Last night Ashton Kutcher literally emerged through a shower of Charlie Sheen's (fake) ashes on the sitcom Two and a Half Men. Since it was announced that Kutcher would replace Sheen in the aftermath of Charlie's ongoing meltdown in March and his ouster from the extremely popular show, culture critics have wondered how Men would handle the cast-change. The answer is: not well. Kutcher is a big, handsome block of wood in the middle of performers with much more verve (Holland Taylor and Melanie Lynskey are especially wonderful). Say what you will about Charlie Sheen, but he is not lacking in charisma, and his absence was definitely felt. Kutcher deserves some slack—after all, it was his first show—but Sheen's particular talent for playing a lightly fictionalized version of himself left a hole in the show.

Shutdowns have a way of looming, don't they?

Kevin Drum is one of many people latching on to a decision Ron Suskind made with a dishy Confidence Men quote from Anita Dunn. Sam Stein talked to Suskind and Dunn to explain the controversy. Dunn told Suskind this:

The reign of "don't ask don't tell" has finally ended on Sept. 20, 2011.

Ron Suskind's buzzy new book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, contends that women in the early days of Obama's White House felt left out of important conversations and meetings. According to the Washington Post, the boys' club of former chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, former chairman of the National Economic Council Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner marginalized female staffers like former White House communications director Anita Dunn and former head of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer. Suskind quotes Dunn saying: "This place would be in court for a hostile workplace. ... Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women." Ouch.

Reading this story about the University of Northern Iowa's attempts to exploit misogynist stereotypes about women being "nutty and slutty" caused me to wonder sadly if we, as a nation, are still living in 1951 instead of 2011. The woman is suing the school, claiming it mishandled the situation when she successfully pressed charges against two football players for raping her. In response to the lawsuit, the school's defense is collecting information to show that the student worked as a stripper, that she's had mental health problems, and that she's had a generally hard life. I'm sure they can prove all these things--I'm often surprised if they don't turn up during a rape case, because rapists love a vulnerable woman like muggers love a dark alleyway--but I have to ask, "So what?" Do any of these things, separately or taken together, make it OK for a football player to rape a woman and then pass her off to his friend? No, they do not. That someone has mental health issues and turned to sex work to pay for college should make her sympathetic in a sane world, and therefore make us all the more disgusted that two men saw her and thought, "Easy to victimize."  

Patent trolling—buying up vague or broad patents and then suing any business that inadvertently violates its intellectual property—is the scourge of tech firms. As was reported on an excellent recent episode of This American Life, no one will wants to call himself a patent troll. Instead, those companies that are plaintiffs in such suits claim to be protecting the property rights of innovators.