Today, Tucker Carlson launched The Daily Caller, a Web site that has been hailed as the conservative answer to the Huffington Post. Given my peculiar obsessions with Arianna Huffington's left-leaning political tabloid, I had but one question for Carlson: Will there be nipples?

Last June, I noted the Huffington Post's regular publication of "nipple slips," or the accidentally bared nipples of major and minor celebrities. I argued that the promotion of these red-carpet snafus encourages readers to objectify women's bodies, while denying those women the agency to control their own nipple exposure—and that these non-consensual erotic displays compromised the Huffington Post's ostensibly progressive bent. (Recall this intensely zoomed-in image of the outer reaches of Beyonce's areola to reveal the depths of HuffPo's obsession with accidental nipples).

When pressed on what it all means, editor Arianna Huffington insisted that a nipple slip is divorced from political ideology: "As Freud said, 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar'—and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip." (Translation: Sometimes a cigar does not mean a "penis," but sometimes a "woman's nipple" does mean a "woman's nipple," and that means lot of page-views).

Huffington's armchair psychoanalysis failed to shed any light on the matter: How is the objectification of women justified by political progressives? With the launch of Carlson's Caller, I was presented with a rare opportunity to see how a right-leaning Web site might deal with women's boobs peeking out of their dresses. Would it lean toward the side of abstinence-informed modesty? Would it tend toward boy's-club objectification? Or would it just publish, like, real news?

I e-mailed Carlson to ask him about his site's political ideology, and whether it would embrace nipples. Carlson's response: "I can't promise the site will be areola-free—in my experience these things are hard to predict—but even at this late stage we haven't settled on a firm nipple policy," he wrote.

So far, the Daily Caller has yet to promote images of any accidentally naked celebrities on the Web. A perusal of the Daily Caller's "Entertainment" page reveals some tabloid fare ("Lohan in paparazzi incident...again"), and some sexy news ("Avatar was supposed to have a sex scene"), but, alas, no nipples:

Yet.

As for Lévy, he's carved out his little rape apology corner on HuffPo since Polanski's September arrest. In his latest missive, Lévy attributes the success of his position to "the generous access provided by Arianna Huffington and her staff." Later, Lévy calls the Huffington Post "Arianna's journal in the United States."

Sorry to burst your French intellectual bubble, Lévy, but the Huffington Post is no finely-curated journal, access ain't hard to come by, and your rambling rape apology posts don't qualify as scholarship. Face it: You're spreading your screeds on a blog, just like every thirteen-year-old with a LiveJournal password. And this particular blog? It will publish just about anything. Like this:

Oooor this:

Or, here's an appropriate selection:

But I could see how Lévy could have become confused. After all, his own French intellectual journal has lately devoted the majority of its online ink to defending Polanski ad nauseam. Currently, the top three stories on La Règle du Jeu are pro-Polanski essays. It's not exactly a culture of relevant intellectual debate, over there.

In his letter to his supporters, Polanski implores Lévy to share his message with the world. "I would like to be able to answer all of [my letters]. But it is impossible: there are too many," Polanski wrote. "Do you have any suggestions as to how I could reply? Perhaps in your journal, La Règle du jeu, which has supported me from the very first day? Perhaps you could disseminate these few words I'm sending you? I don't know. I'll leave it up to you."

And the answer came from on high: Yes, Roman Polanski, you can dump all of your insights onto the Internet, along with everybody else. We've got a little bit of room between a Stephanie Pratt boob shot (no nipple) and Alec Baldwin's own men's-rights fan mail. You're going to fit right in.

Bernard-Henri Lévy seems to think he's writing scholarship. Actually, "Arianna's journal" has made way for Lévy for the same reason it's dedicated space to nipple slips, high-res photos of celebrity wrinkles, and Alec Baldwin's ramblings: Celebrity tabloid fodder gets clicks.

Observe:

Pictured: Not Megan Fox's boobs

Pictured: Not Megan Fox's thigh

Pictured: Not Megan Fox's ass

Pictured: Not Lindsay Lohan's nipple

Pictured: Not Lindsay Lohan's side-boob

Pictured: Not an interactive slideshow comparing Megan Fox's side-boob to Lindsay Lohan's nipples

In fact, the closest we come to lady-flesh on HuffPo today is this:

Pictured: Just a bare upper back.

Oh, when will the world stop mourning!

Every single business reporter selected for HuffPo's latest parade of sexism interactive slideshow is a woman. While I love to see women succeeding in business, this particular feature isn't exactly what I had in mind. Let's take a look.

* Where the dudes at? HuffPo chose to only place women on its list. It must be because, as Pukeimmediately points out, men don't have to be attractive to be respected as reporters. And so, Eric Bolling's camera-ready tan and Cody Willard's glorious mane have gone un-dissected by the Internet sexy police:

* Meow! Why not just put a few guys into the mix in order to create the facade of gender-equality? That would ruin the whole Fox vs. CNBC girl-on-girl cat-fight scenario HuffPo has constructed here. Throwing a Cody Willard may boost HuffPo's progressive cred, but progressive cred can be a real boner shrinker.

* Experience bad. In the real world, the more years a reporter has slaved away at a beat, the more valued they are as a journalist. When HuffPo wonders if Maria Bartiromo has "lost some of her hotness to her younger colleagues," however, we see the limits of experience: it's valuable only until you're too old to be hot anymore.

* Boobs good! When it's not knocking FOX Business for low-ratings, HuffPo is commending it for its steady stream of "buxom women." (I wonder where they found that business model?) Some FOX business reporters are so good at their jobs, they actually have the power to make business viewers not give a shit about business. On Rebecca Diamond: "She recently conducted a well-researched interview about commercial real estate, but it was hard to pay attention. She was wearing a turquoise mini-dress with a deep V that nearly reached her belly button." In other words, women must be attractive in order to become journalists, but they still won't be respected in the field, because they are attractive.

* Newsflash: Pretty girl not dumb! HuffPo doesn't entirely ignore these female reporters' professional accomplishments—it just lists them as some sort of surprise twist to their hotness. Tracy Byrnes is hot, and wrote a book! Melissa Francis is hot, and attended Harvard! Trish Regan is hot, and wrote about pot once! Jenna Lee is hot, and looks American! Okay, so HuffPo couldn't dig up a career accomplishment for all of these women.

* And while we're at it: We get it, HuffPo: "Hard-hitting" means more than just "serious journalism." It also means you guys have a boner. Using this double-entendre twice in this slide-show alone is more than enough.

Last week, I suggested that the Huffington Post was sexist for devoting much of its Entertainment page to obsessively posting accidental female nipple slips caught on camera. Arianna Huffington responded via a Howard Kurtz column by saying:

"As Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’—and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip."

Well, I've been mulling over Huffington's retort for about 24 hours now, and I've finally figured out what is so fucking strange about this response. Let's start with Freud.

Sigmund probably never actually said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," but theories abound as to the source of the attributed phrasing.

Here's the best guess of any: "Sigmund Freud was once asked about the psychoanalytic significance of his smoking a cigar, to which he replied that a good cigar was merely a smoke." So, Freud is sitting around having a cigar, and some student thinks it would be clever to ask Freud why he likes to put phallic objects in his mouth all the time. And Freud is like, ha, ha, you got me, but seriously, I am not gay. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

Nipples, meanwhile are not stand-ins for sexualized female body parts—they are actually sexualized female body parts. It's true, I'm not kidding. HuffPo confirms its peculiar interest in the female nipple by regularly posting intensely zoomed-in "nipple slips" on its Web site, while sparing male nipples—regularly exposed on beaches everywhere, even by smokin' hot American presidents—the same "NSFW zoom" treatment and "check out these nipples, we found more somehow" headlines.

What might be a more apt comparison here? How about this: So, Freud is sitting around with a man's penis in his mouth, and some student thinks it would be clever to ask Freud why he likes to put men's penises in his mouth all the time. And Freud is like, ha, ha, you got me, but seriously, I am not gay. Sometimes, a man's penis in my mouth is just a man's penis in my mouth.

In other words, an Internet "newspaper" can feature sexist entertainment all it wants without actually being sexist, as long as it insists that its actions are meaningless, and can source that meaninglessness back to an unsourceable quote from Sigmund Freud, of all people. You're good, Huffington Post. You're really good.

Photo by RyAwesome

Huffington Post's Vice President for Communications, Mario Ruiz, responded to my inquiry by copy-pasting Kurtz' column into an e-mail, adding: "There's nothing much we can add to what she already emailed Howie."

Huffington to Kurtz:

Huffington dismisses this argument by e-mail, calling it "silly and highly limiting to assume that all progressives can't wait to get to the orgy and all conservatives have a chastity belt in their drawer. . . . As the Washington City Paper's blogger herself points out, we have a wide range of news and opinion on all our sections — including our Entertainment section.

"Looking for hidden political agendas in every article and every photo on HuffPost will lead to some very convoluted conclusions. As Freud said, 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar' — and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip."

Huffington misses the point here. This isn't about valuing promiscuity or chastity. It's not about whether liberals or conservatives should or shouldn't like sex. This is about objectifying women by reducing them to their nipples, which is, in my opinion, anti-feminist. And personally, I would hope that progressives would make very basic women's issues like this a priority.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a woman is just a nipple.

UPDATE: Ruiz has written back with an expanded version of Huffington's statement:

At The Huffington Post we feel that trying to analyze everything in life by looking through a right vs left political prism — including Entertainment and celebrity coverage — will lead to a very distorted view of the world. In fact, we feel that looking at politics in that tired way will lead to a distorted view of the world (compare Dick Cheney’s view on gay marriage to Barack Obama’s and get back to me about right vs left). It is silly and highly limiting to assume that all progressives can’t wait to get to the orgy and all conservatives have a chastity belt in their drawer. History has proven otherwise again and again and again.

[As you pointed out last week], we have a wide range of news and opinion on all our secctions — including our Entertainment section. Looking for hidden political agendas in every article and photo on HuffPost will lead to some very convoluted arguments. As Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” – and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip.

My beef with HuffPo's nipple slip coverage, Huffington Post: Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment, inspired a range of responses this week. One commenter was peeved that I appear to "take no joy" in my work—an assertion that I roundly deny. Another sees rogue nipples throughout HuffPo's political coverage, as well: "They couldn’t find Hillary’s nipple, but they got as close as they could." And the Huffington Post chimed in, too—though not about the nipple thing.

The best of the rest are after the jump.

Theo Goodwin:

Having been on campus since the 1960’s and having shared my life with all those on the Left, let me tell you that the Left’s objectification of women is no secret, not even on the Left. Self aware members of the Left have said for decades that if abuse of women were to become a serious topic of conversation then all the leading men on the Left would have to line up and take their medicine.

tim33ny:

i read huffpost everyday at work, lots of good reads. judging from your article, it would appear as if you are a conservative. try this, stop focusing your energy on trashing liberal entertainment media and propaganda, and start to focus on how to take back the lost dignity of the right wing. if you try that you may actually get something done. also thanks for letting me kno that huffpost has nipple shots, i never knew that, ill be sure to check them out. btw dont bother replying to this comment because i will not be back to this website to check it. peace.

a liberal democrat from new york named tim

ps. dont forget to hail to the chief!!!

jason:

hahahaha. tim33ny is a prime example of huffpoop’s readership.

-libby mcliburul