Salon wrote to McDonough to ask about Wynette's life -- everything from her bizarre kidnapping to her predilection for lime-green pantsuits -- feminism in country music, and why George Jones ended up the hero of this story.

You say that in the country pantheon, Tammy Wynette "gets taken for granted." Why do you think that is?

Shall we generalize, just for fun? I think Patsy, Loretta, Dolly -- all of whom are, of course, quite obviously great -- are easier to digest than Tammy. She's a throw-yourself-off-the-cliff romantic. There's a severity to Tammy and her point of view that gets your lumpy, cat-hair-covered NPR types to grinding their teeth. Now, your retro characters -- who tend to be the most rigid of all -- are put off by the baroque '70s production and the gloominess of it all. No standup bass, no Owen Bradley, no rockabilly '50s garb. Tammy falls into her own slot and you have to take her on her own terms.

The other thing is, you don't hear music like Tammy's anymore. Human feeling's been AutoTuned out of everything, nobody plays live, the tracks are overdubbed to death. I'm afraid Tammy might not have a place in our chilly times.

Wynette has a reputation -- based mostly on "Stand by Your Man" -- for being an anti-feminist mouthpiece, but she obviously paved the way for a lot of women in country. Do you think it's fair to call her anti-feminist?

I think that's horribly reductive. Tammy wore lime-green pantsuits! Proudly! Hmmm, feminist or anti-feminist? She's a little too complex for such simplistic labels. When I hear such talk I immediately tune out. I see chickens dancing on hot plates, dwarves shooting muskets in the air. I notice that people who think in such terms often have terrible taste in music. Some folks just can't take country straight, no chaser, there has to be those greasy rock additives.

You mention that "if there's a hero in this book, it is George Jones," but his relationship with Wynette was pretty fraught. Could you explain that a little more?

First of all, Jones is alive. That alone deserves an entry from Ripley's. And George remains true to the music. Jones figured out a way to survive without sacrificing who he was. Not an easy trick. When Tammy died, it was Jones -- a man who hates hospitals, funerals or anything of the sort -- who accompanied her daughters to the funeral home. No doubt Tammy is smiling down from somewhere above when it comes to Jones.

What's the most bizarre incident you looked into while writing this book?

I'd love to get to the bottom of her bizarre "kidnapping." No ransom, no suspects, no arrests, a story full of unreliable narrators. After she "escaped," Tammy stumbled onto the property of a George and Tammy fan -- one Junette Young. I love the fact that Junette decided "it wasn't the time or place" to inform Tammy she was a fan as she cut off the stocking knotted around Wynette's neck.

What one thing would you ask Tammy if she were alive?

"Can we go get a hot dog, Tammy? I'll buy."

Interesting. And if you've been going around saying that increased availability of porn causes an increase in sex crimes (or at least, that it did through the 1990s; Diamond doesn't cite more recent findings on this subject), maybe you should stop. But speaking of the difference between correlation and causation, isn't it kind of a big leap from that to "More porn equals less rape"?

I mean, I haven't read all of the studies and reports Diamond mentions with regard to this particular matter -- mostly the work of "Berl Kutchinsky, who studied Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s," plus FBI Department of Justice statistics from 1975-1995 -- but I'm guessing it would be awfully hard to control for every other thing that changed in a society over a decade or two. Off the top of my head, for instance, might it not be that increased feminism had something to do with it? Increased rape awareness? Or, I don't know, increased numbers of hourlong crime dramas on TV? Increased use of the word "awesome"? Increased appreciation for Prince's musical genius? A lot was happening back then.

But wait, Diamond also says the rates of pornography use among convicts supports this theory.

Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists. What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing. Richard Green too has reported that both rapists and child molesters use less pornography than a control group of "normal" males.

Also interesting, especially in light of my distaste for Puritanical bullshit. But while the greater use of porn among nonrapists might theoretically support the argument that more porn equals less rape, doesn't the flipside undermine it? If rapists aren't big porn users anyway, why would we assume that making more X-rated media available would reduce the number of sex crimes? To get from point A to point B, one would have to assume that rapists rape because they don't avail themselves of enough smut -- and that the nonrapists stick to other crimes because they do. And to get there, one would have to assume that rape is about sexual gratification, not control and violence; that men convicted of something other than rape have never committed a sex crime; and that having been raised in a repressive religious household is mostly relevant here because of how it affects one's adult porn consumption -- as opposed to, say, one's attitudes toward women. That's a lot of assuming.

Speaking of attitudes toward women, Diamond writes that "Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn't see those movies." Interesting! Except, in the previous paragraph, he just said "most men have at some time used pornography." So maybe there's something different about men who don't? Like, I don't know, a strict religious upbringing that taught them desire is dangerous and women are evil temptresses? So it's possible those attitudes didn't come directly from the lack of porn?

Ah, but Diamond also assures us that "No researcher or critic has found ... that exposure to pornography -- by any definition -- has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women." Good news! But really not the point, where anti-porn feminists are concerned. No one's saying that watching skin flicks will make someone consciously think, "Gee, I really dislike women now. I think they should be beaten and raped. And if a researcher asks me, I'll say so proudly." But like any media, porn can have all sorts of more subtle but profound effects on our ideas about how certain groups of people should behave, what they should look like, what makes them worthy of respect or personal freedom, how much power they have and deserve. And although not all porn is necessarily damaging to women in those respects, a whole lot of it really doesn't help. You don't have to be anti-porn or pro-censorship to acknowledge that and give some thought to what it might mean.

So, let me reiterate: I do not want to take your porn away. But not every discussion of hardcore material has to be about that. Diamond wraps his article up with a stirring rant against making porn illegal that I basically agree with -- I just think it has very little to do with the rest of his argument. He hasn't come anywhere near convincing me that porn is good for society because it reduces the number of sex crimes or improves attitudes toward women -- but he didn't need to, if his ultimate point was only that it shouldn't be outlawed. I was already there, dude. It's just, I would be much more into considering the positive effects of porn on society if you showed me some data that indicates actual positive effects of porn on society. As it is, my position remains unchanged. Whatever. 

Here's the thing: I think we should acknowledge that abortion can change you, that it isn't necessarily an "eh, whatevs" event. For some women, it may be akin to getting a tooth pulled; for others, though, it results in a profound and haunting loss. None of this goes against the dominant pro-choice message, which is that women should be allowed to make their own reproductive choices based on what they feel is right for them. Women have different experiences of abortion and they should be allowed to make different decisions, too.

That isn't to say I'm super pumped about the ads, though. They present one side of the story, which is that abortion changes you, period. Not that abortion can change a woman, but that it always does, and that is quite simply a lie. It isn't the sort of message born of concern for women, but rather a concern for converting women. Also, you know what is guaranteed to change you and your life in a profound way? Motherhood. But I don't recall seeing any subways ads featuring a woman knee-deep in dirty diapers with the text, "I thought life would be the way it was before."

Yet a study released this week from the Archives of Internal Medicine that followed over 19,000 American "normal weight" women over age 39 and tracked their drinking habits for 13 years found that women who were "light to moderate" drinkers gained about 30 percent less weight over time than the teetotalers. Now if there could just be a study linking bacon consumption to smooth skin, this would be my best day ever.

How'd we get so lucky? First, as the New York Times noted today, alcohol gives the female metabolism a minor boost (sorry, guys, it doesn't do the same for men). Furthermore, there's some evidence that the resveratrol found in grapes and red wine might inhibit obesity.

Yet before you dump your weight-loss shakes down the drain and break out the Jagermeister tap, there is one glaring caveat -- that inhibited weight gain seems to be linked less to what women drink as how they drink. Women, much more than men, are likelier to use alcohol as a substitute for food rather than an accompaniment. Think of all the whoooo-hoooo girls you've ever seen at the bar, forgoing dinner for one more sex on the beach. It'd be interesting to see further research on women and their attitudes toward weight, drinking and aging. One hopes maybe some of those moderate drinking, obesity-deflecting women are also just normal, balanced human beings who don't view their health or their bodies in terms of all or nothing. As for the ones who think a glass of sangria makes a meal? They may be thinner than their plusher counterparts at the dinner table, but there's no study in the world that would call them wiser.

No, but seriously, the test is based on actual scientific findings regarding differences between the sexes. (So is Match.com's personality test.) They aren't making this stuff up in an attempt to, say, make me feel bad about my inability to visualize complex rotating 3D images. But, it's also true that the premise of finding out the sex of your brain is a bit misleading. The implication is that the test reveals the most innate, defining characteristic of your mind, the thing that makes you you. And as we've argued countless times before, it just isn't that simple or straightforward. But, hey, if you're looking for a Cosmo-style personality quiz injected with a bit of science, look no further.