Image credit: Dave Herr via The Nerve

A few months ago, Planned Parenthood put the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation under fire for withdrawing their funding from Planned Parenthood’s breast health services. The decision was allegedly made to appease pro-life supporters.

Now, it’s Planned Parenthood’s turn to be scrutinized for their financial decisions. Planned Parenthood of North Texas recently rejected a $500,000 donation from our university’s very own Tucker Max (Duke Law School ’01). For those of you who don’t know, Tucker Max is a blogger and New York Times best-selling author who makes a living from being promiscuous with women and critiquing these encounters publicly. Tucker Max is a selfish jerk. But you don’t have to take my word for it, he tells you so right on his website: “My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.”

Spoken like a true women’s advocate if you ask me! Tucker Max admitted he was looking for a tax break through a contribution to Planned Parenthood and wanted to get some positive press stirring before his next book is released. He also claims he was genuinely trying to do some good by giving back.

But Planned Parenthood wasn’t having it, and understandably so. I mean, just look at what Tucker Max had to say about the organization a little earlier in his career. Last July he tweeted, “Planned Parenthood would be cooler if it was a giant flight of stairs, w/ someone pushing girls down, like a water park slide.” #saywhat? On March 14, he wrote, “In South Florida. This place is awful. Shitty design, slutty whores & no culture, like a giant Planned Parenthood waiting room.”

Dear Tucker Max,
Using derogatory language to describe the clients of an organization probably won’t help you get one of their buildings dedicated for you.
Love,
Common Sense.

Nevertheless, Max saw things differently, telling the NY Daily News, “I thought they’d be very excited about it.” Max also had this to say of Planned Parenthood: “Their motives aren’t about helping women. Their motives are about what they look like to their friends and signaling they’re taking the right types of donations from the right types of people.”

Tucker Max is not alone. Planned Parenthood of North Texas has faced much criticism for not accepting the money, especially since the state of Texas has just ruled to defund Planned Parenthood.

They declined the money, and are slammed for denying vital services to underprivileged women and families. But if they accepted, they’d be helping out a notorious misogynist and condemned by feminists everywhere. The decision was really a lose-lose situation for Planned Parenthood. The way I see it though, if they took the money, at least they’d have ended up with $500,000 in the bank.

Notably, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) jumped at the opportunity to snatch half-a-million dollars and contacted Tucker Max about becoming the beneficiary. Assuring Max he could still help prevent unwanted pregnancies, they proposed using the money to purchase a mobile spay-and-neuter truck for animals. They even came up with a charming title: “Fix Your Bitches! The Tucker Max No-Cost to Low Cost Spay and Neuter Clinic.” PETA clearly has a different code of ethics when it comes to its marketing. (We saw this last year with the pornography site PETA plans to launch, which Eddie discussed.)

Max has declined the offer to help PETA, blogging, “There is no chance I’m supporting an organization that wants to ban two of my favorite things: Making animals dead and then eating them.” Yep, what a jerk. And isn’t it ironic how he didn’t seem to have a genuine interest in Planned Parenthood, yet was willing to give them the money, but not PETA, who has never met a publicity stunt they didn’t like?

Should Planned Parenthood have taken Tucker Max’s money, or were they right to reject the offer? Personally, I’d have a hard time turning down money from anybody, even someone I don’t like. Then again, I certainly don’t think it would be appropriate for the NAACP to cash a check from the KKK so the Klan could get a PR boost. So how bad does someone have to be before their help should be rejected? And how bad does your own situation have to be? If you’re like Planned Parenthood and desperate for money, can the ends justify the means?

photo credit: Coreena_C via photobucket

On the way to class last week, I stopped to buy an iced coffee. I drank most of it immediately but left some for later so I could get one more caffeine blast before my next class. I took a drink of my hour-old coffee and found it unpleasantly diluted, sour, and room temperature. I was kind of annoyed at myself; I know that coffee loses its piquancy as it sits, and ice melts. There was not really anything else I could have done to prevent this unpalatable experience. According to business owner Michael Dozois, however, his product could remedy this situation.

Dozois’ two-year old business, Névé, has become wildly successful and is now an essential ingredient for any high-profile event. Névé specializes in “luxury ice,” which can, Dozois says, transform the taste of any cocktail. By using reverse osmosis, “aging” the frozen water for 48 hours, and cutting the ice with painstaking detail, Névé ice is able to chill your drink without diluting it. Although the ice has a simple appearance, Dozois insists that it’s the pure contents of the ice that matters.

Brooding about luxury ice feels more than a bit persnickety. I can see that luxury ice, like pâté or a nice bottle of wine, could really be the pièce de résistance for a classy evening. But, seriously? It’s frozen water, for God’s sake.  “Oh yes, last night I was telling Angelina Jolie about my new custom-made Jimmy Choos when none other than Madonna comes to me with a cocktail on the rocks. I told her I couldn’t drink it, though, because of my pure-ice diet. Can you believe she’s never heard of Névé?”

Who could blame my upper-crust alter-ego, though? She’s trying to go pure – consuming only organic foods to be healthy and eco-friendly. To her, ice cubes made in her own freezer are like Wal-Mart brand ice cubes. In his book, The Authenticity Hoax, Andrew Potter argues that this this organic craze is all in vanity – people are competing to be the most natural. He calls this “a positional good, which is valuable precisely because not everyone can have it.” My alter-ego isn’t really taking part in this ultra-cool trend for her health and the environment; she’s proving moral superiority.

However, I believe that this perpetual quest for all that is pure actually accentuates immorality and ignorance. Mass-produced products are cheap and readily available. Most people can’t afford to live in a pure way; people who live and eat organically are automatically separated economically from those who buy food (and bags of ice) at Walmart. Whoever has the most organic, free-trade, home-grown (and consequently more expensive) diet, has an elevated status because this false sense of moral superiority is subconsciously associated with socioeconomic status. Also, people are not always living as pure as they think they are. It takes tremendous amounts of energy to make a hybrid car; is that offset by gas mileage? Kombucha, an expensive “raw” beverage made of fermented tea leaves, has been linked to several deaths; should we still choose that over a Lipton tea? Névé’s filtering process loses eight ounces of water for every single ounce it uses; is the purity worth it?

I probably wouldn’t get an iced coffee poured over Névé ice spheres – at least not for $2.00 – but there is definitely a market out there for this product, and I wouldn’t mind seeing, or rather tasting, the Névé magic. For now, I’ll let nature take its course and try to drink my beverages before the ice has time to melt.