Now everyone’s talking about it, despite the fact that 45-year-old Obama has said she doesn’t plan to have any more children. WowOwow actually posted a photo of Obama with an arrow drawn to her nonexistent belly, along with the declaration: “It’s no surprise to us … since we spotted what looked like a bit of a baby bump way back on Election Night.” Yeah, so did Rush Limbaugh. This summer, he speculated that Obama would have to announce her pregnancy during her speech at the Democratic National Convention, so inspiring conservative bloggers to feverishly publish analysis of photographic “evidence.”

I could sassily remark that apparently having a somewhat curvaceous figure means you’re pregnant — but even female starlets with boyish figures are targeted for “bump watch.” The American public simply seems to crave “pregnancy porn” — tabloid photos of celebrities humanized by stretch marks  and weight gain — and so we search for it everywhere. There’s also a shared fascination with the Obamas’ relationship, which offers a rare public example of a marriage that seems healthy and passionate. (After watching them lovingly gaze at one another while dancing at the inaugural balls, my mom told me: “They make marriage look hot.”)  And who could resist the romantic narrative of a baby conceived during  the historic presidential campaign and born in the White House; a royal heir to “Bamalot.”

Those are the more generous interpretations of “Obama Bump Watch.” Limbaugh’s past interest in Obama’s curves seems derogatory, maybe even  racist (then again, I interpret many things he says that way). Ultimately, though, it’s hard not to see this renewed pregnancy gossip as part of the “momification of Michelle,” a desire to cast her as the star of our new domestic soap opera. Everyone’s watching, whether she likes it or not.

“The recession is everyone’s favorite causal explanation for things happening right now,” said Rachel Jones of the Guttmacher Institute. “Other than people conjecturing, there is no evidence that the recession has had a direct impact on teen sexual behaviors.” What we do know, however, is that contraceptive use increased among teens between 2007 and 2009. “We don’t know the reason for that increase,” she explains, and, in fact, it could be the recession — but, again, the truth is we just don’t know. Her no-nonsense take: “It seems if we want to look for reasons for patterns in teen birth rates, [birth control use] is the one indicator that offers us practical insights.”

Bill Albert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy shared my initial skepticism about the economic explanation: “I just simply do not know many 16-year-olds who are thinking about bank statements when they hop in the sack.” But he pointed out that while roughly eight out of 10 teen pregnancies are unplanned, “there is a mushy middle ground [of teens who] say, ‘Well, yeah, I wouldn’t want to get pregnant, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened.’” Call it the “mush” factor: Perhaps those ambivalent teens were swayed by firsthand experience of the economic meltdown: “Their parents might be struggling to make house payments,” he said. “They might know neighbors who have lost jobs and can’t find jobs.”

As for the question of whether a decrease in teen births might be linked to an increase in teen abortions, there is a bummer of a data lag: Guttmacher isn’t releasing 2008 stats on pregnancy terminations until early next year. However, says Albert, “if the past is prologue, the answer is probably no. What we have seen over the past two decades is that teen birth rates have gone down because the underlying pregnancy rate has gone down. Put another way, all three — pregnancy, abortion, birth — all tended to be going down at the same time.” Jones agrees: “Teen births and abortions seem to follow the same trajectory,” she said. “We haven’t seen any indicators that abortions have gone a different direction than births.”

You might recall that there was a troubling and unexplained rise in the teen birth rate in 2006 and 2007. Albert says the 2009 finding — which followed a 2008 decrease — suggests the uptick was “an abnormal blip” and that we’re now “resuming a nearly two decade trend toward fewer teen pregnancies and fewer births.” Inexplicably, some abstinence advocates think this report has “exonerated their approach,” reports the Washington Post. Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association told the paper, “This latest evidence shows that teen behaviors increasingly mirror the skills they are taught in a successful abstinence education program.” Except that … it doesn’t. Says Guttmacher’s Rachel Jones, “The levels of teen sexual activity haven’t changed, which would suggest that there isn’t more abstinence out there — but there was a change in contraceptive use.”

I endorse, sympathize with, and empathize with, the rape consciousness goals of #mooreandme, and have already apologized accordingly. But I cannot defend and will not accept their tactics which mirror so many of the attitudes and threats they fight. I do not know of what Julian Assange is guilty, if anything, and neither does anybody else. But given the extraordinary efforts by Sweden to extradite him, to say he is benefiting from some form of rape apologism is not fact-based. It is also unfair to condemn as anti-feminist those who merely address the juxtaposition of this prosecution to the fact that Assange threatens the secret and nefarious activities of dozens of governments.

But, of course, his antagonists are not condemning him for “merely address[ing] the juxtaposition” (a point Kate Harding made clear in her Salon piece about “the rush to smear Assange’s accuser”). They allege that he spread misinformation about the accusations against Assange. As Doyle wrote, “People trust journalists: If a journalist says something, like ‘the term “rape” in Sweden includes consensual sex without a condom’ (Olbermann’s own, demonstrably false, as-yet-unredacted words), most people will believe that what he has said is true, and act as if it is true, without doing further research.” The protest has consisted of frequent calls for Olbermann to issue a simple correction, to set the record straight for his many followers.

Instead of doing that, though, Olbermann continues: “And I will not engage those who suggest that those who do not prioritize one issue to the exclusion of all others should succumb to forced financial contributions, or should ‘kill themselves.’” He followed up by retweeting one of the messages in question, which read in part, “Seriously, kill yourself.” Then he retweeted a call for him to donate $20,000 to the anti-rape organization RAINN as atonement. His antagonists have been quick to point out that he cherry-picked the “kill yourself” tweet, which is an exception in the thread, and that the call for “financial contributions” is simply in the interest of rape victims. One user wrote, “we WILL NOT be satisfied UNTIL you retract the false information you publicized re: Assange allegations.” Olbermann responded, “you’ll have to accept a block instead.”

It seems Olbermann’s Twitter vacation didn’t help him to raise the level of discourse or realize that, as Doyle put it, his “style of old-media authority doesn’t hold up” online.

Hooters is described in official business filings as a provider of “vicarious sexual entertainment.” NOW points out that the chain has “used this designation as a way to avoid compliance with regulations against sexual discrimination in the workplace.” The official employment manual warns that a waitress is, as NOW paraphrases, “employed as a sexual entertainer and as part of her employment can expect to be subjected to various sexual jokes by customers and such potential contacts as buttocks slaps.” At the same time, however, Hooters is marketed as a family-friendly restaurant. It offers a kid’s menu, high chairs, booster seats and all sorts of merchandise for little tykes — like a “Life begins at Hooters” T-shirt, an “I’m a boob man” onesie and a “Your crib or mine?” bib.

We could argue over whether Hooters has a healthy impact on a kid’s developing view of women and sex, but I tend to think entertainment and dining decisions should be left up to individual parents. More important, that isn’t the issue at hand. In this case, NOW (which hasn’t always been a model of moderate thinking) has taken the exceedingly reasonable position that Hooters shouldn’t be allowed to have the best of both worlds: Either it functions exclusively as an adult venue, and continues to protect itself (somewhat) from sexual discrimination claims, or it’s held to the same standards as any ol’ family restaurant and gets to keep on serving the kiddies tater tots and creepy onesies.

I picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.

Since they’re doing illegal work, sex workers have to be secretive and discreet. They often work in isolated and industrial areas. They get in cars with strangers. There are rarely detailed records of transactions. Many are drug addicts and estranged from their families, so they are less likely to be reported missing. Anyone who knows anything about a girl’s whereabouts is likely involved in the trade themselves, so they aren’t super eager to speak with police. What’s more, as we saw with the Robert Pickton case in Vancouver, police sometimes discount tips from working girls (all the more reason to not risk talking to them in the first place).

It just so happens that Friday is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, which was created in memory of the victims of Gary Ridgeway, a.k.a the Green River Killer. Similar to the Pickton case, local sex workers knew Ridgeway’s identity, but, as prostitute-turned-performance artist Annie Sprinkle puts it, they “were afraid to come forward for fear of getting arrested, or the police didn’t believe those that did come forward, or the police didn’t seem to care.”