Citizen Mom

YUNKER ALERT: It's Shamrock Local Time

Bring out your drunks and get on the bus, friends and neighbors: The 19th Manayunk Shamrock Local is on tap for this Saturday, March 13. Think of it as State Patty's Day for grownups.

Grab your flashing LCD belt buckles, put on your drinking socks and get ready to ride. I'm actually ambivalent about going on the Local this year, coming as it does a few months after the death of our beloved "Aunt Flo," aka Florence Cook.

Flo never was one to ride from place to place -- hauling your drunk shit on and off a bus all day was for kids -- but she was always waiting there for you at Spanky's to start off the Local, and later at Scanlon's to check up on you when you disembarked. I'm not sure I can do an afternoon of beer-soaked tears, but some of my favorite Shamrock Local memories have Flo at the center of them. So we'll see.

 

OF COURSE The Local's On Facebook.

There Are No New Stories, Only Old Ones With Different Words

Here's the latest version of the old "hidden camera busts supposedly disabled people working" story:

Geek.com has a post about a Quebec woman who'd been on a year-plus long leave suffering from depression, yet now finds her benefits cut off after her employer sees photos from her Facebook page showing her partying it up.

The woman claims the photos show isolated happy moments that don't cancel out the ongoing depression. Her employer claims the photos aren't the only factor in their decision-making. Obviously, depression is a little bit more complicated than, say, a guy faking brain damage that supposedly left him with the intellect of a 5-year-old (seriously, watch this one. It's ridiculous.)

But another question here is how the employer got the photos -- the woman's page is private. Though of course "private" and "protected" are words that fall along a continuum when you're talking about social media. How far should/can an employer go into its workers' social lives, either as a matter of course or to investigate something specific?

To paraphrase a line I heard at @ONA09, most people see their profiles, and the information within, as semi-private, and everyone else's as semi-public.

(h/t Cathy Heard)

I Knew The Bride When She Used To Wield A Knife

A few weeks back, Natalie Pompilio was looking for sites to include in a story she did about mocking websites, ala Albert Yee's SeptaFail, Lamebook.com and the instant-classic PeopleOfWalmart.com.

I only wish I'd known about Wedinator.com -- where "Trashing your special day is our prime directive" -- in time to pass along for the story. Enjoy.

A.M. Paper, 'Afternoon Delight'

"Afternoon Delight with John Thornton," in which a dude with seriously hairy back doffs his bathrobe and gets cozy with the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer. Perhaps too cozy. I'll never hear the words "Trudy Rubin" in quite the same way again.
What, no Santorum?

Hat tip to @ckrewson

YOUTUBE: "Afternoon Delight with John Thornton."

Down And Out On Sesame Street

Big Bird might need to start making his own birdseed milkshakes -- Sesame Workshop is cutting back. From the AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — The crisis on Wall Street is plaguing Sesame Street.

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of Sesame Street and other kids' programs, is cutting about one-fifth of its workforce because of the economic downturn.

The company said Wednesday that it's eliminating 67 of 355 staff positions.

Declaring it is "not immune to the unprecedented challenges of today's economic environment," the company pronounced a need "to operate with fewer resources in order to achieve our strategic priorities."

I'd love to tell myself that list of "strategic priorities" has "helping kids learn to read" as its first item, but alas, Sesame Workshop long ago morphed into a "non-profit" media machine. With the economy in the dumper, Elmo's World is now being brought to you by the letters B,R,O,K and E and the Number 0:

Sesame Workshop gets revenue from product licensing and the sale of its programs to PBS and syndication. The company is also funded by government agencies, foundations and corporations.

Total revenue was $145 million in 2008, with operating expenses totaling $141 million, according to the company's website.

MANSCAPE: The Goob, The Bad and The Fabulous

* It wasn't even a year ago we first met the boyishly handsome Republican leader of Louisiana, Gov. RickyBobby Jindal. For about five minutes last April, before anybody knew from Sarah Palin, Jindal was talked about as being a potential VP choice for John McCain. For about five minutes before he delivered the Most Goobtastic Republican Response Evar, Jindal was supposed to be the next Barack Obama. More like the next Erkel.

PREVIOUSLY: America, Say Hello To Gov. Ricky Bobby

* Back in our cheeky coed days, Tina and I had this thing called Dick of the Week, where we'd pick a guy in the news who was guilty of a particular Crime of Man-ity that week and post his picture and a few choice words about him on the door of our dorm room. (Editrix's Note: This was before the blogs, poopies.) Aaaanyway, this week's winner surely would have been Dave Schultheis, a Republican state senator from Colorado.

This credit to his gender cast the lone vote against a measure that would require HIV testing for pregnant women, arguing not that it would be too expensive, or an unfunded health care mandate. No, this exemplar of masculinity believes HIV is exclusively consequence of promiscuity, and the women -- and their babies -- who are infected deserve not only the death sentence the virus can carry but the shame that goes along with. (via Jezebel)

* One of the nicer consequences of the whole Facebook feeding frenzy is that occasionally, amid the blizzard of mind-numbing memes, you reconnect with folks you've known forever but haven't really "known" in a long time. Add to my list Kevin Gatto, a way old-school pal who, like me, fled the brown-and-peach Catholic school uniforms of our youth for a more, shall we say, aesthetically pleasing way of life here in South Jersey. 

Kevin is now artistic director and co-founder of Verde, the Collingswood salon that has been getting a lot of buzz for its focus on environmentally-friendly salon products, practices, even decor.
Check it:

True to form, our care for the environment goes beyond the salon itself. As a part of our guest loyalty program, Verde Salon will be planting trees in the names of our VIP guests as well as offering cash incentives to employees purchasing hybrid or flex-fuel vehicles. Our message will also travel with you as your retail purchases leave in re-usable, organic cotton totes.

Kevin just returned from working at New York Fashion Week, where he styled runway models as part of a team for celebrity stylist David Evangelista. He'll be seeing my mop of hair in his chair soon as well.

Those Purity Rings Are Total Dude Magnets

Once again proving the Palin Principle, i.e. that pretending teenagers won't actually have sex is the quickest path to the grandparent 'hood, here's Sandy Bauers in today's Inquirer:

Research has shown that teens who take virginity pledges are just as sexually active as those who do not.

Now a new study has found that pledgers were less likely to protect themselves from disease or pregnancy by using condoms or other birth control methods. Moreover, five years after taking the pledge, 82 percent of pledgers denied ever having done so.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics, compared 289 adolescents who reported on a 1996 survey that they had taken a pledge to remain virgins, usually until marriage, with 645 who had not taken a pledge. All were part of a national representative sample of middle and high school students.

My favorite part is how most of the kids denied having ever taken the purity pledges in the first place. Similarly, I will deny having ever worn those flourescent sweatshirts with like, a giant question mark on them back in the '80s. Purity pledges are the new D.A.R.E.

RELATED: Maybe the NYT should check with these kids in the '09?

MEOW MIX: A Formula For Getting A Life

* File this one under Effed Up And Not In The Good Way: On the local news here in Tampa/St. Pete this week is a story about a local mom who nearly killed her five-month-old by watering down his powdered baby formula. The woman said she gets her Good Start through the WIC program but it doesn't last long enough to feed little La'Danian for the whole month, so she started cutting it with more water than the can's recipe calls for. Long story short, her baby nearly died from water intoxication. 

However, the supply of formula always ran out before the end of the month. Moss says managers with the Women, Infants and Children program, which provided her with infant formula, told her she was getting the maximum amount. So Moss began to dilute La Damian's formula with water.

Says Moss, "I was doing under 2 scoops more than I was supposed to be doing." [10connects.com]

Since the baby lived, thank God, let me be the first to say: Something stinks here. It's a well-documented story already that expensive baby formula, aka Liquid Gold, is attractive not only to thieves but to cash-strapped parents who could sell a can of powdered formula easily for, say, gas money. And sure enough, the next day's story is about how people all over Hillsborough County are now donating cans of formula to this family. Sayin'.

* Personal congrats to Camille, Pete and the rest of Beretta76, just named by PhillyBurbs as one of the city's Top Ten Bands of the website's lifetime, along with Dr. Dog, Jill Scott and the Hooters. Camille tells me they're working on a new record even as we speak, so stay tuned.

* Is Ed Rendell a sexist for suggesting that Janet Napolitano is a perfect pick for Homeland Security Secretary because she has "no life," meaning no kids, no family? Campbell Brown, who has appointed herself the CNN sexism watchdog, is irate that anyone would suggest that being free of family responsibility makes it easier to do your job (which is true) and actually wonders whether women with families are discounted from positions of responsibility because of their "life"?
Well, yeah, it does. It's a well-documented phenomenon, and Brown makes herself sound naive in the way she approaches it. One recent study found childless female lawyers billed more than their colleagues who were parents. Among federal employees, this report detailed "findings consistent with past literature include the fact that among women who have faced gender-based barriers, those who chose to have children during their careers have been especially disadvantaged."
So what's her problem? Brown says she knows what Rendell meant but that his words "perpetuate stereotypes," which just sounds wrong. Acknowledging a stereotype exists in real life is not the same as perpetuating it.

PHILEBRITY: Time To Take Your Skirt Off

Twilight And Munchies

Ohhhhhhhhh snap!
Courtesy the fine photojournalists at TMZ and with a hat tip to Phawker, here's Twilight star Kristen Stewart sparking up what looks to be a fat bowl. Wholesome family entertainment FTW!

You know, I ain't mad at dear Bella -- it would take a whole lot of some kind of psychoactive to get me through that Emo Vampire dreck.

STEPHANIEMEYER.COM: Everything you wanted to know about Twilight but were rightly afraid it was too dorky to ask.

SICK F&CKS: Drugmaker Paid For Happy Talk On Heavy Psych Drugs For Kids

Back in January, an episode of PBS' "Frontline" series called The Medicated Child focused on the increasing diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children, and a corresponding explosion in the use of serious antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal and Zyprexa to treat them.

Despite little medical research suggesting that these children, many of whom also had more familiar childhood diagnoses like ADHD and autism spectrum disorders, would benefit from the drugs and without FDA approval, doctors began dishing out prescriptions at an alarming rate to kids as young as age 4. While there's little evidence yet that the meds work in the long-term, serious negative side effects, from uncontrollable muscle tics to incessant eating are not uncommon in the present.

Little surprise, then, when court documents revealed this week that Johnson & Johnson had paid a noted Harvard child psychiatrist, to produce positive research data on Risperdal's use in children.    The drug  maker "spent at least $700,000 to fund the Johnson & Johnson Center for Pediatric Psychopathology at Massachussetts General Hospital," Miriam Hill reported in Tuesday's Inquirer. The center, in turn, generated research about Risperdal and children specifically meant to promote diagnoses of bipolar in children and increase sales of the drug. Court documents contain company records and emails that seem to spell it all out.

The mental-health site PsychCentral asks good questions:

What remains absolutely astounding (and a little bit scary) is the unprecedented and massive scope of this deception, including not only a renowned Harvard psychiatrist and researcher, but a huge, respected company (J&J), a world-famous university (Harvard), and an amazing, well-respected teaching hospital, Massachusetts General.

Were all of these prestigious organizations simply duped by Biederman? Or was Biederman duped into shilling for a pharmaceutical company’s product, thinking none of this would ever become public knowledge?

What I wonder is what happens to these kids, the ones whose families were struggling before and are only suffering more now? And what happens to the doctors who knowingly prescribed these drugs for unapproved uses, in kids who were too young for an "official" bipolar diagnoses but have been swallowing adult meds used to treat it? Does J&J think those same kids who sprinkle on their baby powder after a bath are appropriate for use as pharmaceutical guinea pigs?

Last week everybody in the mom-osphere was all wigged out over a corny Motrin commercial, but it seems to me this is the kind of thing mommy bloggers ought to be getting behind. It's a genuine outrage and Johnson & Johnson should hear about it.

FRONTLINE: THE MEDICATED CHILD

BOSTON.COM: Papers reveal push on drug firm funds