By now, most of you writer types have heard about the disgrace of Kaavya Viswanathan, who has been accused of plagiarizing large sections of her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, And Got A Life from 2 young-adult authors, and how the publisher Little Brown has pulled it from the shelves. (If you’re not familiar with the case, I suggest you pop over to Snarkaholic and read the last few entries. Tish does a good rundown.) Since the book was sold through a packager, there’s some question about where the legal responsibility lies.

If I didn’t years ago have a friend who wrote packaged YA books, I wouldn’t know what a packager did. Steve Leigh has a great post about what packagers are and how they work that I suggest you take the time to read. He gives lots of details about the process. Check it out.

Imagine holding a beauty pageant with unsuspecting contestants. That’s what’s been happening in Seattle.

A website calling itself May Madness has set up a bracket system for deciding the “hottest” women on the Seattle Pacific University campus, with open comment threads discussing the looks of the women in question. While I find that sexist in and of itself, it gets worse. Many of the women didn’t know they were on it. The website owner, Matthew Gronlund, collected photos and profiles from My Space and Face Book to run the competition.

According to the Seattle PI he says: “This wasn’t done to be hurtful in any way,” he said. “I’m really taken aback by how much controversy this has generated. I wanted to do this in a way that was respectful to women. I’m sorry for any pain this has caused anybody.”

How, in any interpretation, is this respectful of women? Setting them up, without the knowledge of many of them, to be judged on their looks? I’d love to know what, if any, advertising revenue the site generated.

He claims to have run a similar competition with the University of Washington, but it generated no controversy. The PI says the site has now been taken down, but the damage has been done.

“I personally don’t feel comfortable with being judged on the way that I look,” she said. “It’s hurtful,” says SPU senior Kerry Riley, who found out from a friend that she’d be included on the site.

The university has responded swiftly and firmly.

In a memo to students, the faculty and staff members, President Philip Eaton described the comments on the Web site as unacceptable. He also said that the campus would schedule a meeting for those who were affected by it.

“I call on us to gather around our women who have felt truly wounded in this episode and those who walk wounded because of the spurious demands of the culture on what it means to be a woman,” he wrote.

Senior Kristina DeMain organized today’s rally to discuss the treatment of women on campus — an issue that goes beyond this incident, she said.

“We want to get at the heart of the issue that women are not equally valued and not equally treated,” she said.

Let’s hope it’s not just women who show up.

How well have you been paying attention to the news this week? Take the Seattle PI’s Weekly News Quiz to see what you’ve learned in the past 7 days.

I got 8 of 10.

I grew up on the Curious George books, heading straight for that section in the children’s area of the library upon walking through the door. In turn, I read them all to my kids, enjoying again the antics of that mischievous little monkey. I never thought about how The Man In The Yellow Hat acquired George; he just had him.

Since Curious George the movie came out, however, there’s been some new controversy. From a review posted on the Archeaology Magazine website:

The main story line of this film involves The Man in the Yellow Hat, here known as Ted, who must save the New York museum where he works from becoming a parking lot. The museum’s tired displays no longer interest contemporary children, and poor attendance is causing an economic crisis.

So Ted sets out on a ship to Africa with the intention of finding the “Lost Shrine of Zagawa” and bringing back its 40-foot ape-idol for a new museum display. After several misadventures, he succeeds. The museum’s crisis is solved as families flock to its doors to see this new “wonder of the world.” Ted finds fame and gets the girl, as well as the monkey who follows him home.

My concern with this story line, in which The Man in the Yellow Hat is an archaeologist and museum curator (as opposed to the gun-toting, pipe-smoking animal poacher of the original book series by Margret and H.A. Rey), is the insidious underlying assumption that one simply can go to Africa and transport significant cultural artifacts to a museum in New York. Granted, this is fiction, but even so, it provides our children with a clear lesson in Western cultural hegemony, a lesson that contemporary American children definitely do not need.

Interesting twist, no? The implications of how The Man in the Yellow Hat acquired George went right over my head as a child, and again as a parent, but in retrospect, the animal poaching aspect bothers me greatly. But as this review points out, the current version is even more offensive. Looting of archaeological sites is a serious problem all around the world, as is the less obvious but equally unacceptable practice of Western museums displaying–and making money from–objects removed from their countries of origin under less than honorable means. It’s a great tragedy that some of the finest treasures of Egypt reside in London and New York rather than in Cairo. Even in this modern climate, western museums are fighting repatriation efforts. It’s a much bigger issue than many people realize.

While it seems petty to take on a children’s movie, particularly a story as beloved as Curious George, the reviewer makes a valid point. I’ll never look at it the same way again.

Since I wrote about the problems I have with the words suck and f*ck (* is to avoid search engine problems, not because I won’t say the word) and you were all too polite to disagree with me I wanted to give some exposure to some different viewpoints. Language is important, and I think we owe it to ourselves to look at it from all sides.

Persephone’s Box has a piece up in defense of profanity and Super Babymama has one on the problem she has with certain words and the ones that don’t bother her. I respect both their opinions, so I wanted to give you a chance to read them, if you haven’t already. They’ve given me a lot to think about.

This is the day for referrals. Last week in the Carnival of Feminists I spotlighted Unwilling Self-Negation’s piece The Hoor’s Last Sigh about the images of women in the Islamic afterlife and how it affects the treatment of women in this one. Now she’s back with a post entitled Dude, Muslim Lesbians!

The piece is not as simple as the title implies. It’s a beautifully written glimpse into Koh e Qaf, a paradise promised to abused women after death.

There are holes in the universe that lead to other places besides the planes of the jinn. Would you be surprised to learn that just as in life the places you may go to are determined by your gender? Koh e Qaf is one of those places. Far up in the heavens. Far above the world of man. Far above the astral plane of the jinn. Hidden from the view of angels.

Koh e Qaf. A place only for women.

He’san incredibly gifted writer, weaving together mysticism, feminism and religion with breathtaking beauty. Go. Read. Empathize. Dream.

This morning I’d like to point you to a series of essays written by my good friend A’isha Azar. (Disclaimer: I did her website.) The Women In Between focuses on a group of Arab-American women from the time they are newly arrived in this country until they are raising teenagers born in the US. They are women of amazing strength, and I think you’ll enjoy these stories of their journey between cultures.

Back in February I wrote about MIT making their lectures available on line. Now Berkeley has joined the party. If you have I-Tunes installed on your computer, you can access audio files of lectures and special events on the campus. Offerings include:

• Computer Science - 151 tracks
• Biological Sciences - 57 tracks
• Engineering - 137 tracks
• Physical Sciences - 102 tracks
• Arts and Humanities - 40 tracks
• Chemistry - 36 tracks
• Natural Resources - 45 tracks
• Social Sciences - 102 tracks

That’s just the classes. Events recorded include arts, global affairs, journalism & media, science & technology and politics & public policy. This is lifetime learning at its finest. I hope you’ll join me in taking advantage of it.

1898: Spain declares war on the United States after rejecting America’s ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba. 3,549 Americans died.

1915: The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins the brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War I. 1,500,000 Armenians died.

Which event do you remember?

Read more about the first genocide of the 20th century at The History Place.

I have a great relationship with my shrink’s assistant. Donna is the one I call to make appointments and she’s also the one who calls randomly to check on me and just talk when she knows I’m in a bad patch. She’s single-handedly talked me down out of a panic attack when the doctor was tied up in a long session, and on every other occasion has made sure I talked to him on 10 minutes notice. I feel like she knows me and cares about me. That’s rare in any profession, specially one in which someone is being paid to be nice to me.

So last month when I called to make my appointment, I mentioned that I’d made an out of town trip all by myself to attend a writers conference and had managed mostly ok. When she asked what I wrote, I said historical romance. She squealed, “I love historical romance! It’s all I read!” Then (gulp) she asked if she could read my latest, and I agreed without thinking about it.

Today she called to remind me of my appointment tomorrow and prompted me that I’d agreed to give my novel to the shrink for him to deliver to her at the other office.

Now, bear in mind that I wrote this novel unmedicated and played out all my insecurities in it. Only one trusted friend has read the entire thing. (Ok, so several agents have, but since they rejected it, they don’t count. That’s just business.) Now I’ve got to hand it over to someone very close to my shrink. Argh.

Will she like it? Will she hate it? Worst of all, will she see too much of me in it and tell my shrink? It’s easier to walk naked in front of strangers than in front of people who’ve seen me at my worst.

I promised, so I’ll do it. But it’s not going to be easy.