Who says we want to marry you?

Colin sent me a copy of this Salon.com story. Normally I don't link to salon articles because of the extended hassle to actually read anything on their site, but this one is worth the trouble. Apparently Forbes published an article online called "Don't Marry Career Women" that, despite what you may think, was actually not a parody. The article has since been removed due to pressure from the blogosphere:

Sometime around 5:30 on Wednesday, Aug. 23, two days after its publication, "Don't Marry Career Women" disappeared from the Forbes.com Web site, along with an earlier story by Noer, titled "The Economics of Prostitution," in which he compared "wives" to "whores" and wrote that "the implication remains that wives and whores are -- if not exactly like Coke and Pepsi -- something akin to champagne and beer. The same sort of thing."

I mean, I don't even know what to say. Forbes and Gibson--the boycott list is growing. Really I just keep expecting to wake up to find this whole period of history was a bad, bad dream.

Here's another choice paragraph:

Noer's list went on. Rosie, your riveting bride, will be less likely to bear you children. If she does, she'll be unhappy because wealthier women are "used to 'a professional life, a fun, active, entertaining life,'" and will therefore be dismayed at the un-fun and un-entertaining responsibilities of child-rearing. If you marry one of these witches, "Your house will be dirtier," since studies show that a woman who makes more than $15 an hour "will do 1.9 hours less housework a week." Perhaps the saddest result of your careerist heterosexual union is that "You're more likely to fall ill." That because according to research he's unearthed, wives who work more than 40 hours a week "do not have adequate time to monitor their husband's [sic] health and healthy behavior, to manage their husband's [sic] emotional well-being or buffer his workplace stress."

Okay, I'll grant you the dirty house thing...you got me there.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on culturally that it's suddenly okay to say these outlandish things? It's not like I didn't know people still thought them but I thought we were past the point where it was okay to think them out loud. What do I know?