Underparented Children Of The Day
I'm at a Starbucks in the Hollywood Hills, where I often go to write on the weekend, sitting right by the window. This gives me something to do -- namely, look out the window -- when the muse is playing hooky. Well, lucky me, some blonde English chick is smoking at the table directly outside my window space, accompanied by her two blond brats, uh, boys. Not their fault, of course, that they're brats. Still, the fact remains.
Her underparented urchins are running wild, doing various underparented urchin things, which mostly do not affect me. Suddenly, the younger boy climbs up on a chair directly opposite where I'm sitting inside, and begins wiping his sticky-greasy little paws all over the window -- to a degree where his handiwork, to my surprise and great irritation, is substantially marring my view. As if this isn't disgusting and annoying enough, he actually begins licking the window, then drawing on it with candy. Mom is too busy smoking up a storm and having whatever conversation one has as a parental failure/not-well-aged expat English blonde. As she natters on, utterly oblivious to what is rapidly becoming a grease and fingerprint-on-window neo-Jackson Pollock, my view becomes even further impaired...until I can take it no longer. In the absence, on my immediate horizon, of nomadic barristas with a bottle of Windex in hand, I get up from my computer, go out with a napkin, and attempt to clean off the mess on the window.
"Did my son do that?" the not-well-aged blonde wonders, most blasÈ. "Yes," I respond, scrubbing furiously. Not wanting to start some Big Ugly at a place I'll be writing all day, I restrain myself from launching into the tirade on the tippy-tip of my tongue, and just mutter something about preferring an unobstructed view out the window. "Well," she sighs, as I scrub away at the greasy fingerpainting on the window with great futility, "He'll probably just do it again." I didn't say what immediately came to mind; again, in the spirit of maintaining a non-toxic writing environment; but I will say it here:
(And, looking to the longterm..."HOW ABOUT ADDING PARENTING TO YOUR DAILY TO-DO LIST!?" ...I mean, if that doesn't cut too, too much, into your daily grind to get cut, colored, Pilateased, collagened, and Botoxed, and gossip about Hollywood divorce settlements...and whatever else it is you do when you should be home giving your kids a few lessons in manners and boundaries!)
NOTE TO OTHERS OF HER ILK CONTEMPLATING SEXUAL REPRODUCTION:
Look, I know it's fabulously de rigeur these days to have something to dress in Petit Bateau, but if you really aren't up to actually parenting a child, can't you fulfill your desire to do the "in" thing by getting an Hermes handbag to carry around instead? It's so classic, and ever-so-versatile -- and best of all: it can be guaranteed -- yes, guaranteed -- never to lick or greasily paw a window outside Starbucks where I am attempting to write!
Zero Intelligence Policy
That's what it took to bring down the full weight of the asinine "Zero Tolerance" policy on Stratford Creek High School, in Goose Creek, South Carolina. Wendy McElroy writes that students "were forced onto their knees or against walls, while dogs sniffed their backpacks for drugs." (None were found.)
Silly me! I paid so little attention in geography class that I thought South Carolina was part of the current United States of America, not the USSR, 20 years ago. Jack-booted thugs are, apparently, part of a solid high school education. I guess they don't learn about stuff like that Fourth Amendment thingamajiggie with that probable cause whatchamacallit.
The "Zero Tolerance" idiocy extends way, way down...down to elementary school in New Jersey, where prosecutors have charged a seven-year-old boy with molesting a five-year-old girl. Yes, "molesting." When I was growing up, they called it what the defense attorney rightly called it: "playing doctor." Is there a virus going around, spreading rampant stupidity around the country, like wildfire?
It's gotten to the point where a kid can't even hang onto an asthma inhaler!
Todayís Most Irritating Letter
Dear Advice Goddess,
Is there any hope for a man who has Erectile Dysfunction, yet is very sensual, affectionate and passionate, and loves kissing all over? Kissing has always been my favorite thing, but now I don't feel like a complete man. I want to love and be loved so very much. I feel like I am at the end of my rope. A relationship just ended for me. The lady said that my problem was not a problem, but I know it was; she wanted to see others, and I know for what reason. I know there are lesbians who love each other and have meaningful relationships.ÝI am very depressed and frustrated. How can one go into a relationship being honest without telling the problem up front? Would you? Could you? Help! --ED
Iíve got a question for ED:
Dear ED, Well, first, do you know the root of your ED? Is it medical or psychological? And have you seen doctors about it? Tried Viagra, Levitra, injections? Please copy this entire email into your answer. --Amy Alkon
ED has an answer -- of sorts -- for me:
No I don't know the root andÝI haven't seen a doctor. I do not have insurance and cannot afford it.ÝHypothetically, the problem is medical and cannot be fixed with medication.ÝIs there any hope for a true loving lasting relationship.ÝI know I do have really high cholesterol. --ED
The Advice Goddess is not pleased:
Helloo!? You haven't seen a doctor? You can't afford it? What do you do for a living, pick lettuce? I have Kaiser Permanente for $178 a month. $25 for doctor visits; $10 for prescriptions. Get insurance or buy by the visit if you can't get insured. Don't "hypothetically" me. You have no idea what the problem is. If getting the plumbing working really mattered to you, you'd earn money to see a doctor. After you get checked out medically and get told there's no hope, write back to me, and then, Iíll tell you what you can do. On a positive note, even then, you arenít without hope -- yes, even if Mr. Winky refuses to stand up ever again. But, remember this:
The Advice Goddess helps those who get off their lazy asses and help themselves!
A Stupidity Free Workplace
Troy Anderson reports in the LA Daily News that LA County officials have gone way, way overboard in political correctness:
...banning as potentially "offensive or defamatory" the words master and slave from computer hard drives and video equipment where they are used to describe primary and secondary circuits.Under orders from the affirmative action office...
Wait -- my tax dollars are paying for an "affirmative action office"? This gets worse by the paragraph!
...county departments have surveyed about 1,000 pieces of equipment and taped over "master/slave" and put "primary/secondary" on the equipment, officials said.Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services in the Internal Services Department, started the flap with a memo to electronic equipment vendors saying the county wants master and slave labeling removed from computer equipment it buys.
"The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived," he wrote in the Nov. 18 memo.
What about ensuring a workplace that's free of taxpayer-sucking idiocy? I think citizens paying for this crap -- me included -- should start a drive to make this guy, or whomever above him is responsible for this idiocy, to change his job title to "Abject Moron Wasting Taxpayer Dollars."
Who Killed Nicole Simpson?
A question that might have been answered, but for mishandling of Nicole's body, according to forensics expert Dr. Henry Lee. In an interview in the December FHM, he tells Jon Chase "That case should have been solved easily because of three bloody fingerprints on Nicole's arm. If they were O.J.'s fingerprints, then the case would've been solved. There were pictures of them, but they never collected the fingerprints. Nicole's body was sent to the morgue and they were washed off."
Straight Anthropologist's Eye On The Gay Guy
"Homosexual men tend to be interested in dress and appearance not because they are, as a group, effeminate, but simply because they face the same problem that heterosexual women face: they wish to be sexually attractive to males, and males assess sexual attractiveness primarily on the basis of physical attractiveness."
--Donald Symons, author, Evolution of Human Sexuality
Moral Sex
I've subscribed to Playboy, on and off, for years, and I just bought a copy, along with one each of Maxim and FHM. (Not to worry -- I only look at the pictures.) Luckily for Wal-Mart shoppers, who might be tempted to do the same, those very prim and proper Christians running Wal-Mart are very firm about keeping "objectionable" music and magazines out of their stores. How weird that these same Wal-Mart mucky-mucks don't find it the least bit objectionable to screw their workers -- the foreign ones making their clothes (see Tuesday's blog item), and the U.S. workers staffing their stores. Silly me, I must have missed the bit in The Bible about how good it is to gouge people. And just an aside, but I'll bet Larry Flynt pays his people a living wage. I know writing for Penthouse was a gold mine for Cathy Seipp.
LA councilman Eric Garcetti, whom I heard on KABC? yesterday, noted the hidden cost of shopping at a company that doesn't pay its staff a living wage. Maybe you save a few dollars at the register. Ultimately, you (and the rest of us) end up paying the price for those savings -- by picking up the cost of "affordable housing" and emergency room visits for workers who don't make a living wage and can't afford health care. Now, that's obscene.
Seems Academic To Me
Is it really the university's job to "increase spiritual awareness"? Silly me, I went for literature, science, and the arts. The climate in this country is downright frightening.
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
Take this handy-dandy quiz to figure out what to call yourself, politically speaking (I mean, besides "disgusted with just about everybody in politics"). I came up firmly libertarian ("libertarian, small 'l'", that is -- a term which I borrowed from Cathy Seipp, whom, I think, got it from Eugene Volokh -- very useful for differentiating oneself from the wild-eyed, muttering conspiracy theorists who appear to make up much of the Libertarian party).
Sin Is In
Two new books ask, what's so sinful about gluttony, anyway?...which is different from being a gourmand. In the words of Boston Globe reviewer Jim Holt:
St. Thomas Aquinas -- a hefty fellow himself, as it happens -- declared that gluttony had "six daughters": "excessive and unseemly joy" are the first two, followed by "loutishness, uncleanness, talkativeness, and an uncomprehending dullness of mind." Others have claimed that gluttony paves the way to lechery. "When the belly is full to bursting with food and drink, debauchery knocks at the door," wrote the medieval German monk Thomas a Kempis. Now, there may be some validity to the "drink" part of that: After seven Cosmopolitans, people will do just about anything. But does a gargantuan repast really put one in the mood for fornication? More likely it conduces to slumbrous chastity.In Dante's "Inferno," the gluttonous are consigned to an even lower circle of hell than the lecherous because of the sheer animal grossness of their vice. Gluttony may have seemed bestial to the Carthaginian church father Tertullian, who complained of the mass belching that soured the air at great Roman feasts. But there is more to this alleged vice than just stuffing one's face. Pope Gregory the Great identified five aspects to gluttony; eating too soon, too delicately, too expensively, too greedily, and too much. And no one has accused Americans of eating "too delicately." In fact, it may be our very lack of delicacy at the table that gets us into trouble on the scale.
Is there a link between quality of national cuisine and fatness?
The European countries that have the nicest food -- Italy, Switzerland, and France -- also have the lowest adult obesity rates, below 10 percent according to the latest figures from the International Obesity Task Force. The countries that have, shall we say, less nice food -- Greece, Finland, and Britain -- have the highest adult obesity rates, in excess of 20 percent.Even in the age of celebrity chefs and the Food Network, there is still far more fuss over food in France than there is here in the United States. What American expatriate in Paris, for example, has not had to endure an excruciating dinner-party debate over the best wine to pair with white asparagus? (Viognier, of course.)
If an "inordinate interest in food" is the mark of gluttony, as Prose herself says, then aren't the French as much a culture of gluttons as we are? They would, of course, prefer the nicer term gourmand, which has come to mean someone who loves food and eats for pleasure (even though la gourmandise remains the word for the deadly sin). The most discerning and cerebral of gourmands might claim the honorific of gastronome -- like the great Brillat-Savarin, who famously said that the discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new star.
The French play up the epicurean side of gluttony, eating daintily and expensively; we play up the bestial side, eating excessively and greedily. In the eyes of Pope Gregory the Great, as he looks down upon us from heaven, we are all sinners.
Actually, eating a tiny, seared piece of foie gras with blackberry sauce shows respect for existence in a way that eating a huge, tasteless plate of over-processed crap never can. Americans are fat because we (and I use this "we" loosely, having reformed my American eating habits after many trips to France)...we eat huge portions of tasteless, hormone and chemical-laced crap, and don't move off our fat, gluttonous asses after this Divine-sized "pleasure." (The ridiculous, scientifically stupid "fat-free" movement also has much to do with the ever-expanding American ass -- since those who eat food without fat never feel full.) The French literally love to eat -- which makes them food lovers -- as compared to gluttonous Americans, who are engaged in a lifelong gastronomic gang-bang.
(via Arts & Letters Daily)
Screw 'Em To The Wal-Mart
An excellent LA Times exposÈ by Nancy Cleeland, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall about the low wages and poor working conditions of foreign sewers contracted by Wal-Mart:
When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. demands a lower price for the shirts and shorts it sells by the millions, the consequences are felt in a remote Chinese industrial town, at a port in Bangladesh and here in Honduras, under the corrugated metal roof of the Cosmos clothing factory.Isabel Reyes, who has worked at the plant for 11 years, pushes fabric through her sewing machine 10 hours a day, struggling to meet the latest quota scrawled on a blackboard.
She now sews sleeves onto shirts at the rate of 1,200 garments a day. That's two shirts a minute, one sleeve every 15 seconds.
"There is always an acceleration," said Reyes, 37, who can't lift a cooking pot or hold her infant daughter without the anti-inflammatory pills she gulps down every few hours. "The goals are always increasing, but the pay stays the same."
Reyes, who earns the equivalent of $35 a week, says her bosses blame the long hours and low wages on big U.S. companies and their demands for ever-cheaper merchandise. Wal-Mart, the biggest company of them all, is the Cosmos factory's main customer.
Reyes is skeptical. Why, she asked, would a company in the richest country in the world care about a few pennies on a pair of shorts?
The answer: Wal-Mart built its empire on bargains.
Right. And how much is saving five bucks worth to you?
The Fallen Arches
If you've been dreaming of having feet that resemble toilet seat covers, now's your chance. For those who favor roadkill chic, here's the "raccoon" version. Despite the strong statements (such as "run for a blindfold!") made by the above furry-uglies, the winner for the "world's ugliest shoe" (according to Google popularity) remains...and no surprises here: G'wan...guess!
Hint: In the absence of a latex condom, they are a highly effective form of birth control. Wear them, and nobody in their right mind who's not blind will want to have sex with you.
Come Again?
Dozens of women have a rare condition that makes them have hundreds of orgasms every day, says an Anova story:
Office manager Jean said: "I looked (the doctor) in the face and said: "How would you like to walk around on the verge of an orgasm every second?"
Beats gallstones, I'd imagine.
Fetus First
Myra Rafkind of Planned Parenthood asks a good question:
What does a zygote/embryo have that many viable human beings do not have?ÝÝAnswer: The endorsement of the far-right.
Rafkind lays out the far-rightís idiocy, presenting a rational approach these staunch defenders of masses of cells are sure to ignore. Of course, these are the people most likely to be far, far away (probably ìreformingî welfare) once the mass of cells becomes the fully-functioning child of a working-poor single mom who canít afford childcare, or much else.
"The Matt Drudge Of Porn"
Cathy Seipp on our pal Luke Ford, most recently seen on Sixty Minutes ("most recently," as in, about five hours ago), giving Steve Kroft a tour through a section of Pornville (aka Chatsworth, California).
Questions For Retarded Terrorists
Perhaps my French unsucks a lot more than I think, or perhaps it was just a random error, but somebody at Charles de Gaulle airport gave me the wrong form to fill out to get back into the United States. I didnít realize it until Iíd answered a few questions:
A. Do you have a communicable disease; physical or mental disorder; or are you a drug abuser or addict?
Um, yeah. I should probably be chained to a bed somewhere, what's a little TB among friends?, and I hope it doesnít take long at the border because I gotta hurry up and score some crack.
B. Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence to confinement was five years or more; or been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?
Immoral? What do you mean, exactly, by "immoral"? If the goat is consenting, do you really have a problem with it?
C. Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?
Hmmm...um, what Mohammed Atta said.
D. Are you seeking to work in the United States...?
Am I seeking to work in the United States? Duh. Youíd like me to suck off the public trough? What kind of dumb question is that?
Since it's beyond obvious to anyone with an IQ over 22 that you have to answer "no" to all these questions, or have various and sundry border patrol types poking various and sundry cold steel implements up various and sundry orifices, I got a little worried. It finally occurred to me that I might have the wrong form. I stopped a flight attendant and asked. Indeed I did. It was the I-94W form for ìnonimmigrant visitorsî without visas (except foreign journalists, who get strip-searched and packed off home, and have their lipliner confiscated as a national security threat, if they accidentally come in with the I-94W instead of a special media visa). As I filled out the correct form, given to me by the flight attendant, I reflected on all the undesirables the Justice Department must be tripping up with the I-94W; most notably, the autistic wing of Al Qaeda.
Saccharine Actually
The revised title I'm proposing for Love Actually, a sickening series of weak vignettes tarted up as a movie, which I had the cruel misfortune to see last night, because I looked for a Luke Thompson or Gregory Weinkauf review in the New Times papers, and came up short.
To be fair, the movie isn't totally devoid of value. Should you happen to ingest a small amount of Janitor In a Drum, and be fresh out of Syrup of Ipecac, Love Actually would make a fantastic emetic.
What Did He Know And When Did He Know It?
Bush, 9-11, and the Presidential Daily Briefing.
Separated At Middle Age
A very funny side-by-side comparison by Gawker.
Just Say "Huh?" To Drugs
Colin Powell and Ambien.
(via Radosh)
Parent Your Own Damn Brats
"These parents, they think I'm a role model for their kids, that their kids look at me as some sort of idol. But it's the parents' job to makes sure their kids don't turn out that shallow. That's not my responsibility. I'm not responsible for your kid." --Britney Spears, in Entertainment Weekly
Par Avion
Coming back from Paris today. More blog items on Friday.
The Recline Of Western Civilization
...in ever-increasingly cramped coach seats, prompted this man to invent "The Knee Defender."
Larry Miller Refiller
A Cathy Seipp blog item reminded me of this very smart and funny article by actor/writer/comedian Larry Miller in The Weekly Standard. Unfortunately, it's as timely as ever.
Wild Kingdom
For those of you who know I'm in Paris this week, no, this entry has nothing to do with the subway and French armpits.
I have a two-and-a-half-pound Yorkshire Terrier named Lucy, after Lucille Ball and Lucy from Peanuts. She has a wardrobe that rivals mine, and is most honestly described as "beautiful but dumb." Look to the left on the blog (and perhaps scroll a bit) and you'll see her picture. When I'm away, my neighbors take care of her. She stays at my house, but they come over or bring her to their place and play with her.
Well, they e-mailed me the other day to tell me they were very concerned about her. Sometimes, when I'm away, she doesn't eat much -- they have to throw her balls of kibble and turn it into a game. Well, they wrote that she was emptying her dish -- food and water -- twice a day! (She normally goes through one dish of food in three days.) They also said she was pooping by the refrigerator, not in her litter box. (Come on...you think I would have a dog who wouldn't be toilet-trained?) I think of her as an improvement on having a child: She doesn't need private school, never asks to borrow the car, and is unlikely to set up a meth lab in my basement.
Anyway, the unladylike bathroom habits are not at all like her. I was terribly worried -- but I thought she could wait to go to the vet for a few days, since she's scared enough at the vet if I'm with her. I called the vet from France to make her an appointment for Friday morning, when I'm back. (I figured I might also have to check her into the doggie version of Jennie Craig.)
Well...it turns out it wasn't Lucy sucking down all that food. Turns out she had a little party for two. Yes, she had a friend over: a big ugly possum who's probably been living in my house for a week! My assistant Heather came over to edit my stuff on Monday and got surprised by him in the bathroom. She slammed the doors to the bathroom and called animal control. Apparently, the animal control guy just waltzed in, picked le critter up by the tail and waltzed out. Heather was quite calm about the whole thing. I was not.
Finally, it does underscore what an utter failure Lucy is as a dog. A wild animal is squatting in my house -- and she was probably totally clueless. (A good thing, since it probably kept her from becoming dinner.)
Angles In America
Frank Rich compares two different angles on the Reagan years -- the mini-series CBS shelved and the filmed version of Tony Kushnerís play, Angels In America:
Because "Angels" will reach a far larger audience through TV than any play does in the theater, it will instantly cast the curious argument over CBS's "Reagans" in another light. If there was one consistent theme to 90 percent of the outrage over a mini-series that no one outside CBS (including me) has seen, it was focused on a single line about AIDS attributed to Ronald Reagan: "They that live in sin shall die in sin." The screenwriter of "The Reagans" admitted to The New York Times that she had no source for the line and it was cut. Yet even after it was cut, those on the attack kept harping on it more than any other element in the unseen film. Why?It was the syndrome of protesting too much, methinks. There's no evidence to suggest that Reagan was a bigot, but even so, he did say things similar to that jettisoned sentence. Edmund Morris, who wrote "Dutch," the Reagan biography both solicited and authorized by the former president's inner circle, quoted him as saying, "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague" because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments." But what's more important in any event is what Reagan didn't say ó and didn't do ó when AIDS happened on his watch.
As Lou Cannon, the most respected of Reagan biographers, wrote in his authoritative "President Reagan," "Reagan's response to this epidemic was halting and ineffective." The president mentioned to his own doctor that he thought AIDS was as transitory as measles. Mr. Cannon's bald accounting of the net results of this inactivity speaks for itself: "There were only 199 reported cases of AIDS in 1981. Eight years later more than 55,000 persons had died from this new scourge, exceeding the total of U.S. combat deaths in either the Vietnam War or the Korean War."
Hmmm, they that live by The Bible instead of science -- like the guy we have in The White House now, who got off the sauce (and perhaps more) by finding religion and now makes policy according to WWFD (What Would Fundamentalists Do?)...will needlessly kill a whole lot of people in Africa and other places by supporting the withdrawing of funding from clinics that perform abortion -- and AIDs prevention.
The Man In One Black Patent-Leather High-Heeled Shoe
Question: What's wrong with a man in a black patent-leather miniskirt and matching black patent-leather fuck-me pumps?
Answer: Nothing whatsoever -- providing he's got the legs for it.
Trans-gender girl Deirdre McCloskey, a Reason contributing editor who teaches at the U of Illinois, Chicago, shines a spotlight on the meteorite crater-sized holes in the apparently intellectually crooked author Michael Bailey's "science" about gay men (oops, forgot to study lesbians) and transsexuals -- which says that gay men really want to be girls, or girlish, and men who want a sex change are just gay or crazy or sex-mad, not people with a genuine gender-identity issue:
Bailey writes charmingly and has the knack of suggesting that heís reporting from the front lines of Science, inserting a lot of personal "guesses" and "hunches" into the prose as though he were an actual Scientist with a lifetime of serious consideration of alternative hypotheses and tons of data behind him. You can imagine Bailey with a pipe and a lab coat advertising laxatives on TV. But in his case we have what the physicist Richard Feynman used to call "cargo-cult science": The book has the style of an informal talk with a Serious Scientist who is getting down and personal with you about his science. The stuff looks a little like science, the way the "airports" the highlanders of New Guinea constructed out of coconuts and palm fronds to get the American cargo planes to come back after the war looked a little like airports. Itís even in the title of his book, that Science. But sadly, itís scientific nonsense.Harsh words? Judge for yourself. Throughout the book, Bailey makes a big deal of his academic position. (His bosses at Northwestern seem to agree: they recently promoted this alleged violator of their own human-subjects procedures to chairman of the Psychology Department.) All the way through the book he calls his findings "science." His main evidence for the femininity of gay men (aside from that study of how queers say the two s sounds in science) is a Scientific study of personal ads in some gay newspapers. His other piece of "research" -- and the only research this Researcher did on gender crossers -- consisted of, first, long talks with one gender crosser in Chicago (named "Cher" in the book; I know her well; sheís one of the people who have filed legal complaints against Bailey) and, second, short talks with a half dozen young Hispanic gender-crossing prostitutes whom Cher brought to Bailey under the impression he wanted to help them. Itís a sample of convenience of, say, size seven. (One was Cher herself, the only case of alleged "autogynephilia" Bailey has studied; the rest were the other type, of the two types allowed.)
The sample was collected by what looks like a violation of federal law. Northwesternís Office for Human Research is investigating. No one was offered a human subjects form to sign, no one was told she was under study, and no one was told her story would appear in a book. The subjects were enticed by the offer of a document crucial for their gender change. (Gender surgeons require a letter from a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist saying that the patient is in her right mind, if not his right body.) Their lives were used in the book with brutal disregard for their feelings to titillate readers. Bailey even "studies" one of their weddings, to which he was invited as a guest.
Thatís the legal problem Bailey and his university now face, but the scientific problem they face is worse. The entire sample, representing the worldís hundreds of thousands of gender crossers, just happens to live in Chicago. Six-sevenths of the sample are first-generation Hispanic Americans, most working as prostitutes and professional drag queens. (Bailey dropped from his sample women who were not in sex trades.) Thatís not a very good sample. If most of Baileyís data come from young Hispanic sex workers in Chicago, then he has not put his theory (namely, that gender crossing is about sex, sex, sex, because gender crossers are men, men, men) in much jeopardy.
Randi Ettner, a clinical psychologist who has written the best book on gender problems, Gender Loving Care, and who has seen hundreds of every conceivable kind, has an office in Evanston, a few blocks from Baileyís. Not interested, says Bailey in effect: Leave me alone with my two-category VFW theory and my half-dozen pretty girls off the streets of Boysí Town. He didnít want to talk with gender crossers like, say, me -- exhibiting no "autogynephilia," working not as a prostitute but as a professor of economics (now, now: no jokes).
McCloskey asks the essential question at the end: Why do the transgendered need to be ìcuredî if theyíre happy?
Why shouldnít a free person be able to express her notions of gender? (Gender expression -- your right as a woman to wear pants, say -- is the next frontier of this evolving revolution: see www.gpac.org, the Web site for GenderPAC, devoted to freedom whatever your chromosomes or genitals.) And if changing oneís genitals is considered a violation of Godís law, why arenít nose jobs or cancer cures also abominations?Ask the libertarian question: Why not ? No fair just declaring without sensible argument that itís contrary to natural law. Or saying peevishly, "I canít understand such a desire." Neither can I understand why some people let themselves pay first-year depreciation on automobiles or why other people write books in which they exploit for gain little boys interested in dolls and Hispanic women off the street desperate for a letter to allow gender surgery. But Iím not proposing to put these two disorders into the next DSM to prevent people from engaging in such behavior.
Forget The War On Drugs
How about a war on stupidity? How much money does it take to jail one consenting adult pot-head? And why are we not putting that money into showing middle school students how dumb it is to smoke?
Hosting With The Mosting
"Invite people who disagree with each other ó even to the point of wanting to throttle each other. In other words, if you want to throw a good party, be sure you invite at least one major asshole."
--the advice I give in the LA Weekly on how to throw a great party (or a happening fist-fight)
But Arenít Gay Churches A Threat To Straight Churches?
According to an article on WorldNetDaily, before the ink on that ìMarriage Protection Actî George Bush endorsed was even dry, he jotted off a little fan letter to a queer church -- one that performs over 6,000 same-sex weddings a year:
The president wrote to the founding congregation in Los Angeles of the Metropolitan Community Churches, led by leading homosexual activist Rev. Troy D. Perry, on the occasion of its 35th anniversary."By encouraging the celebration of faith and sharing of God's love and boundless mercy, churches like yours put hope in people's hearts and a sense of purpose in their lives," Bush said in his Oct. 14 missive. "This milestone provides an opportunity to reflect on your years of service and to rejoice in God's faithfulness to your congregation."
Just prior to sending that letter, however, Bush issued a proclamation endorsing an effort to defend the traditional family in response to an increasingly powerful homosexual lobby intent on establishing a right to same-sex "marriage." (quotation marks, theirs)
In other words, if youíre gay, George Bush totally supports seeing you on your knees; just donít get any funny ideas about sauntering down the aisle.
One Good Rollback Deserves Another
And another, and another, in the slow-but-steady laying of the groundwork to repeal Roe vs. Wade. First to go is the so-called "partial-birth" abortion procedure. What's next on the list? Salon's Michelle Goldberg reports on the continuing effort by the religious nuts running our country to take away women's rights:
Right now, several bills that would either curtail abortion or confer personhood on fetuses are wending their way through Congress. Laci and Conner's Law, also known as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, will punish attacks on a fetus separately from attacks on a pregnant woman. (It's named after Laci Peterson, the murdered California woman, and her unborn son, Conner. Whenever possible, Republicans title their legislation after high-profile victims.) When a pregnant woman is attacked, "the pro-life movement says there is a second victim, therefore there should be two victims recognized as being murdered," says Jim Backlin, director of legislative affairs for the Christian Coalition.Laci and Conner's Law has 133 co-sponsors in the House and is expected to be signed into law next year. "There's momentum behind it," says Backlin. "Realistically, it will probably pass in the spring of next year, definitely before the election."
According to the text of the bill, it is meant "to protect unborn children from assault and murder" and applies at "any stage of development." Though it makes an explicit exception for abortion, within the rhetoric of a law that defines killing a fetus as murder the exception seems absurd -- and that's precisely the point.
Meanwhile, even as attorneys for pro-choice organizations were in court to block the Partial Birth Abortion Ban on Nov. 5, Reps. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., introduced a bill to suspend the FDA's approval of RU-486, the abortion pill. They're calling the bill "Holly's law," after Holly Patterson, an 18-year-old who died in September, a week after taking the pill, making her the second American woman to die from RU-486 complications. In comparison, according to the Food and Drug Administration, as of 1998, 130 Americans died after taking Viagra.
If Roe is overturned, abortion won't be banned everywhere, Goldberg writes. The individual states will decide:
Middle-class women on the coast will continue to have access to reproductive care, much as they did before Roe. Women in conservative states who can afford to travel will also be able to get abortions. Other women with unwanted pregnancies will be out of luck.
Not if they've got a closet full of coat hangers!
An Ace Bandage For The Sprained Soul
I havenít heard the latest album by Rickie Lee Jones, but I highly recommend the David Was-produced Rickie Lee Jones CD, Pop Pop. For best results, listen to it in a first-class seat to Paris. If that suggestion seems a bit unreasonable, bite the bullet and fly coach. $408 on Priceline RT from LA. Iím going on Wednesday. Why do I go to Paris all the time? Because itís there.
Check out BiddingForTravel.com, the place to find out how low you can go when bidding for Priceline seats. And, if you do go to Paris, try the snails in broth at La Potee Des Halles, a trËs charmant restaurant in the first arrondisement, about three and a half steps from the Etienne Marcel metro stop. Tell the chef -- a roly-poly apple-cheeked gay guy -- that a crazy redhead from Los Angeles sent you (une folle femme avec cheveux russe de Los Angeles m'a envoyÈ), and you might get an extra escagot or two.
No More Donkey Dongs
She's looking for "a nice, firm, enthusiastic, perky 3-5 incher."
Liar's Remorse
Unfortunately, Ann Coulter doesn't have any. But she should. Because, like a Hollywood agent ("Hello," he lied, the old saying goes), she can hardly speak a sentence without projectile-vomiting falsehoods. Here's one of many, many, many, reported in a column by David Corn:
She claimed that the movie Patton was made by Holly-libs with "hatred in their hearts" for George S. Patton, the brilliant but erratic World War II general. These filmmakers "intended to make Patton look terrible," she maintained, but because they produced an accurate work, the movie ended up making "Patton look great and people loved him."Was Patton a left-wing Hollywood conspiracy that backfired? Host Chris Matthews immediately challenged her in his subtle fashion: "You are dead wrong." He pushed her for proof, and she replied, "That is why George C. Scott turned down his Academy Award for playing Patton." Coulter was suggesting that Scott had spurned his Oscar because the filmmakers plan to destroy Patton's image by portraying the general "as negatively as possible" had gone awry.
Matthews wasn't buying. "Who told you that, who told you that?" he shouted. Her Oracle-like response: "It is well known." She added, "Why did you think he turned down the award, Chris? You never looked that up? It never occurred to you?"
Matthews retorted, "Because he said he wasn't going to a meat parade, because he didn't believe in award ceremonies." And Matthews was right. Following the show, I took Coulter's advice and did look it up. I found a 1999 obituary of Scott that noted he had stunned Hollywood in 1971 for being the first person ever to refuse an Academy Award. He had explained his action by slamming such awards as "demeaning" and he had dismissed the Oscar ceremony as a "two-hour meat parade." (Matthews receives extra points for getting this quote correct.) Coulter had twisted this well-documented episode into yet more proof that liberals--especially those in Hollywood--are conspiratorial traitors.
Coulter's as despicable as the left-wing's favorite liar, Michael Moore -- just easier on the eyes.
Todayís Deep Thought
Itís from Krishnamurtiís Freedom From The Known, one of my much-highlighted favorite books.
Throughout the world, so-called holy men have maintained that to look at a woman is something totally wrong: they say you cannot come near to God if you indulge in sex, therefor they push it aside although they are eaten up with it. But by denying sexuality, they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for they deny the whole beauty of the earth. They have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydrated human beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman.
Supreme NaivetÈ
New Hampshire's Supreme Court needs to get out more. No...on second thought, make that stay in more -- so they can snuggle up at home with a pile of girls-on-girls porn videos -- because a majority of the justices there just voted that gay sex isn't sex. They didn't say what, exactly they think it is. Nevertheless, their misconceptions worked out quite nicely for the married woman who had an affair with another woman, but still (it sounds like) will get to keep a nice chunk of her husband's stuff.
(via David Rensin who just sold another book!)
At Least Industry Can Breathe Easy
One of President Bush's first acts," reports a New York Times editorial, "Was to convene a task force to produce a national energy strategy":
Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the group met secretly with hundreds of witnesses. It heard from few environmentalists, but many lobbyists and executives from industries whose fortunes would be affected by any new policies. Despite lawsuits, the White House has refused to divulge the names of those privileged to get Mr. Cheney's ear. The results, however, have been plain as day: policies that broadly favor industry ó including big campaign contributors ó at the expense of the environment and public health.That unfortunate bias was demonstrated anew this week when the Environmental Protection Agency decided to drop investigations into more than 140 power plants, refineries and other industrial sites suspected of violating the Clean Air Act. The winner is industry; the loser, the public.
How is the administration going to spin the fallout from this one? Liberal bias...in favor of...breathing?
Where The Boys Are
Taking away rights from the girls.
Disgraceful Welfare Leaches
No, not single mothers squandering the monthly welfare check in a one big Blue-Light Special shopping spree. These welfare leaches are rich cotton farmers whose government subsidies exceed the market value of their crop by 30 percent. Jacob Sullum writes in Reason that "...the 'cotton competitiveness program' has cost taxpayers $.$1.7 billion during the last eight years. The payments have included $107 million to the Allenberg Cotton Co. of Cordova, Tennessee; $102 million to Dunavent Enterprises of Fresno, California, and Memphis, Tennessee; and $87 million to Cargill Cotton of Cordova, Tennessee":
Speaking of foreign competition, the cotton subsidies are shameful not only because U.S. farmers should have to play by the rules of the market but because this welfare program for the well-to-do has a ruinous impact on poor farmers in other countries who do not enjoy such largess. By artificially boosting the cotton supply, subsidies depress world prices, driving farmers in countries such as Mali, Benin, and Burkina Faso out of business. Oxfam estimates that U.S. subsidies cost cotton-growing African countries $300 million a year.For American cotton farmers (whose average net worth is about $800,000) the subsidies may be the difference between growing cotton and growing something else, or between farming and pursuing a different line of work, assuming they can't compete without the government's support. For African farmers who earn something like $800 a year, the subsidies can be the difference between eating and starving.
Given this reality, the anger of African leaders is perfectly understandable. Referring to U.S. and European subsidies, Mali's finance minister told the BBC: "The money that those countries put into agricultural subsidies is five times what they give as development assistance. And we've always said to those rich countries, 'You're hypocrites. You tell us to play [by] the rules of the open market at the same time as you subsidize your farmers.'"
Additionally, If we now require poor people in the US to do community service work in exchange for their HUD housing, maybe we should be providing workfare, not welfare, for the rich. Yeah. Since cotton barons are getting all these handouts, shouldn't we get them out there next to all the poor people, picking up highway trash and cleaning toilets?
Ellen Goodman Cares About Your Breasts
Why is it okay to get your big, honking hook nose de-hooked, but wrong, wrong, wrong to get your small breasts upgraded to big ones? Because men might like you better if you get bigger boobs? Scandalous!
According to condescending femi-nannies like Goodman, and the misguided activist daddy she quotes in her column, if you want to surgically enlarge your boobs, you can only be a misguided idiot whoís been brainwashed by the media. The daddy, a guy named Joe Kelly, ìsuggested that this ëchoiceí might be a nonchoice, the result of the ëunchecked cultural pressureí of the ëtoxic beauty myth.íî (Not to worry! She and the daddy and several legions of mustachio-ed feminists will happily lend you their small minds so you can do what they think is right for you.)
Contrary to what feminist parrots like Goodman and company would have you believe, beauty is not some arbitrary standard issued by monthly mandate from Vogue editor Anna Wintourís office. Anthropologist Donald Symons said it best: ìBeauty is in the adaptations of the beholder.î We have very, very, very old psychology. Millions of years old. The features men adapted (are hard-wired) to find beautiful in women -- an hourglass figure, clear skin, youth, symmetrical features -- all indicate that a woman is likely to be a fertile and healthy childbearing candidate. Just because a particular modern woman might not be on the mommy track, or a particular guy isnít seeking a wife, doesnít mean she or he is any less affected by their inheirited evolutionary psychology.
Please, somebody get the message to the antique-thinkers who call themselves feminists. Even now that itís become scientifically clear that silicone breast implants donít harm womenís health, feminists, ever infantilizing women, remain shrilly dead-set against letting women make their own decisions whenever those decisions won't fall into lock-step with the feminist party line. Sure, there may be complications from boob jobs, just like there can be from nose jobs, or any kind of surgery, elective or non. Those risks should, obviously, be built into the cost of getting implants, and not be borne by the rest of us (such as yours truly, whose porn star-sized hooters were hereditary).
In reality (a place far, far away from the womenís studies department), any woman who tries to improve her looks to make herself more attractive to men -- is a woman who understands male biology! Men are visually oriented. Men like beautiful women. No, beauty isnít everything, but trust me, men at parties are not standing across the room muttering to each other, ìLook at the cranium on the chick in the red!î
In other words, if you want a man, you'll want to look like what men like. Is this anti-feminist? No, just smart! Maybe you won't want to go so far as to go under the knife (I certainly wonít). And sure, other stuff is essential, too -- (duh!) -- such as good character, values, and ethics, and being with somebody you love and find fun. But, by making yourself as beautiful as possible, by making whatever effort seems reasonable to you, youíll increase the pool of men you have to choose from, thus increasing your chances of landing a really good one.
The same (only a little different) goes for men. Since women are wired to go for men of status and power (and care less about men's looks, except for symmetry and tallness), guys on the unemployment line arenít likely to be catching the eye of chicks cruising by in their Ferraris. Lifeís tough, huh? Unfortunately for men, getting a huge wallet surgically implanted in one buttock probably won't do the trick.
The "Gallop" Poll
Galloping after cabs (assuming you eventually catch them) is a great way to take the pulse of most cities, according to a bit of classic urban wisdom. Baghdad cab customer Stephen Vincent agrees. According to Vincent's own recent gallop poll, a majority of the hacks in Baghdad are rather thrilled about America's recent and continuing activities in their country. He suspects the scattered nay-sayers he encounters are Sunni Moslems: "Long favored by Saddam, Sunnis stand the most to lose in a democratic Iraq, where power will almost certainly shift to the more numerous Shias."
Charity Begins In The Checkout Line
Who pays for those deep discounts you get at Wal-Mart? You do! In keeping costs down by hiring janitorial companies that hire illegals, Wal-Mart passes on the schooling and emergency health care costs of those illegals to the public. Steven Greenhouse writes in The New York Times:
One night...a co-worker sliced his hand open on a floor-scraping blade and was rushed to a hospital in Red Bank. He had problems paying the $800 bill because his job did not provide health insurance and his employer shunned the workers' compensation system. The hospital swallowed the cost.
And thereís more:
"When you don't pay taxes, don't pay Social Security and don't pay workers' comp, you have a 40 percent cost advantage," said Lilia Garcia, executive director of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a group financed by California cleaning contractors to police fly-by-night competitors. "It makes it hard for companies that follow the rules."Robert, a Czech who runs a Web site to attract Eastern Europeans to janitorial work, said using foreign cleaners was good for Wal-Mart and for American consumers. "No American wants to do this job," he said. "If they hired Americans, it would take 10 of them to do the work done by five Czechs. This helps Wal-Mart keep its prices low."
Right. Buy now...pay later!
Mock The Vote
Andrew Gumbel exposes the gaping flaws in computer voting machines:
For the past few months, an increasingly loud chorus of leading computer scientists has warned about the dangers of touchscreen voting machines. Mounting evidence from elections across the country, including Californiaís recall election, indicates that the machines are prone to software bugs and breakdowns, extremely easy to tamper with, and impossible to verify because of strict trade-secrecy agreements by which the equipment is sold to county elections officials.The first all-touchscreen election in the country, in Georgia last November, was marked by huge, unexplained last-minute swings that resulted in the surprise elections of Republican governor Sonny Perdue and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss. The results raised significant concerns about the reliability of the machines, made by Diebold Election Systems, particularly since they had been ìpatchedî at the last minute following a major software breakdown. The patches, which amounted to a complete reprogramming, were never tested. Then, in January, the source code apparently used in Georgia suddenly popped up on an open-access Internet site ñ a big security no-no that was followed by the discovery of hundreds of security flaws by computer security experts who conducted two separate studies of the code for Johns Hopkins University and for the state of Maryland.
Worse, there were concerns that the companies making the machines were themselves politically engaged. Diebold CEO Walden OíDell told fellow Republicans (he is a major fundraiser for Bush 2004) he was ìcommitted to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.î
Touchscreens made by the three leading U.S. manufacturers (used by about 10 percent of California voters on October 7) are not currently configured to print out receipts of individual voting choices, so there is no separate paper trail to follow in case of controversy, and no possibility of conducting recounts. What is in the machine is in the machine ñ whether it is right, wrong, incorrectly processed, or subject to malicious interference.
Critics also have concerns about other uses of computers, especially in the tabulation of votes, irrespective of how they were actually cast. Again, it is a matter of properly functioning software and data security. That might not sound like such a stretch in this digital age, but the record of recent elections around the country suggests there are plenty of anomalies arising from computer tabulation that we need to worry about. Last Novemberís mid-terms produced one election in Texas where the computers declared a landslide victory to a candidate subsequently found, after a hand recount, to have lost. In another Texas county, three candidates for local office all won exactly 18,181 votes ñ a bizarre coincidence that was never investigated further. And in Alabama, the close race for governor turned on the last-minute, highly suspect cancellation of 7,000 votes in a rural county, where the discrepancy was blamed on a computer-tabulation error.
This isn't to say, with any certainty, that your vote won't count. It still might -- maybe even two or three times!
UPDATE: Here's Andrew's original exhaustive Independent/UK piece on the topic, republished on Common Dreams.
The Leftovers
Hereís your very own bloggie bag of some bits that got left out of my column for tomorrow's deadline -- cell phone manners on dates:
Some people donít realize that itís bad manners to cut out for a cell phone conversation in the middle of a date; perhaps because mommyís telecommunications etiquette instructions stopped at 1. Donít beat the Jones boy over the head with the receiver, and 2. Answer the family phone, ìSmith residence, Jennifer speaking,î not ìWanna hear me fart!?îIf your date comes to understand the error of her ways, you might want to give her a second chance. Then again, how hard is it to figure out, all by yourself, how to be kind and respectful to the person youíre out with? Pay attention to your date and let the calls go to voicemail. Hmm...maybe the unexamined life is a life not worth living with.
Have You Looked At Your Vagina Lately?
Good morning, repressed America! Jeanie Lerche Davis reports on WebMD that women are a mite shy about what many refer to as their "down there." According to a survey of women's attitudes about female health topics:
ï73% said that the vagina is a shocking topic.
ïLess than half have ever performed a self-exam of their vagina.
ïOne in four has not looked at her vagina in the past year.
ï47% said that discussions about the vagina should be held in private.
ïOnly one in 10 women said that there is no shame in having discussions about vaginas.
ïOnly 14% said that women are as comfortable talking about their vaginas as men are about penis-related issues.
Lerche Davis quotes Margaret Thompson, M.D., who calls the vagina "a woman's friend" (mine's always been very good to me), and says "women need to become more comfortable with their bodies, especially talking about sexual health."
Come on, girls! There's no time like the present to get a little cozier with your cooter. Your health may depend on it. And besides, your vagina is just another organ like your lungs or your liver. Or would those be your breathing bags and your toxin filtration system?
Cleopatra Was No Liz Taylor
The real-life Cleopatra looked like a "'before' plastic surgery profile," says Betsy Prioleau, author of Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love. According to Prioleau, it takes a truly brainy girl to cut through the groupies -- and it doesn't much matter what the brainy girl looks like if she's got the gray goods to seduce and keep a man's mind on her:
"The way Cleopatra got Julius Caesar is totally amazing," she continues. "Here is a guy -- you can imagine Mick Jagger -- he was surrounded by groupies. All the women wanted this guy. Men went into battle singing this little ditty about all the women he'd had. Not only that, he was bisexual -- he had all the beautiful boys too. He had everybody. He was a jaded ladies' man. Here's a guy maybe 56 when Cleopatra saw him. When she rolled out of that rug, she was about 18 and not beautiful at all. Plutarch is clear about that. She rolled out and barraged Caesar with such a stream of charming conversation -- a 'charm offensive' through language. She addressed him in perfect Latin. Then perfect Greek. She told him jokes. Stories. Displayed her magnificent erudition. She was a brilliant women. She wrote a tract on weights and measurements, of all things. She was happiest in a library. It was said she had a 'voluptuous' love of learning. Caesar had never encountered a woman like this. He was so charmed he made her his mistress that night."
Nobody's Founding Fundamentalists
Contrary to the contentions of the religious right, the founding fathers didn't see America as a Christian country. They were surprisingly modern and rational in their thinking, as this page of quotes from Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and George Washington shows:
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. --Thomas JeffersonI do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. --Thomas Paine
Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. --George Washington, letter to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792
Wise guys, those founding fathers.
(via Metafilter)
