Satan, 1; Alkon, 0
Okay, so the question revolved around penis size, but I was trying to help two people keep their 35-year marriage together.
Of course, I got a few complaints from readers on this one (of the "not fit for a family newspaper" variety). Here's one of them that came by mail:
Satan and Amy, sittin' in a tree...
Dying For Nothing At 14
The belief, sans evidence, in god, and all the trimmings, is often anything but harmless. The is one of those cases. A 14-year-old boy, a Jehovah's witness refuses a blood transfusion and dies; his death sentence being his indoctrination in primitive, irrational beliefs:
Earlier Wednesday, Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer had denied a motion by the state to force the boy to have a blood transfusion. The judge said the eighth-grader knew “he’s basically giving himself a death sentence.”“I don’t believe Dennis’ decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands the consequences of his decision,” the judge said during the hearing. “I don’t think Dennis is trying to commit suicide. This isn’t something Dennis just came upon, and he believes with the transfusion he would be unclean and unworthy.”
Doctors had given Dennis a 70 percent chance of surviving the next five years with the transfusions and other treatment, the judge added.
Doctors diagnosed the boy’s leukemia in early November. They began chemotherapy at Children’s Hospital, but stopped a week ago because his blood count was too low, the Skagit Valley Herald reported. The boy refused the transfusion on religious grounds.
However, his birth parents, Lindberg and Rachel Wherry, who do not have custody and flew from Boise, Idaho, to be at the hearing, believed their son should have had the transfusion and suggested he had been unduly influenced by his aunt, who is also a Jehovah’s Witness.
The aunt has declined to talk about the case.
I bet she has. Hmm, wonder why the parents didn't have custody, don't you?
Cancer surgeon/researcher blogger Orac writes:
In this case, the court in essence allowed a 14-year-old boy to commit suicide for his religion, about which representatives of his religion could only say:After the judge's ruling, Jim Nelson, chairman of the Jehovah's Witnesses' Seattle Hospital Liaison Committee, said Lindberg was a "very responsible young man who knows his mind and was very clear. He's a very brave young man, and he's standing firm for what he believes in." Jehovah's Witnesses believe the Bible prohibits transfusions of blood, in part because blood is sacred, Nelson said.And it doesn't mean the faith is "antimedicine," he added. "Jehovah's Witnesses do not have a death wish. We're not arguing a right to die."
What a crock. That's exactly what they are arguing, and their defense of how Nelson's religion indoctrinated Dennis to the point where he threw away his life away for no good reason sickens me. They're arguing in essence to allow minors to commit suicide unnecessarily for their religion. I've discussed the specific Biblical passages that Jehovah's Witnesses use to justify their irrational refusal of life-saving transfusions. For adults, I support that right as part and parcel of freedom of religion. I may consider refusing transfusions based on a tortured interpretation of a few lines of scripture to be the height of irrationality, but adults have the right to be irrational in making their health care choices. When it comes to children, I'm much less tolerant.
This is like the Abraham Cherrix case, that both Orac and I blogged on. As I wrote about the tough question in that case -- tough, because I believe in self-determination: "How far should self-determination go for a teen? Should you be sentenced to death because you're stupid, or just not rigorous enough a thinker (how many kids are at 16?) to understand that you're probably going to die if you drink some herbal tonic instead of doing chemo for your cancer?"
thanks, Gretchen!
Whistle While You (Don't) Wirkkala
We've got a live one -- a lady (calls herself "Leslie," anyway) coming to the defense of the poor, underprivileged Dana Point family: you know, the Wirkkalas, in their ocean-view, $535,000 home, with the dad who earns $70K, and the mom who'd really rather home-school their THREE children than get a job. Poor dears somehow can't make their healthcare costs. Seems the rest of us should pick them up for them. My attitude, quoted in the link above:
Why should I pay for them? Lose the ocean view, send the kids to public school, have Mommy get a job, and get Kaiser, mooches.By the way, where's my taxpayer-funded $535,000-plus home? I mean, if I don't have to pay for health insurance because other people are paying my way, there are a lot of luxuries I can afford!
I'm with this commenter on the LAT story:
10. They have a choice. Every kid does not need thier own bedroom. I shared a bedroom with my sister and 1 bathroom with 3 other siblings. Live in a less expensive palce, other state or even another city. The father work for a company that provides insurance. He is being very selfish wanting his own business that does not provide for the family. He says he wants time with his family, but he works 6 days a week. The mother put your kids in public school and get a job during the day. You want that lifestyle with 3-kids, its your responsibility to PLAN for it! It's not right to ask me or anyone else to feel sorry for them. Submitted by: Leza 11:24 AM PST, November 25, 2007Yeah, you know what? You can keep Universal Health Care. What I really want is Universal Beachfront Homes. Pony up, taxpayers! Ocean view, here I come!
Now, some lady who calls herself "Leslie" comes to the poor dears' defense in the comments of the entry above:
not a single one of you people know the entire story about the wirkkalas, they are awesome parents, it makes me sick to read all the mean horrible things that are being written about this family. I dont remember reading one time in the article that they want a hand out, i think the main reason for the article is to show that even families of middle class are priced out of health care.
My comment in response to hers:
Nobody told these people to have children they couldn't afford to support. The mother could work and send the kids to public school. They could live in a rental or in a cheaper house. Saying they are "awesome parents" is ridiculous -- you give no rebuttals to anything posted about them or included in the article.Furthermore, I e-mailed them and got no response. You know them? Ask them to respond.
The questions: How dare they extrude three children and live in a fancy community and think they have the luxury of home-schooling their kids and then expect the rest of us to pay their health insurance? How dare they burden their kids the way they did, telling them to not fall off their skateboards because there's no money for broken arms. How...disgusting.
I have always paid my way, including my healthcare costs. And sorry to mention it again for all you regular blog readers, but at one point, after I was forced to leave an NYC apartment share, I couldn't afford a bed. (I slept in a sleeping bag on an old door propped up on two milk crates.) But, even then, I paid my health insurance, because my health care is MY responsibility, nobody else's.
Come on, tell us "the entire story."
"Priced out of health care"? A family has three children it can't afford to take care of because they live in a fancy schmancy ocean-view house and would rather home-school their kids? Vile.
Hellzapoppin'
A little song and dance from one of my favorite movies. More about the wildly wacky movie here.
Hellzapoppin' a bit more (the band starts playing at the head of the clip, otherwise same song and dance):
There are a couple of DVDs of the movie on sale at Amazon.
Atheist Sunday School
People feel good about being in groups, being part of something. One problem with atheism is that it really isn't a joining thing; it's simply having evidence-based beliefs; i.e., I see no evidence there's a god, therefore I don't believe in god. At the same time, I'm a fiscal conservative/social libertarian. Other atheists may be far left Democrats. We're really not tied together and don't have any formal system, and for many, that's a bit of a problem.
Also, it is possible to be ethical without believing in all the unproven god hooha. As a blog reader just e-mailed me:
Making a point to set aside time on a regular basis to teach children to be responsible little heathens is a good thing.
Well, now there's Sunday school for atheist children -- a step in the right direction in teaching them ethics, but a bit from the piece did kinda make me hurl (the anthem about "I'm Unique and Unrepeatable." Jeninne Lee-St. John writes in Time:
...Some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something for their children. "When you have kids," says Julie Willey, a design engineer, "you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on." So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It's important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it's O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.
I'm reminded of the woman I met at an Atheists' Alliance conference I was asked to. In talking about the problem of getting people to think rationally, she said that on college campuses, "We don't have pizza socials like the Christians." Really? Well, why the hell not?
Low Self-Esteem And Conspiracy Theories
Again and again, that's how Islam plays out. If their religion and their god is so great, how come tiny little men have to defend him against imagined insults by well-meaning schoolteachers? Yes, it's the story of the criminally blasphemous schoolteacher, who let the kids name a stuffed teddy bear Mohammed. Here's the Al Jazeera version about the Sudanese response to schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons -- now up for a jail term, a fine, and lashes:
Blasphemy alleged
Gibbons has been in custody for three days since parents complained that she had allowed pupils at the private Unity High school to name the bear Mohammed. She allowed boys and girls as young as six to name the bear Mohammed several months ago. Officials at the Christian-run school say the bear was named after a vote by the pupils. For devout Muslims, any physical depiction of Mohammed is considered blasphemous.Prison and lashes
Gibbons faces up to six months in jail, 40 lashes and a fine if she is found guilty of "insulting or degrading any religion, its rites, beliefs and sacred items or humiliating its believers", as stipulated in Sudan's penal code.
Some Islamic leaders in Sudan said on Wednesday that the law should be applied against Gibbons.
North Sudan's legal system is based on Sharia, which punishes blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad.
"What has happened was not haphazard or carried out of ignorance, but rather a calculated action and another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam," the Sudanese Assembly of the Ulemas said in a statement.
...Treated humanely
Zamrawi said Gibbons was being treated humanely.
"She is in a room and she has all the necessary things. She has seen her lawyer and is brought food," he said.
"She has basic rights. For us, she is innocent until her guilt has been proved ... Her relatives can visit her."
He said the authorities were working to ensure that Gibbon would not be exposed to angry mobs should she be released.
Backward barbarians.
UPDATE: She's been sentenced -- 15 days in jail and deportation for "inciting religious hatred." Yeah, right. You think the KKK is going to start burning teddy bears instead of crosses anytime soon?
Dimwits. Here's a lady who probably cares immensely for the kids who were under her tutelage, and probably brought to them some sense of a more reasonable, rational, and civilized world than the one they're living in, and they drop-kick her out of the country?
I guess when somebody challenges a culture's backwardness, no matter how inadvertently, they've just got to go.
Should It Be Illegal To Hit Your Kid?
Well, it's illegal to hit your neighbor, the bus driver, your husband, your wife, or the guy who takes your seat at the coffee shop, isn't it? I don't think it's a way to raise rational, civilized human beings -- and yes, I was spanked as a child. I can't find the research I looked up a long time ago on spanking, but I believe they found it detrimental to kids. Wait -- here's an article about a "comprehensive study" by psychologist Elizabeth Gershoff -- plus the counter argument:
After analyzing six decades of expert research on corporal punishment, psychologist Elizabeth Gershoff, found links between spanking and 10 negative behaviors or experiences in children, including aggression, anti-social behavior and mental health problems.However, she found the one positive result of spanking was that of instant obedience.
... Robert Larzelere, a psychology professor at the Nebraska Medical Center and one of the three psychologists critiquing the findings, noted that while Gershoff found links between spanking and negative behaviors, she did not assert categorically that spanking caused those behaviors.
Larzelere, in an interview, said he remains convinced that mild, non-abusive spanking can he effective particularly in dealing with defiant 2- to 6-year-olds.
Gershoff cautioned that her findings do not imply that all children who are spanked turn out to be aggressive or delinquent. But she contended that corporal punishment on its own does not teach children right from wrong and may not deter them from misbehaving when their parents are absent.
My neighbors' children are not spanked, and they are very well-behaved -- because that's what's expected of them, and they are talked to and given a time-out or other punishments when they misbehave. I have always thought, both philosophically, and from experience, that spanking children breeds anger and resentment and teaches that bullying solves problems. Now, Massachusetts is contemplating making it illegal. Via ABC.com:
In all 50 states, parents are legally allowed to spank their children. But in 29 states it's illegal for a teacher to practice corporal punishment, including spanking.A Massachusetts nurse is hoping to change that and make the state the first in the nation to ban corporal punishment at home.
"I think it's ironic that domestic violence applies to everyone except the most vulnerable — children," said Kathleen Wolf, who wrote the bill.
Massachusetts lawmakers will consider the bill today.
The very idea of the bill has stirred huge controversy, because many parents say the state is trying to take away what's been a tried and true method of child-rearing. As many a mom has said, "Spare the rod, spoil the child."
"We don't spank her, but I think that ought to be a parent's choice," one Massachusetts father said of the bill.
And one mother echoed the sentiments of many, saying, "I don't want the government telling me how to raise my children."
Nineteen countries have banned corporal punishment, and some child-rearing experts believe one day the United States will do so as well.
"I don't know if it's an idea whose time has come. But it's possibly one whose time is coming," said Lisa Berlin, a professor at the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy.
You know, I'm usually on the side of smaller government and discipline for kids. In fact, I'm still on the side of discipline for kids, but don't quote me "Spare the rod, spoil the child." It's a metaphor. Please discipline your kid. But, no, I don't think you should, by law, be able to smack your kid around.
And frankly, I think parents who spank their kids probably aren't doing it so much out of a desire to discipline wisely as out of anger -- flying off the handle and smacking the kid one. Again, if you can't do it to somebody your own size -- because you'll either get jail time or the guy'll deck you...maybe you shouldn't be allowed to do it to some three-foot kid.
thanks, Anne!
It Isn't The Size Of A Man's Penis
It's the fact that he's acting like a really big pinhead. Just posted another Advice Goddess column. Here's the genius' letter:
I'm not the biggest horse in the barn, but my wife of 35 years has always said I'm perfect, she's satisfied with me, and my size doesn't matter. Recently, a commercial for "male enhancement" pills came on and I said, "Maybe I should try some." She said, "Bigger is nice, but I like being with you." This really hurt as I viewed it as a comparison to men she'd dated before me. I'm so angry because I'd never compare her to anyone and feel I've been lied to for 35 years. I didn't speak to her for two days, and when she asked why, I told her. First, she didn't remember saying anything, then said she didn't compare me, and apologized. I'm still hurt and have no desire to be intimate. I need advice though, because I don't want this to come between us.
My reply starts like this:
So, in a perfect world, the first time you had sex, your wife would've announced, "As man-tools go, yours is one of those little eyeglass screwdrivers." Instead, she pronounced you "perfect" -- a cruel lie. Worse yet, she claims she's satisfied with you, and says your size doesn't matter. Actually, it seems pretty clear it does, except it isn't your small penis that's the problem, but the fact that you're acting like a really big pinhead.Your wife tried to be sweet, reassuring you, "Bigger is nice, but I like being with you," and you're acting like she's erected an altar in her head to The Big One, The Really Big One, and Whoa, Don't Hurt Me With That Thing. How dare she compare you to any other man?! Uh...are you for real? Sorry, to bust up your fairytale idea of human nature, but people assess what works for them, in part, by comparison: Bigger, smaller, better, good enough, hasn't behaved this idiotically in years.
Hey, Doofus! With all those Big Biffys out there, she married you. So, if you're not exactly big, apparently you're big enough. And, a little something else to consider: While most of the sex problems I get are from couples in flannel pajamas and separate beds at the 3.5-year mark, you and your wife are still doing it at year 35. Or, rather, were. Good move, sailor! ...
The rest, plus comments, is here.
Health Insurance Embarrassment
It's yet another story like that of the Baltimore guy with the woodcarving hobby instead of a job who didn't understand that his right to a fun career went out the window the day he didn't wear a condom. Susan Brink writes in the LA Times of a Dana Point family that considers themselves "priced out of the private health insurance market." Well, boofrigging hoo, let's hear a little more about them:
AMERICAN dream scene: a gorgeous Southern California day. A car-free cul-de-sac on a hilltop overlooking a canyon. A boy and his father, shooting hoops.But stark reality intruded for a brief moment last summer when 40-year-old Wes Wirkkala tripped, stumbled and almost fell. "Dad, what are you doing? Be careful!" his son Nicholas shouted. "We don't have health insurance."
At 8, Nicholas knows his family cannot risk any visits to the emergency room. He's been told a hundred times, as he dashes out the door with his skateboard, to be careful, to fall on his butt if he has to fall at all because there's no money for broken arms.
Wes Wirkkala, father of three, heard his son's words in front of their Dana Point home and felt shot through with shame. He didn't want this particular family deficiency broadcast through the neighborhood. "It was embarrassing," Wes says. "It kind of makes me feel that I'm not providing everything I should be."
The Wirkkalas, with an income that for five years has hovered around $70,000 and a home they bought in 2004 for $535,000, are a family many would call middle class. But they have been priced out of the private health insurance market, and their circumstances illustrate the core of a political battle over how much a family can earn for their children to qualify for a federal-state partnership called the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. If the outcome of Washington politics goes one way, the children could remain uninsured. If it goes the other way, the children might get health insurance.
Sophia and Wes Wirkkala decided, despite his embarrassment, that they should tell their story of how difficult it can be for a family of modest, middle-class means to maintain health insurance. Sophia is not ashamed, just fearful for her children and angry at a system that has pushed health insurance premiums out of reach.
She lies awake at night, worrying about the health of her three perfectly healthy children. "We're in the boat we're in because I'm a stay-at-home mom," she says. "We chose to have children, and we planned that I would stay home with them and home-school the kids. We want to raise kids that are going to grow up and be great adult citizens. We question that decision all the time. You look at your children sleeping, and you say, 'I'm not providing healthcare for these kids.' "
The Wirkkalas are, by most definitions, doing all right. They live in a four-bedroom house in Dana Point that was starting to sag toward the canyon depths when they bought it three years ago. Because Wes knows what to do with a power saw and a nail gun, the house has been shored up and improved with beamed ceilings, antiques incorporated into bathroom vanities, and a granite-countered modern kitchen. An independent contractor, he says: "This home is my business card."
From the patio that fronts the canyon, one can catch a glimpse of the Pacific. "You look at our home," Sophia says, "and you think, 'They probably have everything.' "
Yeah, everything but ethics and brains. You know what's "embarrassing"? It's a couple that earns $70,000 a year but can't find $450 a month to put into health insurance for their family:
When the monthly premium reached $450 last year, the couple decided that the payments were unsustainable....If Congress fails to act, or even if funding is held to present levels, or increased to administration-recommended levels, the California HealthCare Foundation estimates that up to 600,000 children in California could lose their health insurance beginning in 2008. Because of healthcare inflation, California and many other states would have to begin closing off new enrollments and disenrolling some insured children, according to the foundation's projections. "The funding wouldn't allow California to maintain its present caseload, and keep up with inflation," Finocchio says.
With Washington at a stalemate, the program, which expired in September, is being extended at current funding levels, month by month, with the latest program expiration deadline set at Dec. 14. Until politicians sort it out, a California family of five, under the SCHIP program called Healthy Families, can still earn up to $60,325.
The Wirkkalas make too much money.
But if the Democrats' plan passes, and the governor's and state's legislative proposals are enacted, benefits could extend to children in California households earning up to 300% of poverty levels, or $72,390 for a family of five.
The Wirkkalas would squeak in under the wire.
Why should I pay for them? Lose the ocean view, send the kids to public school, have Mommy get a job, and get Kaiser, mooches.
By the way, where's my taxpayer-funded $535,000-plus home? I mean, if I don't have to pay for health insurance because other people are paying my way, there are a lot of luxuries I can afford!
I'm with this commenter on the LAT story:
10. They have a choice. Every kid does not need thier own bedroom. I shared a bedroom with my sister and 1 bathroom with 3 other siblings. Live in a less expensive palce, other state or even another city. The father work for a company that provides insurance. He is being very selfish wanting his own business that does not provide for the family. He says he wants time with his family, but he works 6 days a week. The mother put your kids in public school and get a job during the day. You want that lifestyle with 3-kids, its your responsibility to PLAN for it! It's not right to ask me or anyone else to feel sorry for them. Submitted by: Leza 11:24 AM PST, November 25, 2007
Yeah, you know what? You can keep Universal Health Care. What I really want is Universal Beachfront Homes. Pony up, taxpayers! Ocean view, here I come!
thanks, Kate
Separated At Birth
A moving story of how LA Times reporter Scott Glover learned he was adopted and went off to Ireland in search of his biological mother:
As the Aer Lingus jet reached the coast of Ireland, it was low enough that I could make out the waves crashing onto the beach below. The land was a lush green. It was beautiful.It was quiet on the plane. Evelyn was asleep, with Nick stretched out on her lap in the row across from me. Most of the other passengers were sleeping, too. I pressed my face against the window to take in the view, and I felt tears rolling down my cheeks.
Is this where I was supposed to grow up? I wondered. Is this where I'm supposed to be from?
I once helped a close friend find her birth parents. It's a big thing, knowing who and where you're from.
Urban Canyon
Guys: Find Out If The Kid Really Has Your Eyes
Genetic testing comes to the drugstore. There are, of course, concerns that people won't use it right, but if a guy gets results that his DNA and the baby's don't match, he can always send out for a second opinion. Andrew Pollack writes for The New York Times that DNA tests can now be bought at Rite-Aid:
A company called Sorenson Genomics has started selling a paternity test kit through Rite Aid stores in California, Oregon and Washington. It appears to be the first time a DNA test is being sold through a major pharmacy chain.The move into the pharmacy is another in the spread of genetic testing directly to consumers. Many genetic tests, for health and diet advice, ancestry and paternity, are already available directly to consumers through the Internet.
But Sorenson hopes the corner drugstore will appeal to different customers, including those who do not want to wait three or five days for a kit to arrive in the mail after ordering it over the Internet.
“There is a curiosity and a need to know that can be provided discreetly, conveniently and affordably at retail,” said Douglas R. Fogg, chief operating officer of Sorenson Genomics. The company’s slogan: “For questions only DNA can answer.”
The test, sold under the brand name Identigene, has a suggested list price of $29.99, though a reporter purchased one at a Rite Aid in Santa Monica, Calif., for $19.99. There is an additional laboratory fee of $119 to have the samples analyzed.
The spread of genetic testing directly to consumers has alarmed some doctors and genetic counselors, who said some tests were not valid or that consumers might not be able to understand the results without counseling.
Yes, it's got to be an emotional moment when a man finds out he really isn't into 20-some years of child support.
Saying "I Dough"
Why can't gay people marry? Well, the religious nutters won't have it, but it's also about the money. Straight people can get Social Security from their loved one's earnings (and other entitlements). Open marriage up all to gay people and they'd have access to the entitlements, too.
Of course, I'm against marriage privileging, but if we're going to privilege heteros...well, it's like the magnet Lena gave me:
They should suffer like the rest of us.
Oh yeah, and don't fall back on the "Marriage is about children" argument. If that's the argument, then only couples with children, gay or straight, should get benefits we're now doling out to only married couples. (Not that I'm big on redistributed wealth programs, which I think cause helplessness and irresponsibility in many of us.)
In The New York Times, historian Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage
WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.
...In the mid-20th century, governments began to get out of the business of deciding which couples were “fit” to marry. Courts invalidated laws against interracial marriage, struck down other barriers and even extended marriage rights to prisoners.
But governments began relying on marriage licenses for a new purpose: as a way of distributing resources to dependents. The Social Security Act provided survivors’ benefits with proof of marriage. Employers used marital status to determine whether they would provide health insurance or pension benefits to employees’ dependents. Courts and hospitals required a marriage license before granting couples the privilege of inheriting from each other or receiving medical information.
In the 1950s, using the marriage license as a shorthand way to distribute benefits and legal privileges made some sense because almost all adults were married. Cohabitation and single parenthood by choice were very rare.
Today, however, possession of a marriage license tells us little about people’s interpersonal responsibilities. Half of all Americans aged 25 to 29 are unmarried, and many of them already have incurred obligations as partners, parents or both. Almost 40 percent of America’s children are born to unmarried parents. Meanwhile, many legally married people are in remarriages where their obligations are spread among several households.
Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical. Society has already recognized this when it comes to children, who can no longer be denied inheritance rights, parental support or legal standing because their parents are not married.
As Nancy Polikoff, an American University law professor, argues, the marriage license no longer draws reasonable dividing lines regarding which adult obligations and rights merit state protection. A woman married to a man for just nine months gets Social Security survivor’s benefits when he dies. But a woman living for 19 years with a man to whom she isn’t married is left without government support, even if her presence helped him hold down a full-time job and pay Social Security taxes. A newly married wife or husband can take leave from work to care for a spouse, or sue for a partner’s wrongful death. But unmarried couples typically cannot, no matter how long they have pooled their resources and how faithfully they have kept their commitments.
Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple can keep — who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists. But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet their care-giving commitments.
Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.
Of course, heterosexuality is no guarantee The Children will be well-taken care of, as this Breitbart.tv video of "Guard Finds Parents Passed Out Drunk In Running Car With Scared Toddler" shows.
On the other hand, last week, I met two of the more impressively raised kids I've encountered in recent memory. Mom's a lesbian. So is the kids' other mom. Shouldn't they and their boys get at least the same entitlements we're doling out to the drunken, married heteros?
Is Your Doctor A Drug Company Slut?
Or was he or she brainwashed by one?
Don't be too quick to trust your doctor or your psychiatrist. When they prescribe you a drug you should read up on its detriments and benefits instead of just blindly taking it. Of course, I write that knowing that telling people to go read about it for themselves isn't entirely realistic, as numbers in studies can be fudged so only the top stats hounds/epidemiologists can make out the real deal. And, news reporting on the results of studies is often lazy and flawed.
Still, if you're smart and good at researching, you can sometimes make out a cost/benefit analysis if you do enough reading on the web -- or at least enough of a sense that something may be wrong to get a second or third opinion. (And then, you'd better just hope that Doctor Two and Doctor Three not only know what they're doing but have restrained themselves from throwing their integrity out with a bunch of medical waste.)
Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist-turned-drug company whore, now reformed, writes in New York Times Magazine of doctors who sell out to drug companies -- sell out the patients, that is, and relatively cheap (for anyone who happens to place a high value on patient health and personal integrity, anyway).
Carlat apparently got $500-$750 speaking fees, for example, "for one-hour 'Lunch and Learn' talks at local doctors’ offices, or $750" if he had to drive an hour. (I need a shower.) And here's his description of some other psychiatric slut's talk at a drug company junket to Manhattan for a bunch of his colleagues:
The next morning, the conference began. There were a hundred or so other psychiatrists from different parts of the U.S. I recognized a couple of the attendees, including an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a while. I’d heard that he moved to another state and was making a bundle of money, but nobody seemed to know exactly how.I joined him at his table and asked him what he had been up to. He said he had a busy private practice and had given a lot of talks for Warner-Lambert, a company that had since been acquired by Pfizer. His talks were on Neurontin, a drug that was approved for epilepsy but that my friend had found helpful for bipolar disorder in his practice. (In 2004, Warner-Lambert pleaded guilty to illegally marketing Neurontin for unapproved uses. It is illegal for companies to pay doctors to promote so-called off-label uses.)
I knew about Neurontin and had prescribed it occasionally for bipolar disorder in my practice, though I had never found it very helpful. A recent study found that it worked no better than a placebo for this condition. I asked him if he really thought Neurontin worked for bipolar, and he said that he felt it was “great for some patients” and that he used it “all the time.” Given my clinical experiences with the drug, I wondered whether his positive opinion had been influenced by the money he was paid to give talks.
Here's an excerpt of Carlat's own experience hawking Effexor -- at the point when he finally started feeling guilty:
I realized that in my canned talks, I was blithely minimizing the hypertension risks, conveniently overlooking the fact that hypertension is a dangerous condition and not one to be trifled with. Why, I began to wonder, would anyone prescribe an antidepressant that could cause hypertension when there were many other alternatives? And why wasn’t I asking this obvious question out loud during my talks?I felt rattled. That psychiatrist’s frown stayed with me — a mixture of skepticism and contempt. I wondered if he saw me for what I feared I had become — a drug rep with an M.D. I began to think that the money was affecting my critical judgement. I was willing to dance around the truth in order to make the drug reps happy. Receiving $750 checks for chatting with some doctors during a lunch break was such easy money that it left me giddy. Like an addiction, it was very hard to give up.
...During my talks, I found myself playing both sides of the issue, making sure to mention that withdrawal symptoms could be severe but assuring doctors that they could “usually” be avoided. Was I lying? Not really, since there were no solid published data, and indeed some patients had little problem coming off Effexor. But was I tweaking and pruning the truth in order to stay positive about the product? Definitely. And how did I rationalize this? I convinced myself that I had told “most” of the truth and that the potential negative consequences of this small truth “gap” were too trivial to worry about.
As the months went on, I developed more and more reservations about recommending that Effexor be used as a “first line” drug before trying the S.S.R.I.’s. Not only were the newer comparative data less impressive, but the studies were short-term, lasting only 6 to 12 weeks. It seemed entirely possible that if the clinical trials had been longer — say, six months — S.S.R.I.’s would have caught up with Effexor. Effexor was turning out to be an antidepressant that might have a very slight effectiveness advantage over S.S.R.I.’s but that caused high blood pressure and had prolonged withdrawal symptoms.
At my next Lunch and Learn, I mentioned toward the end of my presentation that data in support of Effexor were mainly short-term, and that there was a possibility that S.S.R.I.’s were just as effective. I felt reckless, but I left the office with a restored sense of integrity.
Several days later, I was visited by the same district manager who first offered me the speaking job. Pleasant as always, he said: “My reps told me that you weren’t as enthusiastic about our product at your last talk. I told them that even Dr. Carlat can’t hit a home run every time. Have you been sick?”
At that moment, I decided my career as an industry-sponsored speaker was over. The manager’s message couldn’t be clearer: I was being paid to enthusiastically endorse their drug. Once I stopped doing that, I was of little value to them, no matter how much “medical education” I provided.
Carlat is currently an assistant clinical prof of psychiatry at Tufts and the publisher of "a medical-education newsletter for psychiatrists that is not financed by the pharmaceutical industry and that tries to critically assess drug research and marketing claims."
No, Dr. Carlat, you aren't forgiven. I wonder how many patients, thanks to your "Lunch and Learns," are taking or have taken Effexor against their best interests.
She Was Asking For It
The latest story from the Saudis on why the woman was raped. Via CNN/AP:
Under fire for its treatment of a rape victim, the Saudi Arabian government on Saturday said that the woman had an "illegitimate relationship" with a man who was not her husband, and that both "exposed themselves to this heinous crime."...Under Saudi law, women are subject to numerous restrictions, including a strict dress code, a prohibition against driving and a requirement that they get a man's permission to travel or have surgery.
In other words, if you're a married woman in the barbaric and backward land of Saudi Arabia, you could very well die of breast cancer if you married to a guy who's kind of a bastard and you haven't done such a good job with the dishes.
Quick, somebody remind me why anyone should be "tolerant" of Islam or its Sharia law or any of the trimmings?
And no, as of today, still not a peep about this on the site of the National Organization of Women:
Of course, they do have a lot of real issues on their agenda.
How Terrorism Is Like The Girl Scouts
Andrea Elliott chronicles the path of a bunch of Moroccan-born jihadists in The New York Times in "Where Boys Grow Up to Be Jihadis":
Increasingly, terrorism analysts have focused on the importance of social milieu. Some stress that terrorists are not simply loners, overcome by a militant cause. They are more likely to radicalize together with others who share the same passions and afflictions and daily routines. As the story of Jamaa Mezuak suggests, the turn to violence is seldom made alone. Terrorists don’t simply die for a cause, Scott Atran, an anthropologist who studies terrorism, told me. “They die for each other.”...Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former C.I.A. case officer, holds that people prone to terrorism share a sequence of experiences, which he outlines in his forthcoming book, “Leaderless Jihad.” They feel a sense of moral outrage that is interpreted in a specific way (the war in Iraq, for example, is interpreted as a war on Islam); that outrage resonates with the person’s own experiences (Muslims in Germany or Britain who feel marginalized might identify with the suffering of Iraqis); and finally, that outrage is channeled into action.
This process, Sageman told me, is rarely a solitary one. He and a growing number of law-enforcement officials and analysts argue that group dynamics play a key role in radicalization. While ideology may inspire terrorists, they say, it takes intimate social forces to push people to action. Friends embolden one another to act in ways they might not on their own. This might be called the peer-pressure theory of terrorism. Experts in the field refer to it as the BOG, for bunch of guys (or GOG, for group of guys). “Terrorism is really a collective decision, not an individual one,” said Sageman, who coined the theory. “It’s about kinship and friendship.”
Kinship can also work to opposite effect. It is certainly part of the reason why Dayday has not left Tetouan. Most of the men with whom he prays and works admire Bilal’s courage in going to Iraq but prefer a different kind of jihad, or struggle, for themselves. They want to improve their lives. “I’m working to support my family,” one of Dayday’s closest friends, a merchant in his 30s, told me. “If I go, who will support my family?”
Jihadi groups, like most social circles, tend to rely on frequent, sustained interaction, Sageman told me. People are drawn together by a common activity, like soccer, or by a common set of circumstances, like prison. Often they meet in the temporary spaces born of immigration. Tetouan, in its own way, is a diaspora setting, with families in constant migatory flux. In groups predisposed to violence, there is often a shared grievance around which members first rally. In the case of urban American gangs, the grievance could be police brutality. For the Hamburg cell behind 9/11, it was the war in Chechnya.
Law-enforcement agencies have begun changing their approach to counterterrorism in tandem with their heightened awareness of the role that groups play. Investigators in Europe, Canada and the United States are now conducting surveillance of suspects for longer periods of time, in part to observe the full breadth of their social networks.
Yet in Jamaa Mezuak, the notion that groups play an important role in radicalizing young Muslims is nothing novel. “It’s the problem of friends,” said Ahmed Asrih, the father of the candy seller who was linked to the Madrid bombings. “If you’re friends with a good person, you’re good. If your friend is a pickpocket, you become a pickpocket.”
I still believe in Satoshi Kanazawa's analysis on why most suicide bombers are Muslim. According to Satoshi, it's because they're a polygamist society, and a few men monopolize the women...leaving a lot of young, horny guys at loose ends. (Read the bit in the NYT about Leila, the girl the guy's pining after at the end of the article, but that he'd have to build a house for atop his parents house -- a financially hopeless endeavor.)
A Girl And Her Birthday
Not mine, that of some upset girl who's written to me. Tell me what you think:
Why do so many grown women find it a dump-worthy offense if their boyfriend or husband forgets their birthday?
Do women think it means a guy doesn't care about them if he forgets? Do you think it means that?
Why do so many guys seem to forget?
Personally, now that I'm not 6, I think of my birthday as a day to apologize to my mother. (I won some pickle company's contest for being the biggest baby born in Detroit the week of March 8, 1964.)
Many other women feel QUITE differently. For example, there's this, apparently from the wife of the blogger behind Life In Austin:
Things to do When Your Husband Forgets Your Birthday10. Pick a fight at 11:30 p.m.
9. Break all his pencils.
8. Let your child loose on his artwork with a bottle of glue and permanent markers.
7. Consider getting cozy with that divorce lawyer you used to work with.
6. Buy yourself expensive jewlery.
5. Use photoshop to black out his face in every family picture.
4. Subscribe him to that service that calls you to remind you of important dates.
3. Call his mom and tell on him.
2. Cry.
1. Use it as emotional blackmail for the rest of his life.
- Mrs. Austin
Help me out. I'm trying to understand.
Nun For Me, Thanks!
One more reason I shudder at the thought of the government providing my health care. By Ryan Singel at Wired:
Sister Glenn Anne McPhee is a busy woman.As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' secretary for education, Sister McPhee oversees Catholic education in the United States, from nursery school through post-graduate. Her job includes working with the Department of Education, speaking frequently at conferences and scrutinizing religious textbooks to clear them with the teachings of the church.
For nine months in 2003 and 2004, Sister McPhee also took on the task of clearing her name from the government's no-fly list, an endeavor that proved fruitless until she called on a higher power, the White House.
... Sister McPhee's chronicle of frustration began in mid-October 2003, after she was stopped at Baltimore Washington International airport on her way to Providence, Rhode Island.
Unable to check in using the airline's kiosks, McPhee handed her driver's license and reservation to an airline employee, who keyed her name into the computer system and then disappeared with her license into an internal door.
When he returned an hour later, he was accompanied by two police officers.
The officers flanked the 62-year-old Dominican nun, one standing with his hand on his gun, the other using a cell phone to run a security check.
Three hours later, having missed two planes, Sister McPhee was cleared to enter the security line, where she was wanded from head to toe with a magnometer.
"This was the beginning of nine months of hell," McPhee said.
Before flying back to Washington, D.C., McPhee called a family connection who works at an airline and who had access to the watch lists provided by the government to the airlines.
Sister McPhee was being stopped because the list said that an Afghani man was using the last name McPhee as an alias. The list had no first name for him, and the intensive checks would continue until she cleared her name with the ombudsman at the Transportation Security Administration, according to this family connection.
McPhee, who travels two or three times a month for her work, tried contacting the TSA's call center, but had to continue traveling until her name was cleared.
...McPhee said she called the TSA's complaint line and left numerous messages. Though the recording promised that someone would call her back in 72 hours, the TSA never called her back.
Now, try that with a brain tumor!
If You're Going To Look Like A Total Idiot...
...yammering into the ether...go all the way. Today's Woot, a Bluetooth headset with fake nose, mustache, and glasses:
For Yammering Idiot Chic, I suggest the Jawbone:
It actually has great sound -- and no, I do not yammer on it in public.
The Bible In Lego
The Brick Testament. And don't miss The Brick Testament on The Law (from The Old Testament).
via Little Shiva
The Message Is A Medium -- Or, Sometimes, An Extra-Large
Mugshots with message shirts, from The Smoking Gun. Installment One. More here.
The Flight Attendant Is Not Your Kid's Mom
Or your kid's babysitter. People complain about how expensive airline travel is, and then expect airlines to shepherd unaccompanied kids free. But, even if you're a parent who does pay...is it really okay to gamble that somebody will look after your kid like you would? From CNN.com:
American Airlines, the nation's largest carrier, estimates that it carries more than 200,000 unaccompanied minors each year. While that's a tiny percentage of its 98 million boardings last year, the number is growing, according to spokesman Tim Smith."It's probably more a social phenomenon, with more single-parent families where the parents live in different cities, and more kids going to visit grandparents, and more kids going to summer activities," Smith said.
Julio Garcia, a real estate investor in San Diego, said his two sons were among eight kids from 11 to 16 nearly stranded 1,500 miles from home in August. They were flying home without their parents after spending three weeks at a French-immersion program in Paris.
The parents paid Continental Airlines Inc. extra to have the four youngest children watched, but not for the 15- and 16-year-olds.
Storms caused the plane to be diverted, and when it finally got to Houston, the children had missed their connecting flight to San Diego. Continental found seats on a later flight for the four youngest, but Garcia said an airline agent told him the other four -- three boys and one girl -- were going to a hotel.
"My eldest called and said, 'They just hauled the little kids away and left us standing here,"' Garcia said.
Garcia said he spoke to three different Continental employees, and told a supervisor, "Let me get this clear. It's Continental's policy to leave unattended minors stranded in an airport? How can you leave them in a hotel room? A hundred things can go wrong."
A Continental spokeswoman, Julie King, said because the parents didn't pay the unaccompanied-minor charge for the 15- and 16-year-olds, the airline had no idea they were traveling with the four younger children. The airline doesn't ask ages of other passengers, and it put the two groups of kids on different records, she said.
Who has their kids fly unaccompanied internationally? I believe it's spelled, not P-A-R-E-N-T, but C-H-E-A-P-S-K-A-T-E. Oh, boohoo...would it be expensive and inconvenient for you to fly across the Atlantic to accompany your kids home? Hmmm, what to do, what to do? Here's a suggestion: If your kids aren't old enough to deal with whatever travel surprises may arise...don't send them.
Here's another CNN link to quotes from indignant parents of kids flying alone. My favorite:
"How would they feel if it were their children? Is this the way they'd want Delta to treat their kids?" asked the kids' grandfather, Chris Miller, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, and Delta platinum flier. He readily acknowledges that mistakes were made, but he asks, "Does that mean Delta didn't have any responsibility?"Like a lot of kids from divorced families, Blake and Briana Sims were flying between parents, from Alabama where their dad lives to Alaska, where their stepfather, an Army air traffic controller, is now stationed after returning from Iraq.
The Alabama travel agent who booked their $2,000 flight assured their dad that he didn't need to pay the $75 fee for them to be unaccompanied minors because Blake was 15. That was mistake number one, according to Delta spokesman Anthony Black. Teens must be 18 to accompany a young sibling. Mistake number two: The kids were booked on the last flight of the day -- not permitted for kids flying solo, said Black, to prevent exactly what happened in this case -- youngsters getting stranded en route.
"How would they feel if it were their children? Uh, airlines don't have children. Parents do.
Ten Shopping Survival Tips
For "Black Friday":
1. Stay out of the stores.
2. Stay out of the stores.
3. Stay out of the stores.
4. Stay out of the stores.
5. Stay out of the stores.
6. Stay out of the stores.
7. Stay out of the stores.
8. Stay out of the stores.
9. Stay out of the stores.
10. Stay out of the stores.
I couldn't believe the commercials I saw, advertising that Marshalls and other stores would open at 4am. So...people wake up early and rush to pack stores today to save 5%...only to go into debt at a rate of 21% for all their purchases on their credit cards? Not baaaaa-aaad, if you're the retailers. But, why do so many people still buy into this?
Things To Be Thankful For
What are you thankful for? Being American in 2007, I live what could most simply be described as a charmed life, especially as compared to women of all other times and in all other places. But, getting down to the specifics, I'm especially thankful that I'm not a dog, an infant, or a woman living in Saudi Arabia (all of which get about the same level of rights). Via CNN:
Under law in Saudi Arabia, women are subject to numerous restrictions, including a strict dress code, a prohibition against driving and a requirement that they get a man's permission to travel or have surgery. Women are also not allowed to testify in court unless it is about a private matter that was not observed by a man, and they are not allowed to vote.
Also from the CNN link, about that woman who's getting 200 lashes and six months in prison after being raped -- increased from 90 lashes because she spoke to the media about her case:
The man and woman were attacked after they met in Qatif on the kingdom's Persian Gulf coast, so she could retrieve an old photograph of herself from him, according to al-Lahim. Citing phone records from the police investigation, al-Lahim said the man was trying to blackmail his client. He noted the photo she was trying to retrieve was harmless and did not show his client in any compromising position.
What else is okay under Islam? "Pleasure from a little girl" -- two, three, or four. "Sexual pleasure from an infant."
Sick fucks. A pity they don't blow themselves up first.
(See the note here, next to the video for the references.)
Oh yeah...and did I mention how much fun it is to be gay or lesbian and living in a Muslim society?
That D.C. Handgun Ban Really Seems To Be Working
David Savage writes in the LA Times that the Supreme Court is about to rule on whether the D.C. handgun ban is constitutional:
Although it has been hotly debated for years, the 2nd Amendment has had remarkably little impact in the courts. The ruling in March that struck down the D.C. handgun ban marked the first time a federal court had declared that a gun law violated the 2nd Amendment.In its only ruling dealing directly with the 2nd Amendment, the Supreme Court in 1939 upheld a man's conviction for transporting a sawed-off shotgun across state lines and said these weapons had nothing to do with maintaining an effective state militia.
In their appeal, lawyers for D.C. cite this 1939 decision and argue that the words and history of the amendment show it was concerned with state militias, not individuals with guns. For example, the phrase "bear arms" is a military term, they say. The amendment "does not protect a right to own a gun for purely private uses," they maintain.
Aimed at individuals
But in recent decades, both the National Rifle Assn. and several constitutional scholars have argued the "right to keep and bear arms" was intended from the beginning to protect the rights of individual Americans to defend themselves.
In March, Judge Laurence H. Silberman said it did not make sense to view the 2nd Amendment as a protection for states, not individuals. "The Bill of Rights was almost entirely a declaration of individual rights, and the 2nd Amendment's inclusion there strongly indicates that it, too, was intended to protect personal liberty," he wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
...In agreeing to hear the case, District of Columbia vs. Heller, the justices issued an order saying they would rule on whether the city's handgun ban "violates the 2nd Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes."
...Silberman said the law can certainly forbid certain persons, such as felons, from having guns.
(Amy: Uh, it already bans everyone from having guns, and clearly, the felons are quick to throw down their weapons and salute.)
Moreover, rulings from the 19th century seemed to say "concealed weapons" can be outlawed, he said.
However, it is unreasonable and unconstitutional to forbid citizens from having handguns at home, Silberman concluded.
City officials and their lawyers argue that the D.C. gun regulation is reasonable because it allows residents to have rifles or shotguns. They also argue that the 2nd Amendment only prohibits Congress from passing national restrictions on gun ownership and doesn't apply to local governments.
Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said he hoped the high court would uphold the city's ordinance. "The council enacted the handgun ban more than 30 years ago because it would reduce handgun violence," he said. "It has saved many lives since then and will continue to do so if allowed to remain in force."
Note to Fenty, see map above. Also see how it works when citizens do own guns, from this Reason piece, "Self-Defense vs. Municipal Gun Bans," by Robert VerBruggen.
Oops...sorry...there is one set of people allowed to own handguns in D.C.: the politicians. From a 2004 John R. Lott piece in NRO:
It is one of the benefits of being a politician. While handguns are banned for citizens in Washington, D.C., congressmen are allowed to have a gun for self-protection on the Capitol grounds. Well-known liberal politicians such as Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy have armed bodyguards. The wives of politicians, such as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's wife, Linda, also have bodyguards. Undoubtedly, these politicians and their families have extremely good reasons for this protection, but many other Americans, especially those living with the high crime rates in D.C., also feel the same way....While these politicians have protection both in their homes and as they travel around in public, since September 24, 1976, other D.C. residents have lived under the nation's most restrictive gun laws. Police enforce a citywide handgun ban, and local statutes require residents to keep long guns disassembled, unloaded, and locked up. Yet, with a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 people in 2002, the District easily holds the title of the U.S. murder capital among cities with over 500,000 people. This was not even close to being the case prior to the ban.
Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. During this same time, robberies fell from 1,514 to 1,003 per 100,000 and then rose by over 63 percent, up to 1,635. The five-year trends are not some aberration. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the almost 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976.
These pre-law drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, the District's murder rate fell during the same five-year period from 3.5 to 3 times more than in the neighboring states and rose back up after the ban to 3.8 times more.
...When the ban passed, criminals had less to worry about from armed citizens and burglaries soared by 56 percent in the five years. Disassembled, unloaded, and locked long guns are essentially useless for self-defense. With police response times in the District averaging 8 minutes and 25 seconds, one doesn't always have the luxury of waiting for police to respond.
...We all want to take guns from criminals. The problem is that gun bans appear to have disarmed only law-abiding citizens while leaving criminals free to prey on the populace.
Art Pussies
Ben Hoyle writes in the Times/UK of British artists and their willingness to shock -- except when the subject is anything beyond what would offend Granny:
Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. Grayson Perry, the cross-dressing potter, Turner Prize winner and former Times columnist, said that he had consciously avoided commenting on radical Islam in his otherwise highly provocative body of work because of the threat of reprisals.Perry also believes that many of his fellow visual artists have also ducked the issue, and one leading British gallery director told The Times that few major venues would be prepared to show potentially inflammatory works.
“I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”
Perry’s highly decorated pots can sell for more than £50,000 and often feature sex, violence and childhood motifs. One work depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary. “I’m interested in religion and I’ve made a lot of pieces about it,” he said. “With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.”
Got it. So, the rest of us will speak out against terrorism, and you can speak out against...cheap gallery opening wine?
Donate A Thanksgiving Dinner
Without even getting up from your computer. I just did. $10 for each person you'd like to pay for. And it's tax deductible. Through the Union Station Foundation, via Goldstar Events, run by my friend, Jim McCarthy, who's a standup guy.
I wrote to tell him I just pitched in and he wrote back:
Thank you! We've raised about $20,000 today alone! Jim
And nobody got it sucked out of their paycheck. And it's much more meaningful than when you do.
From Sesame Street To Sesame Dark Alley Filled With Crack Whores
Vintage "Sesame Street" episodes now come with a label that they aren't safe for children: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Huh? (Next thing you know, they'll be burning Beatrix Potter outside the library.)
Virginia Heffernan writes for The New York Times of America's nanny culture gone mad, sending old "Sesame Streets" to the scrap heap with all the monkey bars:
Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.Live-action cows also charge the 1969 screen — cows eating common grass, not grain improved with hormones. Cows are milked by plain old farmers, who use their unsanitary hands and fill one bucket at a time. Elsewhere, two brothers risk concussion while whaling on each other with allergenic feather pillows. Overweight layabouts, lacking touch-screen iPods and headphones, jockey for airtime with their deafening transistor radios. And one of those radios plays a late-’60s news report — something about a “senior American official” and “two billion in credit over the next five years” — that conjures a bleak economic climate, with war debt and stagflation in the offing.
...The old “Sesame Street” is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper “Elmo’s World” started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original “Sesame Street” might hurt your feelings.
I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”
Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.
Snuffleupagus is visible only to Big Bird; since 1985, all the characters can see him, as Big Bird’s old protestations that he was not hallucinating came to seem a little creepy, not to mention somewhat strained. As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”). Originally designed by Jim Henson for use in commercials for General Foods International and Frito-Lay, Cookie Monster was never a righteous figure. His controversial conversion to a more diverse diet wouldn’t come until 2005, and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.
Although I was born in 1964, as an early and voracious reader, I didn't watch "Sesame Street," but my sisters did, and at this moment, I'm 99.99987% positive neither one is whoring out her body for a hit of crack, smack, meth, or cheese.
Likewise, I have somehow managed to make it through much of 1940s cinema without turning into a chain smoker, despite those onscreen inhaling probably the entire annual crop of the state of Kentucky during that decade.
Of course, the way I see it, the real problem these days is the fact that we're raising a nation of wussies with a gift for emotional blackmail: "Daddeeeeeeey, I wannnna poneeeeeeey!"
And no, the correct response to that isn't, "At your service, Pumpkin!" coupled with a mad dash to the computer to look up the nearest Shetland ranch.
How To Get Rid Of Unwanted Houseguests
Without killing them.
Selective Christianity
That would be, for example, condemning homosexuality over a plate of shrimp at Red Lobster. Bill Friskics-Warren writes in The Tennesseean:
Scholars cast doubt on scriptural anti-gay biasThe Bible says that eating shrimp is an abomination and that working on the Sabbath is punishable by death. Not even the most devout Christian, though, thinks twice about ordering the shrimp scampi or checking their office e-mail from home on a Sunday afternoon.
Biblical literalists know that the customs and circumstances that gave rise to such injunctions were rooted in historical and cultural contexts very different from our own.
So why do so many Christians cling to the handful of Scriptures that cast aspersions on sexual relationships between people of the same gender? Why, when scholars tell us that these passages have nothing to do with sexual orientation as we've come to understand it, do some people continue to use Scripture as a club to judge and condemn?"We have a long history of looking to the Bible to confirm our prejudices," said Daniel Karslake, director of For the Bible Tells Me So, a new documentary that explores these questions and looks at how this biblical heavy-handedness is tearing families, congregations and denominations apart.
..."Stronger texts in Scripture were used to justify slavery," said Ellen Armour, professor of theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School. "And in the case of same-sex sex, especially among men — and I think it's worth noting that that seems to be the focal point of the controversy — we're talking about just a few small verses."
Known as the "clobber passages," these six or seven Scriptures are commonly cited as evidence that God condemns homosexuality.
Probably the best known is Genesis 19:1-5, the text in which God sends a pair of angels in the guise of men to verify the cruel custom of gang-raping strangers practiced by males in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The passage is not about homosexuality as such but about the shameful treatment of visitors.
When Jesus rebukes Sodom and Gomorrah in Matthew 10:12-15 and Luke 10:8-12, he condemns them for inhospitality, not homosexuality.
Pronouncements decrying prostitution in the first books of Corinthians and Timothy likewise are not about sexual orientation but about the exploitation of underage males, a practice tantamount to what we now call human trafficking.
These Scriptures address ritual wrong as opposed to something innately immoral, said Dr. Laurence Keene, a Disciples of Christ minister interviewed in Karslake's film. Nowhere, in fact, does the Bible say anything, much less condemn, loving and committed partnerships between same-sex adults.
via ifeminists
"Islam Is Peace"
Robert Spencer deconstructs the propaganda:
Islam is peace? Tell that to this girl, whose Muslim father tearfully begged her to come home...so he and the men of her family could have her raped, beaten, and murdered. The chilling story of yet another "honor killing" in the Times/UK by David James Smith. An excerpt from the story, which opens on the girl's uncle:
Ari Mahmod held his head up when he went to prison. He felt no embarrassment. And why should he? After all, he said, it was not as if he was locked up for something as inconsequential or shameful as theft. He was sure that, back in the real world of suburban Mitcham, south London, among his own people, they would be thanking his family for what he had done, taking pride in the decisive way he had acted.Many people might find it hard to comprehend that any man could take pride – pleasure, even – in the brutal murder of his niece. Banaz Mahmod had been beaten, probably raped, and finally strangled with a bootlace in the living room at home. Her uncle Ari had not been there, but he had planned it, knew exactly what was happening, and had been waiting nearby, waiting for his family reputation to be restored.
As he liked to say, in his culture, reputation was more important than life itself. That was why it had to be done – why his brother’s daughter had to die.
...Mahmod had five girls and one boy. His only son, Bahman, had accumulated a minor criminal history in the 10 years since the family arrived in the UK as asylum seekers. Bahman’s nickname among those who knew him outside the family was Tony Montana, as in the Al Pacino character in the gangster movie Scarface. But despite his misdeeds, Mitcham’s answer to Tony Montana had not apparently brought shame into Mahmod’s home – a modest semidetached house on Morden Road, with gnomes on the flat roof over the front door. No, as his nephew Azad told me, it was the girls who were the problem: people looked at Mahmod’s family and said they produced whores. Mahmod could not control his daughters. Though he had tried. Before coming to the UK he had arranged for his daughters to be circumcised – a shocking, traumatic ritual carried out by the girls’ grandmother, with their heads wedged in her lap while two other female relatives helped pin them down.
Bekhal, Mahmod’s third daughter, who was about 10 at the time, had accidentally found the clitoridectomy kit beforehand – a sharp knife, a bottle of alcohol and some cotton wool – not knowing what it was for until she peered in through the window and saw what was going on, and ran away, only to be dragged back to take her turn. Her grandmother had cataracts and couldn’t see properly. Bekhal recalled a cut nerve and torrents of blood. It was supposed to dampen their sexual pleasure, apparently, but if that was the case, it had not been a complete success. Bekhal, two years older than Banaz, had been the first daughter to make life hard for Mahmod. She was lucky not to be dead too. Now 23, she would remain in police protection for many years – to save her from harm at the hands of her own family.
As she described it, life had not been much fun back in Kurdish Iraq. As a girl – indeed as a woman – all you were supposed to do was cook, clean and shut up, and she had no idea there was anything more on offer until she arrived with the family in the UK in her early teens.
Bekhal and her sisters were not allowed out like “normal” children, even back in Iraq, so did not learn much about the ways of the world except what filtered through from the family. Bekhal heard stories of honour killings – a boy and girl shot in the head in the park after they were caught sneaking out to spend time together; a girl who vanished after being discovered passing notes under the door to a boyfriend.
As Bekhal well knew, Kurdish society was patriarchal and based on the repression of women. The rise of Islam had only made matters worse – nobody was in any doubt that a stricter Islamic faith had contributed to an increase in the incidence of honour killing.
A blurb at the end, and a snippet within the story says that Hindus and Sikhs do this, too. Awful if anyone does it, but the fact remains, this is yet another bit of barbarianism to chalk up to followers of "the religion of peace," that Robert Spencer shows, again and again, is really anything but.
And while the Koran apparently does not specifically sanction "honor killing," with its treatment of women as something between dogs and inanimate property, it certainly contributes to it.
link to Times story via Norm
Best Adult Flavor Of Jelly Bellys
I was mentioning Jelly Bellys in my column (actual flavors include A&W Root Beer, Bubble Gum, Buttered Popcorn, Café Latte, Cantaloupe, Cappuccino, and Caramel Apple), and I started to amuse myself by coming up with "adult" flavors; for example, "Margarita with GHB" and "Very Cherry Astroglide." Your creations would be?
The Business Of Religion
How about if you're free to practice your religion if I'm free not to pay for it? Go ahead, buy yourself a private jet on your congregation's donations. Gold toilet seats? No, heated gold toilet seats...you go, guy! What I object to is the fact that it's all tax deductible. Jenny Jarville writes for the LA Times:
Creflo A. Dollar, senior pastor of World Changers Church International, preaches that God will reward the faithful with material riches. It is a gospel that has won the flamboyant preacher a 25,000-strong congregation -- and a Rolls-Royce, a multimillion-dollar mansion and a private Gulfstream III jet.Now a Senate committee is investigating whether Dollar and leaders of several other mega-churches have illegally used donations to fund opulent lifestyles.
In a move that some contend could violate the separation of church and state, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, has sent letters to six high-profile mega-churches, including Dollar's in College Park, Ga., requesting that they hand over records of salaries, expense accounts, credit cards, cars and airplanes.
"Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey," Grassley said in a telephone interview. "Do these ministers really need Bentleys and Rolls-Royces to spread the Gospel?"
Grassley has some specific concerns. For example, he wants Paula and Randy White, pastors of the Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla., to document any tax-exempt cosmetic surgery. And he wants Joyce Meyer, who runs Joyce Meyer Ministries from Fenton, Mo., to explain the tax-exempt purpose of a $23,000 "commode with marble top."
..."I have a constitutional responsibility to see that taxes are being enforced," Grassley said. "Churches are no different to other nonprofit groups -- they have to abide by tax rules."
Part of the difficulty, observers say, is that tax rules have not caught up with the fact that many ministries across the U.S. now operate as corporations. Mega-church pastors run multimillion-dollar enterprises, selling not just Bibles, DVDs and paintings, but gym memberships, nutrition classes and the use of banquet facilities. Some refer to themselves not just as pastors but as CEOs.
"They are taking market principles, setting themselves up as corporations, and yet they don't want to be taxed -- they don't want to have accountability," said Fredrick Harris, a professor of political science at Columbia University. "They are blurring the line between profit and nonprofit."
Though most nonprofits have to file IRS 990 forms detailing salary and expenses, religious organizations are exempt. The Internal Revenue Service requires that ministers' compensation be "reasonable" -- that pastors do not gain excessive compensation from tax-exempt work.
Mega-church followers say those who criticize their pastors' perks do not understand their symbolic value.
"Yes, a minister turns heads when he drives a Bentley," said Democratic state Rep. Randal Mangham, a member of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., one of the ministries being investigated. "But that's good. It's important for kids to see you don't have to sell drugs to drive a nice car."
Connie Cotton, 41, a longtime member of World Changers, said, "We give to our pastor because he's a true man of God. He needs a jet to go around the world and preach the Gospel."
...At a bus stop across the highway, homemaker Carrie Roberts, 29, said she had no problem with her pastor driving a Rolls-Royce.
"He's a businessman," she shrugged.
Indeed he is. And we haven't even gotten into all the property taxes all these churches aren't paying.
Here's the IRS on charitable organizations. As opposed to "charitable" ones.
Weirdest Advice Request Of The Weekend
Sent, not just to me, but to Heloise, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter.
In a message dated 11/17/07 11:16:47 AM, @yahoo.com writes:I was born without my left arm. I blame my mothers drinking, smoking and drug abuse during my gestation for my impairment (she says she fell down the stairs). I have tried three different prosthetic devices in the past but never liked them. I have learned to live within my limits and therefore, I believe, reach my potential. I am a successful Health Insurance Consultant, a job which has me traveling through out North America and Europe most of the year. I am also a Level 9 (out of 10) Germaphobiac; at least that’s what my therapist says. My problem is that, because of my busy schedule, I am forced to have bowl movements in public facilities (YUCKY!). If you’ve ever had to use the bathroom in a subway station in Liverpool after a soccer game, you know what I’m talking about.
I understand what the authorities have told me, and that it is not acceptable for me to walk out of a stall with my pants around my knees to wash my hand before I pick them up. I have used those small, travel-size hand sanitizers but because they touch the hand, that I just wiped with mind you, I have to throw them away, and believe me, with the dollar doing so poorly, it gets expensive. I’ve also tried using a surgical glove but I have to peel it off with my teeth and that’s just disgusting.
I’m desperate. Do you have any advice? Also, when I say the word “I”, I’m talking about my friend Dan.
Sincerely, Donald D.
Is There Such A Thing As A Good Divorce?
I've recommended Constance Ahrons' book, The Good Divorce
The conventional wisdom on divorce is that while a breakup is hard on children, parents can minimize a lot of the damage with a "good divorce." Or can they? A new book out this month presents compelling evidence that even a relatively amicable divorce cannot spare children from psychological trauma that affects their self-image and shapes their personalities into adulthood.Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce
by Elizabeth Marquardt (Crown), will not come as welcome news to parents who may be seeking a split on the theory that there is nothing worse for children than growing up amid marital discord or unhappiness. The book establishes that the separation of parents bifurcates children's inner lives, forcing them to become navigators, conciliators and emotional caregivers at an early age, all of which leaves them with a sense of tentativeness and isolation even as adults. Most startling of all are the findings suggesting that children whose parents remain in somewhat unhappy, low-conflict marriages (more common than high-conflict unions involving physical fights or other abuse) fare better in certain crucial spheres than do children of divorce.
The book is based on research co-directed by Ms. Marquardt and Prof. Norval Glenn, a family scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. They estimate that one-quarter of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are children of divorce. Their study included face-to-face interviews with 71 young adults and a national telephone survey of 1,500 others--half from divorced families and half from intact ones.
Many of the comparisons are stunning. Even after a "good" divorce, 52% of respondents say that family life was stressful (compared with 6% from happy marriages and 35% from unhappy but low-conflict marriages). Half report that even as children they "always felt like an adult" (compared with 36% and 39% in the intact-family groups).
According to the study, children of divorce feel less protected by their parents, less emotionally secure and less safe at home than do other children. Children of divorce are less likely to look to their parents for comfort and more likely to feel obliged to protect their parents emotionally. They tend to see their parents as polar opposites long after marital conflict ends. Twice as many children of divorce agreed that, while growing up, "I felt like a different person with each of my parents."
While I'm not a marriage booster in general, I do think the moment you have a child, that's where your life and your needs have to start coming second. That sort of thing doesn't work for you? Stay "Barren!" like me.
In case you're wondering, I write the word that way because I'm just so darn thrilled not to have children, and all the responsibility and angst that comes with having them. Yes, I understand that you may feel they bring you joy. Lucky for me, I can get my joy jones fulfilled by less physically reproductive means.
Don't Get Gang-Raped In Britain If You Can Help It
See, Gordon Brown says the UK and Saudi Arabia have "shared values." If that's not a giant steaming pile of horsie poo, I'm sure staying the hell out of Great Britain.
Here's an example of how the values thing works in Saudi Arabia, from a BBC story:
Saudi gang rape sentence 'unjust'A lawyer for a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six-months in jail says the punishment contravenes Islamic law.
The woman was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack.
When she appealed, judges doubled her sentence, saying she had been trying to use the media to influence them.
Her lawyer has been suspended from the case and faces a disciplinary session.
Abdel Rahman al-Lahem told the BBC Arabic Service that the sentence was in violation of Islamic law:
"My client is the victim of this abhorrent crime. I believe her sentence contravenes the Islamic Sharia law and violates the pertinent international conventions," he said.
"The judicial bodies should have dealt with this girl as the victim rather than the culprit."
Well...yeah! And enough with the multi-culti bullshit diplomacy. The Saudis are barbarians. You don't have to say it in so many words at a press conference, Mr. Brown, but if Islam allowed tattoos (and I'm taking a willlld guess they don't), I believe there'd be a big ole outline of your lips on King Abdullah's ass.
Oh yeah...our Georgie and King Abdullah...they just like to hold hands.
Meanwhile, the National Organization For Women has been bizzy, bizzy, bizzy protesting a bunch of rather benign ads they find "offensive to women," yet not a peep out of the ladies about Saudi Arabia's punishment for this Saudi rape victim (apparently increased because she complained about how little punishment her attackers got). Here's a screenshot of a search I did on NOW's site:
Making Criminals Pay
A sheriff got in trouble for charging inmates rent, but I say...why is it a crime, not policy?
VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP) - A southern Georgia sheriff faces federal charges accusing him of billing inmates for room and board and interfering with an FBI investigation of local judges.An indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court accuses Clinch County Sheriff Winston Peterson of perjury, obstruction of justice, using forced labor and extorting former jail inmates.
Peterson, 62, pleaded not guilty to the charges Thursday and was released on $10,000 bond.
Investigators say the sheriff charged jail inmates $18 per day for room and board. County officials agreed in April 2006 to return $27,000 to hundreds of inmates who paid the fees between 2000 and Peterson also used an inmate to do work at a business run by his wife, investigators say.
Okay, okay, so no fair keeping the money or taking them home and turning them into pets or anything...but why should criminals get a free ride on the backs for the rest of us? You do the crime, YOU pay to do the time, scumbag.
Rich Litter
It seems the rich are pumping out children (almost) like it's 1899. Mollie Jong-Fast writes in the New York Observer:
Yes, the hot accessory of 2007 is children—but not just one or two. It seems that fashionable women in Manhattan just can’t stop popping them out. Jessica Seinfeld, Jennifer Creel and Nancy Jerecki have three. Brook De Campo just had her fourth. Marie Chantal and her sister, Pia Getty, have four. Tory Burch has six (from different marriages—even better). Ron Perelman has six (also from different marriages). Even Donald Trump, hardly on the cutting edge of fashion, has five.Why are rich, fabulous people having so many children? The answer is complicated. One of the reasons is because, quite frankly, children are fun (I say this as the mother of one).
Sorry, I don't think the rich are having children because they are "fun." And come on, are they? For the most part? Jong-Fast continues:
And children are even more fun when you have a huge $20 million townhouse filled with staff who get up with the kids in the middle of the night. Increased prosperity equals more children.The other reason is because children last a lot longer than Jay Mendel minks and Hermès Birkins. From Sandy Weill (and his hospital) to Donald Trump (and his giant buildings with his giant name emblazoned on them in giant bronze letters), or Nina Griscom’s shop or Tory Burch’s clothing line, today’s rich are obsessed with the idea of immortality in whatever shape that might take (bigger apartments, bigger cars, bigger summer houses, bigger private jets, pay-for-play philanthropy). As the English aristocracy has known for centuries, children are our only real way of perpetuating our names.
For the last 40 years, women who had children in their 30’s and 40’s were considered members of the ruling class—yuppies. These women were part of power couples with two incomes and two BMW’s to match. But more recently, many women in the ruling class stopped having jobs altogether. They just hop right out of school and into the maternity ward: Do not pass go, do not collect even one paycheck. And these women who never worked can start popping them out in their 20’s, which means that normal women can’t possibly catch up. Maybe in that way, these young never-working baby-poppers are really asserting their power against a world filled with Ivy-educated egg freezers.
Some illustrious folks grew up in big families. Our first president, George Washington, was one of at least six children; Thomas Jefferson was one of 10 children; and Marie Antoinette was one of 16 children. But life was different back then: Children were farmhands, smallpox and the bubonic plague wiped out four kids at a time, and life was cheaper. Kids didn’t need to have a Montessori pink tower from Kid-O-NY to the tune of $140; back then, kids just played out in the piles of cow-dung with rusty nails and corn husks.
Indeed, infant-mortality rates for the rich are microscopic. But the cost of raising these children is not. By far the largest expense for the young rich is nannies. High-end baby nurses now run in the neighborhood of $200 a day, and generally their employment tends to run from six weeks to a year. That’s $73,000 for a year of baby nursing. Multiply that by four for four kids and that’s $292,000, which means you’re going to have to clear a total of $500,000 before taxes just to afford babyhood. An even larger expense is room and board: Where are you going to put up that baby nurse? A maid’s room (which measures on average seven by 10 feet) is going to add between $100,000 and $700,000 to the cost of your apartment, maybe more. Of course, most nannies don’t like to live in, so often perks must be offered—everything from being driven home after work by the chauffeur to 401(k) contributions.
Something tells me we'd all be better off if these women had gone for the Jay Mindel furs and Hermès handbags.
Drunken Frat Boys Running The Show
Oh, it's the gift that keeps on giving, from All The President's Boys. Yes, it's our Iraq invasion, and it'll be ka-chinging us for decades and decades, and possibly to the tune of $650 billion-plus, just for healthcare for Iraq vets. Bryan Bender writes in The Boston Globe:
The estimate was derived by analyzing the current costs of treating debilitating health problems of troops in Iraq, including blast injuries to arms and legs from improvised explosive devices; the historically high instances of traumatic brain injuries; and post-traumatic stress disorder, which the VA believes affects at least one-third of soldiers serving there.Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, at least 60,000 US service members have been wounded or become mentally ill from their battlefield experiences.
Due to advances in body armor and battlefield medicine, the ratio of wounded to killed is 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 during the Vietnam War and 2 to 1 for World War II. The percentage of amputees is the highest since the Civil War.
The analysis assumed that, at the current pace, as many as 2 million men and women will be deployed to Iraq through the end of the conflict.
It also relied on available figures for veterans' disability payments.
For example, a veteran without a spouse or dependents who is 100 percent disabled receives about $2,400 per month from the government. Over 50 years, that could total more than $1.4 million.
The report said that healthcare costs could go even higher.
It did not account for thousands of civilian contractors serving in Iraq, including more than 1,000 who have filed disability claims with the Department of Labor seeking government compensation.
I Have Friends But I Really Don't Want To Get Friended
I hate Facebook and all the other social networking sites. If I like you, we'll have a glass of wine together. Otherwise, I'd really rather not do any more typing than I'm already doing. (It's Tuesday-into-Wednesday as I'm writing this, and I left the house for the first time today since Friday.)
So...a PR person I have never met (not that I recall, anyway), but whose "friend" request I yessed/confirmed on Facebook, really just to be nice, e-mailed me through Facebook. (Another active e-mail address for me now? What fresh hell is this?) Beyond that, her e-mail's not unfriendly or anything, but it is the kind of waste-of-time message I just hate, and from somebody I don't know at all:
Dear Amy,
how is your column going?
I hope you have an continued increased audience .
Cordially,
I mean, how does one answer her question? Certainly not sincerely, since she doesn't know me, and likely doesn't actually care. And really, if you know me at all, or want to get to know me, say something interesting and we might have something to talk about. Don't send me the e-mail equivalent of wallpaper.
I took the frank approach -- as opposed to opening myself up to further such e-mail exchanges:
Amy Alkon
4:06pm November 11th
Thanks, and no offense, but I don't have time for facebook email exchanges, and as somebody who gets e-mail for a living I really try to dissuade people from writing to me unless there's an emergency. Hope you understand. In general, I despise these social networking sites, and only participate so people won't be offended. If you'd like to comment on my blog, advicegoddess.com, where I focus my time, feel free. Best,-A
It turns out she'd sent me another email (arrrgh!), which I opened next:
this is (name removed) from xx newswire service. I contacted you a while back about doing a column on the (Amy: guy I have zero interest in) and then added you as a featured columnist on my page.
Cordially,
I wrote back:
Amy Alkon
4:07pm November 11th
Thanks!
I just signed on and found this from her:
7:22am November 12thI wrote back:
you have been removed.
Amy Alkon
Today at 1:35am
I guess it's hard to understand that I might get e-mail for a living and not really be into getting more in another area. Even from a PR person.
Well, while I don't like to hurt people's feelings, this person was never my friend, and now she's still not my friend, but, perplexingly, seems to be my unfriend. On the bright side, maybe I'll have 10 more minutes of life per month to spend unchained from the computer.
Like Stealing A Homeless Guy's Sandwich
There are those robberies you hear about from time to time -- like the thug in New York who beat up some 90-something-year-old lady for her purse -- that are so low it's hard to fathom how even the scummiest scumbag manages to go there. This is one of these cases: Department of Children and Family Services employees who allegedly skimmed, no, ladled, out of the pot meant for foster children. Here's the e-mail I sent out to all the Los Angeles DCFS e-mail addresses I could find:
D. Heimpel writes for the LA Weekly:
ON CHRIS' 17TH BIRTHDAY, he got two T-shirts and a sweater from his friend's foster mom. His group home gave him a $20 bill. He spent the day shooting hoops and hurling a football on the lush, green grass of Pan Pacific Park. His friend's foster mom, not the government, arranged the day.Afterward, he went to work at a burger joint not far from his group home, deep in South L.A. That was his birthday.
Chris says he didn't receive a gift card that day (or ever) from the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the 7,200-employee system that handles this county's orphans and unwanted. He never questioned it. A kid without a family is used to not getting much.
But officials say a group of Los Angeles County foster-care employees decided to take a share of the crumbs taxpayers provide to foster children as they struggle in an often frightening and lonely life. According to an audit by the Los Angeles County auditor-controller that landed with an embarrassing thud before the Board of Supervisors this month, four employees purchased gift cards to Glen Ivy Hot Springs Spa and P.F. Chang's. They spent $14,000 on tickets to Wicked, at the time the musical-theater rage of L.A. Of 160 tickets purchased -- using taxpayer money earmarked for gifts for foster children -- only 53 tickets went to kids.
Most were used by county employees and their entourages. But it wasn't enough for these government workers to have a night on the town and pilfer the kids' tickets. The audit revealed that the same employees spent $5,700 for 150 tickets to House of Blues' Sunday gospel brunch -- and just 43 of the tickets went to kids. The remaining 107 tickets were divvied up among employees, "mentors" and a DCFS vendor, according to the audit.
...The audit suggests $250,000 was spent on entertainment and gift cards meant for children and their mentors.
The four employees are members of the tiny Services Outcome Improvement Project, also known as the Mentorship Section, Los Angeles County DCFS Director Patricia S. Ploehn told the L.A. Weekly.
County officials, from the auditor involved to the county counsel, have refused media requests to identify the four. Moreover, the Mentorship Section did not return calls from the L.A. Weekly, and Ploehn insisted that publicly naming the four would somehow "truly hurt the investigation." However, the D.A.'s Office lifted the veil somewhat, telling the Weekly that its investigative case is filed under the name Sherrie Hiller, a children's service administrator.
The Mentorship Section, supposedly dedicated to lifting these children up through partnerships with adult mentors, has just six employees, says DCFS spokesman Stewart Riskin, yet its $1.25 million budget is intended to help those children most at risk: the ones nearing their often-dreaded "emancipation" at 18, when they are, by law, kicked out and often have no home or family to turn to.
Gift cards divert the young adults' attention from the crap in their lives. "Kids come filthy, hungry and unkempt," Riskin says. "The gift certificates are sometimes used to take them to McDonald's, and to get them basic clothes."
Well, when they aren't diverted to mudwraps and deluxe brunches and Broadway shows for the people who are supposed to be their first line of defense.
On a writing and reporting note, compare this story to the earlier story in the LA Times by Jack Leonard. Now, maybe Heimpel had more time, but there's also real effort here by Heimpel to dig up names, and there's also a much more interesting story here because there's a human angle instead of just dry reporting on policy violation. I think it was either David Carr or Willy Stern who spoke at an Association of Alt Newsweeklies conference and said something like, "Don't write about poverty, write about how Sonja can't afford lunch."
P.S. It's possible, per Kate Coe, that Hiller's name was spelled wrong in the Weekly's story. This DCFS doc has "Sherry Hiller."
National PR Person's Day
While looking for updates on the story about the misappropriation of foster children's gift cards/funds I noticed that the L.A. Times, which has long banned my advice column from its pages (despite the fact that I regularly kick their ass at the LA Press Club Awards), promotes this bullshit "holiday" I got press releases about, "Boss' Day":
Did anyone know we could talk about: National Boss Day. It’s not only secretaries who get a day, people! Bosses deserve recognition too. And their high salaries, expensive clothes and carte blanche to tell you what to do certainly do not take the place of a thoughtful card and perhaps a small gift one day a year. Think about it.
You know, if you're somebody's boss, and you hired wisely, they're the one who deserves the attention, not you, you big girl's blouse.
Ads The Wymyn Like
Yesterday, I blogged about National Organization of Women's recently released list of ads they find offensive to women. They also put out a list of "positive ads" -- which show, more than anything, what suckers they are for advertising manipulation. Here's the statement they led with:
Tired of advertisers peddling flesh and not product? Here are some examples of ads that actually show real-looking women—of diverse ages, ethnicities and body types—taking an active role in the world.
Hilariously, they're all for the Crystal Light ad -- a 5-calorie, artificially sweetened beverage advertised with the caption "Bring out your beauty." (Sorry it's so small.)
Yes, to the credulous ladies of NOW, this sends the message that it's okay to "love your body." Uh, ladies, if you love your body so much...why don't you give it apple juice?
Another ad they applaud is for Dove:
Yes, they're actually naive enough to believe that Dove and Ogilvy & Mather are in the business of raising women's self-esteem:
Brian Collins, the executive creative director of the Brand Integration Group (BIG) at Ogilvy & Mather, spearheaded the project.Collins and his team agreed wholeheartedly with Dove's desire to challenge society and the media to re-define beauty and in so doing, raise the self-esteem of women worldwide. At the National NOW Conference, where Collins and his team were given an Image of Women award for the campaign, Collins said, "This is a simple idea, that beauty, whatever that means, is a self-defined and democratic idea." Collins went on to tell the audience, "What I really want everyone to do here is hold the advertising industry accountable."
All the way to the bank! P.S. As for NOW's fight to end the exploitation of women, you gotta love the irony: that excerpt quoting Collins above is from a piece written by one of their unpaid interns.
Here's a excerpt from my earlier post on Dove. Whoops, it seems Unilever, the parent company of Dove, is also running TV spots for another one of their brands, Axe, which they claim turns women nto "lust-crazed vixens." As I wrote previously:
Newsflash: Large, multinational corporations really don't give a shit about your body image. Feminist groups, silly dears, applauded Unilever for Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty," which should have been called Dove's "Campaign for Real Dollars" (not that there's anything wrong with that).It isn't some company's job to worry about your body image. And frankly, I find it naive and silly to think for a moment they do. But, from a story by Alana Semuels in the LA Times, a consumer group called (sorry, I have to laugh, "The Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood") accused Unilever of (gasp!) hypocrisy!...because they're not only running the larger ladies in the Dove campaign, they're running a commercial for Axe grooming products for men that "blatantly objectifies and degrades" women.
Wow...which is it? Healthy images for women, or pandering to the male gaze?
Um...it's the marketing, stoopid.
There's A Dating Service For Everyone
Yes, it's Truckercupid.com. Here's lady trucker Criss:
Chriss's Perfect Match: I am interested in meeting my Life partner. I believe in chemistry and that we should feel it very soon. I am not interested in any game playing or in being friends with bennifits. I need to click with my man.Turn Offs: I am only interested in meeting a man with the same hygine habits as me. There is nothing worse than stinky people. Whats wrong with a bath, some cologne and a clean mouth. I am a non-smoker and can't stand smoke or kissing an ash tray.
Here's guy trucker "J" from Florida:
J's Perfect Match: someone who can have a good time loves to laugh, and have to be truthful.Turn Offs: smoking, cheating, lieing, basicly being a pimple on the road to success!
Hmmm, spelling and grammar seem to be real issues for some of the men and ladies of the road. That said, it's easy to understand where Randy's coming from:
Randy's Perfect Match: well i guess that would be...a woman who enjoys the things that i do.one that would work as hard an play as hard as i do.and of corse treated me great.hell who dont want that huh?.
I'm Still Working On Being Offended
The National Organization of Women has come up with a bunch of ads we're all supposed to find terribly offensive to women, like this Dolce & Gabbana ad, which supposedly shows a woman being gang-raped by a bunch of guys, most of whom look preoccupied with whether they did their ab crunches before they left the house.
Um...if five buff gay men are actually going to gang-rape anyone...I don't think that person will have a vagina.
By the way, if we could hear what the lead guy is saying, I think it would probably be something like, "Look, bitch, tell me what you did with my copy of Inches!" ("Boner's Up! 9 Horse-hung studs")
And a quote from NOW:
In an interview, NOW Foundation President Kim Gandy said, "It's in Esquire, so they probably don't think a stylized gang rape will sell clothes to women, but what is more likely is that they think it will get them publicity. It's a provocative ad but it is provoking things that really are not what we want to have provoked. We don't need any more violence."
If the pictures are what cause violence, how come, as Gad Saad points out in his recently published book, with "exponential growth in the availability of sexually explicit materials available on the Internet from 1995 to 1999, the rate of forcible rape (as obtained from FBI data) during that period has steadily declined"?
Here's another one of the ads NOW disapproves of, which I believe is supposed to be an intentionally distorted picture via photography and the moiré fabric:
NOW captions this photo:
Calvin Klein: Does this dress make me look fat? Exhibit A in why women think they can never be thin enough.
Uh, don't be too sure you know what causes anorexia, and that it's pictures of very thin women.
According to Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by the late Alan S. Miller and my friend Satoshi Kanazawa, in Iran, where women are NOT exposed to imagery of women's thin bodies (since women there are forced to run around in pup tents), women are MORE likely to have eating disorders. A quote from their book I've blogged before:
...A recent study shows that women in Iran, where they are generally not exposed to the western media and culture, and thus would not know Jessica Simpson from Roseanne Barr, and where most women wear the traditional Muslim hijab that loosely covers their entire body so as to make it impossible to tell what shape it is, are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts in the land of Vogue and the Barbie Doll.
Most of these ads are just too silly to even bother blogging about, but I thought this one was hot:
NOW captions this one:
Ralph Lauren Polo: Not to be outdone, Ralph offers that perfect look to wear while scratching your back on a tree while waiting for, um...the stableboy?
Well, I do hate to be kept waiting, but otherwise, this is bad why?
via Glenn Sacks
There's A Dating Service For Everyone
Your haystack or mine? FarmersOnly.com.
via Mayrav
Benevolent Dictatorship, No Thanks
Brad, over at Wendy McElroy.com, is a libertarian who has no objection to helping the poor. He does it personally, donating to the local food bank, refurbishing computers for poor kids, and more. He suddenly realizes what separates him from the lefties he knows:
I'm all for helping the poor. I just think it should be private, and voluntary.At this point I usually hear the objection, "But that's not enough! Small scale solutions like that will never solve the problem!"
Today it hit me: why the hell not?
To be more specific: the question should not be how do increase the scope of the (private) solution. It should be, why is the problem so damned big?
Let's face it: if you're living in a society in which anywhere from one-quarter to one-half of the population can't meet their basic needs through their own efforts -- where a half-trillion dollar enterprise is needed to "help the poor" -- then there is something fundamentally wrong with your society; and redistributing wealth, from those who have managed to succeed to those who have not, is avoiding the real problem. Whether the problem is the legions of overpaid bureaucratic parasites, the erosion of savings through inflation, confiscatory taxation, the countless costs of busybody legislation, or all of the above, you need to fix the underlying cause before you can ever really help people.
Put another way: if transfusing a few units of blood doesn't help the patient's condition, you'd better start looking for the bleeding....not look for more blood donors.
As a (small-l) libertarian, I am working toward a society where everyone can sustain himself/herself; where being poor is a misfortune and not a chronic condition; and where the needy will be at most a few percent of the population. In that society, private charity will be more than sufficient to help them. And I'll be there, contributing.
Personally, I believe that giving people handouts perpetuates helplessness. And that letting bureaucrats manage the handouts perpetuates bureaucracy.
And, while I'm for caring for the desperately poor mentally ill and others who are incapable of doing much more than suffering, as for those who scream about funding health care for all -- meaning those who can pay for their care, but would really rather not -- I say, "Hey, go ahead." Out of your own pockets or a voluntarily funded charity, like these folks with the free clinic are doing.
This doesn't just apply to health care, but across the board. You feel the world should be a more compassionate place? Well, nobody's stopping you from putting your $100 bills where your mouth is.
Baked Injustice, Anyone?
Justin Lafferty writes in the San Diego State student paper of a bake sale by the campus chapter of NOW that charged men and whites more:
"It's just to raise awareness," NOW @ SDSU Co-President Amanda Whitehead said. "A lot of people don't realize that white women make 75 percent of every dollar a white man makes or Hispanic women make 50 percent. It's pretty ridiculous. When they actually have to buy the cookies, it puts it into perspective."White men, of whom NOW @ SDSU says make the most money of any demographic, were charged a dollar for the same cookie a Hispanic woman would pay 50 cents for. The group broke down the prices for white, Hispanic, black and Asian men and women, using pay scale statistics from NOW and www.payequity.org.
"It's a more unique way of showing the differences without just showing the statistics all the time," NOW @ SDSU Co-President Ashley Frazier said.
This was a creative way for NOW @ SDSU to present students and faculty with the facts, but some people didn't like the way the cookie crumbled.
Finance and statistics senior Adam Hyman passed out free doughnuts to men only after seeing the bake sale, disbelieving in the point NOW @ SDSU was trying to make.
"I feel that America isn't anti-minority (or) anti-woman," Hyman said. "(I did this) to prove a point that if a woman were really getting paid 75 percent of what a man is, they could just quit their job and go work for somebody else.
"If this discrimination was real, then a company that only hires women would be better at business."
Feminists who keep flogging this old horse should read the latest by Dr. Andrew Beveridge on the 2005 census. He found that young women in urban areas made 117 percent of what men did. That means MORE Amanda. (Perhaps Lawrence Summers was right to wonder whether women, in general, might lack an aptitude for math?)
But, back to the wage issue; nationwide, says Beveridge, women earned 89 cents on the dollar for every dollar men did. Even so, what's really important is the individual, not the across-the-board wages. The reality is, many women take low-paying career paths (liberal arts-track), and take time off to be mommies. Note to the NOW ladies (or should I call you "wymyn"or something?) you don't resolve what you lazily perceive as discrimination by discriminating. It's just childish -- like so much of modern feminism.
P.S. The payequity.org website mentioned as a source of their stats is "temporarily unavailable." Not a surprise. It's much harder to actually accomplish things than to whine about them, huh?
P.P.S. I loved this comment on the article by a guy named Jamie H. Crowley:
First, does anyone else see the humor that an organization that frowns on women in the kitchen is having a bake sale?bake sale link via fark
We're Gonna Wash Those Terrorists Outta Our Hair!
Oops, the only problem is all the non-terrorists in the path of destruction, too. It's in Iraq, and it's the largest dam in the country, and it's in serious danger of imminent collapse, says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Amit R. Paley writes for The Washington Post:
Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam's deficiencies.
"In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," the Army Corps concluded in September 2006, according to the report to be released Tuesday. "If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely."
The effort to prevent a failure of the dam has been complicated by behind-the-scenes wrangling between Iraqi and U.S. officials over the severity of the problem and how much money should be allocated to fix it. The Army Corps has recommended building a second dam downstream as a fail-safe measure, but Iraqi officials have rejected the proposal, arguing that it is unnecessary and too expensive.
The debate has taken place largely out of public view because both Iraqi and U.S. Embassy officials have refused to discuss the details of safety studies -- commissioned by the U.S. government for at least $6 million -- so as not to frighten Iraqi citizens.
And you wonder where your tax dollars are going! Bottomless hole, as usual! But, the good news is, they're pouring grout into the hole...like mad!
Sitting in a picturesque valley 45 miles along the Tigris River north of Mosul, the earthen dam has one fundamental problem: It was built on top of gypsum, which dissolves when it comes into contact with water.Almost immediately after the dam was completed in the early 1980s, engineers began injecting the dam with grout, a liquefied mixture of cement and other additives. More than 50,000 tons of material have been pumped into the dam since then in a continual effort to prevent the structure, which can hold up to 3 trillion gallons of water, from collapsing.
I Actually Do This
And I recommend you do it, too. Larry David follows my lead on Asshat-tooth headsetters:
Thanks, Deirdre!
Employer-Based Health Care
Like me, more and more people are self-employed. We're the ones who are 1. most careful with our health care dollars, because we have to know the price of things, and 2. most screwed by the current system (well, along with unmarried employees who are subsidizing the guy with a wife and five kids). Ramesh Ponnuru writes for Time about the genesis of employer-based health care, and the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on health care:
During World War II, employers started giving workers health benefits to get around wartime wage controls. Since then, the government has continued to give a tax break for employer-provided health insurance; it isn't taxed, the way wages are.That's how we ended up with the health-insurance system we have now, based on employers. You get a tax break if you get your insurance through your job. If you get a raise and use it to buy your own insurance instead, you have to pay taxes on that money. (Ditto if you use your raise to pay doctors directly.) Almost everyone takes the tax break. The market for insurance bought by individuals is, as a result, small and stunted, which is all the more reason to stay in the employer system.
Republicans used to consider health care a Democratic issue--not something they needed to do anything or even think much about. But in recent years, most Republicans have come to believe that our health-care system is dysfunctional because it is employer-based and that this dysfunction has to be attacked at the root.
In this view, everything people dislike about our system results from the tax break for employer coverage. It makes costs rise, since people are less careful when they're not paying out of pocket. It means people often lose their insurance when they switch jobs. And it keeps a lot of people--those who don't have employers who provide coverage--from having much access to health insurance.
In his State of the Union Address this year, President Bush proposed letting people who buy insurance for themselves qualify for the break too. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that his plan would help 7 million people who don't have insurance get it. But its main point is to offer individuals more control over their health care--to make it possible, for example, for them to keep their policies when they switch jobs.
Free-market health-care experts note that most types of insurance--think of homeowners' insurance--cover major expenses that have a low likelihood of happening to any individual rather than routine and predictable expenses. Thanks to the existing tax break, health premiums have become a way of prepaying for medical care. Under Bush's plan, a lot of people would buy cheap insurance policies that cover emergencies while paying for routine care out of pocket. Cost-conscious consumers could drive down the price of health care.
...The federal government long ago got into the business of insuring two groups that the job-based system excludes: Medicare covers retirees, and Medicaid covers the jobless and indigent. These programs have been expanding. The Democratic plans would expand the federal backstop still more to achieve universal coverage. So both parties would shift responsibility for health care away from business. The main difference is whether government or individuals would get control of the money business now spends on health care.
The Democrats have hardly noticed the turn in Republican thinking on health care, in part because the Republicans seem so weak right now. But the Democrats have already started to emphasize how incremental and unthreatening their plans are. In the months to come, look for them to start accusing Republicans of being radicals who want to end health insurance as we know it. The accusation will be true.
And I, for one, am all for it.
Why Quibble About Proof?
We didn't need proof to go into Iraq. And now, regarding going into Iran, Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers writes that, despite the president's claim that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," there's no conclusive evidence Iran has an active nuke weapons program:
Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush's point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric."Iran is seeking a nuclear capability ... that some people fear might lead to a nuclear-weapons capability," Burns said in an interview Oct. 25 on PBS.
"I don't think that anyone right today thinks they're working on a bomb," said another U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. Outside experts say the operative words are "right today." They say Iran may have been actively seeking to create a nuclear-weapons capacity in the past and still could break out of its current uranium-enrichment program and start a weapons program.
...Bush and Cheney's allegations are under especially close scrutiny because their similar allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program proved to be wrong. Nevertheless, there are many reasons to be skeptical of Iran's claims that its nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes, including the country's vast petroleum reserves, its dealings with a Pakistani dealer in black-market nuclear technology and the fact that it concealed its uranium-enrichment program from a U.N. watchdog agency for 18 years.
"Many aspects of Iran's past nuclear program and behavior make more sense if this program was set up for military rather than civilian purposes," Pierre Goldschmidt, a former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency deputy director general, said in a speech Oct. 30 at Harvard University.
If conclusive proof exists, however, Bush hasn't revealed it. Nor have four years of IAEA inspections.
Welcome to Iraq, The Sequel.
via Brendan Nyhan
When Georgie Met Billy
It seems the story of how Billy Graham converted the President is merely P.R. hoohah. Craig Unger writes "How George Bush really found Jesus" for Salon:
Mickey Herskowitz, a sportswriter for the Houston Chronicle who became close friends with the Bush family and was originally contracted to ghostwrite "A Charge to Keep," recalled interviewing Bush about it when he was doing research for the book. "I remember asking him about the famous meeting at Kennebunkport with the Reverend Billy Graham...." Herskowitz said. "And you know what? He couldn't remember a single word that passed between them."Herskowitz was so stunned by Bush's memory lapse that he began prompting him. "It was so unlikely he wouldn't remember anything Billy Graham said, especially because that was a defining moment in his life. So I asked, 'Well, Governor, would he have said something like, "Have you gotten right with God?'"
According to Herskowitz, Bush was visibly taken aback and bristled at the suggestion. "No," Bush replied. "Billy Graham isn't going to ask you a question like that."
Herskowitz met with Bush about twenty times for the project and submitted about ten chapters before Bush's staff, working under director of communications Karen Hughes, took control of it. But when Herskowitz finally read "A Charge to Keep" he was stunned by its contents. "Anyone who is writing a memoir of George Bush for campaign purposes knew you had to have some glimpse of what passed between Bush and Billy Graham," he said. But Hughes and her team had changed a key part. "It had Graham asking Bush, 'George, are you right with God?'"
In other words, Herskowitz's question to Bush was now coming out of Billy Graham's mouth. "Karen Hughes picked it off the tape," said Herskowitz.
There is yet another reason why the episode in Maine could not possibly have been the first time George Bush gave his soul to Christ. That's because Bush had already been born again more than a year earlier, in April 1984 -- thanks to an evangelical preacher named Arthur Blessitt.
Whereas Billy Graham was a distinguished public figure whose fame grew out of frequent visits to the Oval Office over several decades, Arthur Blessitt had a very different background. His evangelicalism was rooted in the Jesus movement of the sixties counterculture. To the extent he was famous it was because he had preached at concerts with the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, and others, and had run a "Jesus coffeehouse" called His Place on Hollywood's Sunset Strip during that turbulent decade. His flock consisted of bikers, druggies, hippies, and two Mafia hit men. The most celebrated ritual at Blessitt's coffeehouse was the "toilet baptism," a rite in which hippies announced they were giving up pot and LSD for Jesus, flushed the controlled substances down the toilet, and proclaimed they were "high on the Lord."
In 1969, however, Blessitt was evicted from his coffeehouse and, in protest, chained himself to a cross in Hollywood and fasted for the next twenty-eight days. Over the next fifteen years, "The Minister of Sunset Strip," as he was known, transformed himself into "The Man who Carried the Cross Around the World" by lugging a twelve-foot-long cross for Jesus through sixty countries all over the world, on what would become, according to the "Guinness Book of World Records," the longest walk in human history. Blessitt delivered countless lost souls to Jesus. He went to Jerusalem. He prayed on Mount Sinai. He crossed the Iron Curtain. Finally, in 1984, he came to Midland, Texas, to preach for six nights at the Chaparral Center before thousands of Texans night after night on a "Mission of Love and Joy." He did not know it, but he was about to bring George W. Bush to Jesus.
As for the results, I liked the assessment in this letter to the editor from somebody who calls him or herself "New Fauve":
Born Again 20-some years ago...Bush has supposedly been with Christ for 22-23 years now.
Even though I'm not a believer, I often find stories of a person's spiritual awakening to be fascinating, even inspiring.
Yet after two faith-based decades, Bush never seems to demonstrate his Christianity with any depth, or show any ability to describe it in a way that seems remotely convincing, let alone inspiring. He doesn't even seem to have the chops to quote a little scripture to sell the myth. Still, for some reason people buy this idea that Jesus is his "favorite philosopher."
I've always figured Christ is, to Bush, just another necessary political accessory, like a flag lapel pin, like the photo-op ranch. And just as he doesn't ride his ranch's leased horses, he doesn't ride with JC either.
Sadly, I think, for a lot of people, as long as someone pins on the flag, talks with inauthentic folksiness about a vague, simplistic religious faith, it's enough.
Bush's true savior is Karl Rove, and the gullibility of the general public.
The Beauty Of The Full Bush
I'm reminded of the time that Gregg came over to bring me a drink after Elmore and I had been talking for a while at his Christmas party. "What were you talking about?" he asked. Gregg grew up Catholic, and it was his boss, so I told him I thought he'd rather not know. He still wanted to know. "Oh, the beauty of the full bush," I said. And the style to trim it down to a landing strip/Hitler mustache. Heh heh...typical Elmore.
Turns out modern western women (and gay men) and Christopher Hitchens (who had a hilarious spa-turn in VF in October) aren't the only ones who have a thing for hair pruning. Muslim women are pruners as well. Janice Turner writes for the Times/UK:
Is Islam suggesting that the human form, created by God, must be perfected by Man, assisted by the Gillette Mach 3? Why in the West is the pubic bush, the most luxuriant manifestation of our sexual hormones, now universally condemned as “unsexy”?According to some Islamic teaching both men and women are obliged to shave their pubic hair. In men it is part of the fitrah, the cleansing rituals, which also include circumcision, cutting nails and armpit hair, and trimming the moustache. And one can only reflect that males of all faiths (and none) would benefit from such a tough toilette to-do list from an early age, particularly those living in hotter climates. But Muslim women too are enjoined to be hairless, particularly preceding their weddings, and often to remain extensively manicured afterwards for reasons of cleanliness and purity.
Yet in the West such hairlessness in women denotes the inverse: in fact, a hot-hot-hot impurity, a 24/7 readiness for all-night dirty bedroom action. Such is the strength of this assumption that, when a website specialising in sick war snaps by US servicemen posted a photograph of an Iraqi woman injured in an explosion, revealing her bare and shaven lower half, American posters commented that she must be a lapdancer or a whore.
...But as Western women are slaves to the diktats of fashion and beauty industries, likewise Islam preoccupies itself with all matters of intimate grooming. In North London, Bushra Noah, a 19-year-old British-born Muslim, is suing a North London hair salon for refusing to employ her because she demanded to wear a headscarf at work. The young owner of Wedge argues it is part of a stylist's job to showcase the salon's creativity in her own funky do.
Would it feel comfortable, I wonder, to have your hair cut by someone who believes that merely sipping coffee in the salon, with your head publicly revealed, is immodest, even obscene? Why anyway would a devout Muslim want to cut women's hair? There are endless scholarly writings interpreting the Koran's position on this: some suggest that women's hair should not be cut at all, or only if it reaches beyond the base of the spine, others that styles favoured by non-believers are banned — but all agree women's hair should never be so short she might be mistaken for a man. So how could Ms Noah square her avowed faith with a client opting for a Britney?
But then she is not fighting to wear the headscarf out of religious faith. Like the West Yorkshire teaching assistant who demanded to obscure her face while teaching infant children, the veil is a cultural weapon. It is a statement of separation from — and declared opposition to — the secular society in which she was raised, which she expects wholly to accommodate her impossible wishes, while she herself will not budge an inch.
In our war of ideas, the body is a key battlefield, and hair, as Samson discovered, is power.
To de-fur or not to de-fur...that is the question.
24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot
Hilarious. Even if you aren't a 24 fan. Via Pajamas.
Soak Up The Zunshine
To explain "Theory of Mind," Stephen Pinker, in The Blank Slate (now a supreme bargain, at $10.88 for the paperback), uses the example of artificial intelligence researcher Rodney Brooks, who wants to built a robot capable of learning by imitation.
The robot is observing a person opening a glass jar. The person makes a number of physical motions while doing it, including wiping his brow. The robot then attempts to imitate the action. The question for the robot is, which parts of the action are important for reaching the desired goal? And then, how can the robot abstract what he learned by observation and apply it in a similar situation?
Pinker writes:
The answer is that the robot has to be equipped with an ability to see into the mind of the person being imitated, so it can infer the person's goals and pick out the aspects of behavior that the person intended to achieve the goal (underlining is mine). Cognitive scientists call this ability intuitive psychology, folk psychology, or theory of mind. (The "theory" here refers to the tacit beliefs held by a person, animal, or robot, not to the explicit beliefs of scientists.) No existing robot comes close to having this ability.
Pinker then gives another example -- the chimp Nim Chimpsky, who seemed to imitate his psychologist-trainer Laura Petitto's washing of dishes. There was an important difference:
A dish was not necessarily any cleaner after Nim rubbed it with a sponge...and if he was given a spotless dish, Nim would "wash" it just as if it were dirty. Nim didn't get the concept of "washing," namely using liquid to make something clean. He just mimicked her rubbing motion while enjoying the sensation of warm water over his fingers.
Pinker notes that chimps and other primates have "a reputation as imitators," they lack the ability people do, to replicate "another person's intent rather than going through the motions."
I used that Pinker piece as a preface to recommend an amazing book, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine, who happens to be a friend of mine, but that's not at all why I'm recommending you read her. What's especially amazing about her book is what an easy-to-understand, enjoyable, and even fun read it is -- and on a topic that you'd think would be tough to wade through (although, I should warn that it's not for those whose reading is typically limited to the Grishams and James Pattersons of the book world). That said, Lisa is not snobby about Grisham, or even "Saved By The Bell":
I have already mentioned the question that I was asked once about the "slightly autistic" adolescents who choose watching TV over reading novels. In the same vein, it was suggested to me that if somebody prefers Woolf to Grisham; or Grisham to TV; or novels to computer games; or long conversations about one's feelings to discussions of basketball games, it may testify to that person's mind-reading "excellence." I find such speculations misguided no matter how I look at them. Whereas common sense suggest that the mind-reading profile of a person who prefers Woolf to Grisham must indeed be somewhat different from that of a person who prefers Grisham to Woolf, I fail to see what practical conclusions about the person's overall mind-reading "fitness" can be made from the assumption of this commonsensical difference. GIven how intensely contextual each act of mind-reading is, I would not be able to predict how a "typical" avid reader of Woolf would conduct herself in a complex social situation as opposed, say, to a "typical" avid reader of TV Guide.
Because I'm a little behind in everything right now, and because Nick Gillespie describes the book so well, and even interviewed Lisa, I'll excerpt what he wrote in Reason:
Why do we—men and women, boys and girls, Brits and Americans—read fiction in the first place?As it happens, there's a rich new book out on precisely that topic: Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine, who teaches English at the University of Kentucky. Zunshine is a Russian emigre who earned her Ph.D. at University of California at Santa Barbara, where she worked with two of the major players in evolutionary psychology, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides. Zunshine uses recent developments in cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" to explain why human beings are drawn to both the creation and consumption of narrative texts. "Theory of Mind," writes Zunshine toward the end of her book, "is a cluster of cognitive adaptations that allows us to navigate our social world and also structures that world. Intensely social species that we are, we thus read fiction because it engages, in a variety of particularly focused ways, our Theory of Mind."
In a recent email exchange with me, she explains further. We have an "evolved cognitive predisposition to attribute states of mind to ourselves and others" that is also known as "mind-reading." "These cognitive mechanisms," writes Zunshine, "evolved to process information about thoughts and feelings of human beings, seem to be constantly on the alert, checking out their environment for cues that fit their input conditions. On some level, works of fiction manage to cheat these mechanisms into believing that they are in the presence of material that they were 'designed' to process, i.e., that they are in the presence of agents endowed with a potential for a rich array of intentional stances."
In a sense, then, we read novels about Meursault and Heathcliff, Montana Wildhack and Elizabeth Bennet, because they allow us to practice what we do elsewhere in our lives: Figure out the world by figuring out, or at least trying to figure out, what other people are thinking and feeling. Zunshine fills in the details with bravura chapters about novels with notoriously unreliable narrators (e.g., Lolita and Clarissa) and a long section on the detective novel, which underscores the desire and need to assign motives to whole casts of characters. The result is nothing less than a tour de force of cutting-edge lit-crit.
Read it, and you'll never look at fiction the same way. Her section on the detective novel is especially fascinating, by the way,
Here's a photo of Lisa from the last Human Behavior & Evolution Society conference (Hint: She's the one who's NOT Francis O'Steen). She's really pretty incredible, and is now on a Guggenheim fellowship, researching theory of mind at Yale. Actually, here's a really cute photo of Lisa, by Griet Vandermassen, author of another interesting book, Who's Afraid Of Charles Darwin.
Lisa's a typical Russian emigré underachiever, huh?...like another guy I happen to know.
The Big News
My agent just sold my book! Here's the announcement from Publishers Lunch:
My late friend Cathy Seipp nicknamed me Revengerella. I wrote a good bit of the sample chapters and proposal while with her on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Nancy Rommelmann and I were just e-mailing about how much we miss her. She really supported me in my manners psycho-ness, and without her support, I probably wouldn't have been quite as comfortable going after the rudesters. The book will be dedicated to Cathy, of course. Writing the rest of it now!
Daddy Nobucks
A child a man agrees to have is one thing, but should a man have to pay child support when he makes it clear to a woman that he does not want one?
The "he said/she said" of two relationship partners can be hard to parse, but I'm of the mind that the product of, say, casual sex with some guy a woman meets in a bar should be the woman's responsibility. Your body is the one that gets pregnant? You either protect it or be prepared to abort, adopt out, or raise the kid yourself.
Sound bad for the child produced? Well, maybe fewer would be produced in this style if they didn't produce cash payouts from "daddies" in DNA only.
Jennifer Spenner for the Saginaw News and Kathy Barks Hoffman for the AP write of a man who challenged being forced to pay child support for his girlfriend's baby:
Dubay had said his former girlfriend, Lauren Wells, knew he didn't want to have a child and assured him repeatedly she couldn't get pregnant because of a medical condition.He argued that if a pregnant woman can choose among abortion, adoption or raising a child, a man involved in an unintended pregnancy should have the choice of declining the financial responsibilities of fatherhood.
Lawson disagreed and rejected Dubay's argument that Michigan's paternity law violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
Wells declined comment through her attorney, Lawrence William ''Bill'' Smith of Saginaw.
Dubay said he has received support from a broad spectrum of people since filing the case in April 2006. He continues to pay child support of about $500 a month.
Dubay sued the Saginaw County prosecutor and Wells in March, contesting an order to pay child support for a girl born to Wells in 2005. State Attorney General Mike Cox later intervened in the case and argued for its dismissal.
Dubay previously had acknowledged the suit was a long shot.
The case stops parents from skirting their responsibility and neglecting a child they brought into this world, Cox said in a statement.
For all you boys out there, don't neglect the birth control...no matter what she tells you. Unless you're a sterling judge of character, on the level of secret service agents and clinical psychologists, and unless you're absolutely sure you've got an ethical and/or infertile girlfriend, or you personally watch her get Depo Provera injections...prudent thinking is never believing her when she says she can't get knocked up, always bringing your own condom, and retaining custody over it at all times...lest it find its way to the business end of a pin.
Sound cynical? That's what a lot of guys think -- before they write to me about what they can say to persuade some girl to get an abortion, or whether there's anything they can do to get out of paying child support...short of dying.
And yes, sure, you can say a man doesn't have sex if he doesn't want a child...but let's discuss this as if we're living in the real world, 'kay?
You're Supposed To Be A NEWSpaper not a Secretpaper
Kate Coe wonders where the names of the guilty are. It's a story by Jack Leonard in the LA Times about super-vile child welfare workers who "spent thousands of dollars in gift cards and entertainment tickets earmarked for foster children to buy themselves meals and attend musical events, according to an audit released Tuesday." Here's a bit more from Leonard's piece:
Among the most serious problems cited by auditors, county workers bought 160 tickets in July to see the hit musical "Wicked." County officials said the purchase was part of a gala event for foster children and their mentors, yet only 53 children and roughly the same number of mentors were given tickets.The remaining seats went to employees of the Department of Children and Family Services and their relatives and guests, along with unidentified potential mentors and a number of not-for-profit organization employees, auditors wrote. The event cost $14,000.
The audit of the department also faulted employees for using gift cards -- bought with county money to supply food and clothing to foster children -- to pay for staff luncheons.
"It is appalling that children who have nothing are having even this very limited amount stolen from them," said Carole Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center in San Francisco. "This is a stunning lack of accountability."
Auditors said one worker attempted to hide extra gift cards the department received by asking the business that supplied the cards for false invoices. Another told auditors he or she no longer had any gift cards but actually had $23,000 worth of gift cards or certificates, the audit said.
In an excursion to the House of Blues in June, employees spent $5,700 on tickets for the Gospel Sunday Brunch performance. Of the 150 tickets purchased, 43 were given to children. The department said about the same number went to mentors.
The rest went to department employees and a department contractor. One department employee received seven tickets, the audit said. (Mentors are adult volunteers who offer guidance and support to foster children.)
So...who are all these scumwads, Kate Coe asks?
Does the LA Times have some rule about protecting sleazy municipal employees?...They're employed by Los Angeles County and paid with tax monies, so why can't readers know exactly who they are?
Name names! Print photos! And fire every one of them. And then prosecute them and put them in stocks in the center of downtown and supply the homeless with eggs, and pay them $10 for every full frontal hit...pay them out of the sleazoids own pockets, that is.
I wrote to the reporter to ask why there weren't any names in the story. Here's a copy of our exchange:
What Men Want, What Women Want
Sorry to be a little behind in putting blog items up today...but, here's study by three economists of 400 speed-daters. Columbia B-school prof Ray Fisman writes on Slate:
Speed dating is matchmaking on, well, speed—each male-female pair (we stuck to heterosexual couples) meets for four minutes to size each other up, at which point a whistle blows, signaling the men to get up and move on to the next woman. After each "date," participants decide if they'd like to see their partner again. For our study, we also asked them to rate their partners' intelligence, looks, and ambition after each meeting. Each event had between 10 and 20 daters of each gender, and in the course of the evening, every man met every woman and vice versa.After two years of serving as academic love brokers, we had data on thousands of decisions made by more than 400 daters from Columbia University's various graduate and professional schools. By combining all of our choice and ratings data with separately collected background information on the daters, we could figure out what made someone desirable by comparing the attributes of daters that attracted a lot of interest for future dates with those that were less popular.
With the obvious qualification that we're talking here about a four-minute version of love and dating, we found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner's beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks from research assistants, who were hired for the much sought-after position of hanging out in a bar to rate the dater's level of attractiveness on a scale of one to 10.
By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women's choices as men's. It isn't exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter—but only up to a point. In a survey we did before the speed dating began, participants rated their own intelligence levels, and it turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition—a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.
When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own. Women, on the other hand, care more about how men think and perform, and they don't mind being outdone on those scores.
Thanks, Rodger
Why They Strike
Explaining the Writers Guild Strike.
Here's Roger L. Simon on it, and a few of his commenters (thanks for reminding me, Marion):
RE: Hollywood gets no sympathy from me. The current generation of writers are masters at creating garbage. We'd be much better off if they found new lines of work.syn: I will not come to the defense of people whose crap has led to the closing of the American mind; Hollywood gets no sympathy from me eith
Curly Smith: ...The reason for the NYT, network news, music business, and TV entertainment demise is that their products are crap and they routinely insult a very large percentage of their potential audience. There is no originality, no creativity, no vision and it all results from the same thing -- liberal groupthink. Watch one show, you've seen them all; listen to one song, you're heard them all.
And Marshall Herskovitz, explaining the demise of "finsyn" in the LA Times:
After 20 years and five series, including "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life," my partner, Ed Zwick, and I have -- for the time being at least -- stopped producing television programs.It's not personal. I count as friends many of the executives who work at the networks. We had a deal at one network, ABC, for all of those 20 years, and, in spite of many regime changes, we were always treated with great respect. This is not about how we were treated but rather something much larger: How a confluence of government policy and corporate strategy is literally poisoning the TV business.
It started in 1995 when the Federal Communications Commission abolished its long-standing "finsyn" rules (that's financial interest and syndication, for those unfamiliar with the term), allowing networks for the first time to own the programs they broadcast. Before that, under classic antitrust definitions, the networks had been confined to the role of broadcaster, paying a license fee to production companies for the right to broadcast programs just two times. The production companies owned all subsequent rights. In the mid-1990s there were 40 independent production companies making television shows. If a particular network didn't like a show -- as famously happened with "The Cosby Show" many years ago -- the production company could take it to another network.
But not after 1995. The abolition of the old rules set in motion an ineluctable process, one that has negatively affected every creative person I know in television. Today there are zero independent production companies making scripted television. They were all forced out of business by the networks' insistence -- following the FCC's fin-syn ruling -- on owning part or all of every program they broadcast.
The most profound change resulting from that ruling is the way networks go about the business of creating programming. Networks today exert a level of creative control unprecedented in the history of the medium. The stories my friends tell me would make me laugh if the situation weren't so self-defeating. Network executives routinely tell producers to change the color of the walls on sets; routinely decide on the proper wardrobe for actors; routinely have "tone" meetings with directors on upcoming pilots; routinely give notes on every page of a script. (When we did "thirtysomething" in the late '80s, we never received network notes.) And by the way, they have every right to do these things. As owners, they have a responsibility to satisfy themselves that their product is competitive and successful.
The problem, of course, is that these executives often have little background or qualification for making creative decisions. They are guided by market research and -- they want to believe -- a learned intuition about what the public wants. This season's new shows have been a good indicator of how successful that strategy is: Even before the current writer's strike, virtually every new show was struggling.
But the changes have gone further. Over the last few years -- during a time when network profits have been increasing -- salaries and profit participation for the writer-producers who create the shows have been slashed. Fees were cut by one-third to one-half, and profit participation in many cases was effectively eliminated. It's a curious (and peculiarly American) fact that many of the great artistic talents in the history of film and TV also have been entrepreneurs: Chaplin, Capra, Serling, Pakula, Lucas, Spielberg -- the list goes on. For reasons that are probably more psychological than anything else, creative and financial independence seem to go hand in hand.
Yet what we have now is a complete absence of either in the world of television. Your TV may receive 200 channels, but virtually every one of them is owned by one of six big companies -- NBC Universal, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom/Paramount, Sony and News Corp. And each channel has a brand identity dictated by those companies to which each program must adhere. Producers are now employees, not creators. If you were foolish enough to independently produce a TV pilot today, when you took it to the network, you would give up at least half of your ownership and all of your control, even though the network wouldn't pay any more than it used to pay as that old license fee.
Herskovitz announces that he and Zwick have jointed the migration to the Internet with a project called "quarterlife" (a story about a blogger from a look at the first clip on their site). It's "a series and a social network" (Ugh! Not another "social network"!) They "own and control" quarterlife, and they had to give up their TV deal to do it. The series will premiere Sunday on MySpace, and then on their site, quarterlife.com, the next night.
The wave of the future? Perhaps.
Perhaps the networks should have been a little quicker to toss the writers their pennies, huh?
Who Pays On Dates?
Okay, here's a question for all of you. I'm interested in knowing what your personal perceptions are as well as your experiences on the issue of...who pays on dates.
Guys are getting mad that some women are earning big and then sit on their hands and go to the bathroom when the check comes. But, are women really doing so well? Or is it just a few women? And should that even matter?
Is there different first date protocol about paying? If you're of the mind that the guy asks/the guy pays for the first one, when, if ever does the woman start paying?
What about differences in income? How do you manage that or how do you think that should be managed?
And what are your standards of what's right and wrong as far as dating behavior in the wallet department?
And how about worries, by women, that the guy won't think they're interested if they pay? And do some men, even younger men, find it emasculating if a woman scoops up the check on the first date? Or is that a thing of the past?
And if there's anything else you can think of...
...Auntie Advice Goddess needs you!
Ring Toss
Digital Journal has a piece about a woman who saw her engagement ring as a gift with which she could do as she pleased. A judge thought differently, seeing it as a "conditional gift":
Vicky Papathansoupouos was engaged to ex-fiancé Andrew Vacopoulos. He gave Vicky a $15,250 diamond engagement ring. After some time Vicky called off the wedding and told her father to dispose of the ring, with some photographs and mementos of their failed relationship, which he threw in the garbage. Andrew found out about the disposal of his wedding ring so he launched legal action in a Manly (not made up, it is in Australia) court for compensation....Justice Rex Smart said in the eyes of the law, Ms. Papathanasoupoulos was holding her ex-fiancé’s property.
"I do not accept (the) contention that once (Mr Vacopoulos) ... left the engagement ring on the table it became her property to keep or dispose of as she wished," Justice Smart said.
The court found that if a woman refuses without legal justification to marry her fiancé she cannot keep and must return any engagement ring.
By turning down the offer of marriage, Ms Papathanasopoulos had rejected the "conditional gift" of the ring, the court found.
Personally, I find the engagement ring tradition kind of icky, and redolent of both prostitution and women being seen as property. Also, if fiancé boy has to buy you a $15,000 pre-wedding rock, how come, if you consider yourself a man's equal, you don't have to buy him a boat?
Regarding this case and others like it, men do not just run around tossing diamond rings at women. I agree with the judge.
Health Care For Everyone!
While I'm for paying for health care for the small number of people in our population who are hopelessly indigent -- for example, the mentally ill chronically homeless -- I see a difference between those who absolutely can't help themselves and those who'd really rather not. Crid had a great point yesterday about the sillythink of people clamoring for health care via government:
The public seem to think insurance will create wealth that can somehow be used to care for people who are otherwise penniless (and unproductive).
Here's a better solution for those who suggest the rest of us should pay for the Graeme Frosts of the world (the child of the guy who doesn't understand that you stop being able to have a hobby instead of a job when you don't use a condom). Yes, it's free health care for the middle class that's free because all of you charity-tarians are paying for it. Connie Marshner on "The Free Clinic Movement" at TCSDaily:
Warren County, Virginia, at the confluence of the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River has neither the rolling hills of horse country nor the fertile plains of the Shenandoah Valley.Of its 36,000 citizens, an estimated 6,000 are uninsured. Typically, when they get sick, the uninsured go to the emergency room, which is about the most inefficient and costly way of delivering primary medical care.
But, thanks to the initiative of some local Christians, the uninsured of Warren County can instead go to the St. Luke Community Clinic for free medical care. In FY 2006, 2,633 uninsured people did just that.
St. Luke Clinic is one of an estimated two thousand Free Clinics around the country, fifty of them in Virginia. In 2006, the total budget of all the Free Clinics in Virginia was about $18 million, which they leveraged to a value in excess of $80 million.
If all of you who are clamoring for national health care can't start your free clinic right away, no matter. Just stand outside an emergency room, and wait for some guy or girl who chose to spend their money on a nice new plasma screen instead of on health insurance to find their way there, and give them a big wad of your hard-earned cash! Me? I'm taking my hard-earned cash to the bank, and maybe making a wee stop at Loehmann's.
Divine Comedy
From The Atheist's Bible, which Lena gave me:
"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way. So I stole one and asked Him to forgive me." -Emo Phillips"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." -Bill Watterson
"I do not believe in God. I believe in cashmere." -Fran Lebowitz
"The difference between religion and cults is determined by how much real estate is owned." -Frank Zappa.
"If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses." -Lenny Bruce
Sewing Her Mild Oats
From the Advice Goddess column I just posted, here's a reason to marry! The reader writes:
I've always gotten terrible crushes on exciting, ambitious, bold men who never want anything to do with me. I gambled that being with a good, reliable man would cure me of my pointless crushes, and married my best friend. He’s in love with me, and I love him as a friend and figured I’d grow to love him as a husband. Besides, I want kids and I’m short on time...
My answer starts like this:
I love asking couples how they got together, but, in your case, I’ll guess: “I just got super-tired of drunk-dialing business executives (I mean, they all eventually block my number), and at that moment, I happened to glance at my watch, and went, ‘Holy moly, I need sperm!’”
The rest, and comments, are here.
Health Canada -- It's Health USA If You Can Afford It
A Canadian MP with breast cancer seeks treatment in the US says a CTV story:
Liberal MP Belinda Stronach, who is battling breast cancer, travelled to California last June for an operation that was recommended as part of her treatment, says a report.Stronach's spokesman, Greg MacEachern, told the Toronto Star that the MP for Newmarket-Aurora had a "later-stage" operation in the U.S. after a Toronto doctor referred her.
"Belinda had one of her later-stage operations in California, after referral from her personal physicians in Toronto. Prior to this, Belinda had surgery and treatment in Toronto, and continues to receive follow-up treatment there," said MacEachern.
He said speed was not the reason why she went to California.
Instead, MacEachern said the decision was made because the U.S. hospital was the best place to have it done due to the type of surgery required.
Stronach was diagnosed last spring with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). The cancer is one of the more treatable forms but Stronach still required a mastectomy -- which was done in Toronto -- and breast reconstruction.
Stronach, who announced last April she would be leaving politics before the next election, paid for the surgery in the U.S., reports the Star.
A commenter on the story writes of the difference in simple breast cancer detection measures:
Kim While living in the USA several years ago I found a lump in my breast. I went to the doctor the next day, she had me in for a ultrasound and mam the very next day. We are now living in Canada again, this time my doctor here found a lump, she sent me to a specialist ( 10 1/2 weeks it took), still haven't had a mam. This Canadian system is scary, and needs to be fixed! I too if I had the money would seek treatment in the USA.
From an editorial in the Harrisburg, VA, Rocktown Weekly
What would you think of a person who, say, continually and effusively praised the Sundown Medical Clinic but, when he or she was ill, hastened to the Sunrise Treatment Center?Would this raise questions as to the person’s integrity, as well as the quality of the Sundown Clinic?
Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach is a strong supporter of the national health care service of that nation. The Canada Health Act mandates that no one should pay for a health service if others get it free; no matter how bad they need surgery, they must wait in line.
Anything different, said Ms. Stronach would be “a two-tiered health system and … I’m not in favor of a two-tiered health system.”
She’s not in favor of waiting either, and long medical waits are common in Canada.
When Ms. Stronach developed breast cancer, she traveled to California last June for an operation that was recommended as part of her treatment. However, she denied the speed of medical care in the United States was the reason for her quick trip to California.
So, the Labor MP believes in a two-tiered health system … as long as she doesn’t have to use it?
Of course, if the United States had the same type of health care plan as Canada had, Ms. Stronach would still be waiting. There would have been no place to go for her operation.
As a Kaiser Permanente member, I walk down the hall after my physical and get a routine mammogram in about 15 minutes. When I once needed a biopsy (I'm fine, thanks!), I had to wait from Friday until Monday. As opposed to 10 1/2 weeks...just to get a mammogram. Be very, very sure you really want national health care.
I Really Just Need A Housekeeper
But this came in over the e-transom Monday night, subject-lined "DO YOU NEED A SLAVE TO SERVE YOU MASTER ? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" The e-mail follows:
Hello Master, My name is rita, i am a sex and domestic slave willing to serve a master, i am a submissive slave ready to serve diligently in my life without no hesitation. my name is what my master wishes to call me, i have been in this life style while i was very young and i enjoy it so much that i never want to think of the alternate life. I remain the property of any master that own me and all my right shall be for my master, he shall decide what i will eat how to eat and what am to wear, he shall be my commander and i shall be follower to obey him so much in my life. i am a slave with no limits thou i have somethings that i will want my master to agree with me before taking me as his slave, i will not want master to kill me, sexually transmitted diseases will not want to be involved,fire play, breath play, needles, i will be so glad if am not made to do all this but all other thing i am open to it and also will want to give trial am a slave that is willing to learn and i wish to meet a master that will make mne grow so much in this life style so i be a very good slave, i can also be used as a toilet slave, humiliated,degrading,used, all my 3 holes shall be for my master and i will have no right to use any without my masters permission. My desire will be what to please my master and not what to please me i will like to read back from you and if you will take me as your pet slave to be used. I am free and ready to serve you. Little one Rita
The truth is, my late Advice Lady partner Marlowe and I once had a servant in New York. We were on our last change purse of dimes, splitting an order of eggs benedict, when we collectively realized, "We're witty, we're charming, people should buy us dinner." We put an ad in the paper, "Amusing Dinner Companions Available: Two beautiful, interesting creative women available for dinner and witty conversation. You buy dinner, we provide the rest."
We were deluged with calls. We could've eaten out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for months, but we just went on a couple dinners a week with the most interesting ones -- and even ended up bringing a poor composer dinner when he said he wanted to meet us but was too low on cash to take us out. Somehow, I ended up leaving with a pair of his Calvin Klein underwear, which I still have, and which I wore to the gym for years. And even more strangely, there was no nudity involved the evening he gave us the underwear.
A few weeks later, we got the call from the guy who just wanted to serve. It was fun for a while -- we used to have him pick us and our friends up and drive us all to parties (at one, Marlowe made him wear a nametag, "Hello, My Name Is: Worthless"), and he even offered to pick up Marlowe's dry cleaning and pay for it. All we had to do was yell at him: "You little worm!" Well, for starters.
It turned out that we weren't really up to his standards of degradation. He complained that we weren't like his previous mistresses, like one who'd throw a ball across the floor and make him crawl on all fours and retrieve it in his teeth (we, on the other hand, wouldn't even let him into Marlowe's apartment). Oh yeah...did I mention that she'd finish off their little game of fetch by peeing on him?
Uh, yes, Kenneth, we'd be happy to give you a reference. Marlowe found herself doing that one day when I was out of town. And just like that, we were back to taking cabs and the subway, with just the ordinary under-the-breath snarling at the other passengers.
Naming The Victim
I'm against the notion that it's somehow more shameful to be a rape victim than, say, a victim of a mugging. I actually don't find either shameful, and, in fact, I think hiding the name of a rape victim helps perpetuate the notion that being raped is shameful, but I'm godless and, of course, churchless.
I understand that some rape victims, especially because of the religion or culture they're raised in, feel an enormous sense of shame. But, then, the policy of not naming rape victims in the paper -- while we name victims of every other sort of crime -- allows those who make false accusations of rape a convenient shield. (Personally, I'm of the mind that false accusers of rape, when proved to be so, should be sentenced to the same time the accused would likely have done.)
Perhaps on the way to rethinking the naming the victim issue, the Raleigh News & Observer recently printed the name -- and photograph -- of a rape victim, with that victim's permission, and I think that's a good start. Here's the piece about it, by N&O staff writer Ted Vaden:
The News & Observer does not normally disclose the identity of victims in sex crimes, except with their permission. In this case, Cynthia Morton consented to her name and picture being published in a story on the trial of the man accused of assaulting her 14 years ago. The rapist, Vincent Tan Hall, pleaded guilty.Morton today is a nurse who helps rape victims, and several readers were moved to comment on her courage -- and on The N&O's policy of not naming accusers.
"I understand the confidentiality policy of The N&O and other media sources, but I think it is great when a victim has the courage to stand up and speak out about what happened to them with confidence and without shame," wrote Raleigh lawyer Sandra A. Good. "Because only the rapist should be ashamed."
In the wake of the Duke lacrosse case, the policy of not identifying sex crime accusers is under review at The N&O. An internal committee is looking at issues such as whether accusers should be identified or, if not, whether the accused also should be shielded.
There is a good bit of sentiment both within the paper and outside for identifying accusers, out of fairness to the accused who routinely are identified when charged. Other arguments: Newspapers are in the business of providing information, not withholding it, and shielding victims contributes to the social stigma attached to sexual assault cases.
"We have an awareness that by shielding women in that way, you perpetuate the stigma," said Sarah Avery, the editor heading the internal review. "But we also know that the stigma does exist" and that many victims don't have the fortitude of a Cynthia Morton to put themselves in the public eye.
Jim Woodall, district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties, told me that identifying accusers would have a chilling effect on victims' willingness to pursue charges. "Over the years, I have known so many, both women and men, who would tell me they did not want to go forward in a case because they did not want to let people know what happened to them, because of the stigma attached."
The other side of the issue is whether, if the accuser is shielded, it's fair to identify the accused. That problem was highlighted on a national scale by the Duke case, but I'm more troubled by a less heralded case recently in the news.
Last month, Woodall dropped charges against five high-school-age boys in Chapel Hill who had been charged with raping a teenage girl. The district attorney said there were too many inconsistencies in the evidence to go to trial.
Here's what bothers me: When the young men were charged, The N&O identified them but, in keeping with its policy, did not identify the accuser. The paper also ran a photo of the youths being led out of a courtroom in shackles and jail jumpsuits.
Some readers complained to me at the time that the picture was unduly harsh on five teenagers (they are all 17 or 18). My response was that it's routine for newspapers to run photos of suspects arrested in crimes. Why should we show favoritism to these five?
But now that the case has been dropped, I wonder. They've been cleared of the charges, but the publicity attendant to their arrest adheres to five young lives. The N&O ran several stories reporting on charges in the case (in fairness, one story led off with the father of one of the accused teenagers saying his son was not guilty). Meanwhile, the accuser remains anonymous.
Avery, The N&O editor, says her committee considered whether in sexual assault cases the names of the accused, as well as accusers, should be shielded. But that's a slippery slope, she said, that could lead to not identifying people charged in any crimes. "If you extend the exemption to rape defendants, then you have to extend it to all defendants," she said.
Her committee hasn't made a recommendation yet, and, as she points out, no policy "abdicates us from applying reason and logic to all the circumstances." In hindsight, I wish the paper had reasoned that publishing the teenagers' names, without the chain-gang picture, was enough to inform the public.
via ifeminists
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
My friend Brian Linse has a new film out, "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead," and it's great. A film for grownups. That's so rare these days, except when you go see something with subtitles. It was direct by Sidney Lumet, and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, and Albert Finney. And it's probably the best performance I've seen Marisa Tomei give. P.S. She has a hot set of headlights. The trailer is here.
Other movies we've seen recently: The director's cut of Blade Runner, also fantastic, especially without Harrison Ford being forced to slam the audience with a voiceover throughout (it's been removed). And Human Nature, which I was surprised to have missed, since I'll see just about anything Charlie Kaufman writes. Turns out it came out September 12, 2001. Oh.
Life Lessons That Are Nothing Like Life
Jay Mohr wrote in Sports Illustrated of what's become of Little League (it's now Little Coddled League):
My godson batted cleanup (naturally) and led off the second inning with an absolute moon shot. The ball flew off his bat like he was nine! The left fielder had no chance (maybe because he spent the first two pitches squishing bugs against the bill of his cap) and ran like the wind to catch up with the ball. As my godson rounded second base, the ball was rolling around in the outfield after taking a generous carom away from anyone with a glove. Inexplicably, my godson pulled up at second base and stood on it, clapping his hands.What the hell happened? Maybe he knew he was going to hit for the cycle and wanted to get the double out of the way early. Maybe he pulled a hamstring. I ran down to the dugout where my best friend was on the top step yelling things like, "Atta boy, Walt!" and asked him what the heck was going on. He informed me that in this Little League there are no home runs allowed because the parents and administrators of the league feel it is unfair to the other kids. He continued to tell me that parents don't like it when their children are made to feel bad by being crushed by a home run, so all home runs in this league are only doubles.
WHAT!!! Are you kidding me? Do you want to know who I feel bad for? The mini man standing on second base who was denied the glorious feeling of hitting his first bomb. I am so sick and tired of all the coddling that goes on in kids' sports these days. If your child feels bad when he gives up a home run, then help him get over it. Why not teach kids at a young, impressionable age that there are winners and losers? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That's what the game -- and life -- is all about.
...My godson sat out the rest of the game, because another pansy rule in some Little Leagues these days is that everyone has to play at least two innings. The nerve! When I was a child, if a kid stunk at baseball he was relegated to manager or deep, deep left field. Sometimes if a kid wasn't good at baseball, HE DIDN'T GO OUT FOR THE TEAM! Not today, folks. Today we have a field full of kids whose parents can't admit that their child doesn't want to be there. Instead of having their kids play soccer, they shove their "one, two, three strikes and you're out" kids onto Little League fields all over the country.
...No one loses in today's Little League world. What the powers-that-be fail to realize is that not only are they ensuring that no one loses, but also, sadly, that no one wins, either. Forget crushing the opponent and taking slow home run trots; today's kids are taught that what matters most is being a good winner and a good loser. Who is a good loser (aside from the Atlanta Braves)? Why are we trying to protect kids so much as to deny them the feeling of humiliating one another? These kids are in for a shock when the real world gets a hold of them, because as you and I know, there are winners and losers in life.
For more on the trend toward nannyism, David Harsanyi:
Harsanyi's book: Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children.
video via Instapundit
Maybe It's A Crisis Of Personal Responsibility
A man dies of cancer, apparently because he didn't have health insurance. Bob Herbert mourns the guy's death, but never mentions why he had no insurance. I'm guessing, like many people, the guy thought he'd gamble that he could spend the money on other things. Herbert writes in The New York Times of "the health coverage crisis":
Lonnie Lynam, a self-employed carpenter in Pipe Creek, Tex., specialized in spiral staircases. Friends thought of him as a maestro in a toolbelt, a whiz with a hammer and nails.“His customers were always so pleased,” his mother told me. “There was this one family, kind of higher class, and he built them one of those glass holders that you would see in a bar or a lounge, with the glasses hanging upside down in different sizes. It was awesome.”
Lonnie had a following, a reputation. He was said to have a magic touch.
What he didn’t have was health insurance.
So when the headaches came, he tried to ignore them. “We’ve had migraines in our family,” said his mother, Betty Lynam, who is 67 and lives in Creston, Iowa. “So he thought that was what it was.”
Lonnie’s brother, Kelly, said: “He wasn’t the type to complain. And since he didn’t have insurance ...”
Kelly, 45, worked on different jobs with his brother. He was the one who rushed Lonnie to an emergency room one day last fall when the headaches became so severe that Lonnie couldn’t stand up.
It would be great if there were something unusual about this story: A person without health insurance gets sick. The person holds off on going to the doctor because there’s no way to pay the bill. The person is denied the full range of treatment because of the absence of insurance. The person dies.
Now, if you can't get insurance at all, yes, we should fix that. But, if you'd rather spend your money elsewhere, well, sometimes you're going to pay a high price.
I just talked to a reporter yesterday about "environmentalism," and I told her that I take the notion of environmentalism beyond driving a hybrid and using hemp bags at the grocery store. I think we should all try to have as small a "footprint" as we can, to use resources, but not waste them. And to see the airspace in a café, for example, as shared airspace, not airspace one person gets to take over with their cell phone shouting.
And, finally, I think environmentalism means picking up after ourselves -- and not just our ice cream wrapper after we drop it. This also means having health insurance instead of wishful thinking, and certainly, instead of expecting other people to pay for us if something goes wrong.
You Don't Have To Be Drunk To Be Arrested For Drunk Driving
The prohibition nannies are getting out of hand. There's a shocking piece in Reason by David Harsanyi who opens on a D.C. woman who was arrested for drunk driving -- even though she wasn't actually legally drunk:
The breath test revealed that Bolton's blood alcohol content (BAC) was 0.03 percent, a level a 120-pound woman could expect after drinking one glass of wine. It was well below the 0.08 percent limit that marks a driver as legally intoxicated in D.C. It was not low enough for the arresting officer, however. This middle-aged mother of two, who hadn't drunk to excess, who hadn't run a red light or run a stop, was arrested, handcuffed, and fingerprinted for an innocent mistake. She sat in a jail cell for hours and was finally released at 4:30 a.m. Bolton spent four court appearances and over $2,000 fighting a $400 ticket. She then spent a month fighting to get her license back after refusing to submit to the 12-week alcohol counseling program.The arresting officer, inaptly named Dennis Fair, insists: "If you get behind the wheel of a car with any measurable amount of alcohol, you will be dealt with in D.C. We have zero tolerance....Anything above 0.01, we can arrest." Fair recognized that nearly everyone in D.C. was unaware of this zero tolerance policy. Still, he told The Washington Post, if "you don't know about it, then you're a victim of your own ignorance."
Bolton's arrest was not the result of a single cop's overzealousness. In 2004 D.C. police arrested 321 people with BACs below the legal limit of 0.08 percent for driving under the influence. The year before, the number was 409.
...Neoprohibitionists aim to muddle the distinction between drunk diving and driving after drinking any amount of alcohol. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea at a Senate Environment and Public Committee hearing way back in 1997, contending that we "may wind up in this country going to zero tolerance, period." Former MADD President Katherine Prescott concurred, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, where she stated "there is no safe blood alcohol, and for that reason responsible drinking means no drinking and driving."
Technically she's correct. Driving is never completely safe, and many things drivers commonly do-including speaking on a cell phone, talking to passengers, applying lipstick, eating a sandwich, drinking coffee, adjusting the radio, reprimanding the kids in the back seat, and daydreaming about weekend plans-can make it riskier. As states and cities have begun focusing on zero tolerance (or "driving while distracted" laws, which target the diversions laid out above) they are losing focus on the real threat, namely habitually drunk drivers.
Even the founder of MADD thinks this is wrong, protesting...
...the shift from attacking drunk driving to attacking drinking in general. "I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction," she told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1992. BAC legislation, she said, "ignores the real core of the problem....If we really want to save lives, let's go after the most dangerous drivers on the road." Lightner said MADD has become an organization far more "neoprohibitionist" than she had envisioned. "I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol," she said. "I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving."
And now some are trying for pre-emptive strikes -- and not just against those with a history of drunk driving:
In 2004 New Mexico state Rep. Ken Martinez (D-Grants) introduced a bill that would have forced every driver in his state to install an ignition interlock device. In addition to the indignity and inconvenience of breathing into a tube every time they start their cars, this requirement would cost drivers about $1,000 each to install the device, according to estimates by the states that require them....During the Christmas season of 2003 in Fairfax County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington not far from the site of Debra Bolton's arrest, local police took pre-emptive law enforcement to an absurd extreme, launching a sting operation that targeted 20 local bars and restaurants. The mission: apprehend "drunk" patrons before they try to drive. These drinkers were far from their cars and in some cases did not even own cars. What type of evidence did the police use to measure intoxication? According to one law enforcement official involved in the sting, the determination could be made based on unflicked cigarette ashes, an excessive number of restroom visits, noisy cursing, or a wobbly walk.
The raids involved 10 cops in SWAT-like outfits. In an interview with The Reston Times, the general manager of one targeted establishment said "they tapped one lady on the shoulder-who was on her first drink and had just eaten dinner-to take her out on the sidewalk and give her a sobriety test. They told her she fit the description of a woman they had complaints about, and that they heard she was dancing topless."
In one raid, of the 18 drinkers tested for sobriety, nine were hauled to jail for public intoxication. When asked to explain the rationale for the raids, then-Fairfax County Police Chief J. Thomas Mange declared that you "can't be drunk in a bar." Where can you be drunk? "At home. Or at someone else's home. And stay there until you're not drunk."
Harsanyi's final words:
Drinking may not be a prerequisite for a happy life, but it's a ritual most Americans have enjoyed as long as the nation has existed, and harmlessly so in the overwhelming majority of cases. Although I'm not an exceptionally heavy drinker, I can't, and don't want to, imagine a life without alcohol. As long as I'm not endangering anyone else, I shouldn't have to.
How To Teach Your Kids To Binge Drink
Addiction treatment specialist Stanton Peele, author of Addiction Proof Your Child, on showing your kids what responsible drinking is -- by drinking with them before they hit the legal drinking age. The lady in the split screen apparently thinks it's healthier to forbid them alcohol, possibly or likely leading them to celebrate turning 21 with a bender.
Why You Shouldn't Marry For Love
You can't guarantee that a feeling will last a lifetime. Unless you're raising kids, I see no reason to marry; and if you do have kids (in that department, I'm just to the right of Dr. Laura), whether you marry or not, I think you should have a delivery room to dorm room commitment to do what's best for your kids (like staying together as a family, despite, say, having the hots for your secretary).
Until about 200 years ago, according to historian Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage: A History, people used to marry to combine her daddy's pigs with his daddy's cows, or to raise children. Coontz writes of the years prior:
Certainly, people fell in love during those thousands of years, sometimes even with their own spouses. But marriage was not fundamentally about love. It was too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love....And not until the late eighteenth century, and then only in Western Europe and North America, did the notion of free choice and marriage for love triumph as a cultural ideal.
CNN's Roland Martin is on a campaign to save marriages.
And here's my column on the topic, "Holding On For Dear Wife":
Love isn’t the answer, it’s the problem. As Coontz observes, once people started marrying for love, they started getting divorced for lack of it. Nobody wants to ask whether it makes sense to tell another person you’ll love them until you drop. Yes, it can happen. Everybody’s got a story of that one couple, still madly in love at 89, and chasing each other around the canasta table. Guess what: They lucked out. You can’t make yourself love somebody, or continue loving somebody after the love is gone; you can only make an effort to act lovingly toward them (and hope they don’t find you too patronizing). Love is a feeling. It might come, it might go, it might stick around for a lifetime. It’s possible to set the stage for it, but impossible to control -- which is why people in the market for durability should stop looking for love and start shopping for steel-belted radials.I’ve always thought a marriage license should be like a driver’s license, renewable every five years or so. If your spouse engages in weapons-grade nagging or starts saving sex for special occasions -- like leap year -- well, at the end of the term, give them bus fare and a change of clothes, and send them on their way. But, what about the chi-l-l-ldren?! Maybe people who want them should sign up for a “delivery room to dorm room” plan, with an option to renew. It’s counterproductive to preserve some abusive or unhealthy family situation, but maybe more people would buck up and make parenting their priority if they knew they just had to get through 18 years on family track: “We’re very sorry you’re in love with your secretary, but there are children involved, so zip up your pants and take the daddy place at the dinner table.”
Some people do have to settle. They’re afraid to be alone, or they aren’t brave or creative enough to thumb their nose at convention, or it’s closing time in the egg aisle, and if it’s male and willing, they’ll take it. According to your friend’s father, “it doesn’t matter who you marry.” Maybe it didn’t matter to him because he’s one of those guys who really just wants a tidy house, regular sex, and hot meals -- and he never figured out he could come close with carryout food, topless bars, and a cleaning lady. Do you have what it takes to hold out for a woman who really lights you up? You might -- providing you don’t need another half to be whole. If you let this girl go, you may feel empty, bored, and lonely for a while -- but it beats marrying her and feeling that way for a lifetime. Maybe you can’t order up “happily ever after,” but if you try for “realistically ever after,” you might find “happily ever now.”
And here is one more reason not to get married -- or, at the very least, have a serious prenup.
As for how it plays out for those who stay single, another column of mine, responding to a woman who was worried that she hadn't partnered up, "For Bitter Or For Worse":
But, what will become of you if you don’t lock in a man like an interest rate? Who will change the rubber sheet on your bed and put tennis balls on the bottom of your walker? This is an understandable concern, but maybe you could just put a few bucks aside for that, as it seems kind of insulting to get together with somebody now as a means of saving big on elder-care. Beyond the need for good nursing, maybe you fear being all alone in your twilight years (or, worse yet, dying alone and being turned into a Purina substitute by your 26 cats). The truth is, according to studies referenced in Bella DePaulo’s terrific book (just out in paperback) Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, women who’ve never been married have some of the strongest friendships and sense of community in their lives, and are the least likely to feel lonely when they’re old bags.Assuming your friendships aren’t as fleeting as your relationships, and serial monogamy isn’t an excuse to avoid fixing something in your psychology that’s broken, what’s the problem? Your current approach actually seems pretty wise -- not planning in advance how long your relationships will last but being honest about how long they actually do. Until you start longing for something longterm, why not have the love that works for you instead of the love that’s supposed to work for you? Despite all the people who’ll ask how long you’ve been with somebody, not how happy you are, the real tragedy isn’t the relationship that ends after a few years, but the relationship that’s allowed to drag on like the ballet (forever) or a bad play (about 10 minutes longer than the ballet).
P.S. A note to those who'd like to read my column in your local papers: Write to the editor of the local alt weekly or the features editor of your local daily. Letters from readers do make a difference in the content they run.
Is It Hateful To Tell The Truth About The Koran's Thumbs Up For Wife-Beating?
JihadWatch's Robert Spencer writes a letter to the editor of TheDartmouth.com in response to a woman who contends he is "bringing hate speech on campus and hates Islam itself." Spencer writes:
She offers no evidence for this. I ask anyone and everyone, including Chloe Mulderig, to listen to the talk I gave at Dartmouth and to come up with even a single example of “hate speech.”Later on she says that “[Spencer’s assertion] that the Koran says it is okay to beat women is incorrect and offensive.”
Is that so?
Koran 4:34 tells men to beat their disobedient wives after first warning them and then sending them to sleep in separate beds. This is, of course, an extremely controversial verse, so it is worth noting how several translators render the key word here, waidriboohunna:
Pickthall: “and scourge them”
Yusuf Ali: “(And last) beat them (lightly)”
Al-Hilali/Khan: “(and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)”
Shakir: “and beat them”
Sher Ali: “and chastise them”
Khalifa: “then you may (as a last alternative) beat them”
Arberry: “and beat them”
Rodwell: “and scourge them”
Sale: “and chastise them”
Asad: “then beat them”
Pickthall, Yusuf Ali, Al-Hilali/Khan, Shakir, Sher Ali, Khalifa and Asad are Muslims. Are their translations all “incorrect and offensive?”
Laleh Bakhtiar, in a new translation that has received wide publicity, translates Koran 4:34 as “go away from them.” In light of this unanimity among the translators, both Muslim and non-Muslim, this seems difficult to sustain — all of these authorities got the passage wrong until Bakhtiar? But her impulse is understandable, as many Muslims today regard this verse with acute embarrassment. Asad adduces numerous traditions in which Muhammad “forbade the beating of any woman,” concluding that wife-beating is “barely permissible, and should preferably be avoided.”
Unfortunately, however, this is not a unanimous view. Sheikh Syed Mahmud Allusi in his commentary Ruhul Ma’ani gives four reasons that a man may beat his wife: “if she refuses to beautify herself for him,” if she refuses sex when he asks for it, if she refuses to pray or perform ritual ablutions, and “if she goes out of the house without a valid excuse.”
But Mulderig would apparently prefer to pretend that I made this up rather than deal with Muslim approval of wife-beating.
More fun for women under Islam here.
In other death-cult news, the next word in primitivism may be death to sites and/or servers. Word has it there's a cyber jihad planned for November 11 and beyond -- for those whose western values permit freedom of expression, including expressions critical of Islam. Robert McMillan writes for PC Advisor:
The attack was reported by DEBKAfile, an online military intelligence magazine. Citing anonymous "counter-terror sources", DEBKAfile said it had intercepted an October 29 "internet announcement", calling for a volunteer-run online attack against 15 targeted sites, set to begin November 11.The operation is supposed to expand after its launch date until "hundreds of thousands of Islamist hackers are in action against untold numbers of anti-Muslim sites," the magazine reported.
Such an attack could be launched with a known software kit, called Electronic Jihad Version 2.0, said Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism with Secure Computing. This software, which has been in circulation for about three years, has recently become more easily configurable so that it could be more effective in a distributed denial of service attack, such as the one suggested by the DEBKAfile report.
Attackers would download Jihad 2.0 to their own desktops and specify the amount of bandwidth they would like to consume, not unlike the SETI@home software package used to scan for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
However, Henry said that his law enforcement contacts are treating the report with some scepticism. "I talked to a few people today who know of DEBKAfile, who feel they are dubious, but they can be credible," he said. "I'm not looking at November 11 as being the day that the internet goes down."
Security expert Gadi Evron, who recently studied the cyber attacks in Estonia, expressed similar scepticism.
"DEBKAfile gets a lot of news that no one else has, and fast," he said. "But it's a community driven tabloid. Treat it as a golden source to be taken with 5 grains of salt," he said via instant message.
Even if an attack is planned, it would likely be nothing new, Evron added. "Cyber jihad on the level of attacking websites happens every day for numerous causes by enthusiasts. The content of this warning is doubtful. There are not hundreds of thousands of infosec workers worldwide, not to mention working for al-Qaeda," he said.
How To End World Hunger
By Sam Kinison.
via Wendy McElroy
What's Good For The Goose
Women discover what it's like to be on the other side of the alimony hustle. From a press release I just got via e-mail:
Glenn Sacks, who has been his kids' "primary caregiver for the past nine years," has a balanced take on it:
Unlike many in the men's and fathers' movement, I believe that alimony does have a place. I believe alimony is warranted when one partner--male or female--really has put aside or cut back his or her career to be the primary caregiver for his or her children, and is economically disadvantaged because of it. I certainly think alimony can be abused, usually by women but occasionally by men.
Crazy Sane
Martin Amis on Islam on Spiked, written by a somewhat tsk-tsking Emily Hill. Hill writes here of a talk Amis gave, and the silly ideas of "tolerance" and multi-culti relativism too many people have -- in England and here in the USA:
Put your hands up, said Amis, if you think you are morally superior to the Taliban. When a minority of the audience did so, Amis muttered: ‘About 30 per cent…’ His implication is that, in our current relativistic climate, it is taboo to assert your superiority to anything – even the Taliban. Anyone who values freedom, Amis says, should have a problem with Islamism. He graphically went through some of the feudal punishments that the Taliban metes out to women who step out of line. ‘We’re in a pious paralysis when we can’t say we’re morally superior to the Taliban’, he said. His attack on cultural relativism is welcome, and it certainly exposed moral sheepishness amongst the assembled at the ICA. But I couldn’t help thinking: is that it? Is that what it means to be ‘Enlightened’ and principled today – to be Not-The-Taliban? Amis didn’t go any further on the matter.Islam, in Amis’ view, ‘is a religion that’s having a nervous breakdown’. And Islamism is a variation on a death cult – an ‘ideology within a religion, a turbo-charge, steroid version of murderous belief’. He made some interesting points about suicide bombing, describing it as a ‘paltry’ act, signifying nothing but a ‘besplattering’ of the self. What the Islamic world needs, he said, is dramatic progress: ‘Martin Luther, John Calvin… religious wars, then Enlightenment, then you enter the modern world 300 years after that.’ He argued that it is the Western world that is giving Islamism its power to commit atrocity, even helping to legitimise that atrocity, by trying to ‘understand it’. Society does not question or interrogate Islamist values openly out of fear of becoming the target. Amis, however, is the Dirty Harry of the literary world. Come on, mad mullah, make my day. ‘I want to be a target. There are no Switzerland positions here’, he said.
Amis was particularly scathing in his assessment of certain Western liberals who, in the course of ‘listening’ to Islamist grievances, end up treating the views of Osama bin Laden - and those who blow themselves up at his bidding - with respect. Bin Laden, he announced, ‘is the Che Guevara of the current age, the poster boy for this amoral doctrine’. Amis argued that some admire bin Laden’s ascetic lifestyle. ‘He lives in a cave, drinks contaminated water, suffers.’ It’s eco-friendly, borderline holy. But in truth, Amis said, Osama and his crew are not only murderous criminals, they are completely ridiculous figures. ‘At one time’, he said, all Osama’s henchmen ‘had one eye. They are tin-legged zealots, amputeed mullahs, they’re all in bits. Osama is a very stupid man. But he did at least have the wit to stay in one piece.’
John Pilger, the veteran investigative journalist, also came in for a hiding, as did London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Amis quoted Ken’s words: ‘[T]he Palestinians don’t have jet planes, don’t have tanks, they only have their bodies to use as weapons. In an unfair balance, that’s what people use.’ Amis then puckered up his lips and blew a fully formed raspberry of disgust. Is blowing yourself up really going to help matters, he asked?
