Melania Trump's Shoes, Google Memes, Meg Whitman Claps Back

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Meg Whitman tells her side of the Uber story, Melania Trump’s shoes cause a Twitter meltdown, and Googlers fight memos with memes. Have a fantastic day.

EVERYONE'S TALKING

• Meme me. In the wake of James Damore's memo criticizing Google's pro-diversity policies, many of the company's top execs made public statements condemning his use of stereotypes and expressing their support for the company's female and minority employees. Googlers not in the C-suite, meanwhile, found their own ways to make their opinions heard—including the use of memes.

Google employees have an internal company site called Memegen, where they post jokes about current events and company news. In hopes of making the content that gets posted there less white and male, the company launched Memegen(der), a campaign to introduce meme templates showcasing gender and racial diversity.

After Damore's memo circulated, Memegen(der) inspired employees to create some gems—including a few featuring pop culture "sheroes" like Princess Leia and Daenerys Stormborn. I'd try to describe them here, but memes really need to be seen in their full glory... A sneak peek below—see more here: Fortune

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• Wrong foot forward. Melania Trump's choice of footwear set Twitter alight yesterday: The first lady boarded Air Force One for a visit to storm-battered Texas while wearing a pair of towering stiletto heels. While many online criticized the shoes as being in poor taste (not to mention impractical!), Trump's spokesperson pushed back, saying, "It's sad that we have an active and ongoing natural disaster in Texas, and people are worried about her shoes." Fortune

• Meg begs to differ. Meg Whitman is countering Uber's narrative about how the company came to choose Expedia chief Dara Khosrowshahi as its new CEO. Whitman tells The Wall Street Journal that she hadn’t been a candidate for the job until last Friday, when an unidentified Uber director called to see if she would reconsider after the board couldn’t decide between General Electric Chairman Jeff Immelt and Khosrowshahi. She says she laid out her conditions for taking the post—but the company's board did not agree to them. Her account suggests that with Uber unable to meet her requirements and Immelt out of contention, Uber was left with no choice but to tap Khosrowshahi. WSJ

• Talk to the Mann. While launching Witchsy, an "online marketplace for weird art," Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer repeatedly found themselves on the receiving end of condescending messages from outside male developers and designers. Their solution? Create an imaginary male co-founder, the aptly named Keith Mann, to send emails to people outside the startup. Here's the really depressing part: It worked. Fast Company

• There oughta be a law. Marlene Schiappa, France's secretary for gender equality and the youngest member of President Emmanuel Macron's cabinet, wants to make street harassment of women a crime. France wouldn't be the first to so: Belgium, Portugal, and a handful of cities have similar laws in place. Should the U.S. follow suit? Fortune

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Case dismissed. A judge dismissed Sarah Palin's lawsuit against The New York Times, saying that she failed to prove defamation. The former VP candidate claimed that the paper knowingly published misinformation that tied her to a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona (the paper later issued a correction). New York Times

• I have reservations. OpenTable, led by Christa Quarles, was the first company to venture into the world of online restaurant reservations. But it is now facing a host of challenges—including a number of new competitors who are honing in on its turf. New York Times

• WHIP smart? Like it or not, we all know what a "MILF" is. Given that term's intrinsic sexism, some are pushing to replace it with WHIP—“woman who is hot, intelligent and in her prime.” Could it catch on? The Independent

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