Today in FAIL

Back in January NPR earned the FAIL Award for All Around Bullshittery in Reporting (retroactive...since I just made it up) with their failtastic piece about relationships in which the woman in the breadwinner and the man is not that they called "Modern Marriages: The Rise Of The Sugar Mama".

Just a bit ago I caught a tweeted headline that made me go all "ORLY?":

Husbands Who Earn Less Than Wives Are More Likely To Cheat
Though not an intentional follow-up, it may as well be.

In short:

About 7 percent of men and 3 percent of women cheated in the study's six-year period.

[...]

In her research, Munsch [Christin, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Cornell University and author of study] looked at data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth taken from 2002 to 2007. She focused on married and cohabitating 18- to 28-year-olds who were together for longer than a year.

It's speculated in the article and study that perhaps men cheat more because it makes them feel more "manly" because they feel emasculated by being the lesser-earning partner.

However, I'd like to call your attention to this gem of reporting right here:

Freeloading men aren't the only troublemakers. [...]

That's right: "freeloading". Men (and presumably women) who earn less (per headline)--which would mean they are, in fact, employed--or are not earning money at all (hello, stay-at-home parent) are freeloaders. FAIL x10000 there, NPR.

And so we meet again, Patriarchy. I saw your rather obvious hand in writing that January article that called women who earned more than their partners "Sugar Mamas" and intoned DOOOOOM!™ to those relationships. I see you here saying men who earn less than their partners are "freeloaders" and "losers" or of "lower moral character" (per comments on article) and intoning more DOOOOOM!™. Insulting women, insulting men, threatening relationships with prophesies of shite...STFU already, seriously. And NPR? WTF? Just stop.