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Welcome to the Gap Fest for Thursday, October 17th, the Stop the Binge Drinking Show.

I'm Hannah Rosen, editor of Double X. I'm in the D.C. studio. I am joined in New York today by

Noreen Malone of the New Republic. Hi, Noreen. Hey, Hannah. And June Thomas, who is the editor of the outward blog, among other things that's late. Hi, June. Hey, Hannah. So our three topics today. First, we are hours, hours away from averting a budget disaster as we're recording this podcast. It looks like a deal will be struck by tonight. And the credit is being given to a group of women who were led by Republican Senator Susan Collins, who seemed to have been the only examples of grown-up behavior last week. So we are going to gloat a little bit about this era of female competence. Secondly, should we tell young women to stop binge drinking so they won't get assaulted. Slates Emily Offie

writes a piece that infuriates basically everybody. So we will talk to her about that.

And third, a New York self-esteem campaign tells women that they are beautiful. Is that a

contradiction? Is it time to change the way that we use that word? Okay, we have no, we didn't

have any like stellar reader responses from last week, so I'm not going to read any. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, listeners. Get on it. Yes. Step up your game. We need great responses. Surely you'll have responses when Emily Offie comes on, like furious responses. So we'll read them next week. Okay. Let's start with the budget deal. I've been on a plane. When I got on the plane,

we were in status quo stuck. And when I got off the plane, because I was just in Seattle,

things had moved. And in the end, of course, two dudes, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell sat in a room

together and hammered out the deal. But the way the history is being told, the impetus for cooperation came from a bipartisan group started by Senator Susan Collins and some other female senator friends of hers. This is how McCain put it. Leadership, I must fully admit, was provided primarily by the women in the Senate. Now, you know, that comes from McCain. So I can never tell, like, is that just him being chivalrous, you know, him being, that's the other side of being like an old, an old warhorse, you know, I don't really know because it's unclear what details of the group's original proposal was included in the deal. But it is clear that the group provided at least a model of cooperation that no one else was able to rise to. So I will ask you guys, here's how Collins put

it, women's styles tend to be more cooperative. Were you guys convinced by this line that the women

...