That is the modern mentality: no personal responsibility. Everything is the fault of someone or something else. Most therapy seems to just support people in their desire to avoid admitting that they are (or should be) in control of their own lives and decisions.

While I was in school, I took in a room mate to help with the mortgage. He violated my privacy in a fairly egregious way, and this coupled with a few other personality traits compelled me to call him on his behavior. When I told him I was pretty pissed about my privacy violation, he said, "Oh, yeah. I have a problem with boundaries."

I gave him a boundary he could understand. It was the end of my driveway, and his place was the other side of it.

Tiger really should have looked America square in the eye and said, "This is none of your damn business. Leave me alone." I surely would've had more respect for him having a spine despite the fact I cannot admire his idiotic behavior.

I've tried to do the best I can, in both my blogging and professional life. But somewhere little Nick got lost along the way.

I feel real sorry for him. He's a lonely boy looking for understanding. He looks exhausted.

>>It slowly became clear to the appalled audience that Fergie was talking about herself in the third person.

As excruciating as the third-person chatter was, it wasn't the most shameful portion of that Fergie-Oprah show.

At one point Sarah Ferguson was blathering about needing to find the strength to forgive herself (for selling the fake businessman preferential access to her ex-husband, the prince) and she offered - with a rehearsed wobble in her voice - the example of a little maimed refugee boy she had once met.

The lad, she explained, had been able to later befriend the youth who had cut off the former's limb with a machete.

And if that little boy could be so big-hearted, she said to Oprah, surely she too could find the strength to absolve herself for her own bad behavior!

(That was, I think, only the 2nd time I've ever watched the Oprah show live. Her angry interview with James Frey - the fake drugs memoir writer - was the other.)

I'm w/ JD, the tiger woods controversy was an embarrassment, to the culture. But I don't see the public driving this trend. It seems to arise from the news and tabloid media. They demand that celebrities atone to them. It's a form of extortion - come to us and humiliate yourself for our entertainment or we'll destroy you forever. I wonder whether the mawkishness and obvious insincerity of these 'apologies' are really a way for the person to say 'fuck you'. That's what I'd do if I were forced to publicly apologize for a private matter. I'd craft my apology to insult them.

Tiger Woods and his wife are now quietly divorcing. So much for sex therapy and working on the marriage. The apologies were always a publicity ploy just damage control. He wasn't sorry. He was sorry he got caught. Hopefully now, he won't appease the American public' sense of what is right and wrong by remarrying some acceptable women while continuing his golf career proving that love can conquer all. Now maybe he'll accept that he likes to screw different hot women and he'll declare that its nobody's business because really, it isn't!

My favorite is "sex addiction."

Alan Clark rocks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vso9iPIpeu8

The stringing together of ten-dollar words, without much regard as to their actual meaning, has long been a trend in the humanities and social sciences. It reminds me of the pig-Latin mumbo-jumbo of the medieval guilds. And I suspect it serves much the same purpose: (1) it allows members of the cult to identify each other, and (2) it keeps out the riffraff who don't know the password. Hence Fergie's speech: it wasn't meant for us. It was meant for the other members of her elite tribe (and in that, it probably served its purpose). Us hoi-polloi weren't meant to understand.

>>Hence Fergie's speech: it wasn't meant for us. It was meant for the other members of her elite tribe (and in that, it probably served its purpose). Us hoi-polloi weren't meant to understand.

Cousin Dave,

That's a little bit perceptive but, I think, also wrong.

Fergie's status - her value - on this side of the pond is as a black sheep former member of British royalty who is more at home in the USA because, as she's said many times & with transparent calculation, normal Americans are more open & forgiving about people who "royally" screw up than nasty Brits.

I think her audience was meant to be the hoi polloi!

I agree she spoke in tongues on Oprah!
No question.

But by pulling of an amazing double - by managing to be both slick & clumsy with her psycho-babble - the stupid woman set herself apart from the audience she needs.

There were a couple of times that Oprah - the consummate tv communicator - actually warned Fergie she was no longer making any sort of sense at all.

So I'm not sure who you mean when you say Fergie's speech was "intended for the other members of her elite tribe"?

Who are they?
And how can this unknown tribe give her any of the legitimacy she needs as a plausible public figure?

Worst on the self respect front of Tiger's "sex addiction" was one of his former lovers going public wanting an apology complete with lawyer Gloria Alread making scenes to get an "apology" from Tiger for her client. Seriously, the lover didn't know Tiger was married and felt betrayed or something... shame about banging a married guy? Nah.

> I'm not sure who you mean when you say
> Fergie's speech was "intended for the
> other members of her elite tribe"?

Yeah... I thought the whole point of Fergie's generation of royals was to demonstrate that there's no such thing as elites... Yet by being so unremarkable, to ensure continuing support of the diminished monarchy by the unwashed masses. There are plenty of Americans (and others) who can say 'Oh yeah, I have an ex-sister-in-law who put on some weight and went nuts, too... There's nothing threatening or special about this person'. And for at least a moment, they forget that the royals are the all-time champion public entitlement sponges.

(As I understand it, until the Harry Potter woman hit the charts, Lizabeth was the richest woman in the world. She did not earn this money.)

> I don't see the public driving this
> trend. It seems to arise from the
> news and tabloid media.

Media pander... That's it. They don't lead anything, they can only follow. Every stupidity under the sun is thrown up against the wall, and only a few of them stick.

Perhaps my least favorite kind of liberal is the kind who hates Fox or Limbaugh or whomever (without actually considering what those media say), because they're so certain that these people are "opinion leaders".

But I don't think leadership happens that way... Not, at least, for my opinions. I like Steyn and Paglia and Hitchens, but they don't tell me what to think. When they're wrong, they're as wrong as anyone, including the people I loathe.

To worry that media are corrupting the souls of the Little People is only to concede that you yourself are lost without a commander. Don't do that.

"My favorite is "sex addiction.""

How can you be sure that doesn't exist when so many people seem unable to give it up?

Telling on myself a bit, I was once married to a small blonde who was impossible to not touch - and to this day, impossible to completely forget after 20 years. Even though I can't remember what happened in several encounters, everything I had tht would remind me of her has been purged fom the house and I carry a bit of guilt in being manipulated at the time.

"How can you be sure that doesn't exist when so many people seem unable to give it up?"

Because almost nobody can give up sex. The drive to have sex is bred into human beings, with only the tiniest part of humanity having the self control to permanently refrain from sex, and of those who are active sexually, only about half of those resist temptation to go outside the socially proscribed sexual boundaries of marriage.

The lack of self control is not indicative of addiction, it is indicative of a very human CHARACTER FLAW. You can't diagnose every human failing as an addiction or disorder, or you remove personal responsibility to take control of and own one's actions. You give an excuse for someone to never do better, or even try to.
------

Its the same damn argument people use to support fast food addiction, they replace their own responsibility, their own lack of discipline and self control, with a disorder as an excuse.

It may help them sleep at night, but it marks them for the weak person that they are, and RIGHTLY earns them the contempt of others.

The Brits are probably the only country in the world with a worse case of unctious goo goo therapyitis than the US. She probably didn't realize how ridiculous she'd sound to an American audience, because this sort of thing plays well in England, in certain quarters.

Not only is

> unctious goo goo therapyitis

a fun thing to read, but this

> The Brits are probably the only country
> in the world with a worse case

often seems to be true.

Sio spoke of one of Tiger's lovers hiring lawyer Gloria Alred to get an "apology" from Tiger.

No one hires a lawyer to get an apology.

>>The Brits are probably the only country in the world with a worse case of unctious goo goo therapyitis than the US. She probably didn't realize how ridiculous she'd sound to an American audience, because this sort of thing plays well in England, in certain quarters.

Abraxis,
What do you mean "this sort of thing plays well in England, in certain quarters"?

(Not snarking- just puzzled!)

Jody

Just that this sort of weirdly theatrical confessional style is English, not American. It's more formal and melodramatic than the US version. Her appeal resembles the style of a Victorian melodrama.

Thanks, Abraxis.

Amigos was better than Abraxas.

Just sayin'.

""How can you be sure that doesn't exist when so many people seem unable to give it up?"

Because almost nobody can give up sex."

Pbbb. You start out with admitting the issue, but claiming that a character flaw is responsible for addiction?

So, if I administered intravenous heroin to you on a regular basis and then stopped, there'd be no withdrawal symptoms, really - they're all psychosomatic?

Bah.

Sex activates the same parts of the brain that some drugs do. It's pretty foolish to claim, however obtusely, that the effect is the same on everyone.

There's a character flaw in seeking the illegal substance, and another one in not obeying the law because all you want to do is get high - but that has nothing, zip point zero, to do with the chemical effects.

I'll tell you straight off that you can find somebody you'll do things for you never thought you'd do. That you haven't is just a measure of your experience - not that it's bad, just that you haven't reacted that way to anyone you've held closely.

No one hires a lawyer to get an apology.

Posted by: Nick at June 6, 2010 1:35 PM

Obviously. The model/porn star wanted a piece of the pie or at least the attention it might bring to her career. They were just playing the apology deal to get sympathy.

Sio...I agree with you 100%. That was probably not apparent in my post.

On the sex addiction thing...I'll entertain it when a physiological sex researcher can demonstrate that stopping having sex causes significant withdrawl symptoms. Most of the research in the area focuses on reactions to falling in love and orgasm, not "just sex." If it's just about the "addiction" their hand should work just fine. But it's not, it's about variety and getting away with it (or not in Tiger's case).

Liked this headline from Andy Borowitz:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/tiger-woods-at-least-i-di_b_602372.html

Tiger Woods: At Least I Didn't Fuck the Entire Gulf of Mexico

> it's poor impulse control and self-indulgence.

Dear Woman— I like and admire you, and have for some time, though we've never actually met.

And while my comments here might strike you as the rantings of a puritanical, southern Baptist hell-&-brimstone preacher from down in the holler, I am in fact a sophisticated, fully-sexualized child of the Disco age, a gay-friendly liberal of the proudest American academic tradition, a sophisticate who well understands that a contemporary, broad-minded and decent woman of your generation might know what it's like to wake up with an erection in her underwear.

But that erection has never been your own, and that makes all the difference.

Who you calling 'impulsive'?

Tiger fucked it up, absolutely: But let's not pretend it was an oversight, like forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning. Masculinity is difficult for everyone... But it's still the only game in town.

Dopamine my ass.

Don't chirp about "dopamine" if your going to mock others for "therapy-speak".

Aw c'mon, don't go all materialist on us... Read the passage you posted, the one about the failure(even!) of his Buddhist faith... Golf is all about the zen, Right? Remember Carl Spackler? "Gunga galunga. Gunga gunga da gunga." Tiger's life was all about concentration...

IJS, this "impulse" is the model for all other impulses perhaps save hunger, and they're kinda covalent.

Now, here's something offtopic.

My favorite therapy-babble is repressed memory syndrome.

Basically, you have a therapist that can't figure out what is wrong with the person in front of him/her, so they say- Something so terrible has happened to you that you can't even remember it. You must have been abused!

They should call it induced-memory syndrome!

My favorite therapy-babble is repressed memory syndrome.

This was a joke between me and my husband over the weekend.

Me: Don't make me kick your ass again.
Him: When have you EVER kicked my ass?
Me: See, I whupped you so hard you blocked it out.
Him: Sigh.

Jody, let me go ponder a bit. There's a certain segment of the American public that has an odd, almost perverse, fascination with the British royal family. The Windsors make frequent appearances on the front pages of such erstwhile publications as the Weekly World News (in between the UFO abduction and Elvis-is-alive-and-living-on-an-island-with-JFK stories). I've never figured out what to make of that. It sort of seems self-contradictory for an American to go all googoo over British royalty. But most of the people who do it are, shall we say, not really deep thinkers, so maybe I'm reading too much into it.

To add to it, commenting on what Crid said about Fergie's generation of royals: I don't think they have set out to prove that they're not elite. Very much the opposite: they, like Paris Hilton, have set out to prove that they are elite despite the fact that there's absolutely nothing elite about them. Their elite status is based solely on being members of the right tribe. In a way, they're rubbing our noses in it: "I'm up here and you're down there, and I can do whatever the F I want, and no matter what I do, I'll still always be above you." It's sort of the last gasp of medieval-European classism.

>>Jody, let me go ponder a bit. There's a certain segment of the American public that has an odd, almost perverse, fascination with the British royal family.

To be honest, my original comment back to you was a bit clogged, Cousin Dave!

And, btw, I never puzzle over why the British royals fascinate some Americans. They're perceived as fabulously rich, live in castles, talk funny yet behave like emotional halfwits and occasionally screw up spectacularly. (And they almost never sue newspapers!)

Fergie interests me more than she should because her campaign to ingratiate herself with the US public has been - until the latest disaster, bizarrely successful as a British career move.

Diana - especially Dead Di - was a hard act to follow & for a while it looked as though Fergie had finally created a nifty niche for herself. She wasn't especially beautiful, she'd messed up her own marriage, was too ripely scandal-prone to be taken even semi-seriously as a royal in the UK - BUT Americans liked the version she promoted of herself on every visit here - as a down-to-earth working mom (the Weight Watchers stuff) just trying to dig herself out of debt.

Also she was clever at giving the impression that powerful in-laws from hell - the cold & snooty Windsors - made her post-divorce acceptance extremely dicey in Blighty. It was an effective soap opera narrative - flattering to America AND played well back in the UK. (She's reaped tons of positive press about what the Brits can learn from less snobbishly stratified US society...).

But the Oprah show!

It was as tho' Fergie hadn't grasped the rules at all. You can always get some sympathy for being stitched up by the evil British tabloids - but very few ordinary working ex-wives are in the position to be evilly tempted to demand $720,000, just for promising a business introduction to the royal schmuck they were married to.

And when you try to muffle the sordid facts with a strikingly implausible version of therapy speak (as Abraxis said, it was perversely melodramatic) that even Oprah can't follow, I think your goose is probably cooked.

The truth is that Fergie has never, for one second, stopped trying to be an entitled royal. (So you're right on that part - that's the throwback elitism problem).

My only personal stake in this is hoping that Fergie will bugger off back home to the UK (she comes from a village called 'Dummer') so that I'll never again have to explain to an American why on earth the horrid Brits don't just "accept her for who she is."

Man, are we quibbling over trivial wording here, or what?

I love that.

> a certain segment of the American
> public that has an odd, almost
> perverse fascination with the
> British royal family.

Calling it odd and perverted isn't the same as unusual, right? The public's interest in this woman seems entirely typical for a movie or TV star. Royalty is just another way to become well known. It's good that Americans don't admire royal blood for anything more than that, but I'd agree that it's sad that Americans don't explicit detest royalty as we should per our birthright.

Jody writes: "Also she was clever at giving the impression that powerful in-laws from hell - the cold & snooty Windsors - made her post-divorce acceptance extremely dicey in Blighty. It was an effective soap opera narrative - flattering to America AND played well back in the UK."

Wow... to be perfectly honest, I had no idea all that was going on. I guess I'm just not in the loop. So I understand your point now. And yes, in that context, Fergie's appearance on Oprah does look like an unforced error. Did she make the mistake of believing that she could really survive an unscripted interview? Or have her PR flacks, who you would think had negotiated script approval rights, totally lost their marbles?

Meanwhile, Crid adds: "Calling it odd and perverted isn't the same as unusual, right? The public's interest in this woman seems entirely typical for a movie or TV star. Royalty is just another way to become well known."

Sigh... I guess you're right. I suppose it still beats "being famous for being famous". But not by much. Victoria and Albert must be spinning in their graves.

I dunno about that... Vicky & Al used these same forces in pursuit of REAL power.

As a reply to you earlier, I'd started a long long-ass comment about Tamara Ecclestone, Bernie's moderately-attractive daughter, the product of his late-in-life marriage to a fashion model. She's pretty enough to be photographed in lingerie for lad mags, etc., and I've heard comments from her suggesting that in her circles for the decade just ended, Paris Hilton was the absolute pinnacle of fame for a young woman.

But Tamara's going to inherit more wealth than Hilton ever dreamt of. And if she were interested, Tamara could inherit authority: Her father's built one of the most successful, reliable sports entertainment ventures of all time. He'd probably be happy to teach her how it works, giving her a life of challenge, excitement, and intrigue.

But apparently, she wants to be Paris Hilton when she grows up.

That's Bernie on the right. Tamara's in the middle. And Luca Montezemelo on left... He runs Ferrari, and for the last forty years or so, he's been regarded as one of the most stylish and attractive men in Europe. And that's Luca Cordero di Montezemolo to YOU, bub... He's titled Italian nobility.

Tamara doesn't seem that impressed.