Maria Diaz lady business. pop culture. whatever.

Stuff I've Been Looking At, Volume 1

News Stories I have been paying attention to:

1. Known as Father Oprah in Miami, Father Cutie leaves the Catholic Church and goes to Episcopalian church. Latin American media are obsessed with this story, especially now that Cutie has turned his back on the Catholic church. What happened was he got caught canoodling with his girlfriend on the beach, the Church told him to go take a spiritual retreat until he got that crazy lust out of his brain and then he came back and was all "No thanks" and is now joining a different church and is engaged to his lady friend.

I've seen some talk on the spanish news shows that  he was the one who leaked the photos (I guess the girlfriend met with the paparazzi who took them?) and orchestrated this entire event in order to get the hell out of the Catholic church. The priest is rather media savvy, so he may have cooked this up with a crazy publicist.  Many Catholics feel betrayed and a higher up in the church says that only God can forgive him. I don't understand the complete unwillingness of the Catholic church to change the celibacy clause. Clearly, it doesn't work. And what's up with all the outrage over the priest having consensual sex with an adult woman vs all the covering up of the priests molesting young boys?

2. Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and the avalanche of racist & sexist garbage being spewed in the media by the usual suspects. Jezebel has it covered, so I won't even bother to comment except how sad it is that everyone is acting exactly as expected.

3. Elizabeth Wurtzel's piece in Elle and the commentary on Broadsheet. The piece itself is kind of long and whiny but it makes me sad that a woman of such insane privelege and obvious smarts and opportunity is obsessing over her looks and over the attention of gross dudes. We all do it, we're all taught as women that our social value is in how fuckable we are, but perhaps I was naive and optimistic to think that this kind of obsessing diminishes as you get older and stop caring. Apparently, not so much. I feel kind of lucky that I'm extremely average looking and won't have to be dealing with "losing" my looks when I get older because you know, there were never any to begin with.

4. I keep trying to get excited about new television shows but when you write about television for a living, it sucks all of the fun out of it. I'm extremely excited to cover Top Chef Masters however, only because the Real Housewives while fun, are draining. The reunion of the NYC housewives (both epic parts) made me want to get a lobotomy. I think everyone's fame has gotten to their heads (especially my previous favorite, Jill Zarin) and I am completely over the NYC housewives. My previous second favorite, Bethenny, is also on thin ice with me, especially with her drunkorexia diet book.

Finally, we have books! Stuff I'm hoping to read this summer:

1. Camgirls

2. Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg  about the history of blogging

3. Finally finish the anthology of graphic novels I got for my birthday last year

What have you been looking at?