Published in Men and Women
Men and Women
Defending Julia
Defending these other Julias--and not the woman in Orwell's 1984. From Robert Herrick:
WHENAS in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
... Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free ;
O how that glittering taketh me !
You really wanna get rough with Julia, try John Donne's "Julia," Elegy 14:
Her hands, I know not how, used more to spill
The food of others than herself to fill ;
But O ! her mind, that Orcus, which includes
Legions of mischiefs, countless multitudes
Of formless curses, projects unmade up,
Abuses yet unfashion'd, thoughts corrupt,
Misshapen cavils, palpable untroths,
Inevitable errors, self-accusing loaths.
These, like those atoms swarming in the sun,
Throng in her bosom for creation.
I blush to give her halfe her due ; yet say,
No poison's half so bad as Julia.
Finally, try Julia Shaw, who unfavorably compares Obama's Julia to Tocqueville's American woman, whose superiority was responsible for American greatness.
Presidency
Obama as Composite
While autobiographies don't need to be factual in order to be worthwhile reading, the notion of self-creating persons as presidents strikes at the core of what it means to be a self-governing America. Andrew Malcolm rose to the occasion. See his portrayal of the young Obama, together with his then-lover, as a composite. Sample:
He had lived in exotic foreign places, he claimed, consumed strange foods and painfully recounted his longing for an absent father that caused him to wildly over-spend other people's money, desperately seeking to fill some hidden void by repairing bridges and hiring union teachers. He regularly talked of receiving dreams from his father.
Courts
Justice in Gay Suicide Case?
Dharun Ravi had spied on and filmed his Rutgers College roommate, Tyler Clementi, who later jumped off the George Washington Bridge. A jury convicted Ravi of "bias intimidation."
Ann Althouse urges an appeal.
Health Care
The Economics of the HHS Mandate
Presidency
Free Viagra
NLT is not being spammed: In light of the president's recent health insurance coverage edict, I propose that the
The Family
The Real Inequality Problem
Bioethics
Roe v. Wade and Equal Opportunity
Obama on Roe: "And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams." So does he oppose sex-selection abortions?
The entire statement below:
As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman's health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right. While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue- no matter what our views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption. And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.
Bioethics
Rethinking an Old Issue
The science columnist for the Wall Street Journal writes about sex-selection abortion and how it might be curbed. The case against this practice leads one to question the morality of abortion altogether.
Another approach, quite suitable to young adults, is presented in the Newbery award-winning novel The Giver. In the dystopian world young Jonas inhabits, he discovers that his father, a doctor, kills those deemed unfit. Progressive Montgomery County, MD assigns this as an eighth-grade text (along with other dystopian fiction such as Animal Farm and Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron.")
Men and Women
"Women and children first"
It doesn't make sense to berate the captain of the Costa Concodria to be one of the first on the beach in an egalitarian age that decries the notion of hierarchy, difference, and duty. Taking off from Mark Steyn, The Sage of Mt. Airy emphasizes that point, taking off on "women and children first:"
What [Steyn] leaves out is that it's become instead, and sadly so, an increasingly accurate descriptive phrase that captures perfectly a class of people who do go first, whether they should or not. (If, that is, it's even possible to use words like should or ought in a properly multicultural society.) "Women and children" is now descriptive of, well, descriptive of almost everyone, male and female, young and old, able and infirm, etc.. We're all equal after all and that's exactly as it should be. (Here's one place where should is not only allowed, but demanded.)
Steyn on the origins of "women and children first:"
In fact, "women and children first" can be dated very precisely. On Feb. 26, 1852, HMS Birkenhead was wrecked off the coast of Cape Town while transporting British troops to South Africa. There were, as on the Titanic, insufficient lifeboats. The women and children were escorted to the ship's cutter. The men mustered on deck. They were ordered not to dive in the water lest they risk endangering the ladies and their young charges by swamping the boats. So they stood stiffly at their posts as the ship disappeared beneath the waves. As Kipling wrote:
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We're most of us liars, we're 'arf of us thieves, an' the rest of us rank as can be, But once in a while we can finish in style (which I 'ope it won't 'appen to me).
Men and Women
Beauty is a Witch
Men and Women
Man's Best Friend
Gentlemen of the jury: A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince...If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.
Men and Women
The Giffords Interview
Courts
OWS and a Hill to Die On
In 1984 George Orwell's O'Brien declared, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face--forever." That's the way I felt when I heard the participants in the Anita Hill lovefest, "Sex, Power, and Speaking Truth." His narrow confirmation to the Court allowed him to revive American constitutionalism. We must ever keep in mind this victory in our cultural wars.
Meanwhile, further south in Manhattan, the OWS mobs continue to flourish. Comparing them to the Tea Party misses the heart of these true descendants of the American Founding: They stand for the restraints, protections, and procedures of constitutional government.
Men and Women
The Most Beautiful Girl in America...
...is, of course, my girlfriend.
Now that that's out of the way and I have enough cover to keep her from killing me for this post - Miss USA, Alyssa Campanella:
Beauty is a beautiful thing. Slidshow here.
The Family
Tocqueville on the Wedding
Married to a commoner Englishwoman himself, Alexis de Tocqueville would have approved of the latest royal union. Using insights from Democracy in America, Julia Shaw argues the splendid moment was "quite an American affair." What the visiting, onlooking Americans "were watching was not some imaginary fairy tale or even a typical lavish royal wedding. It was another American love story." They went abroad to meet themselves.
My favorite commentary on royalty in the modern world is on a less fortunate royal couple. Mark Helprin's splendid comic novel, Freddy and Fredericka, describes Charles and Di romping incognito across America and acquiring its virtues to make them fit for the royal throne.
Congress
Planned Parenthood Debate as Paradigm
Conservatism
The Future of Conservatism
Discover the bright future of conservatism in the latest edition of Counterpoint, the University of Chicago undergrad-edited journal. See Josh Lerner's account of Progressivism, which reconsiders its European origins. Also of note is the thoughtful, social-science focused exchange on same-sex marriage in the letters section. The case against gay marriage has rarely been made more incisively.
The spring issue will contain a symposium on movies, with contributions by conservatives young and old.
Men and Women
A Note on Trying to Abolish Love
Men and Women
True Lenten Confession
The Family
Fear of Hypocrisy and Ignorance of Right
I think she also gets pretty close to the answer in noting that the current generation of MOTs (Moms of Teens) is also the first generation to have grown up with the new rules and lack of old-fashion standards. As she puts it:
We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn't have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret--I know women of my generation who waited until marriage--but that's certainly the norm among my peers.Therefore, our greatest earthly fear (since the vast majority of us have been taught to understand that "old-fashion standards" are rooted in irrational prejudices and bigotry rather than reason, protection of personal happiness and the good of society) is that of being called a hypocrite. Just as some ex-hippie parents felt sheepish about scolding their kids for trying (or even, using) illegal drugs, many of today's mothers (who grew up mimicking the antics of Madonna) feel sheepish about scolding their daughters for an appearance that our grandmothers would have called "slutty." Besides, we mastered the eye-rolling over that appellation long ago when Grandma scolded us.
I'd add to Moses's list another fear. It is not just that we fear being called hypocrites or that we don't have a firm grasp on right and wrong. There is also the problem of that eye-rolling. If, as girls, we felt "peer-pressure" to look and act in a way that was in accord with the new pop-culture norms, at least it was mainly coming from our peers and semi-rational or moral girls could, therefore, more readily (and successfully) question it. Moreover, the mothers of my mother's day could count on some support from a large number of other moms and grandmothers when they took a stand against an obstinate teenager. Today, the eye-rolling is coming from all quarters. It's not just Hollywood and the music industry combined with surly, slutty teens. It's also coming from other mothers and, even, grandmothers! The scolding mother and grandmother is becoming more and more rare as fear of hypocrisy and guilty consciences guide the standards. Or, to be more precise, the scolding that is likely to be handed down is not directed at the teen, but rather at the mother for being "too controlling."
Even so, there can be a temptation to overstate the doom and gloom and it ought to be resisted, when possible. There are always pockets of decency and good sense, for one thing. Another reason to speculate hopefully is that if the popular culture has actually reached a level of saturation in smut and indecency, it is likely that there will be some backlash . . . if for no other reason than ordinary teenage curiosity and rebellion. I noted a couple weeks ago that Ross Douthat saw some reason for cheer about the current generation of teens.
For my own part (and mind that I am still learning on the job) I have always tried to mimic an understanding of fashion handed down in George Washington's primer on the "Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation." (See rule #52.) Not that I would admit this or explain it like that to my daughter! At her age, her suspicions would be justly fortified if I cited Washington as an expert on fashion to her! "Powdered wigs are soooo 18th century!" after all. But the rule about accommodating nature and bending, with prudence, to the times and one's peers is a good one. The extremes in the debate over appearance can cause a person's head to spin and to despair that appearance is, after all, only appearance. Substance of character would be a better subject for contemplation, of course. But we cannot forget that appearance, while not everything and not even necessarily definitive, is--in this world--still an important part of substance. Fashion ought to be a mother's first lesson in politics to her daughter . . . and the lesson is that in politics as in fashion, "perception is often reality."
Education
Pimp My Curriculum
In an earlier age, the university preferred to think itself as outside of, and if truth be told superior to, the general culture of the society in which it functioned.
For many people today, the more the culture impinges upon the university the better. From the 1960s and perhaps well before, they longed for the university to reflect the culture by being more open, democratic, multicultural, with-it, relevant.He then goes on to suggest that the fall of the universities to these pressures in the 60s was the equivalent in our "culture wars" to the battle of Aegospotami during the Peloponnesian War. American culture, like Athens, may go on . . . but it will never be the same.
I don't generally like to align myself with such pessimistic pronouncements upon current events because I tend to think--maybe superstitiously--that they doom and diminish a fight that is certainly worth having. Moreover, I also think that it is impossible to know in what way events will turn when the actors in question are human beings. We are nothing if not entirely unpredictable--particularly when we are free. Anything can (and does) happen in human history. But at the risk of sounding like one of those boring guys with a computer model to demonstrate probability, if our current estimate of education continues along the trajectory outlined by Epstein, it is hard to see how he is wrong in his unhappy predictions.
The Family
Marriage Saved in Maryland
Men and Women
The New Gender Gap
This means that by the time today's Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.Ferguson draws upon economics and history--but most of all, on Hemingway--for examples of what might be on the horizon in an Asia without female influence. Interesting and important to contemplate? Yes. Appealing or cheering? Decidedly not.
The Family
Get Government Out of the Love Business
Men and Women
Cynicism, Vain Hopes, and Realistic Optimism about Pre-marital Sex
Douthat takes to task the straw man argument springing from the left (an argument, I'm sorry to say, that some social conservatives are only too happy to prop up in direct reach of the left's flame throwers) that holds conservatives to be unrealistic and silly because monogamy as an ideal ignores the impulse and drive of human sexuality by suggesting that a world where every person waits until marriage to have sex is an achievable goal. Instead of accepting the smirking head-pat that the left wants to offer social conservatives on this score, Douthat rightly turns their argument on its head. In other words, only a naive and unsophisticated sort of person incapable of understanding subtlety and accepting the occasional and tragic moral imperfection would imagine that conservatives actually believe a "wait till marriage" ethic would translate into 100% (or even 60%) of brides having the strictly technical legitimate grounds for wearing white on their wedding day.
Pre-marital sex would still exist . . . but its character (however sinful according to religious standards) would still be a lot better when considered by societal standards. Douthat (quite rightly) makes a distinction between sex that is "casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered" and sex that is more accurately described as "pre-marital" because there is likely to be some additional sex that is post-marital. The second kind--though not without its own set of difficulties and heartaches--is, obviously, a world apart from the first. This is particularly true when it is taken as a societal phenomenon rather than as a personal one.
The ability to see this distinction and to recognize the desirability and possibility of restoring this ethic is what sets social conservatives apart from their counterparts on the left as the true but realistic optimists in this debate. Their concern for the whole person and the whole society--even as they understand the pitfalls and the probability of some failure--do not keep them from insisting upon the standard. The left instead notes the difficulty of the standard and then brings it down . . . to safety.
When one notes, as Douthat does, the real difference between male and female emotional well-being in this current state of affairs, it always amazes me that feminists have chosen to cozy up to the left in this debate. Such women appear very clearly to be the sell-outs and the dupes of a cynical philosophy designed for wicked men who would use and discard them as suits their impulses. Where is the female empowerment in that?
The Family
Playing Toward Princeton
Since my own children are long past the tiresome world of eager pre-school interventionists--with their well-meaning but often unimaginative theories about the best ways to develop gross and fine motor skills--I had nearly forgotten how depressing and oppressive that world could sometimes be. Depressing because so uninspired and oppressive because it seems part of some large conspiracy to mold every otherwise capable mother into a ball of self-doubt and confusion: "I know your Nicky enjoys playing with Legos . . . but is he maximizing his capacities with respect to the pincer grip in this activity? And what will this mean for his handwriting and scissor skills in kindergarten? Will he be behind? And how will he ever make it on to geometry from there?"
I used to wonder what it might be like if, say, instead of contemplating the possible benefits to hand/eye coordination in a boring drill of picking up beads with a pair of tweezers, parents and pre-school gurus were to place at least as much emphasis on the moral imagination of the children in their charge. What if, instead of worrying so much about paving a path toward Princeton, we instead started worrying about paving a path toward an ordered soul? Wouldn't Princeton (if that's even something remotely in your child's cards) take care of itself? What if, instead of only striving to create "good students" we instead began to strive toward creating good people? (Think how many "good students" of your acquaintance happen also to be rotten little brats . . .) Then, perhaps, we could stop de-constructing every activity that a normal child will do anyway (when left to his own devices), and parents and educators instead could focus their energies on teaching children the difference between such concepts as right and wrong, good and bad, noble and ignoble, sublime and base, joy and sorrow, justice and injustice--and a few I'm, no doubt, forgetting at the moment. Does anyone imagine that such children would someday find it impossible to master video games or fly fighter jets? Would it be impossible to teach such children to throw a four-seam fastball? Could not a soul, so turned, take on the wonders of geometry or the mysteries of the universe? Experience tells us that they can, but hubris suggests we can perfect the formula.
The worst thing about the direction our minds seem to be tilted toward when it comes to educating very young children is not that we are sucking the joy out of their experiences (though we do try, mightily, sometimes to do that); it is that we are making moral idiots and buffoons out of ourselves in the process. We are focused on all the wrong things. Children can take care of their play time with minimal intervention from adults. But if adults spend most of their time fretting about children's play time and the tactile experiences these offer, they are in danger of squandering the precious time they have with those children by neglecting to point them toward the higher kinds of learning seen in glimpses at their own hard-won wisdom and experience. Perhaps then the paucity of our own wisdom and experience (and the subsequent doubt we must feel because of it) explains our reluctance today to so display it?
Yet this question remains: does Princeton offer any improvement?
Men and Women
Bush Sr. Receives Medal of Freedom
Education
Forget the Elephant in the Room . . .
Every fall, new education theories arrive, born like orchids in the hothouses of big-time university education departments. Urban teachers are always first in line for each new bloom. We've been retrofitted as teachers a dozen times over. This year's innovation is the Data Wall, a strategy in which teachers must test endlessly in order to produce data about students' progress. The Obama administration has spent lavishly to ensure that professional consultants monitor its implementation.
Every year, the national statistics summon a fresh chorus of outrage at the failure of urban public schools. Next year, I fear, will be little different.
RTWT, if you can stomach it. Thanks to Kate for pointing me to this story.
Men and Women
Weekend in Birmingham
I spent the weekend in Birmingham, Alabama, visiting several sites of historic significance to the civil rights movement. Most notable, of course, was the 16th Street Baptist Church. After the 1963 fire-bombing which killed four children (original Washington Post story here), the church became the moral epicenter of Martin Luther King's work.
Birmingham is also the locale of King's imprisonment in 1963, which inspired the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." King's powerful reliance on Augustinian and Thomistic thought, as well as the natural law foundation of America's promise to all people, makes the "Letter" required reading for students of American history and political thought. It also exposes the revisionism of liberals in academia who have replaced Rev. MLK with a substitute Dr. MLK. King's civil rights movement was not an academic exercise in human rights, but a religious testimony of God's law. The secularization of MLK is one of the greatest crimes of modern historians.
Men and Women
Small Blessings
Christina Green, the 9-year old girl who was born on 9-11-2001 and died in the Arizona massacre, turns out to have been an organ donor and has saved the life of "a little girl in Boston."
Asked if he'd like to meet the girl who received the transplant, Christina's father replied, "Oh yes, and I'd give her a big hug."
Sometimes the world is a beautiful place.
Men and Women
Reactions to Arizona
Political leaders in Washington have offered universal condolences and shown true human decency in the wake of Arizona's tragedy.
Obama: "Such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society."
Boehner: "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve."
Rep. Eric Cantor also announced, "All legislation currently scheduled to be considered by the House of Representatives next week is being postponed so that we can take whatever actions may be necessary in light of today's tragedy."
I expect our statesmen will continue to conduct themselves appropriately throughout the course of this crisis. It is important to remember that Rep. Giffords was only one of a dozen people injured or killed during this tragedy - one victim was a federal judge appointed by George H.W. Bush, another was a small girl.
But the most rank partisan outlets, such as the Washington Post (blaming handgun laws) and CNN (blaming Sarah Palin), have already begun to indict conservatives, Republicans, Tea Partiers, etc. And this is the administration of Rahm Emmanuel: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Extremists will no doubt attempt to capitalize on this killing - decent people should remember that such shameless indictments reflect the indecency of the accuser rather than the accused.
The Family
The Case Against Hobos and for Marriage
Jonah Goldberg has made a highly qualified case for bourgeois homosexuals (Hobos) and hence for same-sex marriage. In the lively new University of Chicago journal, Counterpoint, "Carl Roberts" anticipated why Jonah's argument fails. Unlike the Robby George-inspired recent natural law essay "What is Marriage?" Roberts bases his argument on social science.
Roberts maintains that legalizing same-sex marriage would change the cultural underpinnings of marriage from procreation to companionship. This profound shift undermines marriage in general (here he uses the Chicago lingo of "incentives"). It subsequently encourages single motherhood, which clearly is the major source of urban poverty.
The conservative journal (edited by Chicago undergrads) boasts a series of thoughtful articles on Martin Diamond, Jane Austen, gun rights, Lady Gaga, and many other topics of enduring and contemporary interest. May it be blessed with a Rockefeller!
Men and Women
Census Demographics
I mention below the political (electoral) consequences of the 2010 census, but several demographic stats also deserve mention.
As expected, the quickly growing Hispanic population has easily surpassed blacks as the largest minority. Whites presently represent less than 2/3 of the population, and are shrinking. Minority population has grown at five times the rate of whites since 2000 - so if you're an "America is a white nation" advocate ... you'd better get breeding! 2050 is forecast as the shift in balance when whites fall below 50% of the population.
On the issue of segregation, about 80% of whites live in predominately white areas, while just under half of black and Hispanics live in areas with a majority of their own ethnicity.
Most troubling by far, however - women are only 50.7% of the population. That's still way too many dudes, in my opinion. Ladies, more of your own, if you please!
Men and Women
The Return of Nature?
Progress in the United Kingdom?
During a chat with a group of 17-year-old girls recently, our conversation turned to their dreams for the future. One girl, Patty, wants to be a lawyer. Another, Justine, has her heart set on becoming a doctor.
But it seems there's one aspiration that's proving surprisingly popular -- and it doesn't involve years of dedicated study, either.
Yes -- feminists look away now -- most of the girls I talked to are intent on marrying a rich man. . .
As a teacher, perhaps I should have argued with these teenagers and told them their happiness depended on financial independence and high-flying careers. A few years ago I would have done, but not any more.
So what's changed? Well, four years ago my daughter Nancy was born and I became a harassed working mother. It was my implacable belief that a career was the path to female fulfilment that kept me working after her birth.
Back then, I honestly believed that women who didn't work were boring little drones who had given up all vestige of personality.
How wrong I was!
Exit question: if, as a rule, men and women want different things out of life, and if one of the the central questions of liberal eduction is how to live, how should we address the differences between men and women in our schools? A start would be recognizing at least the possibility that the reason why just about every society in history has had gender roles is because men and women like to differentiate themselves from each other.
Has the idea of the equality of men and women been rendered secure enough in modern America to allow us to discuss the both the ways in which men and women are equal and the ways in which men and women are not the same, and don't want to be the same?
Refine & Enlarge
The Marriage Gap
UVA's National Marriage Project has released a study, The State of Our Unions (press summary here), which reveals the "striking reversal of historic trends" among middle and upper-class America.
First, "highly educated Americans are embracing a pro-marriage mindset even as Middle Americans are losing faith in marriage."
...marriage is in trouble among so-called "Middle Americans," defined as the 58% of adults who have a high school diploma ... no four-year college degree.
...trends in non-marital childbearing, divorce and marital quality in Middle America increasingly resemble those of the poor, many of whose marriages are fragile. However, among the highly educated and affluent, marriage is stable and appears to be getting even stronger - yet more evidence of America's "marriage gap."
The "marriage gap" also accompanies a corollary "faith gap," as the upper-class now attend church more often than middle-class Americans. Another recently study by NMP concluded that "across America's major racial and ethnic groups ... shared religious activity - attending church together and especially praying together - is linked to higher levels of relationship quality."
The logic is not surprising. Religious people consistently report higher levels of happiness and stability, as do married people, and religious people are more likely to marry and remain married. It's a virtuous circle. Decrease either the religion or marriage components of the equation and you're certain to produce a decrease in happiness and stability.
The retreat from marriage in Middle America cuts deeply into the nation's hopes and dreams as well. For if marriage is increasingly unachievable for our moderately educated citizens--a group that represents 58 percent of the adult population (age 25-60)--then it is likely that we will witness the emergence of a new society. For a substantial share of the United States, economic mobility will be out of reach, their children's life chances will diminish, and large numbers of young men will live apart from the civilizing power of married life.
This retreat is also troubling because highly educated Americans (defined here as having at least a bachelor's degree) have in recent years been largely unaffected by the tidal wave of family change that first hit the poor in the 1960s and has since moved higher into Middle America. Indeed, highly educated Americans, who make up 30 percent of the adult population, now enjoy marriages that are as stable and happy as those four decades ago. There is thus a growing "marriage gap" between moderately and highly educated America.5 This means that more affluent Americans are now doubly privileged in comparison to their moderately educated fellow citizens--by their superior socioeconomic resources and by their stable family lives.
Men and Women
RIP Elizabeth Edwards
It deserves notice that Elizabeth Edwards passed away yesterday. The NY Times obituary summarizes her life as consisting of "idyllic successes and crushing reverses." In her own words, when she decided to forgo further treatment for her terminal breast cancer, Ms Edwards wrote:
I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces -- my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope... The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.
Our prayers for her, her family and friends.
Quote of the Day
Quotation du Jour
The wisdom of Franklin:
Men I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can, they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they creep into corners, or cover themselves with the darkness of night, when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of a virtuous action. A virtuous action it would be, and a vicious one the killing of them, if the species were really worth producing or preserving; but of this I begin to doubt.
Men and Women
Too Cool for School?
Interesting hypothesis:
Women follow rules better than men do, so the women do better in school. But, there is no correlation between doing well in school and doing well in adult life. And there might be a reverse correlation, because school is about doing what you're told, but strong performers in business make their own rules. Maybe this is why most big law firms have no women in their top 10 rainmakers. This is because it's an ill-defined, outside-the-rules-of-what-you-learn-in-law-school kind of job. But these are the people who make the money and have the flexibility to have a lifestyle they want outside of work--one not so hours-bound. So for women to really get the kind of workplace they want - flexible, responsive, and engaging, the women are going to need to break some rules.
Literature, Poetry, and Books
How to Lose Writer's Block
You think you struggle with writing? Consider this WaPo profile of Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit and Unbroken. Hillenbrand suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome so crippling that for two years she could not leave her DC house nor, for months, even her room.
In the carefully calibrated world of Laura Hillenbrand, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. On one day, she might agree to an interview but skip a shower. Energy is finite, and she typically has enough for one activity a day. She is constantly measuring herself, monitoring herself. She might write a bestseller - she might write two - but the ensuing fame will touch her only tangentially. She will not see her books in Barnes & Noble.
The profile explores not only her writing on a champion horse and a champion athlete who suffered as WW II POW but also the love between her and her political theorist husband, a Thucydides scholar. Both attended Kenyon College.
Men and Women
Steinem's Shameful Feminism
I had a good laugh at Gloria Steinem's latest stunt to remain relevant as the spokeswoman for leftist, radical feminism. The lady is obsessed with Sarah Palin, and again recently expanded her ridicule to include all conservative women. It's the same absurdity visible among leftist race-baiters who bitterly refuse to acknowledge Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, Colin Powell or any other right-of-center African American as authentically black.
Steinem scolded Palin for using the "mama grizzly" motto, insisting the bear is solidly pro-choice, and condemned "Republican" and "right-wing" females as "obedient women" who "have accepted their own subordination" and "think they better do what the powerful tell them to, otherwise they'll be in even more trouble."
Yes, that's exactly how I think of Coulter, Ingraham, Palin, Noonan, Malkin, Crowley, Hutchison, Bachmann, etc. I assume it entirely escapes Steinem that her stereotyping of half the women in the country as obedient subordinates due to their divergence from her political ideology is profoundly sexist, intolerant and disgraceful.
In fact, I should have just ordered obedient and subservient Julie Ponzi to write this article for me, since she'd obviously do my bidding in order to stay out of trouble. Right, Julie...?
Men and Women
It's a Name, Not a Destiny
It is not the first time that I've seen an author take up the subject of gender-neutral trends in naming and reflect upon what the trend may mean about today's parents and the future of masculinity in America. It is, however, probably the first time that I've read something in this line that--while leaning toward a kind of traditional and general distaste--is not breathless about the threat the trend poses to the Republic. In other words, it is a sane piece.
A reason for that, it seems to me, is that the author actually took the trouble to talk to the people engaged in all of this creative naming. She discovers quite a few interesting things. One of them is that while there is a core of people who really are consciously and conspicuously engaged in the careful practice of baby naming with a feminist and ideological purpose, most people pick baby names for the unoriginal and simple reason that the name--for whatever random and non-ideological reason--appeals to them. Nuts and political philosophy students who stay up too late and take in too much caffeine (or other substances) may protest that whether these people are conscious of it or not, there is some movement of the culture afoot or an ideological force that is propelling these tastes. Well, ok. But so what? Here's something those worrying sorts can stick in their pipes and smoke: this pathetic gender-neutral ideological trend has given rise to a counterpart; the deliberate choosing of hyper-masculine but non-traditional names . . . like Colt! So, if it turns out that the idea of a name being destiny holds water in the cosmic ordering of the universe, at least there will be ideological parity . . . and when it comes to a shooting war, we'll know which side holds the guns.
The more important and rational observation comes at the end of the article when the author reports on the surprise of some of the hopeful parents who named for the purpose of gender-neutrality. It appears that their efforts have had no effect at all on the actual character distribution of children. Whatever we may hope, kids will be largely whatever those kids will be. It is an observation rooted in the common sense of the subject: a name is only destiny in Shakespeare and other works of art, after all. And however good you may be as a parent, it is unlikely that you are a Shakespeare--and besides, even if you were, your child is not your manuscript or canvass.
More disturbing than the notion that wild-eyed feminists or sociology professors will succeed in their evil plot to emasculate American society with sissy names, is this idea (one that appears to have adherents on both sides of the masculinity divide) that a human soul is putty in the hands of its parents. After serious reflection on that proposition every actual parent--liberal, conservative, feminist, or neanderthal--will probably agree to raise their glasses in bewildered and exasperated agreement. It is most decidedly false! A toast to that point. The dignity and freedom of the human soul remains. Nature wins.
Men and Women
Paladino on Parade
NY's Carl Paladino stepped on a landmine this weekend by, as WaPo puts it, refusing "to step back from his inflammatory comments disparaging gays." Referencing his opponent's decision to march in a gay pride parade with his child, Paladino objected that, where men wearing only women's bikini underwear are "grinding at each other and doing these gyrations, I certainly wouldn't let my young children see that. Young children should not be exposed to that at a young age. They don't understand; it's a very difficult thing."
If you've ever seen a gay pride parade, you know that you'll be exposed to things you shouldn't have to know about until you're in prison. If parents acted in a similar manner in front of their kids at home, authorities could remove the kids on cause of obscenity and mental abuse. It's the equivalent of taking your child to a burlesque cabaret or X-rated film.
Nonetheless, Paladino committed the media sin of prioritizing parenthood above gay rights. Further, he stated that he didn't want his kids "brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is acceptable." And therein is the reason he was roundly denounced by the usual suspects as "hurtful and dangerous," "preaching hate," "stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality."
If any other group wandered into the streets dressed and behaving as those in gay pride parades, they would be arrested. If nearly any other group (Muslims immediately spring to mind) demanded that all others approve their lifestyle and branded all dissent as bigotry, they would be admonished for devaluing free-speech, individuality and diversity.
Could the homosexual lobby please practice what they preach and tolerate those with whom they disagree? Is it really an extreme proposition to object to kids being taught that running around in the street, in someone else's underwear, pretending to masturbate or have sex, is acceptable behavior? American's aren't Islamophobic for not wanting a mosque at Ground Zero, and they aren't homophobic for not wanting homo-erotic obscenity in the streets. It's just common sense decency in a pluralistic society.
On the other hand, Cuomo stated that Paladino's views "make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York." If that is so, it speaks more of New York than "the mainstream" or the GOP candidate.
Men and Women
The High Cost of Feminist "Freedoms" in France
Aren't women more free when they get to negotiate (with their husbands) their own ideas about what being a good mother and wife should be? And if there is anything (short of rape) that is more degrading in Western Civilization than that regimented prescription of vaginal exercises ordered and funded by the French government, I cannot imagine what it is. The NYT, in typical fashion, engages in excellent description and a huge amount of missing the point.
Men and Women
Edward Taylor, a fine man
Pop Culture
Out of the Mouths of "Babes"
Men and Women
Madonna and Sarah Palin
Pop Culture
Gaga Gags Paglia and Kills Sex
Paglia is particularly repulsed by Gaga's "banal voice" and her "lugubrious face" both of which, Paglia argues, come together awkwardly in the Gaga music videos and live concert productions, to produce an over-manufactured as well as shamelessly plagiarized product that is anything but sexy. Paglia takes pains to demonstrate how erratic and, seemingly, pointless are Gaga's borrowings. There is copying that can come from inspiration and a desire to pay homage to a thing one considers great. But this is not what Gaga offers--for nothing is great and nothing moves in the Gaga universe. Gaga, it seems, copies out of boredom--the way teenagers text at the bus stop or while "talking" to their parents. Gaga is pop music at the end of history. It is the place where the soul cannot be stirred.
Her catchy, but soul-numbing lyrics in "Poker Face," Paglia suggests, offer a window into Lady Gaga's soul (though not, of course, into Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta's) and that "soul" amounts to an excuse for what Paglia considers her pathetic artistry. Yet the "little monsters" of the digital age--who, like Germanotta, were raised in a political correct and sanitized world that offered almost no suggestions of an alternative--eat it up. Sadly, rebellion without authority turns out to be pretty unexciting . . . and it degenerates, quickly, into a silent scream of horror. It is fitting that Gaga calls her fans "little monsters" . . . for they, like she, have been denatured.
Paglia tries to illustrate this point by offering a contrast between Gaga and one of her presumed fore-mothers, Madonna, that bears repeating at some length:
Gaga's sexual reticence can't be chalked up to priest-ridden guilt: although she was nominally raised Catholic, her father (an internet entrepreneur who was once a bar-band rock musician in New Jersey) was clearly less repressive than Madonna's old-school authoritarian Italian-American father. In fact, the puritanical strictness of Madonna's background sparked her ambition and strengthened her best work. Without taboos, there can be no transgression -- which is why Madonna's ideas waned after she drifted into misty Kabbalah. There is no religious frame of reference in Gaga's songs, aside from the passing assertion, "Got no salvation, got no religion" (in So Happy I Could Die); there is nothing remotely comparable to the sweeping gospel-choir crescendo of Madonna's Like a Prayer. So it is unsurprising to hear that Gaga is consulting celebrity "spiritual guides" like Deepak Chopra. [Italics are mine, ed.]We note, too, that in another of Gaga's more famous works (a work that earned her top honors at the MTV VMA awards), Bad Romance, the lyrics--to say nothing of the visual suggestions--are remarkably un-erotic horrors cheaply packaged in what is taken by those who haven't experienced real eroticism to be an erotic envelope. Passing over without comment the mangled "tableau" at the end of video (which depicts a typically expressionless Gaga perched in bed over an incinerated corpse), take note of the tiresome refrain, "I don't wanna be friends."
No, she doesn't. But neither does she want that "something more" than friends suggested by true eroticism. She does not want to know you, as there is nothing to know. Paglia is disappointed that the only connections offered in a Gaga universe are those of a "filial" nature--and she disapproves, strongly, of Gaga's supposed celibacy. But Paglia's use of "filial" strikes me as off. Gaga doesn't want any of the varieties of friendship previously known or celebrated by humanity through the ages--nothing filial or erotic. Instead, what she seems to offer is exactly the thing that is already tired and passé in this Facebook/My Space generation: the "friending." Paglia bemoans the ways in which the "hook up"--once a kind of thrilling dash into the forbidden today, "blends friends and lovers, with sex becoming merely an excuse for filial hugging." But the hugs that gag Paglia aren't even "filial" hugs. They are less than that. They are the utterly meaningless expressions of nothing; ways to pass time in stupefied comfort and they have about as much real meaning as air kisses. Though those, at least, had a mild taste of disdain in them. The "seduction" of a Gaga video is similarly indefinite and equally meaningless. You might touch--you might not. You might be an onlooker, you might erupt in flames. You might be the equivalent of Facebook "friends" but you're really not anything to anyone . . . so you just aspire to acquire and conquer or kill for the sheer thrill of pretending to feel. Because, hey . . . why not? Nothing is real. All is a lie. What is the difference, then, if we incinerate and die?
Men and Women
A good old man, talking
There he sits, a good man and true. He can't see everything, but he sees enough to know that this fat shape in front of him must be Peter. He doesn't hear well, but he can turn the gizmo in his right ear up, in case I say anything interesting. I was with him an hour and a half. He wasn't interested in talking about himself, or the weather, only the well being of the country. His experience hasn't dulled his most fundamental sense, his vigorous mind. He is not too old to think, he is not too old to learn.
Do you think that there is enough of a constituency out there that still appreciated standards, so that the old virtues of diligence and perseverance can be re-kindled when necessary? It wasn't enough for me to say yes, I had to give reasons, and each had to be expanded and clarified as a result of his queries. The whys and wherefores forced me to concentrate, just to keep his pace. It was not possible to get beyond him. Sure, there was some talk of policy issues, and taxes, and government spending, but mostly there was just talk of the virtues necessary for self-government and questioning whether or not we still have them, as needed. He argued with perfect clarity why we shouldn't hide our virtues in the world as it now is. No tempest in his old unblemished mind, nothing but clarity and wisdom on behalf of freedom. Impressive and good, and I noticed as I left that I was no longer tired. Another gift from Ed.
Let me praise my old friend this way: An old man should always be an Edward Taylor.
