (otherwise the best of the season) forward.”
So basically, Stasi is mad at Weiner for violating the privacy of an imaginary person, and also because she doesn’t understand the show’s interconnecting themes of sex, death, and womanhood. She has similar complaints about the episode where Sally is caught diddling, as well as the one where she walks in on Roger getting a beej from her step-grandmother. “Again, this was a scene that not only did not move the plot forward, in fact, it stopped it cold,” she writes. It’s unclear what kind of plotline she thinks would be sufficiently forward-moving for Sally. Perhaps one in which she plays with her dolls and pledges to stay a little girl forever?
She’s also concerned that pedophiles are getting off to these scenes:
I can’t help but wonder whether Weiner ever considers if scenes like that excite child sexual predators. Does he care? Surely this must panic her parents — no?
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that children don’t need to do anything sexual to arouse the attention of pedophiles. Pedophiles are easy like that! Letting your kid be on TV at all is inevitably going to expose her to creeps, but that’s not what Stasi’s angry about. And as for the “appropriateness” of what happens to Sally, I must remember what it’s like to be 12 better than Stasi, because thus far I’ve found all of Sally’s tribulations to be completely developmentally appropriate. Wanting on the one hand to do new and grown-up things, and on the other to hide from those things while curled up in bed with your mother, is what being a pubescent youngster is all about. From the gogo boots, to the coffee, to the terrifying first period, I think the show has handled all of it really well.
If they had Kiernan Shipka parading around in Jon Benet Ramsey outfits and coming onto older men, she might have a point. But as they are, I think that Sally Draper’s plotlines constitute a sensitive and realistic portrayal of what it was like to come of age in the late 1960s, as well as what it’s like to come of age in general.
(Via The New York Post)
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Any by that we mean he can’t stop using you to garner a little attention for himself.
It’s been two years since his divorce from Katie Price, yet the memory of Peter Andre’s marriage to her haunts his memories still. Peter was a guest on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories this weekend, and he opened up about how their relationship has scarred him for life.
He explained:
“I think that’s what hurts the most about what went wrong a few years ago. Because I’d just come from the worst place in my life. I’m not blaming anybody, but when I finally found happiness (with Price), it was the first time I’d felt good. I felt good about everything. I think that’s probably why I’ve never been able to (move on)… I’ve moved on in leaps and bounds in one way but in another way I’m still a bit tortured inside.”
Yes, breakups can be difficult.
But c’mon! Time to move on! This tortured soul bit isn’t really going to get you anywhere. Let’s try a different angle to get your career started again, okay?
[Image via WENN.]
Are Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher back together? They haven’t gotten a divorce yet, after all.
—Innocent Blessed, via the inbox
There have been some signs of detente,…
TACO BELL said it plans to roll out in early July new menu items created by celebrity chef Lorena Garcia. New items feature such ingredients as black beans, cilantro rice, citrus- and herb-marinated chicken and cilantro dressing.
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TACO BELL said it plans to roll out in early July new menu items created by celebrity chef Lorena Garcia. New items feature such ingredients as black beans, cilantro rice, citrus- and herb-marinated chicken and cilantro dressing.
See all stories on this topic »
TACO BELL said it plans to roll out in early July new menu items created by celebrity chef Lorena Garcia. New items feature such ingredients as black beans, cilantro rice, citrus- and herb-marinated chicken and cilantro dressing.
See all stories on this topic »
OK, so Amanda Bynes claims that she wasn’t under the influence of anything when she was slapped with a DUI for sideswiping a cop car in April (and followed that up with two other hit-and-runs). But she’s obviously smoking something, considering that last night she sent out a Twitter missive to none other than the President of the United States asking for help in her unfair sentencing.
At the time, Amanda refused to take a blood test or breathalyzer, and she maintains that she doesn’t drink. Bullshit, but the larger problem is that celebrities really shouldn’t be abusing Twitter to demand that the President step in and fix their fuck-ups. Like, she really thinks that Obama can just fire some cop?
It should go without saying, but Obama has not yet tweeted back.
[via Dlisted]
Photos: BuzzFeed, Twitter
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