Douchebag Decree

Some weeks it's tough to choose who gets the Douchebag Decree. I'll admit that I've written posts that were a bit of a stretch in the past, or tried to cram two stories into one because I couldn't decide who was the bigger douche. This week, however, the guesswork's been done for me. You know him, you probably don't love him, you may be disgusted and/or threatened by his very presence: Ladies and Gents, it's Daniel Tosh!!!

The Boston Police Department has been in the news lately, and not for entertaining buddy cop shenanigans. Well, unless you count publishing a racist, homophobic, sexist, bigoted, rage-inducing union newsletter and then deleting the archives instead of taking responsibility for them to be entertaining (it isn't).

It's never a surprise when new shows on television lack diversity. Someone writes about how awfully white a show is, it stirs up some commotion on the Internet but people continue watching, (*cough* Girls *cough*) and that's about the extent of it. And it's not so different for Amy Sherman-Palladino's new ABC Family show, Bunheads (except maybe it's less addictive than Girls). I mentioned a few weeks ago in an On Our Radar post that Grey's Anatomy creator, Shonda Rhimes criticized the show (via Twitter) for its lack of racial and ethnic diversity. Totally relevant and very much called for. This has been blowing up all over the interwebs, and of course, Amy Sherman-Palladino responded, but it surely wasn't what anyone wanted to hear.

Let’s make this Decree short and sweet. Adam Carolla, a washed-up douche with some seriously skewed views of gender and sexuality, decided to squawk about unfunny women in a New York Post interview this weekend. Yes, that tired argument. Again. Seriously though, who cares what Adam Carolla thinks? He didn’t even make me chuckle during his brief time as a Celebrity Apprentice, and that’s rookie stuff.

I get a lot of mail from my credit union, and most of the time it's pretty uninteresting. Account balances, promotional materials, and brochures about "community" usually end up in my recycling bin, but except for the tree damage they're basically harmless. Not so for the members of D.C.'s U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union, which recently sent out a sexist pop-up mailer simultaneously mocking and sensationalizing women and their breasts.

Enter Mario Batali, the Crocs-wearing beponytailed celebrity chef best known for his shows on the Food Network and that time he drove around Spain with Gwyneth Paltrow. Recently, Batali left the show Iron Chef, and earlier this week at the Atlantic Food Summit he explained why. Said Batali:

When they had judges like you [Corby Kummer] and Jeff Steingarten and Dana Cowin and Ed Levine, people whose opinion I felt merited the ability to criticize my food, that’s one thing. But when all of a sudden you get these skinny little actresses from a show called The OC and they’re saying they don’t like raw fish, I’m like, ‘Fuck you, why are you talking about my food? Who let you in this room?’ ‘Oh, I really don’t like that.’ Well who the fuck are you?

We get it. Selling magazines is tough. As a feminist nonprofit swimming in publishing world, we know how hard it is to keep your head above water. (Completely unrelated: Do you have your Bitch magazine digital subscription yet?) But some magazines feel the need to push their publication with provocative cover photos and headlines in order to compete with the Huffington Post. Here are some recent offenders...

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's sexism is old news at this point, but hey, it's election season and he has to stay in the news, right? Romney doubled down on the misogyny last Thursday by hiring Richard Grenell as his national security and foreign policy adviser. Grenell, formerly of the Bush administration, kicked off his first week on the job by deleting a bunch of sexist shit from his Twitter account.


Sexist tweeters, raise your hands!

It comes as no surprise that when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed over 50 bills last Thursday, several of those bills limited women's reproductive rights. However, Walker took his douchery to a new level by repealing the state's Equal Pay Enforcement Act. Governor Scott Walker you have earned a Douchebag Decree for taking your sexism a step beyond reproductive health issues, limiting women's rights even farther by denying them legal protection from gender-based work discrimination.

Not content to just Photoshop its models to look thinner and younger, megaretailer Forever 21 is now airbrushing out their kneecaps. Kneecaps! Sooo gross right?