The idea of Palin as a nature guide is more than a little strange, perhaps because of her support of hunting Alaska's wildlife by helicopter, but come on, as a reality star? Palin may be on to something. All the linguistic boo-boos, muddled thinking and rigid ideological stances that make Palin a terrifying candidate for our nation's highest public office would make her an excellent candidate for "The Real World." After all, she has all qualities that reality show casting directors hunt for. A signature look? Check. Palin was rocking her signature bouffant long before the world had heard of the banana-clip stylings of "Jersey Shore's" Snooki. A relentless drive towards self-promotion? Absolutely. A competitive nature? Oh yeah. Speech peppered with semi-incoherent mixed metaphors and kernels of down-home slang? You betcha. Palin has a knack for that sort of surreal-reality entertainment, a flair for the dramatic that frustrates her political opponents, but, well, would make for a great show. Though "Alaska" doesn't quite look like the Palins' version of the Osbournes, (though please, almighty television gods, let that happen) it will still be hugely entertaining. We've all been watching the Sarah Palin show for years. Now, at least, we have the option of turning it off.

Her latest motivation for speaking out: The devastating revelations of widespread sexual and physical abuse of children in Ireland by priests and nuns – and the church's horrifying complicity in it. On Saturday, Pope Benedict issued a letter to Irish Catholics addressing "the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country." In the letter, which was distributed and read at weekend masses throughout Ireland, Benedict acknowledged that "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured."

But he also didn’t shy away from casting blame on "the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society ... often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values." In perhaps the biggest head-scratcher of the whole letter, he wrote, "There was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings." You know, the day that covering up abuse and moving rapists around from parish to parish is in any way well-intentioned, I will eat my mitre.

Many of my fellow Catholics were similarly unswayed by the papal missive, including O'Connor, who in a Tuesday letter to the Irish Times wrote, "The Vatican strategy, as shown in the Pope’s letter, is to sell the Irish Catholic hierarchy down the river, by making it seem it was acting independently of the Vatican when it covered up abuse. That is a lie ... What victims deserve, the world over, is a full confession from the Vatican, that it ordered the cover-up. And that it is now trying to cover up the cover-up." It wasn't the first time she's spoken out on the issue – earlier this month she wrote in the Irish Independent, "How an organization which has acted, decade after decade, only to protect its business interests above the interests of children can feel it has the right to dictate to us what Christians should do is beyond belief…. If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him."

O'Connor, who has been frank about her struggles with bipolar disorder, may seem an unlikely voice of reason in an outrageous situation, but her passionate, eloquent, and apparently unceasing opinions are a welcome articulation of what many of we struggling Catholics feel. When, in her letter to the Independent, she railed against the "attempted manipulation of good Catholic people," she was talking about all of us the world over who did not sign up for what she called "this bull dung," who are furious that a philosophy with the potential to do so much good has been so institutionally defiled at its highest levels.

Not long ago, a friend of mine said of the Church's continued clueless responses to crime and betrayal within its ranks: Well, what did you expect? The answer is, we Catholics expect better. In fact we demand it. And we're not going to slink off quietly and shut up about it. Why? Because nearly two decades after that infamous television appearance, the words of O'Connor's song are more powerfully resonant than ever. Because we have confidence in the victory of good over evil.

You may recognize his name: Beckerman has twice before appeared in Salon -- first in 2004 for a Q&A about his feminist-blaming book, "Generation S.L.U.T.," in which he was eviscerated by Rebecca Traister, and then some five years later in a personal essay renouncing his former douchiness. Now he's here, once again, thanks to a brave feat that just might fully redeem him: Beckerman and his girlfriend demonstrate on camera just how screwy Cosmo's sex advice is. For those of you who can't watch the NSFW clip below, you can get the general gist from the video's title: "I Tried Cosmo's Sex Advice -- Wow, My Penis Hurts! (But the Mango Was Nice…)" Yeah.

Even if your man is actually after a sore penis, you need not shell out cash each and every month for the latest issue's guidance, as Beckerman reveals Cosmo's top-secret formula: "I am convinced that the way that they pick their sex advice is to look around their office for any random object and say: 'Put it on a dick.'" Now that is quite the mantra.

While women may no longer be told outright, as they once were, that they aren't allowed to write for Newsweek, a subtler sexism still persists, they argue. The trio writes:

[M]en wrote all but six of NEWSWEEK's 49 cover stories last year -- and two of those used the headline "The Thinking Man." In 1970, 25 percent of NEWSWEEK's editorial masthead was female; today that number is 39 percent. Better? Yes. But it's hardly equality.

Newsweek may have a female managing director who climbed the ranks at the magazine, "but just as the first black president hasn't wiped out racism," they argue, "a female at the top of a company doesn't eradicate sexism." And in a "highly sexualized, post-PC world, navigating gender roles at work is more confusing than ever." They write:

The sad truth is that when we do see women rise to the top, we wonder: was it purely their abilities, or did it have something to do with their looks? If a man takes an interest in our work, we can't help but think about the male superior who advised "using our sexuality" to get ahead, or the manager who winkingly asked one of us, apropos of nothing, to "bake me cookies."

Hmm, I wonder whether that male superior or manager works for Newsweek. Either way, bold move in calling them out.

See, now I'm having a retroactive fantasy of writing an article for a newspaper I interned for in college about how my editor would, without fail, grab at his junk while talking to me one-on-one and give me a look that just dared me to acknowledge it out-loud. And just imagine if I'd written about how the same editor would build me up and then tear me to shreds, over and over, like an emotionally abusive boyfriend. Sure, that would have gone over well. At the time, I went to my journalism professor for advice -- but omitted my close-encounters with crotch-rubbing out of embarrassment -- and she told me plainly that some men take "delight in putting a young, bright, attractive woman 'in her place'" and warned: "Take a lesson from this -- it won't be the last time." It sure wasn't, nor was it that last time I found myself turning a skeptical, paranoid eye toward the professional praise or attention I received from male superiors.

What impresses me about this piece isn't the distillation of the current evidence of persistent inequality, which is all too familiar to me as a ladyblogger. It's their bravery in not only speaking out about their past experiences with subtle and then not-so-subtle discrimination ("bake me cookies," seriously?) but also the fact that they are doing so in the very publication that pays their bills. (And major kudos to Newsweek for publishing the piece.) These tales are so often relegated to bathroom gossip because women don't want to risk their job or be seen as a whiner -- after all, you don't get into the boys' club by reminding everyone of what a girl you are. But part of pushing through the "the fog of subtle gender discrimination," as they call it, means telling these stories publicly, to women and men. So, to this trio, I say: You go, women.

Frankly, if you've ever been around babies you know they've always been tyrants – it's just take, take, take with them and their needs to be fed and cleaned and kept alive. But the mania for perfect motherhood is a problem imposed by grownups, one that gives up every mom a new way to fail every day of our kids' lives. Did you breastfeed for less than a year? Give them gender-stereotyping toys? Microwave their chicken nuggets in a plastic container? Please, let Caitlin Flanagan explain why you suck in a lengthy essay. 

Badinter is spot on to advocate that women keep on being women when they become mothers – women who can move comfortably between sex, work and a nicely chilled glass of sauvignon blanc. And when she says, "It may seem derisory but powdered milk, jars of baby food and disposable nappies were all stages in the liberation of women," the 66-year-old grandmother is speaking honestly about a revolution that has been a tremendous benefit to working mothers of today. Moms don't need to be guilt tripped every time we lower a bar that permits us to leave the house now and again. Or as a friend once said, "As long as there are jars, I will be there to open them."

But where Badinter starts to go off the rails is when she says that she doesn't buy the "1001 claims in favor of breastfeeding" or shrugs that the French have "always been mediocre mothers, but we’ve tended to have happier lives." Plenty of devoted mothers actually do have happy lives.  Badinter seems to have overlooked the possibility that nurturing may not be an instinct all women share, but for many, the challenge is still a joy. She also ignores the possibility that fathers can parent, too. Don't want to be held to the drudgery of pureeing organic apples and changing those hemp diapers all day? How about involving your baby's dad in the process? When she says that motherhood "shuts the sexes in different circles," maybe the solution isn't just storming into men's -- but likewise inviting them in to ours.

The author declares that, "Between the protection of trees and the liberty of women, my choice is clear," but the question that raises is – why shouldn't we aim for both? We'll fall short a lot, and that's OK. Our children – whose physical and emotional needs, by the way, Badinter blithely sidesteps in her interview, deserve loving parental attention, nutritious food, and a clean planet on which to grow up. We mothers can't provide it for them by ourselves. We all have to step up – fathers, friends and family – if our kids are to have healthy, happy childhoods. But Badinter is correct that we can't always save the world and ourselves. And sometimes, the best thing we moms can do for our kids is let somebody else take care of them a while so we can grab a nap -- or even a drink.

The truth is, tons of people find hopelessness extremely titillating, judging by the abundance online of "broke girl" smut and the like. For a tabloid celebrity like Suleman to cave to repeated public offers only after reaching a point of utter despair sounds a whole lot like public humili-tainment to me. It's entirely different from watching a porn star like, say, 22-year-old Sasha Grey who conveys such aggressive ownership over her performances that it's near impossible to see her as compromising herself, even as she's engaging in some seriously edgy shit. It's hard not to see the Suleman offer, on the other hand, as approaching bribery. She's an adult woman and fully capable of making her own decisions -- good and bad, cuh-learly -- but there is no denying that she is in desperate straits. She's a mother of 14 children and facing foreclosure on her home.

Plenty of women have found themselves in this position, especially during these dark financial days. As I reported last year, most facets of the sex industry have seen an increase in job applications as a result of the economic downturn; and as I wrote just last week about a laid-off high school teacher who told her class she was going to become a stripper and sell her eggs, "The recession has so many feeling profoundly hopeless -- and for women, true economic desperation often means selling our bodies in one way or another." And with the porn industry hurting like it is, the overall level of desperation is ratcheted up; I mean, there was a time when I considered Vivid to be one of the most respectable, female-friendly mainstream companies out there. Now it's the X-rated equivalent of an ambulance-chaser.