On the Daily Beast this week, Tina Brown called out President Barack Obama for keeping Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “invisible” during Obama’s recent whirlwind diplomacy tour of Earth.

Brown frames the piece—how else?—by a Middle-Eastern take on the “stuck in the kitchen” analogy:

Read More “Hillary Clinton: Barack Obama’s Saudi Wife?” »

“Does Kanye Dress Too Gay?” Elizabeth Gates writes on the Daily Beast. The speculation on the impact of Kanye West’s dandy foppishness isn’t invalid, but it does require a follow-up: too gay according to whom?

Gates makes the case that West dresses too gay for hip-hop, which she claims has backed off from its full embrace of flamboyant dress—see George Clinton, Dr. Dre (?), and my personal favorite, Cameo (above). But Kanye isn’t too gay for the “black-male community” in general. Gates’ main evidence of homophobia against Kanye’s lavender suits are Internet trolls. In other words, Kanye is too gay for the most homophobic idiots ever.

Gates writes:

“Only gays wear that [crap]!” wrote blog reader “TheTruth,” while another reader advised that they should “go taste the rainbow.” “Bootylishious” wrote that he/she simply “feel(s) sorry for all those gay dudes,” and sadly, the list goes on. It seems that just as we settle into our most modern America yet, the tradition of black fashion has been lost.

Also lost in the Internet fray: decorum, intelligence, sincerity, accountability. Kanye isn’t too gay for hip-hop—he’s one of its biggest stars. But he is too gay to escape indiscriminate homophobic Internet trolls, a phenomenon that wasn’t around when Dr. Dre was drawing on eyeliner and Cameo was strapping on a codpiece.

Clinton, though, probably would have been spared. Writes one more fop-friendly Internet commenter, “[calling Andre 3000 gay is] like saying prince is gay. prince is renown for pulling some of the finest woman of all time, in spite of being just so different. . . . oooor beter yet, like calling george clinton gay. lol, u crazy. he’s just a funky individual.”

Political-royalty-turned-blogger Meghan McCain has launched a new campaign to usher gay rights into her hip, young Republican fold—but the gay media is not biting.

In the Daily Beast this week, McCain calls gay rights “one of the [causes] closest to my heart,” and insists that “if the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric.” Later this week, McCain is slated to address the Log Cabin Republicans at their annual convention, and she works hard on the Beast to build up the the gay conservative group’s inclusiveness as a part of its “core Republican values,” while dissing the Democrats for being the party that’s really anti-gay.

Read More “Washington Blade Calls Out Meghan McCain” »

The Daily Beast’s Ashleigh Banfield wrote a screed today arguing that “sexting” offenders—teens who send naked photos of themselves and others to other teens—should be prosecuted harshly, to serve as examples for others. Banfield says that a “little felony can ruin your life.” Which is why teenage sexters should receive felonies: to ruin their lives.

Banfield also suggests, in her title (”Drinking Age? We Need a Texting Age!“) that there ought to be a minimum age that adolescents can send text messages. “We’ve already decided they can’t be trusted to drink in moderation, drive before age 16, or make many legal decisions before age 18,” she writes. But Banfield doesn’t suggest what age would be appropriate!

So: At what are are teenagers old enough to handle the technology that will inveitably ruin their lives?

Former City Paper editor Kara Swisher writes for the Daily Beast about her insatiable desire to be married to another woman. Swisher has been gay married four times so far: the non-legal romantic, traditional, family wedding; the rushed, Niagara Falls parking lot Canadian wedding; the voided San Francisco sham wedding; and the final, in-at-the-buzzer, right-before-polls-close-legalizing-Prop-8 California wedding.

Here’s Swisher’s message for the anti-gay Mormon elite who would stand in her way: “I’m not going away, because I have an Elizabeth-Taylor appetite for gay marriage.”

Last week’s Daily Beast feature which asked former Project Runway contestants to design a Michelle Obama inauguration gown—using only ridiculous materials and some pluck—accidentally asked the wrong Jay McCarroll to design the dress. According to Jezebel, The Beast actually contacted one Jay McCarrol, who has but one “L” in his last name, is not a well-known clothing designer, and has won no national reality television contests. McCarrol proved up to the challenge, however, taking the Beast at their word and asking a friend to sketch up a design for Michelle. McCarrol’s buddy, a 20-year-old student, came up with this pretty okay design, above, considering that the anonymous designer could only use burlap sacks and American flags as material. Tina Brown’s new Web-first outfit recieves a warning, while the fake McCarrol’s young friend establishes herself as a front-runner for the next season of Project Runway.

UPDATE: I’d like to just comment here to clarify the headline of this post, because there’s been some confusion in the comments. I’m not calling the lovely Michelle Obama nor the talented Jay McCarroll ugly. I’m calling the dress design ugly. Proceed to rip me apart for my misguided fashion criticism.

The Daily Beast posed this absurd challenge to former Project Runway contestants: Design an inaugural gown for Michelle Obama using only “Laura Bush’s 2005 Inaugural Ball dress, to be chopped up and repurposed, à la Pretty in Pink; an American flag; burlap potato sacks; and $10 worth of trims of their choice.” (Umm, is that how this happened?) Head to the Beast for god-awful designs from Jay Carroll, Austin Scarlett, Mychael Knight, and others.

Jezebel does the Beast one better by selecting dresses from the Project Runway designers that Michelle might actually want to wear.
Sketches from The Daily Beast.